Rands in Repose

Rands in Repose

The link

Rands in Repose website

"Bored people quit", self-explanatory

"Meeting creatures", on meeting stereotypes

A surprisingly humane presentation on firing people at the 2013 CTO summit

What it is

“Rands in Repose” is the blog of Michael Lopp, or “Rands”. Rands writes about management, IT and general ‘tech life’, with a focus on leading teams and on team interactions. Lopp is currently Head of Engineering at Pinterest. When not writing on management, he obsesses over pens, bags and Instagram filters. Rands himself has an excellent introduction to his blog called “Don’t skip this”, which also indexes his 10+ years of content. I fully plan to steal that idea if I make it that far.

What it means to me

Rands never stopped being an engineer when he joined management, and his body of work is the chronicle of his attempt to find out how to make groups of people write software. Rands in Repose doesn’t update very often, and each post has a definite “I’ve found out something new” quality about it. I think he’s at his best when he describes office dynamics, within teams and between teams, because he lays bare processes that take place everywhere, but that are difficult to pinpoint exactly.

I appreciate Rands for being to able to perfectly write down things I have a vague feeling about. Like Information Dashboard Design, his blog has a very high ‘nod along’ factor, in the sense that the situations he sketches are recognizable.

Rands’ quests for perfect tooling are equal parts thorough and hilarious. Thorough because they are meticularly researched, and because the selection criteria ar provided in great detail. Hilarious because Rands is well-aware of how obsessive he is.

There's not much more to be said really, an a lot of material to read - go read some Rands in Repose!


Leonard