Isidro López (he/him) ❤️‍🩹

It is NOT about "doing more, with less".

It is about:
* "doing less" (less "things" but much more valuable, focused, of higher external and internal quality, and faster feedback),
* "with the same or less" (keeping a sustainable pace, avoiding burnouts, with better use of resources and people's capabilities, etc.)

"It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends on his not understanding it."

― Upton Sinclair

N.B. in 2024: I guess he meant "a person", not only "a man" 😅

The "headwinds/tailwinds asymmetry": people notice their headwinds (disadvantages) much more than their tailwinds (advantages). https://buff.ly/3vBqmBq

(an availability bias in assessments of barriers and blessings, by Shai Davida and Thoms Gilovich)

"The Corporate World’s Superficial Psychology", by flowchainsensei: https://buff.ly/3IYhkl4

🎉 The time has come! It’s time to start actively searching for a new professional challenge 🚀 Here is my Santa Claus letter:

🌍️ 100% remote
🤏 Preference for small teams/companies (but open to other options)
🫂 Team contributor role (neither 100% management nor heavily focused on Infrastructure)
📦️ Product companies (with a strong product mindset)
🧪 You embrace XP/Lean values, principles and practices (or are serious about improving them)
📃 I’d prefer to be hired as an employee
💰️ “European” salary

A reminder to myself: my ethical stance https://buff.ly/3To5Vzw

"There is no substitute for direct observation of and interaction with the people who will be using the product.

[...] numerical correlations say nothing of people's real needs, of their desires, and of the reasons for their activities."

("The Design of Everyday Things" by Don Norman)

"Question everything. I am particularly fond of "stupid" questions. A stupid question asks about things so fundamental that everyone assumes the answer is obvious. But when the question is taken seriously, it often turns out to be profound.
[...] Quite often the solution to problems is discovered through stupid questions, through questioning the obvious"

("The Design of Everyday Things" by Don Norman)

"Never underestimate the power of social pressures on behavior, causing otherwise sensible people to do things they know are wrong and possibly dangerous"

("The Design of Everyday Things", by Don Norman)

"One of my rules in consulting is simple: never solve the problem I am asked to solve. Why such a counterintuitive rule? Because, invariably, the problem I am asked to solve is not the real, fundamental, root problem. It is usually a symptom.

[...] It is amazing how often people solve the problem before them without bothering to question it.

[...] In the real world, the problems do not come in nice, neat packages. They have to be discovered"

("The Design of Everyday Things", by Don Norman)

In case it helps to anyone currently in a recruitment process, here I share a post I wrote some time ago with a list of questions I usually ask during the interviews (as an interviewee): https://buff.ly/49DtOKw

What are you actually looking for in your business, what do you want: long-term satisfied customers or short-term HOSTAGES? I see so many "dark patterns" (often a euphemism for "unethical patterns") along the sales funnels in some products/services... 🫣

La recomendación del jueves: activad el doble factor de autenticación (2FA) en TODAS partes (donde sea posible, claro) 🙏