Wrote 100 posts, learned a lot & reflecting on the top hits
When it comes to age, the number 100 holds a special place. I have only met a handful of centenarians in my life. The odds of reaching 100 years old based on US Social Security data for an individual that has reached 65 is 3% for men and 5.9% for women.
Reaching 100 of anything is an accomplishment. I once got roped into doing a charity bike ride. What I did not know was the ride was 170 miles long over two days. For kicks, my friend wanted to do the optional 15 mile legs on each day to make it a full century. I nearly died, but I made it.
One hundred comes up in other areas of life. Financial advisors are often asked to make a top 100 list of people to call in their first week on the job. Tech startups that reach $100 million in revenue have usually reached unicorn status and start thinking IPO. The 100 meter dash in track & field is the pinnacle of athleticism and sheer human speed.
Getting to 100 is not easy. Taking the first step is a difficult one, but in my experience, keeping the momentum and consistency going is even harder. Work interferes, life interferes, priorities change, lots of things happen that you cannot predict. Even this newsletter did not come out exactly on a weekly basis. I had to take a break a few times for travel or business reasons.
So yes, this is a long winded way of saying that I have reached 100 posts for DEV.BIZ.OPS, and it was not easy to get here. What has helped is a lot of great feedback and encouragement from you and the fact that you open up my newsletter and read this blog on a regular basis. Thank you so much for being an inspiration and a supporter!
With that, I wanted to share the top five posts over the past six months in case you missed any or wanted to go back and read some of the essays again:
The DevRel Kerfluffle — Developer Relations has taken off as a career over the past decade, mirroring the greater prominence of developers. Are they just salespeople in disguise, marketers doing pitches, or actually advocates helping the developer community?
The Equation for Digital Transformation — Enterprises are diving in headlong to transform their organizations. But the key part of transformation success involves developers writing software and building a supportive engineering culture.
Moonshots and Diversity — I shared the story of Margaret Hamilton who was instrumental in the success of the NASA space program. If you want to create your own innovation moonshots, you need to support greater diversity of ideas, thinking, and people.
Failure at Scale — Inspired by a talk I gave at a bank, I discuss how organizations can achieve startup like agility, but it requires being more experimental, accepting failure as opportunities to learn, and giving managers the agency to encourage continuous learning.
Does Your CEO Understand Software Development? — Based on a great blog post by Tom Limoncelli, for enterprises that are looking to transform, the biggest barrier to success may be that C-level executives still often believe that “the software is the easy part”.
And last but certainly not least is a post about how the founder and CEO of Stack Overflow, Joel Spolsky, stepped down. It was quite a shock to see a leader of ten years to make such a brave move, but I am also keenly interested to see what Stack Overflow does in the next ten years. Though I joke about it in the post, my gut tells me that an acquisition by Microsoft might be the most logical next step. As for me, well hopefully I am still writing this newsletter for you as I reach my next big goals…reaching 200 posts and publishing a book!
What has been your favorite or most thought provoking DEV.BIZ.OPS. post? Is there an article from another author that you found particularly inspiring?
Can White Castle?
Can White Castle?
begingroup$ (Edit: so this is wrong..) Brilliant puzzle! The answer is: No! White can't castle. [Spoiler alert! Scroll…puzzling.stackexchange.com
Love nerding out on some good chess puzzlers…
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