Week 13 2024

What am I working on

• I gave some feedback to our platform teams about an initiative to improve our services we call this WAS (Well Architected Service). They have done a great job planning things and defining a scope but I felt it was starting to feel like a death star so gave feedback on how to reduce the complexity and get started sooner.
• Clarifying our offer and GTM strategy in the UK for the next 6 months, what we will stop, continue and start doing. We have an operating model that works really well in other markets, it's mostly applicable to the UK too but the  EPS problem I wrote about last week is hampering us deploying it having a negative impact on us, partners and patients, so we are thinking how we work around it while we wait for the assurance process to open up again.
• Discussion about an experiment we are trying which is no meeting and no product work on Wednesday's for solving tech debt problems or improving parts of our architecture to help with the WAS work but also tackling some of those TODO's in the code base; we are running this until the end of April and I am looking forward to seeing what the outcome will be. This is inspired by a firebreak that was run with the NHS.UK teams but over a longer stretch to allow time for things that will take a while to work out and execute.
  
  We are also trying different ways of working too. As a company operating across Europe, we have access to a larger talent pool which is a great upside, also the working day spans 9 hours instead of the typical 8 with a one hour overlap. The downside is trying to optimise developer flow time, we find that it is typically what is left after everyone else has taken a slice of time.  I have set the teams the challenge of trying different approaches and reporting back their findings. That doesn't mean 8 hours a day constant developing with no meetings, but it does mean designing a schedule with intent.

What did I read?

• RIP Redis: How Garantia Data pulled off the biggest heist in open source history An interesting take on the usurping of much loved Redis by Garantia now known as Redis Labs. I am looking forward to seeing how AWS reacts to this one, I don't see open source changing licensing terms any worse to someone acquiring a company that owns software you depend on. At least you can make a fork and continue.
• A Bronx Teacher Asked. Tommy Orange Answered. I loved the part the teacher played in this, so nice to see the impact of books in a world of social media. I've added 'There, There' to my reading list.
• Lynda Barry - I don't know who she is, but I enjoyed reading this article about her creative process and teaching methods. Especially the parts about less technology.

Something Personal

• I spent the bank holiday weekend in Anglesey with my family and got out on the Jetski for the first time this year. They battery was flat when I first tried firing it up but an overnight charge sorted that out. I took my daughter and her friend on with me as it's a three seater and while doing a slow rate turn we all leaned out of the turn a little too much which threw us in the bitterly cold water. Our bodies were fine because of the wetsuits but our feet, hands and head was freezing. I promptly ordered wetsuit socks and gloves ready for the next outing.