Industry News

Google Search has started to roll out the first broad core update of the 2023 year, and this one is named the March 2023 broad core update. It started on March 15, 2023, at about 10:30 am ET and can take about two weeks to roll out. This update touched down fast and hard - it is a big one...

I’m sure we’ve all seen those “here’s how to work with me” documents (and the controversies around them), but I like this slightly different take. In her post 9 Managers in 4 Years: Creating Continuity in Chaos Genevieve Conley Gambill shares a framework for helping our managers understand our skills, our work, and our career goals: Foundation – What are my unique strengths and capabilities? Trajectory – How do I view my current role and performance? Aspirations – What am I...

In the latest Platformer piece Meta doubles down on layoffs we see a perfect example of why stable software development teams are more effective than “agile teams” where people are seen as interchangeable cogs in a machine. When leaders think that people can be moved around between projects and “initiatives” at will and without knock-on effects, they run headlong into the basics of systems thinking, as shown here by Mark Zuckerberg’s realization:

In retrospect, I underestimated the...

From How to Be a PM That Engineers Don’t Hate:

You see it everywhere: Engineers complaining about the product managers that they work with. Hating on PMs is kind of like complaining about your utility provider or the TSA—so universal that it’s always good for a light chuckle in the right circles. The PMs don’t know how the technology works. All they do is send emails and take credit. They’re meeting generation machines.

When I interview engineers my first question is always,...

Microsoft Bing confirmed minutes after OpenAI announced the new version of GPT, GPT-4, that Bing uses that upgraded model. Yusuf Mehdi from Microsoft said, "We are happy to confirm that the new Bing is running on GPT-4, customized for search."

When you search for [youtube] in Google Search, currently, the YouTube home page is not ranking. You get Wikipedia, the YouTube Android app on Google Play, the iOS app on Apple.com, the YouTube blog and others but not youtube.com.

The World Nature Photography Awards 2022 winners have been announced.

What Does Workplace TikTok Look Like During Layoffs? It Gets Weird. Always Be Contenting, I guess. “It’s uncanny to watch clips of boisterous lunch buffets next to teary videos about being exiled from them—sometimes from the very same creators just months apart. You come to see how workday and layoff TikToks are mutually intelligible, odd sides of the same coin. No matter what happens, they say, workers will post...

Some fairly standard advice here from Peter Yang on How to Run Meetings That Don’t Suck, but this point in particular is so important:

Try not to cancel or move 1-on-1s. If you’re a manager, it’s easy to move or cancel your 1-on-1s for other “important” meetings. This is disrespectful to your direct reports. Even if you see them everyday, nothing beats a private half-hour conversation where they can be open about real issues.

How we show up in meetings as leaders is very telling...

In This will only take a minute the Raw Signal team shares some much-needed advice for leaders who feel like they never have time to think and reflect. This state of constant hypervigilance is not a sustainable lifestyle because:

On one level, you’re a human being. Regardless of your title or role, you are worthy of work that doesn’t wreck your health, or your happiness, or your ability to enjoy lunch away from your webcam. On another, if you’re a manager, you’re responsible for the...

The Google February 2023 product reviews update finished rolling out yesterday afternoon on March 7, 2023. It took 14 days to rollout this expanded language version of the product reviews update that kicked off on February 21, 2023.