InfoQ Homepage Communication Content on InfoQ
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Being an Agent of Change for Others and Yourself
Everyone can be an agent of change, even with small contributions. You can also be an agent of change for yourself by focusing on what you can control. Knowing why to change matters, and exploring it you may find out that it’s not the time yet to make a change.
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Debugging Difficult Conversations as a Pathway to Happy and Productive Teams
Any time we talk to someone or to a group when there are high stakes and/or high emotions, difficult conversations can happen. If we ignore difficult conversations they typically don’t resolve themselves, in fact, they often get worse. Handling difficult conversations involves thinking about the logistics, having the proper mindset, and preparing yourselves.
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Curiosity and Self-Awareness are Must-Haves for Handling Conflict
When you're in a team, collaborating with others, it's crucial to embrace diverse opinions and dissent; you need to have good conflicts. Conflicts have bad reputations, but with curiosity you can harvest more positive outcomes and build trust and psychological safety. Self-awareness of your emotions and reactions can help prevent saying or doing something that you might regret later.
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How Open-Source Maintainers Can Deal with Toxic Behavior
Three toxic behaviors that open-source maintainers experience are entitlement, people venting their frustration, and outright attacks. Growing a thick skin and ignoring the behavior can lead to a negative spiral of angriness and sadness. Instead, we should call out the behavior and remind people that open source means collaboration and cooperation.
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Leading in Hybrid and Remote Environments: Skills to Develop and Tools That Can Help
Leading in hybrid and remote environments requires that managers develop new skills like coaching, facilitation, and being able to do difficult conversations remotely. With digital tools, we can include less dominant and more reflective people to get wider reflections from different brains and personalities. This can result in more diverse and inclusive working environments.
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How the Hybrid and Remote Working Revolution Impacts Maintaining Mental Health
Whether working remotely or in a hybrid environment, the way in which we work with one another is changing, and can impact mental health and well-being. Personality characteristics can influence how we respond to remote or hybrid working environments. Organizations can foster psychological safety by focusing on culture, transparency, clarity, learning from failure, and supportive leadership.
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Kent Beck: Software Design is an Exercise in Human Relationships
In the closing keynote at QCon SF, Kent Beck spoke about how software design is an exercise in human relationships, why iterative and incremental development is the most cost effective way to build software, and how the overall cost of a software system is directly related to the cost of coupling and decoupling and the jackpot changes which result in cascaded coupling.
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Getting Feedback When Your Colleagues Are Also Your Customers
Getting and using feedback from colleagues who are also customers using your product can improve the quality of the product and help to improve the way of working. In this situation, it’s easier to receive feedback, but you can get overloaded by it.
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How Getting Feedback from Angry Users Helps to Develop Better Products
Every time you change something in your product, angry users can show up. These users are engaged and they care about your product. Listening to them can help you find golden nuggets of user insight to improve your product.
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The Path to a Staff-Plus Engineer Role: from Management Back to Tech
When working in tech, a managerial career may not be for you. Fabiane Bizinella Nardon went from being a manager back to tech, becoming a staff plus engineer and creating a staff plus friendly company. She presented A CTO That Still Codes: My Tortuous Path to the Staff Plus Engineer Role at QCon London 2022 and will present at QCon Plus May 10-20, 2022.
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Becoming an Effective Staff-Plus Engineer
To increase your effectiveness as a staff-plus engineer, it can help to develop your communication, listening, technical strategy, and networking skills. Blanca Garcia Gil presented Five Behaviours to Become an Effective Staff-Plus Engineer at QCon London 2022 and will present at QCon Plus May 10-20, 2022.
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Remain in Tech by Becoming a Staff Plus Engineer
Engineers who want to remain focused on tech can follow the path toward a staff plus engineer. Staff plus engineers enable others to have impact. Bringing the people along can be hard; you need to work on your communication and influential skills. Nicky Wrightson presented The Secret Strategy for Landing That Staff Engineer Role at QCon London 2022 and will present at QCon Plus May 10-20, 2022.
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How Open Source Can Pave the Path Towards a Staff+ Role
Open source contributions and long-term community engagement can help you on your path to a staff+ engineer role. Written communication skills are key for the async and remote work which is common in open source. Your contributions should be aligned with business needs, which can give you visibility that opens up career possibilities. Alex Porcelli presented at QCon London 2022.
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Becoming a Staff Plus Engineer: Leadership and Communication Training Matters
The poor industry support for engineers who want to pursue a technical career affects them; many outstanding technical individuals find themselves forced to seek a management position. The path to a staff plus engineer role is not straightforward. Training on leadership and communication for staff plus engineers can help them to become a better tech leader.
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Creating Tight Cohesive Tech Teams for Women to Thrive
Women in tech need a dynamic, valuing team, stimulating work, push and support, local role models, nonjudgmental flexibility, and personal power. Tight cohesive teams can provide high-quality interactions, making people feel valued.