Prologue
As programmers and tech writers, we are creators, and we are knowledge workers. We strive to do rare and valuable work, regardless of the circumstances, what Dartmouth professor Cal Newport calls deep work. Deep work is hard and difficult. At Canonical, we are specifically committed to doing things that are simultaneously hard and difficult, doing them all the time, and sustaining that work over long periods of time.
Last week, we had an engineering sprint, which is a live gathering of Canonical’s engineering knowledge workers from all over the world. Normally, we have them every six months, but we hadn’t had one for almost exactly two years because of the Covid-19 pandemic.
When he opened the sprint, our CEO began by speaking about the events in Ukraine, because these events were on everyone’s mind. Without addressing them, that weight wouldn’t be lifted and we couldn’t focus on doing good engineering work, live and in person, for an entire week. We would not be…
