Protest is political. At its core, protest is the visceral withdrawal of consent from the state; it is a challenge of the legitimacy of the state itself; it is a reminder that the power of the state is derived from the consent of the people.
An Open Letter to Lester Holt – DeRay Mckesson.
To me, a successful career is one without ceilings, walls, or even a blazed path. It is not a ladder, it is not stairs, it is not a single road with milemarkers along the way to tell you how close you are to your destination.
What is a career? – Andrea Badgley.
Meanwhile, back in America, online education isn’t succeeding because it’s better than Oberlin, it’s succeeding because it’s better than nothing, and nothing is what’s on currently offer for millions of people.
Clay Shirky – The digital revolution in higher education has already happened. No one noticed.
Law enforcement agencies can’t weaken encryption for terrorists without weakening it for everyone.
The best in customer care are functional chameleons, becoming conversant as product managers, marketers and salespeople to bring resolution to customers.
Lessons from the Woman Who Built Squarespace’s Customer Care Team.
Advertisers like to use moralizing language when their money starts to flow in the wrong direction. Tricking people into watching ads is good; being tricked into showing ads to automated traffic is evil.
“To be clear, the idea is not that there will be a big financial payoff to a liberal arts degree,” Cappelli writes. “It is that there is no guarantee of a payoff from very practical, work-based degrees either, yet that is all those degrees promise. For liberal arts, the claim is different and seems more accurate, that it will enrich your life and provide lessons that extend beyond any individual job. There are centuries of experience providing support for that notion.”
When there has been a deliberate change though—one that is important for future development and that almost certainly won’t be changing back—then that sort of apology can be counter productive. If you know that a feature has been removed and is gone for good, it’s unhelpful to offer false hope to a customer of “recording your feedback” and “voting for that to be returned”. It will probably never happen.
Stop apologising to customers and start leading them – Mathew Patterson.
On poorly managed teams conflicting and irrelevant work is allowed to go on because leaders don’t notice, care or take the time to guide people’s efforts in more useful directions. Capable people may work away in their private tasks, believing they’re making progress (and earning bonuses), when in reality they’re doing work that will be thrown away or even hurt the project. When someone puts their head down to work, how fast they’re going doesn’t matter if they’re heading in the wrong direction (or towards a cliff). How a talent is directed can be more important than the size of the talent itself.
Work vs. Progress – Scott Berkun.
I’ve always believed that the key to creating great software is to talk with those who use it, to understand what they need and want from your product. If you step away from support, your software will suffer.
You can, however, step away from bad customers.
Some Customers Suck – Nick Bradbury. via Sheri