Tag Archives: Professional behavior

QUOTE: Heroics in the workplace

…People respond with heroic behavior. And when they act heroically, they stop improving. They just act heroically again, again, and again, and they stop learning. David Anderson in interview for Software Engineering Radio.
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2 steps to more effective communication

I’m reading Garr Reynolds’ “Prezentation Zen” and his points about efficiency of presentations, which can naturally be translated into efficiency of communication, resonated with my mind: The presentation would have been greatly improved if the presenter had simply kept two questions in mind in preparing for the talk: What’s my point? And why does it matter? Now [...]
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Professionals are always around you

Today I had an inspiring chat with one of fellow QA engineers about one of the systems we recently developed. I had a new requirement in mind that triggers complete re-test of the system. Me: How long does it take to re-test our solution? QA: Any new features or components? Me: No, “just” another communication protocol. QA: Give me [...]
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Be reasonable

Be reasonable with your requests. Be reasonable with your responses. Human actions (at least, in professional and business fields) are mostly driven by reasons. People never (or very-very rarely) do something out of spontaneous wish at work. Yes, you can have a spontaneous idea, but it, anyway, will serve some particular purpose. Idea tries to solve a [...]
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Critique is not easy

When people communicate they exchange facts, ideas and opinions. When they hear something which is not a sure fact like “At present, Earth orbits the Sun” they will either agree or disagree. As Paul Graham suggests this is a natural behavior. But disagreeing itself is somewhat simple: nothing remains after the conversation except for changed or [...]
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Take on the change

Leo Babauta of Zenhabits describes an interesting concept of pigeonholes in interpersonal communication. My personal experience with this suggests that there is always a hassle that stops people from changing for better. Changing for worse usually happens gradually and unconsciously; and when it is conscious (I can not imagine that, but still) you do not care [...]
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Predictability over… everything

Many years ago when I was at school I was serious about orienting. Once I even was 3rd in national championship. And the trainer always told us “Stability is a sign of mastery”. No matter how fast you are on the training you’ve got to be able to repeat this result in real competitions [...]
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What do you need to be a great engineer?

If you haven’t read Founders at Work, you definitely should. Reading this I’ve enjoyed every page. Probably this book is more about “experience sharing” than any other book. This book has 33 co-authors each sharing his insight into key components of success. I just could not resist posting these words of wisdom of Steve Wozniak: Livingston: What [...]
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Advanced Selling Podcast revisited

Going out for a walk with my 3-months old daughter I took my iPod loaded with older and recent episodes of Advanced Selling Podcast. And again I enjoyed all the episodes just I did last time when I had Advanced Selling Podcast “listening session”. Continuing my walk I tried to understand what are Bill Caskey and [...]
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