First post
It’s always a blog post about writing a blog post
Establish a reputation in your field as someone who delivers measurable results vis-a-vis improving revenue or reducing costs.
— Patrick McKenzie (patio11)
I’ve spent many years working on the “delivers measurable results” part of that formula, but not so much on the “establish a reputation in your field” part. Mostly because the latter is often a distraction from the former.
Most excuses to not be blogging crumble under even basic scrutiny:
- “I don’t have any time!” … I’m at level 70 on Wordscapes so I clearly have time for something.
- “I don’t have anything interesting to say that hasn’t already been said (better) by others!” … this one’s worth digging deeper into…
Maybe I have something worth sharing? I’ve spent years curating the Tech Leadership Field Guide, mostly without any fanfare, and recently thought to myself “What if I turned all that great content into a book?” The first problem is that 99% of it isn’t my content, so that might get me into legal trouble in book form… but not in blog form!
So here goes a deeper dive into many of the best topics from the Field Guide. If just one person learns just one thing and it saves them from making just one of the many mistakes I’ve made along the way from Software Engineer to Team Lead to Engineering Manager to Director of Engineering — it’ll have been worth the writing.
BTW, the name of this blog is a poke at “Tactical Empathy”, a silly concept from an otherwise amazing book called “Never Split The Difference”. “Tactical empathy” is like the “truck nuts” of interpersonal skills: totally unnecessary because the original works just fine, but around anyway because men are too insecure to talk about the original.
