Adam Tanner

I adore this. ❤️ I tend towards saying the things I think need to be said in business, even if I’m uncertain or I worry they’ll paint me in a bad light. I have learned through my career that if I care passionately about the business and want to improve it this is essential. There are routinely two outcomes from me speaking up. 1️⃣ It goes badly In a good organisation I learn from this, and it doesn’t discourage me. In a bad organisation, I get a strong signal (which increases over instances) that my voice isn’t required, that change isn’t appreciated, and that I am not a fit for the organisation. When this later happens, it’s time to get out. “Change your culture, OR Change your culture!” 2️⃣ It triggers discussion, debate, and improves outcomes Even if my view is wrong (and it sometimes is, of course) it starts a discussion, and typically what we want in organisations is discussion, debate, healthy conflict, and shared improvement. This is critical to improvement in business, and should be embraced by all leaders. ——- When I coach and mentor leaders, one thing I routinely do is cover the above with them and implore them to find their voice in an organisation. It is one of the more powerful things you can do as a leader, and in the right organisation will help you grow yourself and the quality of the outcomes around you. Go find your voice!

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Coding tests and take home assignments are for the most part just a really bad measure of a candidates knowledge and ability. They produce very skewed signals and discredit able candidates for whom such tasks might be harder for some reason. As they are often asynchronous it means that they lack entirely a process for the candidate to do exploration or clarification. Sure, you can always send an email, but then you need to wait for an answer which might not entirely fulfill the query. This aspect also makes these assignments inherently inequitable as people in different situations might have very inequal starting positions. Some might not have time to dedicate outside of work for an assignment due to a multitude of concerns (family, health, other obligations). Some might not have access to a development environment between jobs. Surprisingly many companies have put very little effort into producing a well written assignment. Many are littered with grammatical errors, inconsistencies and some are straight misleading towards what is expected from the candidate. Not to mention ridiculous requirements like "You shouldn't spend more than 4 hours on this assignment" and then another point is requesting "Production quality code". I even have a (personally) funny experience, where I misunderstood the assignment, tried (and failed) to produce something more complex based on my misunderstanding. Which the hiring company understood and even admitted to having written the instructions in a misleading way. But instead of giving me a "second chance" they decided not to do the follow-up interview after the assignment. For me this kind of hiring process mishap is funny, since it revealed a Red Flag, but for others this can be devastating as it might happen in a company they really wanted to work at (and most likely could have succeeded at). It just shows how bad of a signal these assignments can be for the hiring team. I wish our industry would just get over the notion of needing a solo, in vacuum, coding assignment to prove a candidates worth as they are so far removed from what the actual work would be. (Unless your company does coding work solely in vacuum and solo, that is.)

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Just published a new blog post exploring the transformative potential of WebAssembly (Wasm). I'm excited about how Wasm can unlock near-native performance in the browser, opening doors to innovative products and vastly improved user experiences. #WebAssembly #Wasm #EmergingTech #WebDevelopment #ProductManagement #Innovation

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Doctors hate charting. I built a tool to automatically generate structured clinical notes from an audio memo - or a recording of the entire appointment. A workflow for many independent clinicians making house calls is to do an audio memo, send this to someone for transcription, get the drafted note back a day or so later later, and then make final edits, sign, and upload to a secure database. This cuts the process down considerably: go from audio memo / appointment recording to structured SOAP note in about a minute. Review and sign. It works surprisingly well! I was even able to tuck in an additional feature: the app automatically generates a "second opinion" for the clinician to consider. Potentially decreases the possibility of clinician error or oversight. Built with Replicate and Supabase. Deployed with Vercel. Currently doing evals with models from Anthropic, OpenAI, and Gemini AI #medtech #healthtech #healthcare #ai

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I’ve seen so many organisations struggle with this. When everything is important, and “no” or “not yet” isn’t common in the vocabulary, you’ll typically find questions like: - “why is this going so slow” - “we have N people on this, I expected it to deliver faster” Ultimately, reducing WIP, focusing on only the most important things, and working them through to deliver routinely speeds up velocity in organisations. But so many organisations are unwilling to say “no” enough to test it.

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Google are you ever going to bring out a '/' command capability in your suite of products. Here are some use cases I would love to see... In a google doc, I would like to quickly add a table by typing "/table" this then opens up a modal to select size. In a google doc, I would like to reference another document in the drive folder by typing "/drive" Loads more can be done through the same capability and would dramatically improve my workflow.

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If you are not scaling your operations, you are not scaling your teams. Over the past 7 years I have worked with Product and Engineering teams at Evolent to help them effectively and efficiently scale their teams and operations. When I started in 2016, the company had ~8 development teams. Fast forward to 2024 and the company now has 50+ development teams in Engineering alone with an additional ~10 teams in IT and Information and Cybersecurity. That's over 60 teams that have to work toward the same goals and objectives! At the beginning of 2024, Evolent was still managing their operations using spreadsheets. Can you imagine keeping track of 50+ teams, 700+ team members, 50+ products, and well over 1000+ team allocations in spreadsheets and still be able to effectively scale and manage your teams? 🤯 I started developing Team Planner in December 2024 to help Evolent move their business operations off of spreadsheets initiating a successful proof of concept (POC) in January 2024. Team Planner was built leveraging the actual experiences of Scrum Masters, Product Owners, Product Managers, Engineering Managers, and Operations professionals "living in the trenches" of a large, complex technology company. Now Team Planner is available from Team Dynamics, a novaturient company, to help your organization scale your operations by effectively and efficiently managing your teams, team members, products, and solutions in an ever changing environment. #scaledontfail #teamplanner #teammanagement #effectivescaling #businessoperationsatscale

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One of my favorite parts of the Healthcare Product course is that the students actually do a live user interview together and walk through best ways to make the most out of the session Talking to your actual stakeholders should be a regular occurrence. But figuring out the questions to ask is hard! If you're too explicit you'll lead the user, but if you're too vague then you might not get the information you actually need. Dhruv Vasishtha and Julia Lin outline how to do these user interviews properly and what you should actually be looking out for, and then you get to test it with an actual user! Healthcare Product 201 course enrollment ends this week - you can learn more about it and sign up here. It's the most hands-on way to learn the healthcare nuances of being a PM: https://lnkd.in/ek9SUjSi

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How do you work through feeling overwhelmed with projects, both at work and at home? My project list is never ending. I have multiple major work areas, a house with a sheet of improvement projects that keeps growing, half a dozen trips planned into next year, and a wife and two daughters with lists of their own. It's easy to not know where to start or what to do next. And then before you know it you've burned an entire day playing sudoku. Many years ago I learned the art of Getting Things Done. I even wrote an article on it for USENIX Association's ;login: Magazine just as the world came screeching to a halt in early 2020, and talked about it on The Hedge Podcast (episode 88). There is a lot of structure to GTD, but I can boil it down to having a trusted list of all the next actions I need to do. One that is reviewed regularly and captures thoughts as I have them. All of it - work, home, family - gets treated the same way in one place. I've been out of practice and I've recently rekindled my system. This is one of the ways I'm addressing feeling adrift. I can always find something to do that will move me forwards, as well as give me that dopamine hit of crossing a task off my list. And if I'm avoiding one it's probably because I didn't break the next action down to a small enough chunk. The most important part of practicing GTD (and other organizational systems) is that it clears my head. The human brain isn't really great at maintaining lists. The only real method it has for doing this is to constantly go over the list, which keeps the pathways in the brain fresh. That takes mental capacity, whether you realize it or not, and it adds to your stress. Plus, half the time you don't even have the list in mind or complete when it needs to be. You think about the dead batteries in the flashlight when the power goes out at home, not when you're standing in Home Depot wondering what else you need to get.

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Wise Innovation: Advice for building and creating in 2024. 1. Conduct Before and After Action Reviews: before you launch get in the habit of running BAR and AAR. Before launch: play out worse case scenarios, think of possible outcomes, brainstorm solutions to possible problems. After launch: go over lessons learned, develop best practice based on what went right, and test results based on what you learned. 2. Put on your legal hat: think of any blind spots or information gaps you may have missed. Are you observing infringement, copywrite, or privacy laws? Does your LLM source from proprietary material not owned by you or your company. If you don’t know, consult your legal team as a precautionary measure. This will save you headaches and potential lawsuits down the road. 3. Tech singularity: as we build models for the next era of AI, be mindful of placing guardrails and safety rails around what you build, in essence develop SMART (Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Relevant, and Timely). AI is currently unregulated so it’s up to us to develop what we build wisely. 4. Bad actors: in my experience I’ve seen people find a way to misuse, exploit or abuse anything that is created. Even if your product is built with the best of intentions, be mindful of possible bad actors attempting to misuse your product. 5: Responsible creation of AI: An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure. Aim to reduce errors and minimize risks. In essence learn to anticipate and mitigate risks. You can do this by ensuring legal compliance and setting ethical and safety standards to guide your team. This will minimize errors, reduce potential misuse, and foster trust in AI technologies. This is a proactive and crucial step in developing impactful and ethical AI solutions. This is OUR time, go out there and create something amazing.

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🧼🧼 The dishwasher state 🧼🧼 Popular coding languages ressemble a list of instructions. Do this, do that, etc. For my dishwasher uses, that would be: fill with dirty dish, place detergent pod, start machine, empty clean dishes, and then repeat. Well, I never do that. Instead I *start* with placing the detergent pod, then the dirty dish, etc. Why? Because a dishwasher without detergent can never fulfill its function. The desired outcome (clean dish) is entirely dependent on having detergent in the machine. So any time the dishwasher spends in a state without detergent is creating a risk: the risk that the machine ends up running without detergent. Now we can derive an easy rule: the dishwasher should have detergent at all time. This rule can be checked and enforced every time the dishwasher is filled, which gives several chances to catch a mistake, versus only one when we place the detergent immediately before starting the machine. This soapy example actually yields real programming lessons I use at Centaur Labs. 1. When your code is a list of instructions, don't assume they all get executed correctly. If one fail, in which *state* is your code/data? Is it OK? 2. Identifying dependencies between elements before writing code leads to better design and less bugs, at little cost. 3. Writing instruction is fine, but explicit rules are more powerful, as they can be checked and enforced.

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It’s not every day you get to help build a product that impacts the ability for patients to find care, but here we are 👀 Freshpaint Maps helps patients find the care they need without compromising their privacy in the process. We’re doing that with a ton of cool features, but here are a few favorites: 1️⃣ Hosted on Freshpaint’s BAA-supported platform to ensure HIPAA compliance  2️⃣ Pannable, zoomable embedded maps  3️⃣ Auto-complete search functionality 4️⃣ Customizable styles to support any website’s style The whole team has been working hard to bring this to life. Check out the link in the comments to learn more! 👇

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I appreciate Andy MacMillan's conversation with Judd Antin on UserTesting's Insights Unlocked podcast. They revisited Judd's UX "r-word" essay in which I did--and do--find a lot of points that I agree with. In this conversation I particularly resonated with a point Judd makes regarding the linkages that can and should be made between tactical research projects, like usability tests, and higher-level strategic research. The way I think through and attempt to implement this as a research strategy is to always be mindful of high-level strategic questions that help to frame research projects at lower-levels. At the same time, I remain open to insights that might spring from tactical projects with sometimes small and sometimes large implications for higher level questions and strategies. Where I may be misunderstanding Judd's argument is in the negation or deemphasizing of middle range research and theorizing. To me, it's this middle range that articulates the connections that Judd is suggesting we seek to forge. Perhaps the secret is to not hang out in the "middle" too long. . . Regardless, I'd be interested to hear how folks draw and maintain these connections. To my mind, Emily DiLeo, PhD, MLIS's calls for robust and active knowledge management systems are spot on in this context. Information and knowledge are meant to be active and convivial.

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⛔️ Fear of failure will destroy your career before it starts. Most people quit. Maybe they get overwhelmed by the research and differing opinions. Maybe close friends say its too hard, or give examples of why they will fail. If you assume failure and are around people that encourage a negative viewpoint, it'll be a lot harder for you to make progress. But what if you succeed? What if it does work out? I know for me, I spend a lot of time thinking about the "what if it works" scenario. I used to be an office assistant. 👉🏾 I'm a firm believer that consistency and work ethic will breed consistent results. Maybe things won't work as fast as you'd like, but it will work. 👉🏾 Don't fail because you chose to fail. Surround yourself with doers. The rewards are worth the struggle. #mentormesh

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LLMs (like ChatGPT) are tools. At the core they're very powerful predictive engines. Think of it like autocomplete on steroids. Rather than suggesting the next word it can predict entire paragraphs, even complete articles. It learns from a vast amount of text data which is how it mimics the ways humans write and converse. This can make it seem almost sentient. What are they good for though? As a tool LLMs are very good at summarization, transformation, and expansion of text. You can provide an LLM a large block of text and ask it to summarize. You can have it test for tone or sentiment, spellcheck, grammar, or format text you provide. You can also give it a small piece of text and ask to expand on it (reverse of summarization) and generate new content.

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Do you think you need to hire developers as w2 employees to build a highly-skilled, devoted and culturally aligned team? Let Blueprint show you otherwise. Here's how we're changing the game: 1️⃣ Unmatched Quality: Quality is our creed. Our vetting process includes interviewing with former CTOs and senior software engineers, ensuring only top-tier talent makes it to your team. 2️⃣ Long-Term Commitment: Forget the turnover and churn worries! Our developers stay longer than industry norms for W2 developers (average tenure of 2.2 years), providing stability and continued expertise to your projects. 3️⃣ Cultural Integration: Culture isn't just an add-on for us. We dive deep to understand your core values and ensure every developer we match with your team enhances and embraces your company culture. 4️⃣ Equity is Optional: Save your cap table for your growing startup! We ensure that our developers are passionate believers in your product right from the start - without incentivizing them with equity. We rigorously test for craftsmanship, ensuring they value not just a quality end result but also the journey of creation. 🌟 Shoot us a DM to connect and see how we can improve your staffing strategy. #StaffAugmentation #InnovationInStaffing #TechTalent #CultureFit #LongTermGrowth

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Who is the feature for? When thinking of your next feature think about who is it benefitting Is it benefitting the user? Is it benefitting your company? We see this all the time with SAAS products, hell even big companies like Microsoft and Meta. Over time you go from a plucky startup for the people to screw the people. There are many reasons for this. The size of the organization grows, investors want their money back, founders leave, etc. I am not going to be naive and think that a company should not think of itself. They have to make money to stay in business. There has been a rising trend of anti-consumer practices. One that came to mind was Microsoft and its pop-up ads for bing. I am sure you can think of many as well. Eventually, you push your customers away enough to where they start looking for alternatives. So when you're thinking of a feature think about who you are enriching with it. What are some products you stopped using because of this? **** Do you want to create better healthtech products? Learn from someone with almost 10 years of healthcare experience. Join 3200+ founders, investors, clinicians, and executives for free. Click here to subscribe to Digital Thoughts (https://lnkd.in/gBPQxERG) Or search "digital thoughts substack" in your favorite search engine #startups #digitalhealth #product

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One of the most common questions I hear is: "What is the easiest way to land a job in tech?" Often, people recommend roles like frontend development or QA as the “easy” entry points. But that’s a lie. ❌ There's no universal 'easiest way'. What seems easy for one person might be challenging for another. Me personally, if I have to land a frontend role first, I don’t think I ever would have landed a role as a software developer. Also, opting for a supposedly 'easier' role just leads to a second transition when you want to move from that role to the role you actually wanted. Because guess what, if that “easier role” isn’t what you want to be doing, then you are just building skills you don’t need. Every career is unique. Don't let others decide what is easy or hard for you. Instead, stay focused on your specific goals. What looks “easy” from the outside, is often just relentless focus. --- 💬 let me know your thoughts in the comments 👍🏼 like and share if you found this interesting ➕ follow for more career content #careercoach #careerdevelopement #softwareengineering #softwaredevelopment #interviewskills

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Shreyas Doshi wrote an invaluable post on dealing with real world tech challenges. He is brutally honest and I respect his ideas and recommendations. In a nutshell he offers this: 🔵Have the judgment to debug the real problem, 🔵Have the courage to formulate a solution that might involve ruffling some feathers, and 🔵 Get the mandate to go solve it properly. He also offers this comment which is core to my work with clients: delivery "Put your head down and ship something. Anything." Very much a deep, tough love post - that is an essential read. #ProjectManagement #DealingwithConflict #CareerSuccess

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