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”

Taking apart the 23003.31 model ceramic lamp holder

I spent HOURS googling for how to disassemble these lamp holders, and even longer sitting trying to get the darned things apart by hand. In the end, as is so often the way, my dad came to stay and he worked it out (although in my defence it did take him hours too).  Continue reading “Taking apart the 23003.31 model ceramic lamp holder”

Making a Penguin birthday cake

I’ve always made Rufus’ birthday cakes since he was born, and I didn’t want to fall at the first hurdle. Last year, a monkey cake, and this year… a penguin. Luckily the first Google search result for “penguin cake” looked both amazing and relatively easy.  Continue reading “Making a Penguin birthday cake”

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”