After tasting different flavors of tech companies and interviewing a number of people from the industry, this a shortlist of what, through our eyes and experiences, is a safe and welcoming workplace. — Many of us — builders, creators, and leaders alike — live under tremendous pressure of expectations, aspirations, successes, failures, and complicated human relationships. We often talk about and share our favorite methods, frameworks, approaches, tools, but we rarely speak up about how difficult it is to endure, persist, and not…

Being a functional fitness gym member for 4 years I noticed that, in contrary to the Navy Seal inspired business coaching, the fabric of that community is not the elite. It’s regular people wanting to be the best possible versions of themselves. — June 9, 2020 update: I strongly distance myself from the statements of the CrossFit Inc. CEO in the midst of the fight against systemic racism. Fitness communities I visited all over the world have always been the embodiment of welcomeness, inclusivity and kindness. I do not and will not accept…

All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy. When was the last time you engaged your team with something both fun and informative? Here’s a story of how me and my team learned new Scrum tricks with some help of classical music composers. — 3PM, we’re in the middle of a Sprint Review with stakeholders from 3 different timezones. The team is already exhausted, yet we get to the point, we conclude the event with take aways for the Sprint Planning.

The tech industry started treating Agile as a remedy for everything. It is not. The overall hype has pushed the deep understanding of agility to the backstage, and it was the worst move we could make. — Let’s put a few things straight first. There are two main sets of wisdom and knowledge in the universum of Agile. There’s the philosophy of nourishing flexibility and sanity in complex software-related endeavors, which I cherish and praise by reading a line from The Manifesto every other day at least.

Agile is Dead, Long Live Agility. 15 years after the birth of the Manifesto, many of us still don’t get what Dave Thomas meant, and why the heck this meaningful adjective started to work as a noun. — Here’s a bold statement: There is no such thing as agile methods. I cringe when I see a job offer saying: experience in (so-called) agile methods or agile methodology. First of all, it’s not the methods that are agile. It’s the people. Second, methodology implies replicability, predictability, and generalization. …

Your teachers probably told you: don’t spread yourself too thin. But in 2015, a broad set of skills is the way to get a job. Here’s how I learned to stop worrying and love what I do. — I’m 27 and I’ve been working as a content designer and strategist for a couple of years now. I design all sorts of stuff for social media engagement, increasing web traffic, lead generation and sales. Back in high school I wanted to be a lot of things: a journalist, a…