Users of iOS from 2018 and macOS from 2021 can use the Shortcuts app. It allows you to create simple ( and not so simple!) automation that can make using both operating systems much more effortless.

By default, the app offers such shortcuts as recording water drinking, displaying the word of the day or an image (randomized from a NASA database). These automation, while quite valuable, are not wow-inducing functionalities. You can create a number of automation yourself, or use solutions developed by the Shortcuts community (e.g., on Reddit), which will significantly improve daily work on Apple devices.

iCloud Keychain

An example of such a shortcut, which I personally liked very much, is the shortcut that opens iCloud Keychain. A keychain is a password manager whose database is stored in iCloud. This allows a single password library to be used simultaneously on several Apple devices logged in with the same Apple ID.

Until now, the user path using a keychain could look as follows.

1. When logging in to a website or application, there is a prompt for verification via biometrics (Touch ID / Face ID) after which the user’s data in the form of (usually) login and password were completed with the data from the keychain.

2. when logging in to a website or application, the prompt to use the keychain does not appear. Then the user is forced to open the keychain manually. This one is found in the system settings after scrolling halfway through the settings list.

The extended user path can cause frustration. Why is it taking so long to access iCloud Keychain?

The solution to this problem is a shortcut created in the Shortcuts application. Its overview looks as follows:

The biggest advantage is the ability to add a shortcut to the Dock (iOS/iPadOS/macOS) or Menu Bar (macOS).

Artykuł Improve Your Cybersecurity Today: Make your passwords easy to use pochodzi z serwisu LEOCODE.

Nobody expected 2020 to end up this badly. After a year of economic uncertainty, rapidly changing work conditions and widespread digital transformation, companies were forced to implement the work-from-home approach. 

The Information Technology industry became a magnifying glass for a long-awaited digital transformation. As 2021 is just around the corner, business leaders must get ready to embrace changes and get used to the new trends that seem to be settling in for good.

Here is a list of my personal tech trend predictions for the upcoming year. If you are making plans to change your career path, or perhaps develop a new business development strategy or even investing in order to capitalize on emerging trends, you should definitely take these into consideration.

Quantum computing

At our current technological pace, our ability to produce ever smaller and faster computers is slowing down. Scientists believe that the next giant tech leap involves harnessing the laws of nature, notably quantum physics. Quantum computing is still a new concept known mostly to enthusiasts, yet major technology companies are investing millions of dollars to fuel research in quantum computing. This research will only increase through 2021 and beyond (even though the technology is progressing at a fairly slow pace). A quantum computer would take just a second to achieve what a traditional computer would take years to process. Have a look at the video below that will explain the basics of quantum computing.

Quantum computing will likely take decades to filter into the mainstream but big tech companies are fully aware that traditional technology is slowly reaching its maximum potential. More complex problems can be solved much more easily using quantum supercomputers.

There are endless applications that quantum computers could be used for. Finance and investment experts could use them to optimize portfolios, simulate economic forecasts and for complex risk analyses. Scientists would benefit from speeding up discoveries in chemical bonding, space travel, AI and machine learning, or even human consciousness itself. The possibilities are endless. Labs all over the world are competing to produce the first commercially available quantum computer and major players such as Amazon, IBM, and Microsoft have been betting big on quantum computing for years now. 

Remote work is here to stay

The option of working from home has been available for years, yet the 2020 global restrictions brought non-negotiable working conditions to the table as people all over the world were simply not able to physically go into work. It has been a real challenge for many companies as their IT departments suddenly had to face a significant increase in the demand for networking, storage and application delivery solutions to support a work-from-home workforce.

It is still far from perfect but we might observe a rapid growth of solutions for more structured remote-working protocols. IT teams distributed across the globe suffer from well-known issues such as time zone differences, so implementing solutions for asynchronous working patterns might become one of the most wanted suites helping to support the new wave of stay-at-home professionals.

Cloud solutions

Cloud technology offers an agile solution, providing an environment that allows cost reduction as businesses face the challenge of keeping employees and customers connected. It’s easily scalable, both up and down, and also a distributed cloud can improve an application’s performance and reduce latency, leading to better connectivity.

Nevertheless, cloud management requires collaborative professionals who understand the importance of secure remote access and who are able to deliver high-quality services in a fast-changing environment.

Worldwide talent pools

As remote work is quietly becoming mainstream, companies tend to look for talents outside of the local talent pool, and vice versa. If you do not have to go to the office every morning, you might as well start earning better pay by working for a company on the other side of the globe!

In a booming market of “remote-work ready” IT professionals, talents will start to look outside of the large technology centers and start to think globally. This creates a great opportunity for anyone who can create a well-branded, “go-to” place for anyone looking for a remote IT job, or a tech professional looking for a work-from-home opportunity.

New cybersecurity challenges

The governance, privacy and security requirements that many organizations struggle with can get much more demanding as remote work and cloud technology introduces new data privacy and security challenges. Cloud security requires proper configuration and a trained eye for monitoring. It is important to note that 99 percent of cloud misconfigurations go unnoticed. In 2021, organizations will be forced to implement privacy-enhancing measures and cybersecurity solutions to protect sensitive data and ensure security policies in the cloud.

Quantum computing could also make us more susceptible to security breaches because of the staggering volume of calculations these technologies can do. Even though we won’t be seeing hackers using quantum computers any time soon, there is no denying that the risk is too big to not take the appropriate preventative measures. The United States government passed the National Quantum Initiative Act in June 2018 which is a great indicator of how this future trend will move. In 2021, governments and big tech companies will try to accelerate post-quantum security measures and cryptography development to protect the internet as we know it today. We cannot afford to build quantum computers without countermeasures or security systems too complex to solve, even for a quantum computer. 

VR and 5G are going mainstream

Covid-19 has significantly influenced the way we interact with each other. Virtual collaboration, video calls and remote work in general will likely continue in a post-covid world, creating the need for a more reliable and faster technology. We will need more connectivity and a higher bandwidth than ever before and this is where VR/AR and 5G offer solutions to our demand for virtual interaction, higher speed and bandwidth.

5G networks are already going mainstream in some countries but in 2021, this tech will most likely go mainstream globally. Major phone manufacturers have already launched 5G ready phones. 5G will also allow advanced technologies like AR, VR and game streaming platforms like Stadia and GeForce to become more viable and work better than ever.

Summary

The ongoing COVID-19 pandemic has presented challenges for companies around the world, producing economic uncertainty and forcing organizations to shift to remote work. During the time of rapid changes, IT departments have to make the right decisions to maintain business continuity and future-proof their companies. The work-from-home approach has also caused major changes in both hardware and software spending. Some companies will likely stick to flexible working arrangements permanently, trying to focus or compensate for lower productivity by developing more strict remote work structures and workflows.

To gain perspective on how this great shift will influence IT in the coming years, SWZD surveyed over 1000 technology buyers in companies across North America and Europe in order to provide context into the magnitude of the shifts expected in 2021.

• 44% have already started, or plan to start accelerating their digital transformation.
• 33% plan to improve their security, risk and governance.
• 30% plan to develop training aids to support remote employees.
• 36% plan to improve IT operations and systems performance.
• 32% plan to connect employees using standardized, secure and easy-to-use tools.
• 27% plan to refine disaster recovery plans to account for additional scenarios.
• IT spending will grow by 4% up to 3.8 trillion dollars worldwide.
• 80% of businesses in North America and Europe anticipate year-over-year tech spending to stay the same or increase (33.3% increase vs. 46.3% stay the same).

Artykuł 2021 Tech Trends Predictions pochodzi z serwisu LEOCODE.

“In a survey of nearly 260 UK developers by software company Haystack, 83% of respondents reported feelings of burnout, 81% of which cited the COVID-19 pandemic as the cause. Of these, 32% said this was true to a ‘great’ extent, and 30% to a ‘moderate’ extent.” According to Zdnet.com 

Job burnout

You might have experienced this yourself or known someone else who has. Some of us might have even tried to self-diagnose ourselves by searching online for relatable symptoms, but do we really know the difference between being tired from working hard and true burn-out? How similar is it to a general lack of motivation, fatigue or small bout of depression?

The term was brought to the research lexicon in 1974 by the article “Staff Burn-Out” written by the psychologist, Herbert Freudenberger. He defined it as “the depletion of motivation, a growing sense of emotional exhaustion and cynicism”. Freudenberger’s studies and observations were conducted with volunteers at a drug rehabilitation clinic in New York in 1974 wherein he coined the term “burn-out” and applied it to a wide range of issues. During the study, his subjects, formerly idealistic mental health workers, were finding themselves depleted and experiencing an ever-growing negative emotional response towards both their patients and the clinic. 

Do any of these symptoms sound familiar to you? You will find a handy self-test at the bottom of this article. 

The first mention

Traditionally, the word “burn-out” has been used as a colloquial description for a particular set of work-related symptoms such as being constantly stressed, overwhelmed, and not having enough energy to devote to a given task or even an entire career. In May 2019, the term “burn-out” was officially given a medical definition in the 11th revision of the International Classification of Diseases (ICD-11) and was recognized as a formal mental health problem. WHO announced that burn-out would be classified under “Factors influencing health status or contact with health services”. A spokesperson for the World Health Organization, Christian Lindmeier, described it as “not conceptualized as a medical condition, but rather as an occupational phenomenon”.

What is burnout?

ICD-11 definition

“Burn-out is a syndrome conceptualized as resulting from chronic workplace stress that has not been managed successfully. It is characterized by three dimensions: 

1) feelings of energy depletion or exhaustion;
2) increased mental distance from one’s job or feelings of negativism or cynicism related to one’s job;
3) a sense of ineffectiveness and lack of accomplishment.”

It’s worth mentioning that the World Health Organization only recognizes burn-out as a type of non-medical life-management difficulty rather than an illness. Nonetheless, ICD-11 highlights burn-out as a real handicap to productivity and mental health and not just synonymous to being “stressed out”. 

The mismatch between a desired state and reality

In February 2020, the anonymous tech networking platform, Blind, conducted the first of two surveys with 3.6M verified users IT professionals. They posed the question “How often do you feel burned out?” – The poll gathered 3,500 responses and the results were as follows:

• 36% Daily 
• 32% Weekly 
• 14% Monthly 
• 13% Every few months 
• 5% Never

The platform ran a second poll in May 2020 to compare the results from before and during the COVID-19 pandemic. The key results from 6,789 responses, stated: 

1. 61% of professionals felt burned out in February 2020, but this number rose to 73% in May 2020. Of these numbers, the subcategories and underlying reasons can be summarised as:
   • During the COVID-19 outbreak, one in five professionals feel burned out due to job security fears (19%).
   • 20.5% of professionals during COVID-19 feel they have an unmanageable workload.
   • Over 10% of professionals feel as if they have no control over their work.
2. All surveyed companies reported to have had at least 60% of their workforce burn-out in May 2020 whereas, pre-COVID-19 the minimum was 30%. 

You can download the full report here.

Burn-out is the stress that has not been successfully managed

Creating digital products takes effort; both from development teams and their leaders. There are many aspects which could go wrong and prevent digital products from being released on time, or even from being built at all. 

Burn-out tends to happen when the effort we put into work is bigger than the reward we gain from it. Some of the most common work-related factors of burn-out include:

• An unmanageable workload.
• An expectation to consistently perform perfectly.
• An evaluation of performance based on output.
• Toxic productivity-focused work environments.
• Poor management.
• A lack of support.
• Perfectionism.
• Micromanaging.
• No recognition or feedback.
• Financial instability.
• Long hours and consistently working overtime.
• A lack of common aims in the workplace.
• High effort, low reward work.

What we see as “rewarding” is entirely subjective. It is based on our background, personality, interest, values and mindset. Some people may find one job extremely rewarding while others may see it as strenuous and thoroughly unenjoyable. It’s different for everyone.

Nevertheless, the core values underlying our enjoyment and core motivation are all reasonably similar; earning a good salary, getting a promotion, improved social status, flexibility to work as you please and working in a mission-driven company. We always strive for financial stability, validation or recognition and the feeling of making a positive impact. 

Symptoms of a burnout

Knowledge workers such as IT experts are expected to be consistently productive and creative in equal measurements. However, it’s almost impossible for the human brain to constantly generate new ideas without a rest. 

It is vital that you have a chance to unwind or spend time on less cognitively-demanding tasks for your brain to recover and function properly. If you don’t, you might start seeing some of the symptoms associated with burn-out which could ultimately lead to a full blown case if you don’t catch it early enough. 

Burnout symptoms are usually separated into three categories: physical (body), emotional (mind), behavior:

Physical:

1. Feeling drained most of the time.
2. Frequent headaches or muscle pain.
3. Lowered immune system.
4. Change in appetite or sleep habits.

Emotional:

1. Sense of failure or self-doubt.
2. Feeling helpless, trapped, defeated.
3. Detachment, feeling alone in the world.
4. Loss of motivation.
5. Increasingly cynical and negative outlook.
6. Decreased job satisfaction.
7. Feeling little or no sense of accomplishment at work.

Behavioral:

1. Withdrawal from responsibilities.
2. Isolated from others.
3. Procrastinating, taking longer to get things done.
4. Using food, drugs or alcohol to cope.
5. Taking out your frustration on others.
6. Skipping work, coming in late all of the time, leaving early.

“If not addressed, burn-out can lead to additional health issues, including insomnia, depression, substance abuse, and coronary heart disease.”

Dr. Sharon Toker, Tel Aviv University.

How does it translate into your business?

Staff turnover rate increases: This is a strong signal that there are instances of burn-out. Your employees might be tired and looking for less demanding and more rewarding career opportunities.

Lower performance: If your team keeps failing to meet deadlines, lacks creativity or shows a negative attitude towards the job, you might want to consider counseling your employees and checking for possible burn-out symptoms. You should also watch out for decreasing code quality which will result in extended deadlines. 

Increased absenteeism: Unhappy employees tend to take sick days to get away from work. Even though they’re not feeling ill, they take a sick day just to escape the feeling of being overwhelmed.

Low morale and poor internal relationships: Fatigued employees show a more negative and cynical attitude towards both the job and their team. A negative work environment is contagious and can quickly affect everyone on the team, resulting in a complete collapse. 

Productivity is not an endurance sport.

Burn-out might occur because of either personal or work-related factors. This blogpost focuses only on the professional aspects of this phenomenon. We’ve gathered some of the most popular ways of minimizing tension in the workplace by encouraging natural human interactions and providing the necessary downtime without affecting your company’s daily performance.

Here are our top tips for avoiding burn-out in your workplace:

• Reasonable workloads: There’s a fine line between having a challenging yet achievable amount of work, and that which is overwhelming and detrimental to your health. To alleviate workloads, delegate jobs and assign tasks to your team in a reasonable way. Ensure that your team is not overloaded by their to-do lists.
  
• Achievable work hours: The amount of hours one can work differs from person-to-person. Some will be able to work 80 hours a week reasonably comfortably while others will seriously struggle with a 40-hour week. Allow for sick days, paid time off and vacation periods.
  
• Don’t be afraid of taking breaks: Encourage your team members to take 15-minute breaks throughout the day (everyone, not just the smokers), as well as making sure they have a proper lunch break as well. Regular breaks allow your employees to take a walk, have a chat with coworkers or do a little bit of exercise to get their blood flowing before the next session.
  
• Be flexible: Set realistic deadlines to avoid an unnecessarily stressful crunch time. Don’t be afraid to re-assign people to different jobs if they were not right for the task. If you feel that your team would work better with a restructuring of responsibility, don’t hesitate to make that change for the good of everyone.
• Clarify roles: Communication is key. Provide every team member with a specific job description and make sure everyone understands their role and are aware of your expectations, without exception.
  
• Develop a culture of being supportive: Reward employees who show a supportive attitude towards the team and encourage collaboration, provide assistance to others and promote inter-team bonding.
  
• Encourage socializing: Socialization is a must-have for forming bonds within the team. It allows people to share insight, share different perspectives and to unwind when it’s needed.
  
• Provide downtime: Provide your team with a reward to let them know that they are appreciated. It can be anything from food, gift cards, allowing them to leave early or having a party at work. A workplace where an employee is excited to come to work will most certainly experience less burn-out.  
• Be Fair: Equal treatment is another core value to implement in every organization. Be sure that decisions are fair and ethical. 
• Feedback: Provide and listen to feedback. It creates room for improvement, reduces frustration and prevents the tensions from escalating.
• Listen: When an employee expresses frustration or concern, address it immediately. Make sure that they know you are taking appropriate action or give an explanation as to why you can’t meet their needs.
• Educate employees on burn-out: Provide information about burn-out and ways of preventing it. Hold a seminar where employees can ask relevant questions about burn-out. Consider asking a mental health professional to mediate the discussion.

The burn-out questionnaire

To let you spot a possible issue, we’ve prepared a short test. I want to note that no inventory is absolutely accurate or foolproof. Your score on this test is merely a guide to your experience of burn-out.

Interpret these results only as an indicator of a possible issue, not a definite one.  If your score is high, consider taking steps towards fixing the issues highlighted by consulting a mental health specialist or a personal advisor of choice.

To download, click here or on the button below.

Artykuł Job Burnout in Tech Industry – Test yourself pochodzi z serwisu LEOCODE.

All newsletters which we will talk about are prepared by people who are probably as passionate about technology as you are, so you will get all the great news right in your inbox.

1. Tech Manager Weekly by CTO Craft.

Frequency: every Monday

“All about how CTOs around the world are solving problems across Culture, Technology, Operations, Product and Scalability, and hear interviews with CTOs who’ve been through the learning process and come out on top

2. “The 5 Minute Tech Break”

Frequency: every Friday

“Everyone needs a tech break now and again so, every Friday we ask you to close the laptop, grab a beverage of your choice and chill with our weekly newsletter. Packed with the personal, the entertaining and the stimulating – mostly based around ‘tech management’, sometimes not.”

3. LEOCODE TECH newsletter

👈👈👈😉 SUBSCRIBE

Frequency: once a week

A weekly dose of news about digitalization, management, and trends. It was created to connect like-minded people who manage software developers. According to researches, hard skills are only a small percentage of the challenges that most CTOs and IT directors have. In most cases, it’s about the management, leadership and soft skills. That’s why we would love to discuss some scenarios here and help to find the best solutions.

4. The Hustle

Frequency: every day

It consists of nice stories about business, tech, and culture, that are all written in a rather funny tone.
So, if you’re fed up with traditional media and you are ready to try something new, don’t wait and join your like-minded people.

5. Hacker Newsletter

Frequency: every Friday

Kale Davis works in data at MailChimp, and in his newsletter collects the best articles on startups, technology, programming, and more.

…

If you know more interesting newsletters or other sources of knowledge and news for CTO, feel free to share them with Damian Winkowski, he will be happy to chat with you (damian.winkowski@leocode.com or www.linkedin.com/in/damianwinkowski/). He has experience in forming well-motivated tech teams and delivering digital products on time.

Artykuł Top 5 CTO NEWSLETTERS To Follow in 2020 pochodzi z serwisu LEOCODE.

In the current situation, in order to provide a way out of the crisis, companies are looking for new development paths and are working to increase their efficiency. We decided to study the experience of international brands and collect several cases of well-known companies that had not only survived the crisis, but also got out of it with great advantages over competitors.

Since the beginning of the century, workflow automation has helped businesses grow.

The easiest way to create a useful product is to automate part of the manual routine. This provides a stable demand and an initial source of financing.

In 2000, Ben Chestnut, co-founder and CEO of Mailchimp, ran a design consulting studio. They created a web design agency called the Rocket Science Group. Their attention was focused on large corporate clients, but, on the other hand, they created an amazing email marketing tool for small businesses.

So in this way, MailChimp was born, and in 2017, the company was gaining 14,000 new customers every day, reaching an annual revenue of $700 million in 2019.

What happens to startups during the economic downturn? Do they have a chance?

The International Monetary Fund forecasts that in 2020, no less deep recession is expected than during the global financial crisis of 2008-2009. Entrepreneur Richard Lew studied statistics and found that the future of startups is not as pessimistic as it might seem at a first glance

It seems logical that during a recession, it will be more difficult for startups to find financing, especially at early stages. However, statistics show that the number of transactions with business angels and investors aimed at working with start-up companies during the crisis of 2008-2009 remained stable and even grew (see the dark blue line on the chart).

Early-stage startups survive and succeed

During a recession, startups apart from having difficulties, have also some advantages such as:

• Companies with good financing get a chance to buy competitors;
• Office rental and travel expenses are reduced;
• Representatives of certain types of businesses are expanding their presence in the market.

It is worth noticing that part of the startups that appeared during the recession of 2008-2009 became unicorns.

2008:

• Airbnb (private, valuation for 2019 – $ 38 billion)
• Pinterest (public, October 2019 valuation – $ 14 billion)
• Cloudera (public, October 2019 valuation – $ 2.5 billion)
• Beats (in May 2014 was bought by Apple for $ 3 billion)
• Yammer (in July 2012 was bought by Microsoft for $ 1.2 billion)

2009:

• Uber (public, October 2019 valuation – $ 54.6 billion)
• Square (public, October 2019 valuation – $ 26.9 billion)
• Slack (public, October 2019 valuation – $ 12.5 billion)
• Nutanix (public, October 2019 valuation – $ 4.9 billion)

Let’s look at a few stories in more detail.
FedEx

The 1970s oil crisis hit the automotive and aircraft industries particularly hard. The Organization of Arab Petroleum Exporting Countries (OAPEC) members refused to supply oil to countries supporting Israel which was in a conflict with Syria and Egypt. The embargo affected Western Europe and the United States.

Oil prices soared four times. President Nixon called upon the Americans to save money: people were encouraged to drive less often, and airlines were encouraged to reduce the number of flights.

It was in such difficult conditions, that Federal Express was born – “a new airline designed only for parcels.” Its founder – Fred Smith came up with the concept of express delivery over long distances while he was still at university – he devoted one of his term papers to this topic, for which, by the way, he was given the top three. Smith believed that in the modern world, time plays a much greater role than money. The cargo delivery system of that time worked slowly and inefficiently, as only several companies shared the entire cycle. Smith decided that the “door to door” responsibility for the parcel should be taken by a single company.

The first three years of operation saw the company lose money despite having the highest finance as a new company in US history in terms of venture capital. The problem was that FedEx positioned itself simply as a more secure delivery service, without focusing on speed. In 1975, Smith dramatically changed his marketing strategy – now FedEx only handled urgent orders, “which needed to be delivered yesterday.” It was not until 1976 that the company saw its first profit of $3.6 million based on handling 19,000 packages a day.

How Airbnb turned renting air mattresses in their apartment into a $31 billion company

The Airbnb founder story is one of the most inspiring stories of the 21st century.

Source: https://pando.com/2013/01/10/brian-chesky-i-lived-on-capn-mccains-and-obama-os-got-airbnb-out-of-debt/

In 2008, when it all started, the creators of Airbnb, Brian Cesky and Joe Gebbia, were barely making ends meet. To scrape up money for rental housing, they allowed strangers to spend a night on air mattresses in their apartment. That is what prompted them to the idea of a new business. People have to pay homeowners around the world for overnight stays. What is worth adding is the fact that at first, the largest investors in Silicon Valley were fully convinced about the failure of this concept.
Here’s how they turned their idea of renting an air mattress into a business that has scared the hotel industry.

Source: https://airbnb370.wordpress.com/history-of-airbnb/

SUMMARY

Of course, all the mentioned examples are large leading companies in their industries with a strong business model, managerial and financial resources, and other advantages that not everyone possesses. But it was not always so. These are very vivid stories that provoke a broader look at the current situation (and not just to concentrate on cost optimization).

Perhaps new possibilities are beginning to open before your company, and now is the time to notice and take advantage of them. We are super curious about how the current situation will impact the digital and IT world. Feel free to share your thoughts, Damian Winkowski will be happy to discuss it (damian.winkowski@leocode.com).

In the meantime, you can check out some of our earlier stories about companies we love: Slack, Skype or Whatsapp

Artykuł Big Businesses That Started in a Recession pochodzi z serwisu LEOCODE.