Tech — Work — Ramblings

by Mike Kalvas

I see you're not using JavaScript (which is awesome!) on one of my pages that uses it to provide a better experience. If you see something not working right, please let me know. My site should work exactly the same without it apart from any exceptions noted here.

I use prism.min.js to do syntax highlighting. It clocks in at 23kb total in size. Since the majority of the writing I do involves coding, I personally find this to be a worthwhile trade off. If you choose to keep this disabled, rest assured, the code examples are still there, they just may have some extra whitespace and obviously no syntax highlighting.

I do no tracking at all and am a zealot about keeping my pages as small as possible. If you're reading a page of mine that transfers more than about 250kb over the wire (including my most gratuitous indulgence — fonts) I've messed up.

So, if you'd like to have a slightly richer experience, consider enabling javascript for my site and I promise your trust won't be misplaced.

202110181215 Target praise carefully

You can and should praise anyone who does a good job on things, but there are times when using praise in a targeted way can have a greater impact on the team or an individual.

For instance, when 202110181158 Coaching underperformers, we need to make sure that all praise for the good things they do are linked to continual improvement and expressed as a positive step on a longer journey.

When trying to impact the culture and attitude of the team, praising the right actions publicly, in a group setting can signal that you — as their leader and boss — value that behavior and will reward it.

There are other areas that this makes sense as well and it can be a difficult thing to get right all the time, but it's important to be discerning.