Sre

I grew up playing with computers. Our first computer was a Packard Bell 286, and I fondly remember getting a book on BASIC and trying to make a game with it. Later, we got a Gateway 2000 486, and on at least two occasions, I broke it by editing autoexec.bat and config.sys. A few years later, we got a Gateway (at this time, they had rebranded) Pentium III 550 MHz, which was an absolutely screamer for its time. My dad worked for Gateway, and an incredible perk they had was free computers for employees (with a mandatory contractual work period in lieu of payment). I think at the time (1999), this would have retailed for around $2000, or about $3600 in 2023 dollars. Utterly out of reach for a poor kid in rural Nebraska. ...

I suspect that most people with jobs involving any kind of production (widgets, software, energy…) are familiar with the idea of a post-mortem. You may know it by another name; the Nuclear Navy calls it a critique. A friendlier term is retrospective, with the idea that it emphasizes that it’s important to note what went well in addition to discussing areas for improvement. If you’re in tech, this is extremely familiar. You may even use the eponymous SaaS tool, which is IMO legitimately useful if for nothing else than automatically spinning up a Slack channel, Zoom meeting, and Jira ticket with a single command. ...