An undercurrent of this and similar pieces, which I would like to highlight: "Firm-specific human capital" is a real thing in the world. Being effective at Google is a skill you can specialize in, independent of (and on top of) the thing you *actually do.*
@patio11
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Google’s Corporate Culture: An Insider’s Perspective Analysis
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One of the better articles I've read over the years on the culture that is Google, warts and all. (This substantially matches my understanding from *many* conversations that do not have a publicly readable URL associated with them.)
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AI counseling relationships user expectations and accountability
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Sometimes they want social permission to have an ongoing relationship with someone who will listen to their problems then provide sage counsel, which is a thing I make pretty widely available *but without an SLA.* Sometimes they want someone to be responsible for their outcomes.
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Mentorship Reality: Clarifying Expectations in Professional Guidance
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I get a surprising number of emails from people who want me to mentor them, although I don’t always think they have a clear mental picture of what that relationship would actually look like.
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Financial Regulation Framework: Expedited Access and Check Processing
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(If you enjoy spelunking in our legal and regulatory weeds the magic search term is the Expedited Access to Funds Act and/or Check 21. https://
uscode.house.gov/view.xhtml?pat
h=/prelim@title12/chapter41&edition=prelim
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Tech Industry HR Practices and Employee Referral Accountability Standards
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Yep, but you’d be absolutely dumbstruck if you met someone in the U.S. or Canadian tech industry who was formally punished by the company for introducing the company to someone who was later e.g. fired, right.
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Ethical Risks of Production Data Deletion Tools
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You write a tool which is capable of deleting prod then you slap your forehead. “Yep I’m going to get some kid fired five years from now at a terrible employer, phew, let me do you a solid kiddo. Well, OK, not making a value judgement on whether you being there is good idea.”
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Production Safety: Making Destructive Actions Nearly Impossible by Default
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There is some blend of machismo, “Well I’m certainly not incompetent so I don’t need guardrails to prevent me wiping prod”, and a bit of hazing culture all mixed up in this. How about… no? How about “all tools should make it almost impossible to delete prod, out of the box.”
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Rails Safety Culture: Industry Must Stop Tolerating Dangerous Practices
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Apropos of nothing: a change Rails made many years after existing, which is a positive change, is refusing to reset the database if you point it at a production environment. Culture isn’t just a firm thing. We, as an industry, have tolerated footguns far, far too long.
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Blameless Postmortems and Senior Engineer Support Culture
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Oh making something explicit that was implicit: there do exist companies who have blameless postmortem culture whose senior engineers would not take time out of their day to console a terrified newbie. And there exist ones with blameless postmortems where seniors would.