Johanna

A good pair programming task could be solved in a way that’s too long for the session or in a shorter approach. Picking a “good enough for now” solution is part of the evaluation.

“Innovation” is more natural in person. It’s better when even the quiet person in the back can pick up a marker and explain something.But once you agree on something it’s about individual performance… This is usually easier remote.

Your criteria for selection should be so extreme many people would rather not work for you. You’re trying to attract the right select few, not the masses.

The way to look at remote work is that it’s a series of tradeoffs. You enjoy benefits in exchange for disadvantages. The uptake of remote work over the next decade will depend most on the minimization of those disadvantages rather than the maximization of the benefits. Reason being, the benefits are already substantial while many of the... See more

Howes says that “innovation is not in human nature, but is instead received. … when people do not innovate, it is often simply because it never occurs to them to do so.” Joel Mokyr says, similarly, that “progress isn’t natural” (and his book on this topic, A Culture of Growth, helped inspire this blog). I agree with both.

You cannot swap one life for that of another. But if friends are primarily attributes, then you could swap two people with the same attributes. Or even get someone else with better attributes.What you cannot do is remove someone from their web of entanglements and replace them with an identical twin. To do so would be to disrupt the networks of... See more