Eigengrau

Eigengrau - When we close our eyes or enter total darkness most people see vague grey field usually composed of changing regions of tiny black and white dots. This dark grey colour is called the Eigengrau, a German word that means intrinsic grey. What we are seeing is visual noise and it is the static of our retina.

💡 This week’s wisdom: Being pleasant and having a good attitude is a simple way to become luckier.

Opportunities come through people, and people are more likely to bring opportunities to people they like.

It’s hard to win if your attitude adds friction to every interpersonal experience. James Clear

The best Twitter thread of the week

“I’m currently unemployed. A recruiter lined me up an interview. …With the employer that just fired me. I wish I was making that up”

🐕‍🦺 Leadership

Women in the Workplace 2021

McKinsey’s annual report on gender in the workplace enters its 7th year. Handily, all the previous reports are also listed at the end of the this online report. The analysis feels a little weak in some places, and is missing any age related correlations - surely a key component of intersectionality. Still, it’s an accessible report we should read and bookmark

The Toxic Effects of Branding Your Workplace a “Family”

Intelligent post from brainfooder Joshua A. Luna discussing on the implications of using ‘family’ as the template for social organisation in business. Particularly good in providing a balanced review, as well as recommendations of what how to do it better.

Bryq’s Big Book About Culture

Every organisation has a culture whether it is explicitly discussed or not. How we go about improving it to better help that meet organisational goals might depend on first being able to measure and define it. The folks at Bryq have a view on this, and so they have released an accessible e-book discussing key concepts and methods.

The Most Important Characteristics Of High-Performance Teams

Why do some teams perform better than others? What sets these teams apart from the rest? How can you build outstanding teams? I’ve written a pretty comprehensive article about this, covering key traits of such teams, vital things leaders and managers need to focus on, and the top frameworks in the are.

🛡️ Security

My guilty pleasure is reading parents reviews of parental child monitoring apps.

Turns out kids are easily bypassing child monitoring software, much to the annoyance of their parents.

Trojan Source: Invisible Vulnerabilities

“We present a new type of attack in which source code is maliciously encoded so that it appears different to a compiler and to the human eye.” There’s a proof-of-concept repo as well.

Minimum Viable Secure Product

Minimum Viable Secure Product is a minimalistic security checklist for B2B software and business process outsourcing suppliers.

💻 Tech

Web development best practices in 2021

Presenting the state of web development. Demographics, App types, Device targets, Audience sizes, Design tools, CMS choices, Editors, Programming languages, and Web frameworks

An oral history of Bank Python

The strange world of Python, as used by big investment banks. Bank Python differs considerably from the common, or garden-variety Python that most people know and love (or hate).

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