Month: February 2019

Our ‘tranquilizing drug of gradualism’

A version of this essay was published as part of my monthly newsletter a couple weeks back. In its own way, it commemorates African American History Month. Find other archives and join here to get updates like this first.

Dr. King is likely the American thinker who comes to my mind more than any other. Not the populist who was culturally moderated over time into a convenient character for classroom posters. But the difficult and complicated and tortured man, the leader who was flawed and inspiring and masterful in so many ways.

When a MLK quote rattles in my head, it isn’t his iconic, if tired, classic: “Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.” Pulled from its context, that’s always seemed to me to be too universal to stir. Instead, it comforts, and I’ve found always found MLK misunderstood when he’s seen as a comforting.

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Punctuation today: notes from the 2006 bestseller “Eats, Shoots and Leaves”

Modern linguistics is based largely on a descriptivist view of language, describing common usage. Many grammarians follow a more prescriptivist view: if we don’t prescribe, language will falter.

I read a host of pop linguistics books this year, challenging my prescriptivist publishing origins with a small library of descriptivist perspective. I also consumed podcasts, articles and other interviews with experts on the matter. (Most recently this conversation.)

Along this exploration, I was familiar with several of the most-cited grammar classics (King’s English and Elements of Style among them). But I hadn’t read Eats, Shoots and Leaves, published by Lynne Truss in 2006. So I changed that late last year.

I wanted to share a few notes below.

Continue reading Punctuation today: notes from the 2006 bestseller “Eats, Shoots and Leaves”

Notes from ‘The Hard Thing About Hard Things’ by Ben Horowitz

Prominent investor Ben Horowitz’s 2014 book ‘The Hard Thing about Hard Things’ is among the seminal business philosophy books from this era of Silicon Valley entrepreneurship.

Horowitz is half of the founding team of Andresson-Horowitz, an iconic Sand Hill Road software-focused venture capital firm. His work and perspective has influenced today’s funding and startup climate, and so I finally dug into the book.

I enjoyed it and took away several insights. As per my habit, find some of my notes below.

Continue reading Notes from ‘The Hard Thing About Hard Things’ by Ben Horowitz

How to show growth for employees at a small organization

  • If you are a small company without a lot of turnover or new positions how do you make people feel that there is room for growth at your company?: We built out structured levels with half-steps and (over time) relatively clear definitions, and I’ve found our employees have appreciated that transparency and clarity. We have a Coordinator, Manager and Director structure, with just two C-levels and one VP, all of whom are senior and been with the company for a while. I’ve been mindful to avoid bloat (which I don’t think we always got right and made some mistakes there) but we do have clear ways for folks to grow. ie. Our more junior Coordinators first strive to oversee a department’s intern; our Managers tend to oversee a full-time Coordinator or at least a meaningful budget; and our few Directors lead a small team (2-3 people). (We have used the “Senior” title as a half-step, like Senior Manager or Senior Director ,to show growth)
  • How do you give promotions? Is it based on time (you’ve been here a year), responsibilities (you’ve taken on a new project) or something else (your boss is leaving)? One of the early successes that has really helped was that, with rare exception, only do promotions/salary growth two-times a year: aligned with twice-annual performance reviews. This has given structure and over time our staff really latch on to that cadence. One of the performance review questions includes a chance for teammates to call out what kind of growth they want
  • Do you wait until someone asks for a promotion, or are you clear upfront about what the next move is and when it could happen? For teammates I really want to retain, I often talk openly in their performance review check points about ways they might grow; projects and positions. Other teammates themselves voice, having seen how this works over time.
  • Do they have to add value (revenue) to warrant a promotion? Yes, most usually, we do discuss how their growth impacts the business, even for editorial. For example, we recently did a big internal promotion to a relatively junior editor of ours who worked on a smaller project exactly because she had been clever and very supportive of a newsletter subscriber growth strategy (which if not directly does indirectly tie to business goals). Our staff has grown pretty savvy in articulating how their work supports business goals. The performance reviews are good tools here: each six months a staff member is given a set of high-level priorities. Many excel at working toward them.
  • Do you give raises with promotions? Which do you find more motivating for people–promotions or raises? We always give raises with promotions. As a small local journalism org, for non-editorial roles, we haven’t always been competitive (though we’re getting better). Showing steady (if modest) salary growth year-over-year (even without promotions, we’ve usually outpaced COLA, which is easier in these low inflation years) has been important but the pathway for career growth has definitely meant a lot to many of our (best) teammates. I never judge teammates who really value salary growth, I’ve just tried to be upfront that I might not be able to meet those expectations longterm. This has been healthy.
  • Do you work with employees to create their growth plans? How does that process work? Yes, very tied to performance reviews. The aforementioned junior editor early in her time with us (four year employee) identified that she wanted a pathway to be a newsroom leader, more as editor than reporter. She is an excellent teammate so we kept finding opportunities for her professional development, which helped when the internal promotion opportunity came. She was less experienced than our external candidates but since it was part of a longterm conversation, we had de-risked so much with her that it proved an easy decision for me. That only happened because we had an open dialogue about her wants. Other staff members haven’t had as clear a personal journey (which is OK), but then I’ve likely not hit all their longterm plans.

A thank you to my coworkers ahead of Technical.ly’s 10th anniversary

A decade ago this month a couple friends and I started down a pathway that became Technical.ly so in the next couple weeks I am going to do some sharing.

A couple weeks ago, we hosted our inaugural Alumni Ball — gathering both current and former staff at the Pen and Pencil Club — and on February 26th in Philadelphia, we’re hosting a public celebration, conjoined with our largest jobs fair. We’ll also run plenty of editorial mentions honoring this anniversary.

First things first publicly, I wrote a Twitter thread unashamedly showing off about how lucky I feel about the team I am a part of right now. I’m sharing that here, with slight editing.

Continue reading A thank you to my coworkers ahead of Technical.ly’s 10th anniversary