On my final day of work after the layoff, I knocked together one final "farewell" work blog, which probably got more readership than most of my prior posts combined. I'm pretty proud of it, especially given the circumstances, but I didn't think to copy it to this blog before I left so this is more or less a recreation.

I led with with a Neil ( Read more... )

Here's the new work blog post I mentioned that had been created since I worked through the backlog. This one was put up when I went on sabbatical. In fact, it went up on the very first day of my sabbatical, August 25, 2022. This flushes the queue out for now ( Read more... )

Since I wrapped up my backlog, I've had one more new post and realized that I'd missed one older post. Here's the older post, which went up on December 21, 2021 but is even somewhat topical for Thanksgiving later this week ( Read more... )

This is the 14th and final post in my work blog series. I'm sure there will be more eventually, but for now I've ran through the backlog of posts that are generically relevant enough to consider posting here. Today's post went up on Thursday, May 19, 2022. Hey, that's today! With my 20th anniversary at work being tomorrow, I guess it's topical! I' ( Read more... )

This post originally went up on April 21, 2022. The opening paragraph originally had 6 different links, one to a project overview blog post that I had written. I made that into a boring name and then removed the 5 links about specific roles. I also removed a link to a blog post I didn't write about Constructive Conflict. Beyond that, not much has ( Read more... )

This was the fourth and final of Basics of Accountability, which went up on March 31, 2022. Upon re-reading it, I'm kind of disappointed. I don't feel the series pops as much as it should have. I could have done better. Oh well, that's life ( Read more... )

This post went up on March 24, 2022. Once again, I dropped the graphic and the links to HR content. I removed the name of my employer from one place. This one had a lot of heading sizes, which LJ doesn't support, so it's definitely less pretty. I excised some references to our issue tracking and internal chat tools, and alas had to remove some ( Read more... )

Part 2 of this four part series was originally posted on March 17, 2022. I once again removed the graphic showing the four basics of accountability as well as the code urging people to sign up for the Mentoring Circles program that this series came out of. Most of the rest of the post is unchanged. I redacted my team name, removed a reference to ( Read more... )

My employer rolled out a program a few years ago called Mentoring Circles where they identified someone who was known to be good at a specific skill. This person would be the mentor for a circle of 5-8 people who applied to be in the program. For 2021, I was the mentor for "Ensures Accountability." I really enjoyed the process and actually am doing ( Read more... )

This post wraps up my Effective 1:1 series. It originally went up on September 23, 2021, and much like part a lot of the better parts were dialed back by HR review. In particular, the "Celebrate Accomplishments" section was originally a lot more blatant about "hey, your manager controls your raises and bonuses, make sure they know what you've done ( Read more... )