Once we’ve got a plan and that plan is locked we’re in this rare and special place where the things that will pull us off-course haven’t happened yet.
— Raw Signal Group, What to do about time goblins
Managing Up
Michael Lopp has a great post about “managing up”, including how problematic that term is:
To me, “Managing Up” has that “your boss’s job is more important than yours” feel, which pisses me off. Your boss’s job isn’t more important than yours; it’s different.
He goes on to share some great advice for what to share with your manager, and when. For instance, when to share something immediately:
Unexpected developments. A situation appears in front of you, a non-threatening one but unexpected. Strange. Something is up, but you can’t discern the backstory story or the intent. It is unfamiliar. Tell your manager. Now. Just a brief note. A heads up. It’s probably nothing—it usually is—but there is a chance your manager’s context plus your suspicions equals additional clarity.
The Ghosts in the Machine
I finally had a chance to make my way through Liz Pelly’s Spotify exposé that’s been making the rounds, and it is so infuriating. Definitely worth reading the whole thing, but the short version is that Spotify is seeding their most popular playlists with generic “background music” that they pay even lower royalties for. A good summary of the issue:
A model in which the imperative is simply to keep listeners around, whether they’re paying attention or not, distorts our very understanding of music’s purpose. This treatment of music as nothing but background sounds—as interchangeable tracks of generic, vibe-tagged playlist fodder—is at the heart of how music has been devalued in the streaming era. It is in the financial interest of streaming services to discourage a critical audio culture among users, to continue eroding connections between artists and listeners, so as to more easily slip discounted stock music through the cracks, improving their profit margins in the process. It’s not hard to imagine a future in which the continued fraying of these connections erodes the role of the artist altogether, laying the groundwork for users to accept music made using generative-AI software.
I’ve been on the fence about streaming services for a while, but I think going forward I want to use both my Kindle and Spotify in the same way. Sample a book/album to see if I like it, and then buy it in physical form (or Bandcamp!) if I do. Like when we used to listen to CDs in the record store to decide if it’s worth spending that precious music budget on.
Regarding "missed" and "slipped" deadlines
I really like Basecamp’s concept of “Hill Charts”. The gist of it is that each project we work on has two distinct phases: a “figuring it out” phase and a “making it happen” phase:
To quote from their post about it:
First there’s an uphill phase where you figure out your approach. You have a basic idea about the task, but you haven’t figured out what the solution is going to look like or how to solve all the unknowns.
Eventually you reach a point where there aren’t any more unsolved problems. That’s like standing at the top of the hill. You can see clearly all the way down the other side. Then the downhill phase is just about execution.
“Figuring it out” is full of uncertainty, unknowns, and problem solving. “Making it happen” is all about certainty, confidence, and execution.
I bring this up because one of the issues with quarterly planning cycles and committing to due dates on that cadence is that teams are often asked to commit to dates during the “figuring it out” phase. There’s a lot of uncertainty and unknowns, so teams have to make best guesses. The problem with this is that these do not reflect what Cagan calls “high-integrity commitments”:
The key is to understand that the root cause of all this grief about commitments is when these commitments are made. They are made too early. They are made before we know if we can actually deliver on this obligation, and even more important, if what we deliver will actually solve the problem for the customer.
So what inevitably happens is that, for a lot of projects, the date that teams provided “slips”. I believe this language matters, and I think by framing it this way an org tells teams they did something wrong. But the irony is that in the majority of cases, if teams move a date after they reached the “top of the hill”, they are doing the right thing for the business. They are saying that they have now figured out all the unknowns and uncertainties, and they are ready to make a high-integrity commitment. Again, here is Cagan:
So the compromise is simple. The product team asks for a little time to do product discovery before commitments are made, and then after enough product discovery is done to consider the risks, we are willing to commit to dates and deliverables so our colleagues can effectively do their jobs as well.
I think it’s important to encourage behavior that does the right thing for customers and the business. The right thing would not be to try to cut corners to meet a date that was committed to during a “figuring things out” phase. I also don’t believe the right thing is to inherently communicate to teams that moving a date once they reach the top of the hill means they “missed” a commitment.
I think we should be very clear about the nature of commitments when we make them. What is our confidence in our dates? Are we still figuring things out? Or are we at the top of the hill and ready to make a high-integrity commitment? The health of any Product org can be improved if we say that it’s ok to communicate what we think we can accomplish early on in the quarter, and move to high-integrity commitments once teams reach the top of each project’s hill.
My 2024 in Music
I love reading end-of-year music wrap-ups from the personal blogs I follow (two highlights this year include the posts by Sarah K. Moir and Simon Collison), so I wanted to make an attempt at my own as well. I decided to wait until Dec 31 so I can have accurate data from my Last.fm profile, where all my listening stats go (I use Spotify and Roon for streaming, and I also send my physical media listening stats there).
So according to my listening stats, here are my favorite releases from 2024 (plus two standouts from earlier years that I discovered this year and became obsessed with). Links will take you to my side project site Listen To More with some more info about each album.
#1 - A LA SALA by Khruangbin
A return to super chill vibes from the Texas indie soul trio, this is #1 in listen count because it’s a beautiful album, but it’s also wonderful dinner / hangout music. So we put it on a lot over here.
#2 - Songs Of A Lost World by The Cure
Only #2 in listen count because it was released so late in the year… This is my personal Album of the Year. What a gift to get this absolute masterpiece so late in The Cure’s career. If Endsong is the last song they ever make, I will be happy. “Left alone with nothing at the end of every song”. Dang.
#3 - Kontrapunkt by Markus Guentner
This year I started to dive even deeper into the Dark Ambient and Drone genres, so there are 3 such albums on the list, starting with Kontrapunkt. Most folks (myself included!) think of ambient music as “background fluff”, but this is… not that. This is anxious music, and in a weird way I find that it calms me down. If you give this a try (you should!), don’t just turn it on and walk away. Immerse yourself in it. And that goes for the next one too…
#4 - RITUAL by Jon Hopkins
Most of us know Jon Hopkins from his collaborations with Coldplay and his harder dance albums. This is very different—it’s a dark ambient collaboration with several artists that flows like one continuous track. I love this thing. It gets really intense in the middle before settling down in the last couple of tracks to a beautiful, calm release.
#5 - Leon by Leon Bridges
I will gobble up anything this neo soul artist puts out, and Leon is another wonderful entry in his discography. Really chill but also intricate.
#6 - Ohio Players by The Black Keys
I know most people have kind of moved on from The Black Keys, but their last few albums have been a return to form in my opinion. Ohio Players is solid blues rock from start to finish.
#7 - Sonido Cósmico by Hermanos Gutiérrez
If you like #1, you’ll love this. These brothers manage to pull off a sound that reminds of Khruangbin, but is also its own thing altogether. That’s a lot of chill on the list, so let’s go to…
#8 - Vega by Anberlin
Ah Anberlin. The crown jewel of the Tooth and Nail label for years, before things happened. I still love this band—Cities is such peak 2000s emo hard rock. I didn’t expect much from their latest, especially considering that some songs feature a different lead singer. But this thing goes hard, y’all. It’s definitely their best effort in years.
#9 - Small Changes by Michael Kiwanuka
The self-titled album from Michael Kiwanuka remains my favorite, but the new outing from this (yes, another!) neo soul artist is a solid entry, and I enjoy it a lot.
#10 - FAÇADISMS by Rafael Anton Irisarri
The last of the dark ambient albums, and the most devastating. Rafael Anton Irisarri is my favorite ambient artists (check out Solastalgia), and his latest is another fantastic entry in his prolific discography.
And based on how much I listened to these two new discoveries (for me), I have to give them honorable mentions:
Every Moment, Everything You Need by Deserta (2022)
My most-listened song in 2024 was I’m So Tired by Deserta. I discovered this album early in the year, and it remained in constant rotation all year long. It’s shimmery guitar shoegaze at its best, with lyrics that feel just right:
Guess you’ll know why I’m so tired
Too tired to be cool
Guess you’ll know why I’m so tired
Dreams You Don’t Forget by NIGHT TRAVELER (2021)
This is an album that’s on the verge of being synthwave, but not quite. It’s just this side of pop, but it has that neon 80s DNA that I love so much (see also On the Corner Where You Live by The Paper Kites and Red Earth & Pouring Rain by Bear’s Den). Another one that was in constant rotation despite being a little older.
As for 2025… I don’t know? This has been a wild year (but it feels like they all are, these days). I enter 2025 with a fair bit of anxiety. But I also know that, as always, music will be there for me. A companion for every mood, a friend in every circumstance. I remain eternally grateful for this undying obsession of mine.
Happy New Year, everyone. May you find your Album of the Year early, and hang on to it steadfastly.
A career ending mistake
This is lovely post by John Arundel (“Come for the schadenfreude, stay for the thought-provoking advice” indeed!). I especially like the section on how to become a good manager:
If you want to become a great manager, which I think is the only kind worth being, start practicing now. Learn people skills, communication, collaboration, psychology. Work on understanding the things that make different kinds of people tick. Manage yourself excellently. If you can’t organize yourself, how do you expect to be responsible for a team?
Code shufflin’
In Code shufflin’ Robin Rendle writes about why he, as a designer, still messes around with coding projects. I think this is why I continue to obsess over my side project as well—and proactively reach out to indie devs who use the Cloudflare platform to see if I can help.
I’d forgotten what it feels like not to ask permission for changes and instead make pull requests and break things. There’s a momentum to this sort of work that I crave deep down in my bones because it doesn’t rely on meetings or six months of quarterly planning or going up the chain of command. And what I love most about shuffling code around is that every day there’s progress, every day there’s a tiny degree of success you can point to.
How Murderbot Saved Martha Wells' Life
I love the Murderbot books, and this interview with author Martha Wells is a delight:
Of all her characters, Wells has said, Murderbot is the one she’s put the most of herself into. It’s a surprising claim, until it’s not. It’s obvious that Wells feels a distance from other humans, even as she’s spent a life trying to relate to them, to understand them.
The cruelty of gentle parenting
This is a really interesting rebuttal of some modern parenting methods by Marilyn Simon:
The job of the parent is not to prevent any potential “trauma”, it is to love the child even when they are bad, and to punish them, and most importantly to forgive them. A child can’t understand the lightness of forgiveness without understanding first that one needs it.
How to Make Planning Better
Lots of great planning advice in this First Round article. There are two things related to Strategy that I especially like. First, this definition (Strategy is not a vague vision statement!):
Strategy is the sequencing of how you take a very long-term end goal and break that down into more digestible components. Done right, it gets you a really clear picture of what’s in your long-, mid-, and short-term plans, where you stack up in the market, and how you’ll win.”
And then, the importance of org design in executing that strategy well:
Org design is how you deliver on your plan. Instead of meticulously planning all of the ‘what,’ the right org design will give you the ability to hand a talented group of people a new goal, and have them continuously come up with the best way to achieve it.
The post also covers another topic I’ve been thinking about a lot, which is the cadence for planning, and how to make the quarterly (or however often you do it) planning cycle less painful/stressful. We’re in our annual planning cycle right now—once we’re done I will write a post that touches on these topics, and more.