Interview 2.0 with Michael Lopp (@rands), VP of Engineering at Slack. We chat about the dangers of Performance Management, Speaking Last, the Builder’s High, Front Page of Reddit, Biking Inspiration, Sharing Your Things, Phone Home Screen, some useful apps: 1Password, DarkSky & Wonderground, Strava, Bear App, MarkDown.
Then we get into some Email vs Slack, Slack Tricks and thoughts on Slack for Social and as a knowledge base.
Finally – Spoilers: Last Jedi & Blade Runner
At some point in your leadership career, you’ll need to care about performance management. My first bit of advice is the hardest: don’t ever let yourself think or say the words “performance management.” This is impossible, but aspirational. I will explain.
1. Act last. In poker, a full table is ten players, and the betting starts to the left of the button which is a round plastic thing that sits in front of one player and rotates clockwise with each subsequent hand. The button, the last player to bet, is the prime position because you get to see how every other player at the table is indicating they are going to play this hand. You have the most information for which to make a betting decision.
When I am in a foul mood, I have a surefire way to improve my outlook – I build something. A foul mood is a stubborn beast and it does not give ground easily. It is an effort to simply get past the foulness in order to start building, but once the building has begun, the foul beast loses ground.
Lots of great home screens….
Including Lyle’s
The Apps that Michael has on his phone… we talk about some.
1Password remembers them all for you. Save your passwords and log in to sites with a single click. It’s that simple.
Dark Sky is the most accurate source of hyperlocal weather information. With down-to-the-minute forecasts, you’ll know exactly when the rain will start or stop, right where you’re standing. (It’s like magic.)
iOS and Android –
bq. The most hyper-local weather data wherever you are in the world.
OS X and iOS
bq. Bear is a beautiful, flexible writing app for crafting notes and prose.
A podcast about the internet’ that is actually an unfailingly original exploration of modern life and how to survive it.
You know, where Michael works….
When your team needs to kick off a project, hire a new employee, deploy some code, review a sales contract, finalize next year’s budget, measure an A/B test, plan your next office opening, and more, Slack has you covered.
Recorded March 26th 2018 in Los Gatos, CA.
