InfoQ Homepage Culture Content on InfoQ
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Trust-Driven Development: Building Cognitive and Emotional Pillars
Trust-driven development uses authenticity to build a safe environment for people to operate. To build trust we need to focus on two main pillars of trust – cognitive and emotional. We need to be brave, have courage, and give people access to our authentic selves.
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Green Software Development: Terminology and Climate Commitments Explained by Microsoft at Devoxx UK
As a side effect of the accelerated move towards the cloud, the software industry is contributing more and more to global warming. Companies have taken on different commitments: Net-Zero, Carbon Neutral, etc. Asim Hussain, Green Cloud Advocacy Lead @ Microsoft deciphers them during the Devoxx UK keynote. Understanding them will help developers move the needle for each type of commitment.
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How Software Affects Climate Change, and What Software Engineers Can Do about It
There are huge amounts of software running everywhere on the planet - and this software consumes energy when it is running. Unfortunately most of the energy world-wide is still being produced by burning fossil fuels. Software engineers can improve the software so that it uses less energy to do its job, then less energy needs to be produced by burning fossil fuels, which is better for the climate.
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Scaling Software Architecture via Conversations: the Advice Process
Andrew Harmel-Law recently published an article describing a decentralised, scalable software architecture process based on the "Advice Process". The Advice Process promotes software architecture by encouraging a series of conversations driven by an empowering, almost anarchistic, decision-making technique. It comprises one rule - anyone can make an architectural decision.
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How Organisational Culture and Psychological Safety Fosters Our Creativity
Organisations need to create the right conditions and culture for creativity to flourish so as to stay relevant, compete and thrive for the future. An addiction to burnout and fixation on productivity can stifle creativity. What’s needed is psychological safety, inclusion, experimentation, growth mindsets and allowing thinking time.
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How a Safe-to-Fail Approach Can Enable Psychological Safety in Teams
Companies can establish a culture of psychological safety among their employees, a culture in which failing is not frowned upon but rather is accepted as something that can happen to anyone. Safe-to-fail should be part of the corporate culture. A shift in the way we envision success can lead to a better understanding of where failure lies and provide courage to overcome our fears.
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Four-Day Work Week Gaining Traction
A number of studies and reviews have recently been published which look at the changes needed and the impact of shifting to a four-day work week. The consensus is that, while there are some challenges to be overcome, generally shifting to a four-day work week results in happier, more engaged staff with increased productivity.
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Tech People: Enhance Your Professional Journey with Mindfulness
In software development, we need to focus carefully and stay focused in order to be productive. Especially during a lockdown, people in tech are faced with stress, lack of concentration, and other mental problems that reduce their focus and motivation. To enhance tech people’s professional journey, a suggestion is to combine testing with mindfulness.
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Collective Learnings about Remote Working during Covid-19
The response to the pandemic showed how to make sure people are productive and included in a hybrid environment, and it's all due to the learnings we carried on from March 2020. Many organisations demonstrated how it’s possible to work in an inclusive and productive way even if people are distributed around the world.
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Remote Working Risks Increasing Toxic Cultures
In a study conducted in May 2021 of 133 US companies, 29% of the respondents said that team spirit and working relationships have suffered from working remotely, with 11% leaving or planning to leave because the company culture has become toxic. Toxic cultures result in demotivated and disengaged employees and have a significant negative impact on organizational outcomes.
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Fostering Cross-Cultural Collaboration
Building intercultural relationships are so important to success in the workplace and world today, yet many people are hesitant or unsure of how to build relationships with those who are different from themselves. The first step is to reflect on yourself and notice where and how you spend your time and resources.
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Paving the Road to Production at Coinbase: QCon Plus Q&A
As Coinbase scaled both their number of engineers and customers, they needed more projects, faster iteration, and more control over their growing infrastructure. In developing their in-house deployment tool by looking at what developers were doing and trying to help them, they created a culture of self-service.
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Becoming Personally Agile for Mental Health
Feeling the need to be constantly producing high-quality deliverables with a high sense of perfection can lead to stress and can cause burnout. You have to first accept that you have a problem to find your way out of burnout. Applying agile on a personal level can help you to achieve high goals while reducing stress and lowering the chance of getting burnout.
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Creating and Nurturing an Intentional Remote Culture
Company culture isn’t built in the short term, nor can it be imposed. It’s deeply rooted in the founders’ ideologies and behaviours around work. From there, it grows and evolves organically as the company hires individuals who embrace these values, and who also bring their own identity into the mix.
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The International Week of Happiness at Work
During the last week of September, from the 21st to the 27th, companies and individuals around the globe are invited to celebrate the International Week of Happiness at Work for the third time. The event was created to promote happiness at work around the globe and companies are encouraged to organize events to focus on increasing happiness at work