Olivier De Meulder

Sr. Director of Engineering at NY Times. Former startup founder. 🇧🇪

[Olivier De Meulder @odemeulder]

This is not a tweet.

[Olivier De Meulder @odemeulder]

@mattyglesias Not sure how many of your 117000 subscribers are Belgian, but this truly enjoyed the spotlight on our little country.

[Olivier De Meulder @odemeulder]

So do I

[Olivier De Meulder @odemeulder]

@mattyglesias Prescriptions are the difference, no? Nobody can sell prescription drugs unless they are FDA approved. For OTC ( over the counter) anything goes.

[Olivier De Meulder @odemeulder]

@alex_kuhner @benharnett Threads is nice. Come on over there.

[Olivier De Meulder @odemeulder]

@mathiasverraes So true. It irks me so much.

[Olivier De Meulder @odemeulder]

@heyits0livia I schedule time on my own calendar. Gcal has a focus time feature. I schedule the time with a specific purpose/ goal for each focus time appointment. E.g. next Thursday 10-11, I will work on x and produce y. I also make my weekly work goals public for accountability.

[Olivier De Meulder @odemeulder]

@namepa100169 @CraigatCoF Mine is Never Enough. I’ve had enough of it a long time ago.

[Olivier De Meulder @odemeulder]

Slack is the policy of deliberately leaving time that isn't allocated for stories, using that time for unplanned work. Although this seems inefficient, it usually yields a significant improvement for the productivity of a team.

[Martin Fowler @martinfowler]

NEW POST: Many software teams pack too much work into their iterations. Teams will usually run better when they have deliberate slack, as it allows their delivery to be more predictable and gives them time to improve their environment.

https://t.co/YW7NtxVVt2

[Olivier De Meulder @odemeulder]

@garychou 🇧🇪

[Ant Murphy @ant_murphy]

Don't scale agile.

Descale the work and organisation instead.

One of the best books on building an agile organisation is not what you'd expect.

But 'Team of Teams' is a bible for building a resilient and adaptive organisation.

Here's serveral enablers from the book 👇

/1

[Cory House @housecor]

Some teams struggle because there’s too much friction in making improvements.

If a dev has to create a ticket, sell management, size the task, and get it prioritized, they’re likely to just say "not worth it."

Solution: Welcome proactive improvements. Make them easy.

[Olivier De Meulder @odemeulder]

@housecor @tastapod Right there in a link from the article you posted:
We needed labels for the domains that didn’t have an obvious hierarchy, and we settled on colours. If your domains are called Blue, Green, Orange, Yellow, etc. then there isn’t an obviously “best” one.
https://t.co/sKyPMSidoU.

[Cory House @housecor]

A key dev team role: Architect.

Duties:
-Foster reuse
-Enforce consistency
-Standardize solutions
-Select technologies and patterns
-Review changes with a holistic view
-Automate time-consuming and redundant tasks
-Consider the long-term implications of key decisions

[Olivier De Meulder @odemeulder]

@robinberjon Là-bas, au Connemara
On dit que la vie, c'est une folie
Et que la folie, ça se mange

[Olivier De Meulder @odemeulder]

Some engineers have asked whether they should be a generalist or a specialist. In my opinion we have room for and need both.
And I love this quote from Vonnegut below.

[Will Wooten @williamwooten94]

👇 THIS 👇

[Olivier De Meulder @odemeulder]

I like to tell my team: "If you don't think you can contribute meaningfully to a meeting, just leave. Don't attend meetings that have no agenda. Be suspicious of meetings with too many attendees."

[Techmeme @Techmeme]

Memo: Shopify cancels all recurring meetings with over two people "in perpetuity" and encourages staff to decline invitations, leave big group chats, and more (@bizboyle / Bloomberg)

https://t.co/w0DI3OKsoz
https://t.co/Cjmw4lzxnz

[Olivier De Meulder @odemeulder]

Queen bee. First time. #spellingbee

[Olivier De Meulder @odemeulder]

@garychou g5t

[Olivier De Meulder @odemeulder]

@justinph Same here.

[Olivier De Meulder @odemeulder]

@schwanzer I think this entire crypto business is a sham.