Back in July, I revealed the start of financial quarters to be a universal celebration. It’s great to have universal days of celebration, but can we top that? Wouldn’t it be cool if we’d share seasons as well?
“How could we make that happen, though, Zef!? In some places in the world, we’re heading into the winter, in others into the summer. You can attempt to define reality all you want, but there are limits!”
And this is where you’re wrong. There are no limits.
Even though you may not have realized, or more likely: you may not have appreciated it — we do share at least one season in common, worldwide, universally.
And the amazing news is that at Mattermost this season starts today.
It’s “Performance Review” season!
Indeed, judgment is in the air.
More on this most wonderful time of the year, and how to get the most out of it, after this week’s picking of the κεράσια (that’s Greek, according to Google).
Cherry picks
Platform-related channel picks (in case you find yourself thinking “hey, I have FOMO, perhaps I’m not in the right channels.”):
- Client Performance Automation — where pan-Platform discussions happen on how to best approach measuring performance.
- Multi-Product Architecture — where discussions and status updates on the multi-product architecture happen. Here is this week’s summary.
On the mobile platform end, we’re making progress on the performance regression testing. Some of us are learning Go to be able to contribute to the one-command install project. We also had a good meeting with the Boards team to discuss what’s in stock for Boards on mobile 2024. It looks like a solid first step.
On the web platform end, multi-product architecture for the front end is now merged into master on webapp. We’ll enable running Boards in “product” mode on Community server soon. Beside this we spent time debugging why we regressed on Community last week (marking a lot of channels as read-only for a short amount of time). We also continued our effort to upgrade dependencies.
On the desktop platform end, we primarily focused on the last fixes to prepare for the 5.2 release next week.
On the server platform side, on the load testing end, we’re performing some low-hanging fruit maintenance work like upgrading the version of terraform and doing better cleanup after running tests. To better support the ever-increasing cloud load, we’re making progress on Perseus (the PgBouncer replacement we’re working on). Regarding the drastic refactoring of the server repo we’ve been doing, we’re starting to hit a point of diminishing returns, so we will likely stop and shift our effort to other, more high-impact areas after wrapping up ongoing things.
On the QA platform side, we’re still in the process of setting up Percy for visual regression testing.
We’re also feature testing Boards 7.4 with the community, and asking for user feedback on recording in calls. And continuing work on the observability of our test infrastructure.
Mirror, mirror
Some time ago I wrote about the challenge to turn punch holes into dynamic islands. A fun subset of this problem space is to frame tasks that may appear as chores as life-altering experiences.
At some point, I’ll do a world tour asking audiences to yell out a chore, and in real-time I’d come up with a framing that shows it’s the best thing to do, ever. It’ll be fun.
Until then, let’s look at one timely chore: writing your self-reflection!
Part of this most wonderful season of the year, writing your self-reflection is the first step.
Annoying right?
Wronk!
In fact, this an exercise we should all do regularly anyway. Including it in The Season™️ is just a life hack to do it at least twice per year.
Here’s how I suggest you approach it. It means answering just two questions to yourself. How hard can it be? Or rather: how much more fun can it get?
We love talking to ourselves!
The first question: When did I feel awesome this year?
When did I feel king or queen (or some gender-neutral variant of royalty) of the world? Or, if that is too high of a bar: what do I feel were my biggest wins this year? When did that dopamine blast me in the face? What were the circumstances? Can I think of more cases? What were the circumstances then? Is there a pattern?
Now, as a bonus question (that doesn’t count to the 2), what could “the company” do to create more instances of awesomeness for me? (Let your manager know, you may be surprised about what’s actually possible.)
And in case I really cannot come up with something here — this is a bit of a flag. Am I in the right role, the right team? Do I have to make some changes? When I mentally peruse the company’s org chart, is there any place, any role, any team that makes my blood flow faster? In other words: is there a place where I could be more awesome? Ideally, in the company, but you know, that’s not always the answer. I hear Twitter has some recent openings (or maybe wait a bit).
Second question: Have I been giving the company my very best this year?
Let me nuance this question: have I been giving the best I can do, while still maintaining a reasonable work-life balance?
Some sanity-check questions around this nuanced version:
- Does my significant other still recognize me?
- Does my cat still come to me when hungry?
So, have I been giving my reasonable best? If yes — amazing.
Really, though?
Am I sure? Was there really nothing that impacted my performance this year?
Really?
Was it all rainbows and unicorns?
Really?
Seriously though, really?
I thought so.
(I call this technique the “5 really’s” — the recpipe is to ask “really?” until the target realizes they’re wrong — usually 5 times suffices.)
If not, why not? What was blocking me?
Was it skill? Motivation? Was it unclear where I’m heading, what I was supposed to do? Is it related to my team? My manager? Was the work not interesting enough, or seem valuable enough? Was I distracted? Did I not feel appreciated? Was I not able to do the work I feel I should have been doing? Are my skills not used to their full potential? Or, was it life getting in the way and we need to rebalance a few things?
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Bad news: the answers to these questions might not be one-to-one copyable to the form you are going to be asked to fill in for your self reflection, but they should provide you with enough content to provide solid answers there.
Side note: if you’re (un)lucky enough to report directly to me, you are hereby granted permission to cheat the system, ignore the questions and just dump in the answers to the two questions above in any of the fields — if you’re comfortable with that, of course.
But the form, nor the process, nor system is the goal. It’s the opportunity. Self reflection is not a punch hole, it’s a dynamic island in the island group of self discovery.
Listen to me, attempting to sound all poetic and shit. Let me make a note for my own self reflection.
The questions should help you discover and reflect on your strengths and weaknesses and figure out where you want to go next. Not because the company is nagging you, but because — hopefully — you want to discover this yourself.
And as Yogi Berra supposedly said: “If you don’t know where you’re going, you may not get there.”
Our ability to step back and self reflect is likely one of the most effective ways to improve as people. Peer feedback will come, your manager may have an opinion, sure. Ultimately, it’s you who will have to consolidate it all and turn it into something useful.
Who cares what other people think anyway, we know ourselves and what we’re capable of. We make our own decisions. Amirite? Power to us, the people!
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This post was adapted from its original version on the Mattermost Community Server. Want to take a closer look at the inner workings of the Platform team? Join the Community server to be the first to read The Platformer every Friday.
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