Robin Monks

video

Thoughts on Jasper

A personal retrospective on Jasper National Park and Banff National Park

Autumn Catch Up

What I'm reading, EV ownership 1 year in, and new discoveries.

AI Bulls Would Like Apple to Pretty-Please Keep AI Premium

Apple is poised to make AI tools on the level of Copilot and Gemini free next month, and AI bulls would really like them not to.

Kroger & Albertsons: A Story We've Seen Before

The proposed acquisition of Albertsons by Kroger raises questions about the future that we can answer with how these companies behaved in the past.

AI

WWDC Made AI Winners and Losers

Apple didn't launch new ways of using Generative AI, but changed the terms of engagement in a way that will shake tech.

Startups

Racing to the Obvious

Recently, I've been noticing a pattern as startups struggle to jump on the AI train. I've started to internally refer to that pattern of companies as "racing to the obvious."

Work-Life Balance

A Software Engineering Managers Guide to Doing More in Less Time

So you’re there.  You’ve convinced your team, your higher-ups, your fellow managers to try a shorter work week. Now what?

Work-Life Balance

An Engineering Manager's Guide to a Better Work Week

If you’ve been reading my previous articles, you probably already suspect that something isn’t right with the way the average work week is run. (In fairness, it’s entirely likely you already noticed that before encountering this blog at all!) So, for the next few posts, we’re

Startups

Unlocking Success: Why Small Adjustments Make a Big Difference

Today's post is a shorter one. Partly because I deeply believe in the idea that small and consumable ideas are powerful and shouldn't be overly drawn out for the sake of word count; and also partly because the upcoming week is my birthday and so I&

Work-Life Balance

An Engineering Manager's Guide to Boundary Issues

Jobs, like gardens, often require pruning to prevent them from unhealthily creeping into life spaces where they don’t belong. That very much includes our home lives.

Startups

Startup Insights: Leveraging Customer Support to Improve Your Product

By establishing an efficient support system early on, you can gain invaluable insights directly from your users, understand where they're struggling, and identify areas where your product needs improvement.

Work-Life Balance

An Engineering Manager's Guide to Pivoting Out of Work Mode for Real

One benefit of regular breaks is a chance to step back and become aware of yourself but what if you’re still wearing down? To counteract the problem of slowly grinding yourself away, you’ll need to find relief on a larger scale, beyond the confines of your job.

Business

How "Right-sizing" Companies are Sacrificing Innovation

We know companies tend to continue their existing trends until something changes. But what if that external force is not a sudden shock but a gradual erosion? What if the company starts losing its most valuable asset - its people - through layoffs?

Work-Life Balance Featured

Work-Life Balance for the Software Engineering Manager

Today’s post marks the start of a new series on work-life balance and on the healthiness of work in general. I’ll be coming at this from a somewhat different angle than most sources on the topic. Searching for a Balance I have a confession to make. I am

Work-Life Balance

Avoiding Burnout, Taking Breaks

As managers faced with large (or numerous) projects, we might start to believe that it’s our responsibility to “be the heroes” in our companies, ensuring that everything gets done and performance metrics are always on the rise. This can lead us to some very unhealthy places.

Startups

A Engineering Manager's Guide to Managing Effectively

Mastering the art of managing a team goes beyond structural efficiency. Learn the essential skills of prioritizing and delegating effectively to create an environment where everyone can shine.

Technology

The data landscape: ELT, Event Streaming, and ESB

Every company will deal with data, and if you're a SaaS company, the data is coming in from all sides like a strong storm front blowing in snow. You'll be buried in data, more data than you'll ever use. How you do use that

Mastodon

Using Cloudflare to Customize Your Mastodon Username Domain

You can use Cloudflare to customize your Mastodon username domain without needing to host your own Mastodon.

Hiring

An Engineering Manager's Guide to Hiring - Planning to Hire

Hiring, growing and retaining people are going to be your most important skills as a manager. Growing your team, not just grow in size but in ability and consistency, is the most accurate reflection of your management abilities. If you're an engineer that's new to managing,

career planning

Providing Career Planning and Advancement

Welcome back to Room to be Awesome! I hope all my Canadian readers had a great Victoria Day, and all my US readers are able to enjoy Memorial Day with their families. In my previous post on building deep connections with your team, I discussed the need to provide opportunities

Employment

With Times Changing, Deep Connections to Your Team Matter Even More

2 years. For most tech companies, that’s the expected median tenure for a software engineer (Forbes). If you’re an engineering leader, having that high turnover means a lot of your corporate knowledge leaves each year. Your managers are also constantly on a hiring treadmill to maintain equilibrium, even

engineering

Reflecting and Flywheels

Change isn't fun, but it's a part of life. I've been in a reflective mood the last few weeks. I've gotten a flood of kind messages (which I've deeply appreciated) as well as interesting offers to chat from other founders

podcast

My Podcast Listening for Summer 2021

It's July, and you've still got a few months of Summer left, and you're working on checking off those checkboxes. First watermelon? Check! Off bug spay? Of course. Enjoying sitting on your truck or hatch back tailgate at the beach with just enough of

Dolby

Movie Theater Sound: How does Dolby Digital work?

I know many of us haven't been in a theater for a while, so I wanted to write this short missive about the underappreciated world of theater sound before my next product design post drops. If this sort of technical nerdery isn't your thing, I get

HotSpot Parking

Lessons Learned From My First Commercial Product: User Flow

It was 2013. We were watching videos of the Harlem Shake, Daft Punk's Random Access Memories just came out (and signalled when I was okay admitting EDM was my preferred style of music), and I was in a startup incubator in Fredericton, New Brunswick. I was part of