https://www.howarddierking.com/tags/personal/ Recent content in personal on howarddierking.com Hugo -- gohugo.io en-us Tue, 22 Feb 2022 00:00:00 +0000 https://www.howarddierking.com/2022/02/22/my-workflow-v2/ Tue, 22 Feb 2022 00:00:00 +0000 https://www.howarddierking.com/2022/02/22/my-workflow-v2/ Some friends of mine recently released a podcast episode on the topics of attention management related tools, and it turned out that one of the resources they referenced was an old blog post of mine on the topic; so maybe that’s a decent place to start and see what’s worked out, what hasn’t, and what new circumstances necessarily change strategy. As I read back through that post, most of the reasoning behind my need to get more organized still holds true - there’s a lot of cross-group coordination, inputs come in from a number of different sources, and as a result there’s a tendency for work to become almost entirely reactionary. https://www.howarddierking.com/2019/04/13/changes/ Sat, 13 Apr 2019 00:00:00 +0000 https://www.howarddierking.com/2019/04/13/changes/ (I’ve been sitting on writing this post for a while now because there have been quite a few different pices of the puzzle all up in the air and I’ve been waiting for at least a few of them to land. I now have enough clarity to go ahead with sharing.) TL;DR In short, our time in the Pacific Northwest is coming to a close this summer. We moved here a little over 13 years ago when I started working at Microsoft, and I very much consider this place and its people home. https://www.howarddierking.com/2017/11/29/i-don-t-work-for-a-technology-company/ Wed, 29 Nov 2017 00:00:00 +0000 https://www.howarddierking.com/2017/11/29/i-don-t-work-for-a-technology-company/ And it’s likely that neither do you One of the projects that my team works on is a GraphQL server. The service provides a consistent, data-focused interface between multiple types and versions of front end applications and multiple types and versions of back end APIs. Now, let me be clear up front: this post is not about GraphQL vs. REST. As I’m sure will be unsurprising to the vast majority of you, our back end services differ wildly in terms of design (from RPC to “Pragmatic REST” (aka RPC) to full-blown hypermedia), content types and granularity of resources. https://www.howarddierking.com/2017/09/07/on-change-and-career/ Thu, 07 Sep 2017 00:00:00 +0000 https://www.howarddierking.com/2017/09/07/on-change-and-career/ I originally wrote this as talking points for a conversation I had with my team and wasn’t planning on sharing it more broadly. However, as I’ve been watching this crazy industry of ours over the last several months, I think that these thoughts apply to many more people than just those on my team and I hope that at least one other person finds them useful. So first, a bit of context… https://www.howarddierking.com/2017/03/12/my-workflow/ Sun, 12 Mar 2017 00:00:00 +0000 https://www.howarddierking.com/2017/03/12/my-workflow/ I initially became interested in personal workflow methods and tools when I started at Microsoft in 2006. Microsoft differed from my previous roles in that projects generally required coordination across multiple teams - meaning that there were lots of tasks to manage. Additionally, the corporate culture made heavy use of emails and meetings - meaning that tasks could originate from a variety of sources at almost any time. Without some kind of structure, working at Microsoft could very easily become purely reactionary. https://www.howarddierking.com/2017/03/02/on-disappointment/ Thu, 02 Mar 2017 00:00:00 +0000 https://www.howarddierking.com/2017/03/02/on-disappointment/ I’ve been completely unfocused this week waiting to hear the outcome of a meeting that I knew was planned for Tuesday. The meeting was of the admissions committee for MIT’s Sloan School of Management. In the fall, I began work on applying to the executive MBA program - and this process took me through writing 4 essays, securing 3 letters of recommendation, and even dusting off (translation: rewriting) my resume. In January, I advanced to the in-person interview stage of the process - it looked like this thing could really happen. https://www.howarddierking.com/2015/10/08/growing-pains/ Thu, 08 Oct 2015 00:00:00 +0000 https://www.howarddierking.com/2015/10/08/growing-pains/ If there’s one thing that I want for the 10 of you that read this blog (hi dad!), it’s that you know that I want to be as transparent as humanly possible with you - about both the successes and failures. I started with Concur as a development manager about a year ago and was promoted to director a few months ago. This is post is an update of what’s gone well, what hasn’t gone as well, and some areas where I’m not really sure whether what I’m observing is good or bad. https://www.howarddierking.com/2015/06/22/i-lost-a-friend-today/ Mon, 22 Jun 2015 00:00:00 +0000 https://www.howarddierking.com/2015/06/22/i-lost-a-friend-today/ I have a million and one things that I should be doing right now. There’s code that needs to be reviewed, more code that needs to be written, customer calls to prepare for, expense reports to approve (and submit). I’m not doing any of those things right now. None of that feels all that important. I learned today that my friend and former colleague, Thomas Remkus, just lost his fight with cancer. https://www.howarddierking.com/2014/08/14/leaving-microsoft/ Thu, 14 Aug 2014 00:00:00 +0000 https://www.howarddierking.com/2014/08/14/leaving-microsoft/ After 8 amazing years, it’s time for me to move on. I’ll articulate my own rationale for leaving shortly, but it would be disingenuous to not first list some of the many, many ways that I have grown and benefited from my time working at Microsoft. I got to run the developer certification program where I designed and built programs that helped start and grow the careers of many. It was also in this role that I had the opportunity to file my first patent. https://www.howarddierking.com/2014/06/14/stuck-in-a-rut/ Sat, 14 Jun 2014 00:00:00 +0000 https://www.howarddierking.com/2014/06/14/stuck-in-a-rut/ Warning: This is a completely downer of a post. If you don’t want to risk being pulled down with me, stop now. I don’t know whether the place I’m at is particular to software folks or whether it’s something more general that everybody has to deal with at one point or another. I feel stuck. Stuck between holding onto the technical skills that I spent more than a decade developing and building up more abstract skills like management and business development. https://www.howarddierking.com/2014/06/02/ergonomics-without-the-office-furniture-look/ Mon, 02 Jun 2014 00:00:00 +0000 https://www.howarddierking.com/2014/06/02/ergonomics-without-the-office-furniture-look/ In my last post I talked about my switch to a mechanical keyboard and in that expressed that one of my chief concerns (and reasons for not getting one earlier) was the fact that the keyboard was not ergonomic. On further inspection, I concluded that the bulk of the problems related to keyboards in general had less to do with their own ergonomic features and more to do with the fact that the typical desk is too high to type on top of. https://www.howarddierking.com/2014/05/15/my-new-old-keyboard/ Thu, 15 May 2014 00:00:00 +0000 https://www.howarddierking.com/2014/05/15/my-new-old-keyboard/ If you follow Jeff Atwood, then you’ve no doubt read his articles on designing the Code keyboard and his thoughts on mechanical keyboards more generally. I’m not going to even attempt to provide an equivalent level of insight into all of the details on the different types of keyboards. However, I will share my experience now that I finally took the plunge and got my very first mechanical keyboard. I had been toying with the idea for a while as I’m always looking for things and techniques that will make the hours that I spend in front of the screen more enjoyable (not saying that coding isn’t it’s own reward - perhaps saying that all of the other stuff that involves typing that’s not coding my need a bit of extra incentive from time to time). https://www.howarddierking.com/2014/03/24/my-spring-speaking-schedule/ Mon, 24 Mar 2014 00:00:00 +0000 https://www.howarddierking.com/2014/03/24/my-spring-speaking-schedule/ Spring is in there air (well, intermittently here in the Pacific Norhwest), and that means - the spring conference season is shaping up. With three kids at home who are all 6 years old and under, I’m still trying to keep my travel under control. However, I will be venturing out a bit, so here’s where I’ll be over the next couple of months. If you’re in the area, I would love to catch up - so let me know! https://www.howarddierking.com/2014/02/03/open-office-layouts-de-personalization-and-mobility/ Mon, 03 Feb 2014 00:00:00 +0000 https://www.howarddierking.com/2014/02/03/open-office-layouts-de-personalization-and-mobility/ Today opens a new chapter in my experience at Microsoft - my team (and larger group) has made the move from the Microsoft-traditional individual offices to the open office layout (team rooms, more specifically). Now, before I come off as negative, I’ll enumerate some of the things that I really like about the new layout. The space looks amazing. It’s like what I would expect from a startup who got a ton of VC and had a flair for the dramatic. https://www.howarddierking.com/2014/01/19/on-juggling/ Sun, 19 Jan 2014 00:00:00 +0000 https://www.howarddierking.com/2014/01/19/on-juggling/ I realize that there are entire shelves worth of books on this subject, but enough people have asked me about my approach to juggling all of the email, meetings, and various deliverables at Microsoft that I figured I would add my 2 cents to the corpus in hopes that maybe it might provide one extra nugget to someone. As surprising as it may seem (it does to me much of the time), I also have a life outside of Microsoft that is pretty hectic in its own right, including training content authoring, independent consulting, church commitments, and most importantly, my wife and 3 daughters. https://www.howarddierking.com/2014/01/14/new-year-new-blog/ Tue, 14 Jan 2014 00:00:00 +0000 https://www.howarddierking.com/2014/01/14/new-year-new-blog/ Over the past year, I’ve been wanting to blog a good bit more for a couple of different reasons - many of them completely unrelated to blogging. For example: I’m convinced at this point in time that the manner in which we’ve been thinking about building dynamic Web sites and applications for the last 15 years or so (e.g. Web-server driven, dynamic application fameworks and CMSs) is completely wrong and in many ways runs counter to how the Web is intended to work (In fact, this will be one of the subjects I’m planning to cover in my next Pluralsight course).