Category: Work

Podcast – How Google uses behavioral science to make work suck less

Podcast: How Google uses behavioral science to make work suck less

This episode of the You Are Not So Smart podcast came recommended by Donncha, a colleague at Automattic. It’s packed full of really interesting thoughts, including “the job of a manager is to serve their team”; a good reminder that everything we at WordPress.com VIP do in terms of process does serve our team and our goals.

Laszlo Bock (head of People Operations at Google) explains how and why Google does what it does when it comes to everything internal, from perks and promoting to motivation and productivity. In the interview you’ll hear how the company combats confirmation bias, the halo effect, the Abilene paradox, pluralistic ignorance, survivorship bias, and more – all with a mix of behavioral science and Google’s immense power to test and re-test using its unique resources.

If Tom Willmot’s WordCamp Europe talk was out on video, I’d link to that, so keep your eyes open there. There’s also Nikolay’s tweet recommending Drive, which is now on my reading list:

…of course, if your work sucks, you could change that by coming to work for Automattic ;)

Command-C Alfred Workflow by Sayz Lim

Here’s a great workflow for Alfred which sends your clipboard to an iOS device via the wonderful Command-C:

Command-C supports x-callback-url which I can use in Alfred workflow. I create an Alfred workflow called Command-C that contains basic custom actions to send clipboard from Mac to selected iOS devices. There are three types of supported actions in Command-C, but you’re likely using only the action that sends system clipboard.

Source: Command-C Alfred Workflow | Sayz Lim

Testing repositories with private submodules in Travis

Recently I’ve been working on a project we’re testing in Travis CI and we need to include some submodules referencing private GitHub repositories then run the tests on the combined code. Naturally Travis fails to retrieve the submoduled repositories, because it’s not authorised to do so. This is how we’re getting around that… Continue reading Testing repositories with private submodules in Travis

All about WordPress Web Addresses

I’ve given this presentation at WordCamp London 2015, and last night at the Manchester WordPress User Group. Essentially the talk title is a trojan horse to talk about rewrite rules and regular expressions, without everyone running out of the room screaming because I put “regex” in the talk title. ;)  Continue reading All about WordPress Web Addresses

MWUG notes from Wednesday 21 January 2015

Some notes from last night’s MWUG meeting. Something I don’t get along to often enough, as Mike has mentioned on occasion. :)
Continue reading MWUG notes from Wednesday 21 January 2015

Business and Open Source

At WordCamp Europe 2014, I described how working with Open Source has enabled me to grow in business, and to grow my business. I talked about the tensions between Open Source and traditional business instincts, and shared how giving in to giving stuff away has powered my growth as a consultant working with WordPress.

If you’re interested in exploring these tensions further, and looking into the philosophical underpinnings of the WordPress project and the Open Source movement, I wholeheartedly recommend Siobhan’s talk: “WordPress: Bringing Ideas to Life”. Continue reading Business and Open Source

I have a dream, about development environments (presentation)

This is the presentation I gave today at WordCamp Manchester, 2014. There’s an embed of the slides below, and you can also download the version with my (fairly verbose) speaker notes. Continue reading I have a dream, about development environments (presentation)

A quick and dirty logger for Gravity Forms

Today I noticed pieces of code to hook into a logger scattered throughout Gravity Forms, when I was trying to track down an issue. Here’s some quick and dirty code which hooks into the logging methods and writes to the PHP error log: Continue reading A quick and dirty logger for Gravity Forms

I had a dream

The first post in a series covering how we currently control our development environments at Code For The People.

Back in 2013 I had a dream. I wanted our team at Code For The People to work within a consistent development environment, which we could jointly outfit with tools and functionality to help us do our job better. I wanted us to be able to assemble resources, plugins and themes and code libraries, as we needed them. I wanted us to be able to easily develop and easily deploy. I wanted something which would allow us to engage freelancers, or even clients, and get them started on development without having to go through complex sysadmin procedures. I wanted us to be able to jump in and help each other at short notice.

I think we’re well on the road to meeting these requirements now, and so I’m due to write up the travails which have got us to this point. Continue reading I had a dream