Something I've been musing about. In my career, I've been happiest when able to move to wherever the opportunity is: Amsterdam for Booking UI, London for React/Native, Seattle for Amplify. There was a time in my life where I was not able to "apparate" into opportunity like this Dating (and marriage, back in the day) is interesting because very often the people in my current location are disinclined to move to where my opportunities are. Heck, even in NL, few wanted a relationship with someone in the UK because "it's so far away" (haaa...)

On the topic of tech writing salaries🍺 My background:

I have written docs for @MozDevNet while working on the web animations API.

For 3 years I was a "docs engineer" at @Meta on the @reactnative and @reactjs teams, launching reactnative.dev and react.dev docs overhauls and writing a good deal

When folks tell me their dream is to become a DA, I tell them the pay difference between DAs and just plain old engineers—and handling Twitter drama is not a part of the job description for engineers! I remember wanting to be a DA because travel, people, cool demos, and also I saw "people like me" in advocacy, but not necessarily on engineering teams. Many years later I'd realize...

Today I explained OKRs and KPIs twice and why you should never mistake KRs for KPIs. My fave example from the two showed how you can apply this framework in your every day life.. Objective (goal): keep your heart healthy!

KPIs (quantifiable indicators you're moving toward or away from that goal): blood pressure, cholesterol levels

Key Results (things you think will get you to that goal): exercise, heart friendly meals, medicine

It's morbid that my insurance will only provide me with one month's worth of birth control at a time when "perfect use" requires perfectly uninterrupted usage.

In NL I got a year's supply in one visit. In the UK, I got three months supply delivered in the mail.

WTF is this Give her her goddamned birth control. usatoday.com/story/news/nat…

I didn't anticipate my docs resources thread would explode. What are your favourite resources when it comes to writing, maintaining and innovating on your developer educational materials? I talk a lot about docs. But I am not the expert. I got into Docs as a Job because I wanted to learn React from the React Core Team and all they needed was docs for React Native. So I learned that, too. Turns out people are more excited about my docs than me as a React expert 🤷

Useful resources for folks building docs in opensource, the thread 🧵: Join the @writethedocs community at writethedocs.org. The newsletter is valuable, the Slack community is a great place to spitball ideas and source contractors, the conf is a good one to go to at least once

birdsong Word.

After almost three years, today is my last day on the React team at Meta. When I joined, I had a list of things I wanted to do for the React community to "push the ball in the right direction"... Shipped (and even co-authored!) a new way to learn React beta.reactjs.org, overhauled ReactNative.dev's docs, and even managed to organize Women of React Conf—some participants going on to become members of the React 18 Working Group

Want to grow the table and disrupt bias? Try to introduce each other more intentionally. Like when you're introducing two friends in opensource who have no context on each other's work, fill them in on how awesome the other one is. Get in there before Lazy Brain makes assumptions Many people, especially minoritized folks, do not gain anything from "needs no introduction" modesty by proxy.

Make proper introductions and celebrate the good work you're doing.

For everyone looking at new jobs for 2022, here's some sleepy advice:

Go places you know you'll be challenged and work with people who are smarter than you, but avoid roles where you feel you'll have to "prove yourself." Don't waste time posturing and people pleasing Prioritize working where someone who outranks you believes in you.

I don't mean handwavy "we can't wait for you to join/love your work/you're great" sell call flattery.

Someone, somewhere should be willing to say you are awesome enthusiastically to their peers. That is golden

I think about this diagram a lot

https://twitter.com/waitbutwhy/status/1476962460049584136

I forecast. A lot. It’s not because I’m particularly clever. It’s because I was raised in a constantly changing environment. I had to think two steps ahead or lose. And I do that constantly now. Estimating probability helps—I keep a personal advisory board for that

There's a tax for saying "we should do X" as a woman that men don't have to pay.

Been reading "Playing Big" by Tara Mohr and realized how often I have to code switch into "tentative speech" or face obstruction/have my ideas blocked—with both men and women: "We might consider X" I wouldn't mind if everyone used tentative speech. But if one person in a dialog has to back every forthright statement with dozens of facts and others don't, that person's ideas will face much more friction to land

It's amazing what a sprinkling of confidence can do for your world outlook. This is why I've enjoyed pair coding every week during this long haul project. It's hard when my timeline is long to get dopamine hits outside of user testing sessions "This is on the right track. I'm having fun. Things will be ok." I can track how I've made increasingly better decisions as these feelings increase. So sometimes I artificially induce them as a ward against anxiety-based reactions: playing a fun game, or learning a new skill

"Unseen leviathans" are the invisible forces that cause visible effects.

Example: you notice a bunch of people leaving a company. What you cannot see is the major reorg shaking people free or the exodus of a few keystone people the others are following. Much like a fish just under the surface of a pond coming suddenly into view, in retrospect the leviathan's presence seems obvious. Many will claim retroactive foresight. But very few can spot an unseen leviathan until it breaches.

Watching Amazon's take on Cinderella and praying it's not a Disney knock off.

I really hope the rest of the movie is about this princess and Ella. I ship it!! All the men in this film should be fed to the sea monster. Specifically the prince for murdering Freddie Mercury

ADVENTURE TIME

because I just found out I have Friday off Oh look a castle

Interviewing is career speed dating Don't know what you want to do with your career? Interview for a lot of roles. You'll get to learn more about the day to day and have to do lots of homework to get a feel for the gaps you'd need to bridge/rewards to gain

Reward for meeting my weekly sleep goals fuck yeah Basically I no longer get to buy myself nice things unless I've gotten to bed on time for a week. Then I get one nice thing. One. It's turning into a Sunday night ritual of delight

TFW you accidentally impress someone with double recursion because you were too sleepy to remember while loops exist TBH everything looks like recursion to me. This is why I'm not allowed in your codebase

My next big talk It’s just, “how to plan your future when the future is unpredictable”