😈 Unpopular opinion: Designers are the most important people in the product creation process.

One might argue, that we can build a project even without them, but have you really seen those applications? ⤵️

1. They are hard to use and ugly. Developers aren’t the best people to create website maps or pick colors (most of them don’t even know about color theory, typography, layouts, etc).

2. They took a lot of time for devs to work on. To add a new page or even a modal, developers or pm’s trying and retrying to use tons of variations of different components.

3. UI libs are so similar in their ugliness. 😶

4. Developers rarely think about mobile-friendly applications. If it works on their 15” MacBooks, then everything is okay. 🤢

5. Same about accessibility.

6. Same about performance.

7. Same about tons of things. ♾

And what makes me sad the most, is that started to forget that: “Design isn't just what it looks like and feels like — design is how it works.” (Steve Jobs)

🤔 I worked with a lot of designers, most of them were not appreciated enough, because mostly we think that developers are the most important people. I’m not sure.

P.S. It's UX/UI, not UI/UX.

#unpopular

Another unpopular opinion about University Education

https://oganisyan.com/blog/unpopular-opinion-university

👨🏻‍💻 As a developer, I have only one responsibility — break all the deadlines. That's the reason I decided to publish my yearly review right after the new year.

Here's the list of things I managed to create, achieve, love, and use during 2021 ⤵️

https://lnkd.in/g2uPdDeG

🤔 "So, how to learn JavaScript?"

One of the most common questions I came across during the teaching and mentoring experience!

As an answer, I’ve collected all the articles, resources, books, and courses I'd recommend for people who are starting their journey. 🔎

Check out my article below 👇

https://oganisyan.com/blog/how-to-learn-js

Another day, another great book. "The Hard Thing About Hard Things" by Ben Horowitz is one of a kind and legendary. Here's why ⤵️

You are going to get:

1️⃣ The story behind the creation of the famous "Andreesen Horowitz" VC and companies preceding them (Netscape, LoudCloud, Opsware).

2️⃣ Practical advice on how to hire, onboard, and fire executives. Yes, even if the executive is your close friend.

3️⃣ Pieces of advice about the value of 1-1s and how to conduct them. Do your executives seem to not doing them? The book will provide a hint of how to make them realize the importance.

4️⃣ The difference between war and peace time CEOs and how to behave during different stages of company's shaping.

▶️ And it was only 10%. The book is stuffed with really great practical bits of advice on the art of being CEO.

I have just finished "The new one-minute manager". The book for completely newbies, but don’t bother yourself reading it if you’re experienced manager. Here’s some notes ⤵️

In only 100 pages, Spencer Johnson managed to decompose the basic principles of Management: Planning, Appraisal, Feedback.

🤔 For each of the principles, the author tries to provide a simple framework to manage the process both from the manager and employee sides. It’d be a good starting point if you just got promoted or found the job. What I like in the book most, is that the author summarizes each chapter at the end.

🐣 If you are an experienced manager, the book might be a little boring cause you should have been faced with everything mentioned.

🧠 I've been practicing Mindfulness (or Awareness) Techniques for the past six months and it completely changed my life. And "The Happiness Trap" by Russ Harriss is a tribute to mindfulness. Here are some thoughts from the book that may convince you to give it a try ⤵️

The book describes ACT (Acceptance and commitment therapy) and its main points

1️⃣ Accept your internal experience and be present using

— Defusion - recognising thoughts, images, and memories for what they are just words and pictures - and allowing them to come and go as they please, without fighting them

— Expansion - making room for feelings, sensations, and urges and allowing them to come and go as they please, without fighting them, running from them, or giving them undue attention

— Connection - awareness regarding everything you do and feel) techniques

2️⃣ Choose a valued direction

Come to a clear understanding of values that are important to you and pick a direction for growth.

3️⃣ Take action

Again and again, no matter why, because they align with your values from 2️⃣ points.

The happiness trap is one of the best books I've read about mindfulness and what I like the most is the pieces of practical advice I've been getting and using from the first pages of the book. I'm sure you won't regret reading it.

Unpopular Opinion: Offline courses suck!

Before you scroll down, let me bring some arguments to the table ⤵️

1️⃣ Attract best talents

During the covid, I had several courses where students were from Armenia (both capital and multiple villages) and Russia (even from glubinka). Most of them were great students and they’d miss the class if it was offline.

And the class would miss them.

2️⃣ Out of box solutions for recordings

Recorded lessons were one of the great bonuses for students. Now they can re-watch the lesson multiple times instead of trying to remember everything. It really improved the performance.

3️⃣ Less operational costs

During the offline lessons, operational issues were the ones that bothered me the most. Broken projectors, cords, and lines.

Now, the only operational dependency is the internet.

🚫 But what about socialization?

One might argue that communication suffers during the online lesson. Sadly, I have to agree. But! We can and must adapt:

— Peer-graded assignments, Pair-programming, Team Related tasks

Coursera uses them to solve the problem of cooperation and experience sharing

— Start each lesson by experience sharing

Evil Martiance use every 10-20 minutes of their meeting time to share their life-related experience

— Online tours

e.g. visit the Louvre or watch some tv-shows via Netflix Party

Yesterday, I turned 24 and here are the lessons I learned:

https://oganisyan.com/blog/awareness-matters

I have just finished Google Project Management Certification which consisted of 6 courses (I have a nice badge 😂).

And here's the review on the course 👇

https://oganisyan.com/blog/google-pm

Gonna get tons of hate, but anyway

https://oganisyan.com/blog/unpopular-opinion-monitor

The past year I was gradually limiting applications that could distract me. Finally, now I turned all notifications off. Here are my thoughts about that 👇

https://oganisyan.com/blog/notifications-off

People ask a lot about my experience with Toptal: especially the preparation and screening process. Here is my article which describes the whole process 👇

https://oganisyan.com/blog/how-to-toptal

I asked chatGPT to write an article about Cold Shower instead of me.

Let's see what it generated 👇

https://oganisyan.com/blog/cold-shower

Traditionally https://oganisyan.com/blog/2022-in-review