CANTON, OH—Following dozens of visitor complaints, officials at the Pro Football Hall of Fame announced Thursday that they have elected to take down an exhibit featuring a firearm owned by former New England Patriots tight end and current murder sus...

CHICAGO—Despite broiling temperatures that have plagued the residents of the Midwest and much of the Eastern Seaboard throughout the week, local man and lifelong contrarian Martin Rivers told reporters Thursday that the ongoing heat wave does not in...

Courtney shared this story from Rands In Repose:

"Project managers don't write code, they don't test the use cases, and they're not designing the interface. You know what a good project manager does? They are chaos destroying machines, and each new person you bring onto your team, each dependency you create, adds hard to measure entropy to your team. A good project manager thrives on measuring, controlling, and crushing entropy." Pretty much, yep.

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When it was five of you sitting the same room, it was easy. When someone needed to know something, they stood up in the middle of the room and asked, "Who broke the build?" When a decision needed to be made, you looked up at Phil and said, "Phil, this needs to scale from day one, right?" and Phil nodded. In a nod, you defined the entirety of your product performance plan. When someone was struggling or was blocked, you could tell because they were swearing profusely at the monitor - directly across from you.

I should help him.

But now it's 105 of you. You're spread out over two floors of the building, you're working on two products, and you're approaching the dreaded moment where you don't know the name of someone on your team. This is the first of many warnings that the team needs to evolve.

I want to make the argument that it's time for project managers.

WHOA WHOA WAIT RANDS WHOOOAAAAAAAAA. We've got a self-starter engineering culture, we're flat, and we're not about to dilute that culture with... project managers.

I've run into this response a lot. When I hear this knee-jerk reaction I hear the following:

• Most engineers don't know what a project manager does, and if they do, they usually don't know what a good one looks like.
• Crap project managers have ruined the reputation of the gig.
• By suggesting you don't need project managers, you're saying that you, an engineer, want to do this work and my question is, "Do you or do you not want to be an engineer?"

The Project Rules

First, some definition. Project manager, product manager, and program manager. Let's clear that up. A project manager is responsible for shipping a product, whereas a product manager is responsible for making sure the right product is shipped. A program manager is an uber-mutated combination of both that usually shows up to handle multiple interrelated projects like, say, an operating system. Different companies use the names differently, but for this article, project = ship the product, product = ship the right product, and program = ship many interrelated products, usually at the same time. Got it?

Second, a rule: the addition of each new person on your team increases the cost of each of the following:

1. Communication. How much effort is required to get Idea A and make sure it travels to all the necessary people?
2. Decisions. How quickly can a group of people best choose Path A or Path B?
3. Error Correction. How long does it take to detect and fix when something is going wrong?

Think of it like this: when it was five of you and one of you wanted to do a new feature, how'd it happen? Well, you did it. You wrote the feature in the morning, tested it after lunch, and then checked it in before dinner. The update to the team that a new feature landed was the check-in notification sitting in everyone's inbox and the silent nods as they read the check-in... Sweet, we needed that feature.

How does it happen now?

After the latest release, there's a feature review meeting where the team sits down and scrubs JIRA and comes up with feature nominations. Then they vote internally, and then they vote with the business development team. After those votes are counted, we do a prioritization pass before we send the list to the VP of Engineering, Phil, who takes the list and prioritizes it against his vision for the product. That takes two days and, invariably, we argue about prioritization.

Now we've got an initial list, but who is going to do the work? ASSIGNMENT MEETING! More debate about who should do what. Further arguments occur because there are cool features and not-cool features and features must be assigned carefully to fairly dish out the coolness. Sweet, features have been assigned, but first, we have to write a feature spec, which will then need to be vetted with the rest of the team to make sure we're writing the right feature. I would like to point out that a single line of code has yet to be written and I'm already exhausted.

Take a look at the work in the prior paragraphs. If you're a lead on a growing team, you have your unique version of this process, and to me, a huge chunk of this work is for the project manager. You already have a project manager and it's you. You're a full-time engineering manager, you're the leader of the people, and you're also a project manager. My guess is that on a growing team you're likely doing at least one of those jobs half-assed. Which means you're officially part of the problem.

A good project manager is one who elegantly and deftly handles information. They know what structured meetings need to exist to gather information; they artfully understand how to gather additional essential information in the hallways; and they instinctively manage to move that gathered information to the right people and the right teams at the right time.

There are humans who are really good at this. They thrive on it. Engineers have difficulty believing this - it's the same issue they have with managers. They see these strange humans focusing furiously and scurrying hither and yon and they wonder, "What are they actually building?" They're right. Project managers don't write code, they don't test the use cases, and they're not designing the interface. You know what a good project manager does? They are chaos destroying machines, and each new person you bring onto your team, each dependency you create, adds hard to measure entropy to your team. A good project manager thrives on measuring, controlling, and crushing entropy.

You did this easily when you were a team of five, but if you're going to succeed at 105, what was done organically now needs to be done mechanically.

The Project Concerns

I've heard a litany of concerns about the introduction of project managers. My response is a good starting point to understand who I believe the role fits on the team:

I am worried about project managers influencing product direction. Two points here: first, remember you're no longer in a world where everyone is doing everything. You miss the world because it made you agile, but you're just too big. You need role definition and that means being clear with everyone: Bob owns this, Frank owns that, Percy owns the other thing. What does "own" mean, Rands? Glad you asked.

To me, ownership means that a person is responsible for all decisions for the thing. They are accountable. At Apple, we called them Directly Responsible Individuals. You will likely call them something else. In this world of delicious new ownership, a good project manager owns the execution of the machine that makes sure everything is getting done. It's no more or less important than any other role, but it's essential to starting a project, understanding the health of that project, and deciding when you're done.

Second point: what kind of douchebag manager doesn't want every single person on the team to have an opinion about the product? Good project managers have a unique insight into the health of the project because it's their job to have visibility into the entire machine. It seems like they would have an informed opinion regarding the product.

I am worried about losing insight into what is going on. Tough news. As I've already mentioned, this is already happening as you add each new person to the team with the new set of opinions, values, and experience. An effective project manager instinctively creates artifacts of insight. It's their first question when arriving on the scene: "What... the fuck is going on here?" Your first conversation with your new project manager sounds like this: "I want to be able to measure X, Y, and Z and I'd like to be able to measure them on a weekly basis." The project manager will take this request and do their damnedest to find that data (and the people creating that data), efficiently mechanize its collection, and eventually present you the artifact. Given the chaos factor on your team, the work necessary to build this artifact varies wildly, but if you haven't seen a draft of any valuable artifact in two to three months, something is wrong.

There is no crap work on my team. This is a concern raised by someone who doesn't understand the role of a project manager or has been burned by crap project management. It was probably this meeting: you were sitting there meeting with the entire team where a project manager showed a Gantt chart on the wall and presented a partially informed opinion as fact. "We are three months from shipping." Everyone thinks, but does not say, "Bullshit." This partially informed person rambles for another 30 minutes, the meeting completes, everyone shuffles out, and the reputation of project managers as shovelers of bullshit is furthered. This was a crap meeting based on crap work.

There are a couple of memorable screw-ups in this meeting. First, you've got the a poorly defined artifact. Gantt charts are great at showing the order of operations for building software, but in the never in history of ever have they effectively been used to measure when to ship that software. Second, you've got the whole team staring at this useless artifact and the person presenting it - both of which are losing credibility by the second.

One of the easiest ways to screw up the landing of project managers on a team is not to be painfully aware of what you need out of the role. The way I've seen this screwed up is when the guy in charge says, "Well, this looks bad. You know, at Apple, we had engineering project managers. We should have engineering project managers. Go hire them."

Incorrect approach. You are not and never will be Apple. What your team, and your culture, needs out of a project manager is entirely dependent on the people, the team, the culture, the projects, and this moment in time. Top down declarations of necessity without deep understanding of the situation within the team are a terrific way to set up a new role for failure. The arrival of project managers (or whatever you end up calling them) needs to coincide with a clear and present danger to the product or the team. They are here to help with X because if we don't solve X, we are screwed.

I am worried that process nerds like project managers are going to kill creativity and innovation on my team. This isn't actually the issue that folks fear. What they're really saying is that they don't want to give up control, and again, I think this comes from prior awful interactions with project managers. See, the reputation of a project manager grows over time because of their penchant for knowing, well, everything. It can be intoxicating being the only person who knows you have the best assessment of the situation among the chaos, the person that everyone goes to because you have the information. There are project managers who go crazy with this power and become political. They become information brokers, which means they're precisely the opposite of the job. They're using information to control rather than to illuminate. My advice: fire these people as quickly as possible.

A good project manager's job is to decrease chaos by increasing clarity. I understand that chaos can be an essential ingredient in creative, but I guarantee you -- I promise you -- even with the best project manager on board, you still get to run around like a crazy person because the sky always unexpectedly falls. Chaos in a complex system is a guarantee.

The Question

As a lead, you have three jobs: people, process, and product, and you get to choose how to invest in each of those roles. As a demographic, you're likely best at product followed by process, and finally, by people. What's weird is that you seem to be spending all of your time working on the people part of the gig, right? You should hire a great people lead, right? Maybe, but perhaps the situation is that you're constantly talking with the people because the process piece is broken. You're serving as a person who moves information so that we're all on the same page, so that the people are happy and efficient. Do you love this job? Probably not.

My question remains: do you or do you not want to be an engineer? If this is what you love, even as a lead, this where you should spend your time. You're never going to code like you did when you were an individual contributor, but your company and your team will get disproportionate value from the work you do that best approximates engineering.

As with any evolutionary change on your team, you need to be paranoid. Each new role, like each new person, has a unique ability to affect the culture in ways that you'll never predict. You need to carefully design around your specific pain, but once you hire and land the first person, you also need to pay careful attention for unintended side effects. The irony of the arrival of crap project managers is that you're effectively punishing inefficiency with useless bureaucracy, which, wait for it, creates more inefficiency.

A great project manager is rare, but so is any great hire. However, my guess is that you want to be an engineer. You want to focus on the satisfying act of building, and I think you'd be crazy not to viciously protect this time.

	Courtney shared this story from Another Way To Breathe:
	Edna.

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skullvomit:

rimbaudwasademonchild:

Poly Styrene on stage at the Roundhouse, London, 1978. Photo by Denis O’Regan.

• via

Fucking queen.

newsperanza:

Too accurate to be ignored. 

A goat shows off its parkour skills by scaling a wall to jump a five-foot-tall fence in this 2009 video uploaded by BrandosonR.

via Say OMG

Here’s one way to fail at integrating Myanmar’s Muslim minority: don’t let them marry into the larger community. A Buddhist monk in Myanmar is calling on the government to bar Buddhist women from marrying Muslims without the consent of their parents and local officials.

According to the monk, U Wirathu, 2.5 million people have now signed a petition for the measure. (Some may have believed the petition was simply a call to protect Buddhist women, the Bangkok-based Irrawaddy Daily reports.)

Violence between Buddhists and Muslims has taken over parts of the formerly reclusive Southeast Asian nation, which has only just started to open up its economy and political system. The measure, which the monk tells the Irrawaddy Daily will be sent to Parliament only adds to tensions. In Youtube and DVD sermons, U Wirathu has been saying that Myanmar’s Muslim men marry Buddhist women and pressure them to give up their religion. He’s also accused Muslim women of purposely having more children in order to boost their numbers; Muslims currently account for just 5% of the population.

Fighting in Myanmar over the past year has killed hundreds and displaced over 150,000 people, mostly Muslims. (Myanmar is now the largest source of refugees in Southeast Asia.) The government’s meager efforts to stop the violence is chipping away at Myanmar’s image as Asia’s next frontier of economic growth. One worrying sign, according to a June report by the political risk firm Maplecroft, is that violence has spread far beyond the Rakhine State, where it started last year. Clashes taking place near the capital and in Yangon, Myanmar’s most populous city, could be destabilizing for foreign investment and development. The monks have called on a boycott of Muslim businesses, which dominate in sectors like transportation and construction.

It’s unclear how seriously lawmakers would consider Wirathu’s proposal. Myanmar’s opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi opposes the measure, as do several women’s rights groups in the country.

roane72:

thirtypercent:

thisprettywren:

qthewetsprocket:

tysolna:

ibeggedformercytwice:

ifitsbritishimprobablyafan:

plushmistress:

OMG THIS.

Dedicating this post to the word “plethora.”

Chasm… I”ll never live that down…

Most of the words within my vocabulary.

Tongue. I pronounced it French.

Two words: Dun Laoghaire.

Cheers, knapsack. And indict.

Also: Dun Laoghaire, ugh, yes.

That bus driver pretended he had no idea where I wanted to go. He knew where I wanted to go.

It took me years as a kid to realize “debris" and “debree" were the same thing. And as a college student I mispronounced “social mores" in front of a linguistics professor and a group of students and she corrected me in front of everyone. Dammit, language.

ennui is the first one that comes to mind.

Sorites. (sigh)

Read 5 remaining paragraphs | Comments

Yesterday I made the call to return my Google Glass. After months of anticipation, a trip to New York, and several weeks with the device, after much deliberation I decided the device wasn't ready for prime time and my $1,500 would be better spent elsewhere.

Orphan Black: 0, The Americans: 2 (Outstanding Guest Actress, Main Title Theme Music). Connie Britton got a lead actress nod for Nashville and Tatiana Maslany didn't. Outstanding Lead Actress in a Drama Series nominations: Vera Farmiga (chewing scenery on Bates Motel), Michelle Dockery (chewing better scenery on Downton Abbey), Claire Danes (Show Designed to Excite White Bloggers), Robin Wright (Being Pissed at Redneck Kevin Spacey), Elisabeth Moss (Mad Men victory lap phone-in season), Connie Britton (Overacting Redneck Singers), Kerry Washington (Scandal)

Closca is a foldable bicycle helmet designed to fit inside backpacks, briefcases, or purses while you’re not riding. The helmet comes in two stylish designs, duckbill and flatcap, in an attempt to making wearing a bicycle helmet more convenient and less flashy. The project is currently seeking funding on Kickstarter.

image and video via Closca

Bundle of Holding +4 is a package of innovative and independently created story games that can be had for any price, with some of the proceeds going to Oxfam and Feeding America.

Read more...

	Courtney shared this story from swissmiss:
	CAT LORUM IPSUM

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Finally, a beautifully designed Lorem Ipsum resource, offering themed placeholder copy. Some of the Ipsum options are: Cororate, Pirate, Bacon, Cupcake, Gangsta or Cat.

(via Khoi)

[If you can not see a video here view this post on Brand New]

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Link

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He offered his own ad space and was paid $15,000 by a member of the Republican Party to go through with it.

Client: Would it be okay if I paid you in a month?

Me: That’s fine, the invoice is has a 30 day pay period.

Client: Great, that’s when my Kickstarter will be finished and I’ll have money to blow.

Alt is a an alternative interface to NewsBlur. It's very reminiscent of Google Reader. It's compact and efficient. I still love the NewsBlur filtering options. I never spent less time reading news than I do now with NewsBlur. That's a compliment.

You can check out Alt for free on their demo page

By way of One Thing Well

NEW YORK—In a move that has shaken the already fragile publishing industry, struggling retail giant Fox Books officially filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy Wednesday, sources confirmed. Once known as the “Big Bad Wolf” for its ability to pu...

Jenny McCarthy is well-known for her thoroughly debunked anti-vaccination claims. She also once claimed she was an "indigo" and her son was a "crystal" child. Those two beliefs may be connected.

Read more...

punchsportsandpunchlines:

deathandcatses:

Further studies in fluid dynamics. 

It is amazing to me how nature’s most agile and biologically perfect hunters are also the laziest pieces of shit in the animal kingdom

unimpressedcats:

MAJESTIC 

The latest update of Google Maps appears to have wiped out the Scottish island of Jura. But while the internet giant is aware of the problem, it has yet to fix it.

Read more...

OnlyMrGodKnowsWhy

Ladies in Science !!!!

Original Source

CTV News

In conservative states, abortion pushback with an eye toward Roe v. Wade CNN Washington (CNN) -- When Texas Gov. Rick Perry signed some of the country's toughest abortion restrictions into law on Thursday, his state joined a growing number of those strategically pushing the limits of federal abortion rights that have been in place for ... New Texas Abortion Legislation ExplainedNews 92 FM Perry signs 20-week abortion ban billThe Hill (blog) WATCH: Lewis Black releases anti-Texas, Pro-NYC 'ad'1230 WBZT CTV News -New York Times (blog) -KTVN all 460 news articles »

gingerhaze:

lesbiaaans:

me

wow that’s how it’s done

People are offended because the terrorist looks like a rock star, and Rolling Stone had the guts to show us that.

They show us our fear -- not of him -- that would be irrational because he can't harm anyone. Rather they show us our fear of ourselves. The realization that we equate youthful and sexy appearance with benevolence. Our value system fails. The input does not equal the output. Does not compute.

On one side of the equation is the dream, the sexy rock star idol, and on the other side is the cold-blooded murderer of innocents. Instead of looking at it, and learning what it can teach us about ourselves, that our cherished images are lies, many want to suppress it. Shame. Here's an opportunity to bust some myths.

Rolling Stone, perhaps inadvertently, has admitted that they are a lie. Next time they put a rock star on the cover, you'll have to wonder what evil lurks behind the pretty face. Maybe this is what you all don't want to look at.