New Phaistos

A personal story The Balkans have been a place that has always fascinated me. Of course, partly due to my origin. The warm people and the amazing food culture certainly helps. But the main reason for the appeal is the rich tapestry of cultures. Balkaners have been under Roman and then Ottoman rule for most of their recorded history to varying extents and relatively recently have managed to create independent and self-governed states. This rebirth provides a neutral ground for a new society to emerge, and witnessing the emergence of new societies is definitely unique. Given my fondness for the region and my personal connection to it, I have naturally felt a pull. To visit, to study history, to meet locals and make connections. Through these interactions, I have observed how similar we all are. Everyone is very proud of their culture and their (not recent) history. We have similar concepts of time and we socialize through food. All of us face similar problems too that can mostly be descr...

Progress as destiny "...The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice." This statement, first put to words by Martin Luther King, perfectly exemplifies that ideology of many progressives. People with good intent believe that  over the long term, society tends towards moral progress and overall betterment.  This blind positivity affects all kinds of liberal minded people. For some, this belief takes a distinct techno-optimist flavour, where technology is expected to keep improving our lives. For others that are influenced by the reverberations of materialistic dialectics, the natural evolution of the mass accumulation of wealth is its fair distribution. And so it seems that all is well under the sun. The pendulum has hypnotized us So here is where there is a problem with this notion of perpetual improvement - things are definitely not improving if you are seeing the world with an appreciation for freedom and justice. How then do then the people that are dr...

The ailment I recently had a very interesting discussion on LinkedIn, something that might be as rare as a unicorn. A distinguished professor and entrepreneur was voicing his frustration with legacy technology companies, particularly in Northern Europe. According to him, the flat culture of these companies which celebrates individual contributions has caused them to slow down to a crawl. We live in rapidly changing times. And that means that processes, opinions and technologies must evolve too. And if you have many of those "free individuals" who are all treated as essential stakeholders, colossal effort is required to achieve alignment. That often proves to be too little too late, because either alignment takes too long and the opportunity is lost, or worse, a few dissenters prevent consensus and block change. Obviously this way of working puts us at a disadvantage. Other cultures may blindly follow the leader and that's that. Combine that with ruthless succession dynami...

Data never lies... I am sure we have all heard that phrase before. It is especially common for it to pop up in arguments. You are discussing with a friend about a hot topic or perhaps its a business meeting and you are debating which supplier you will go with. That is where somebody wanting to reinforce their argument will show some data that reinforces his point and expect that this will change your mind too. After all, its science and science can't be wrong ... right?  People do lie In fact, there are multiple ways such arguments could be much weaker in practice. First of all, the data itself might be wrong or biased. But even assuming you can trust the source, data without proper scaling is of little importance. Always pay attention to starting points of diagrams and the relative sizes of shapes, because while the data might be true, the visualization might be optimizing for storytelling.    Also good piece of advice: ask for anchor values . A sales number of  €3 ...

Am I the bottleneck? Why bother with delegating tasks? The simple answer is to get work done. Delegating tasks is all about giving to your team a free pass to solve a problem the way they see fit. Instead of defining methods or solution, only the destination is defined. This is not only perfect at decreasing the managers workload and letting them think strategically, but more crucially it is oxygen for the team. With clear task delegation, they can have the autonomy to fill in the gaps and grow. No need to wait for when the manager will have time to make a decision and move forward and no complete stops when the management team is busy or on holidays. Scope creep Still, it’s hard to let go. Engineers are trained to optimize, to make things efficient. In the early days of a career and within the context of small teams, this mindset thrives. Team leads still write code, pair with colleagues, and drive decisions closely. These are often hands-on managers. But when the team grows...