Best Blogs of June

Right now, you need reading material more than ever, and our best blogs for June post includes a lot of good stuff, including stories on being a more inclusive manager, the virtues of a brick-and-mortar workplace and popular misconceptions about DevOps.

Being More Inclusive

One of the takeaways from the Black Lives Matter protests this month is that society needs to do a much better job of providing platforms and access to people of color.

Yes, discrimination based on ethnicity has been made morally and legally taboo – however, minority groups are still disproportionately shut out from the upper levels of society. Boardroom personnel, upper-level managers and key decisionmakers are still overwhelmingly white. This is to the detriment of society and the companies themselves, as research shows a strong connection between diversity and profitability. While it will require a lot of time, energy and willpower to overhaul our biased systems, increasing inclusivity can easily happen through small, intimate changes.

The human brain is hard-wired for bias and tribalism. We tend to gravitate toward people who look like us, and that’s bad news for people outside positions of influence. One small but powerful change is to stress collaboration between people from different backgrounds. Ask employees to be self-aware of their own preferences and curious about co-workers from backgrounds that seem unfamiliar.

Read the whole story here.

The Case for Working “at Work”

For people not accustomed to it, suddenly working from home can seem like newfound freedom. If nobody’s standing over your shoulder to make sure you’re producing widgets, then you can work from anywhere and, say, take a conference call while in the Popeye’s drive-thru. Basically, every workday can be Ferris Bueller’s Day Off, right?

Well, not exactly. If the COVID-19 lockdown has taught us anything, it’s that we crave natural, in-person interaction. When people work together, they feed off each other’s energy and support one another during difficult times.

Furthermore, interpersonal skills are much more effective in-person. For instance, if you want to make a compelling case for why your department can’t sustain staffing cuts, you’re better off making that argument in person, rather that over the phone or email.

Companies are also putting more focus than ever on building a vibrant company culture, as studies have shown this can provide a massive return on investment. Building a winning culture that attracts and retains top talent is much more difficult when it’s done over Slack and Zoom.

Read the whole story here.

DevOps Misconceptions

Once up a time, software engineers labored in a vacuum, with very little feedback from people who used what they made. With DevOps, there is now a continuous and prolonged cooperation between development and operations. Engineers are no longer separated from the individuals who use software that has been made and released.

Unfortunately, there are still many misconceptions associated with DevOps. First and foremost, it is a methodology, not a specific job. As opposed to having only “DevOps engineers,” you ought to acknowledge the responsibilities of everyone for both the development and operations sides of the equation. Since the siloing of engineers is a relic of the past, companies must acknowledge that constant evolution of a product is no longer one department’s responsibility.

Read the whole story here.