#(note: yes there are ads in AE but it's a very reasonable number. one at the start of each chapter plus optional ones for hints and such)

[nonbinary-octopus]

me: I should go to bed soon

also me: *stays up til 4am playing a mystery adventure game*

[respectable-username]

🔐 Why You (Probably) Don't Need A VPN

A rant by a software engineer sick of VPN ads from her favourite YouTubers

TL;DR:

Here are some legitimate reasons the average internet user might want to use a VPN:

To connect to their company's internal network

To bypass the Great Firewall of China (or other types of website blocks at country or organisation level)

To watch Netflix etc as if you were in another country

Here are absolutely rubbish reasons to use a VPN:

Privacy

And today, I'll tell you why.

Hang on, won't a VPN stop hackers from stealing my passwords?

I mean, it does encrypt the web traffic coming from your device.

You know what else encrypts web traffic coming from your device? Your browser.

Yes, in the year 2021, pretty much all websites on the internet are accessed over HTTPS. The "S" stands for "secure", as in "your request will be securely encrypted". If your browser is using HTTPS, nobody can capture the data you're sending over the internet. More detail in the "I like too much detail" section at the bottom of this post.

It's very easy to check if you are using HTTPS by looking at your URL bar. In most browsers, it will have a lock on it if secure:

(From top left to bottom right: Chrome on iOS, Safari on iOS, Chrome on Windows, Edge on Windows, Firefox on Windows, and Safari on Mac. Screenshots reflect the UI at the time this post was written. Oh gosh this has taken over 4 hours to write.)

But isn't moar encryption better? What if somebody breaks HTTPS?

For starters, nobody's breaking your HTTPS, and there isn't any benefit from double encrypting. This is because of the maths behind encryption/decryption!

Encryption works kinda like a lock and key, except the lock is maths and the key is a special number only known to the person allowed to unlock the information.

The important thing is, without the key, all the locked data looks like complete and utter garbage. Completely unusable. Barely distinguishable from random noise. There's absolutely no way to tell what the original data was.

The other important thing is that the key is nearly unguessable. As in, with current technology, will generally take more than the lifetime of the universe to guess by chance. And when technology gets faster, we just make the numbers bigger again until they're once again secure.

For any major website you use, they will use a strong encryption algorithm (ie lock) with big numbers so your keys will be strong enough to withstand an attack. This means your data is safe as long as that lock icon is in your URL bar.

A VPN will not make the existing garble any more garbled. The extra $10/month or whatever you're paying for does not buy you any extra protection.

If you want to know more about how encryption and HTTPS in particular work, see the "I like too much detail" section at the end of this post.

Something something viruses

How's a VPN going to stop viruses? It controls the path your internet traffic takes, not the content that gets sent down that path. I guess it could block some known virus-giving hosts? But if it's known to the VPN provider, it's probably also known to the built-in antivirus on your computer who can block it for you.

(Oh yeah, 3rd party antivirus is another thing that's not worth paying for these days. Microsoft's built-in Windows Defender is as good as the third party options, and something something Macs don't get viruses easily because of how they're architected.)

Honestly though, keep your software up to date, don't click on anything suspicious, don't open files from sources you don't trust, and you'll be right most of the time.

And keep your software up to date. Then update your software. Hey, did I mention keeping your stuff updated? Update! Now! It only takes a few minutes. Please update to the latest version of your software I'm begging you. It's the number 1 way to protect yourself from viruses and other malware. Most major software attacks could have been prevented if people just updated their damn software!

But my ISP is spying on me!

Ok, it is true that there are TWO bits of data that HTTPS can't and won't hide. Those are:

The source of a request (your IP)

What website that request is going to (the website's IP)

These are the bits of information that routers use to know where to send your data, so of course they can't be hidden as the data is moving across the internet. And people can see that information very easily if they want to.

Note: this will show which website you're going to, but not which page you're looking at, and not the content of that page. So it will show that you were on Tumblr, but will not show anyone that you're still reading SuperWhoLock content in 2021.

It's this source/destination information that VPNs hide, which is why they can be used to bypass website blocks and region locks.

By using a VPN, those sniffing traffic on your side of the VPN will just show you connecting to the VPN, not the actual website you want. That means you can read AO3 at work/school without your boss/teachers knowing (unless they look over your shoulder of course).

As for those sniffing on the websites end, including the website itself, they will see the VPN as the source of the connection, not you. So if you're in the US and using a VPN node in the UK, Netflix will see you as being in the UK and show you their British library rather than the American one.

If this is what you're using a VPN for and you think the price is fair, then by all means keep doing it! This is 100% what VPNs are good for.

HOWEVER, and this is a big "however", if it's your ISP you're trying to hide your internet traffic from, then you will want to think twice before using a VPN.

Let me put it this way. Without a VPN, your ISP knows every website you connect to and when. With a VPN, do you know who has that exact same information? The VPN provider. Sure, many claim to not keep logs, but do you really trust the people asking for you to send them all your data for a fee to not just turn around and sell your data on for a profit, or worse?

In effect, you're trading one snooper for another. One snooper is heavily regulated, in many jurisdictions must obey net neutrality, and is already getting a big fee from you regardless of where you browse. The other isn't. Again, it's all a matter of who you trust more.

For me personally, I trust my ISP more than a random VPN provider, if for no other reason than my ISP is an old enough company with enough inertia and incompetence that I don't think they could organise to sell my data even if they wanted to. And with the amount of money I'm paying them per month, they've only got everything to lose if they broke consumer trust by on-selling that data. So yeah, I trust my ISP more with my privacy than the random VPN company.

But my VPN comes with a password manager!

Password managers are great. I 100% recommend you use a password manager. If there's one thing you could do right now to improve your security (other than updating your software, speaking of, have you updated yet?), it's getting and using a password manager.

Password managers also come for free.

I'm currently using LastPass free, but am planning to switch after they did a bad capitalism and only let their free accounts access either laptop or mobile but not both now. I personally am planning to move to Bitwarden on friends' recommendation since it's not only free but open source and available across devices. I also have friends who use passbolt and enjoy it, which is also free and open source, but it's also a bit DIY to set up. Great if you like tinkering though! And there are probably many other options out there if you do a bit of googling.

So, yeah, please use a password manager, but don't pay for it unless you actually have use for the extra features.

No I really need to hide my internet activity from everybody for reasons

In this case, you're probably looking for TOR. TOR is basically untraceable. It's also a terrible user experience for the most part because of this, so I'd only recommend it if you need it, such as if you're trying to escape the Great Firewall. But please don't use it for Bad Crimes. I am not to be held liable for any crime committed using information learned from this post.

Further reading viewing

If you want to know more about why you don't need a VPN, see Tom Scott's amazing video on the subject. It's honestly a great intro for beginners.

I like too much detail

Ahhh, so you're the type of person who doesn't get turned off by long explanations I see. Well, here's a little more info on the stuff I oversimplified in the main post about encryption. Uhh, words get bigger and more jargony in this section.

So first oversimplification: the assumption that all web traffic is either HTTP or HTTPS. This isn't exactly true. There are many other application layer internet standards out there, such as ssh, ftp, websockets, and all the proprietary standards certain companies use for stuff such as streaming and video conferencing. Some of these are secure, using TLS or some other security algorithm under the hood, and some of them aren't.

But most of the web requests you care about are HTTP/HTTPS calls. As for the rest, if they come from a company of a decent size that hasn't been hacked off the face of the planet already, they're probably also secure. In other words, you don't need to worry about it.

Next, we've already said that encryption works as a lock and a key, where the lock is a maths formula and the key is a number. But how do we get that key to lock and unlock the data?

Well, to answer that, we first need to talk about the two different types of encryption: symmetric and asymmetric. Symmetric encryption such as AES uses the same key to both encrypt and decrypt data, whereas asymmetric encryption such as RSA uses a different key to encode and decode.

For the sake of my writing, we're going to call the person encrypting Alice, the person decrypting Bob, and the eavesdropper trying to break our communications Eve from now on. These are standard names in crypto FYI. Also, crypto is short for cryptography not cryptocurrencies. Get your Bitcoin and Etherium outta here!

Sorry if things start getting incoherent. I'm tired. It's after 1am now.

So first, how do we get the key from symmetric crypto? This is probably the easier place to start. Well, you need a number, any number of sufficient size, that both Alice and Bob know. There are many ways you could share this number. They could decide it when they meet in person. They could send it to each other using carrier pigeons. Or they could radio it via morse code. But those aren't convenient, and somebody could intercept the number and use it to read all their messages.

So what we use instead is a super clever algorithm called Diffie-Hellman, which uses maths and, in particular, the fact it's really hard to factor large numbers (probably NP Hard to be specific, but there's no actual proof of that). The Wikipedia page for this is surprisingly easy to read, so I'll just direct you there to read all about it because I've been writing for too long. This algorithm allows Alice and Bob to agree on a secret number, despite Eve being able to read everything they send each other.

Now Alice and Bob have this secret number key, they can talk in private. Alice puts her message and the key into the encryption algorithm and out pops what looks like a load of garbage. She can then send this garbage to Bob without worrying about Eve being able to read it. Bob can then put the garbage and the key into the decryption algorithm to undo the scrambling and get the original message out telling him where the good donuts are. Voila, they're done!

But how does Alice know that she's sending her message to Bob and not Eve? Eve could pretend to be Bob so that Alice does the Diffie-Hellman dance with her instead and sends her the secret location of the good donuts instead.

This is where asymmetric crypto comes in! This is the one with private and public keys, and the one that uses prime numbers.

I'm not 100% across the maths on this one TBH, but it has something to do with group theory. Anyway, just like Diffie-Hellman, it relies on the fact that prime factorisation is hard, and so it does some magic with semi-primes, ie numbers with only 2 prime factors other than 1. Google it if you want to know more. I kinda zoned out of this bit in my security courses. Maths hard

But the effect of that maths is easier to explain: things that are encoded with one of the keys can only be decoded with the other key. This means that one of those keys can be well-known to the public and the other is known only to the person it belongs to.

If Alice wants to send a message to Bob and just Bob, no Eve allowed, she can first look up Bob's public key and encrypt a beginning message with that. Once Bob receives the message, he can decrypt it with his private key and read the contents. Eve can't read the contents though because, even though she has Bob's public key, she doesn't know his private key.

This public key information is what the lock in your browser is all about BTW. It's saying that the website is legit based on the public key they provide.

So why do we need symmetric crypto when we have asymmetric crypto? Seems a lot less hassle to exchange keys with asymmetric crypto.

Well, it's because asymmetric crypto is slooooow. So, in TLS, the security algorithm that puts the "S" in "HTTPS", asymmetric RSA is used to establish the initial connection and figure out what symmetric key to use, and then the rest of the session uses AES symmetric encryption using the agreed secret key.

And there you have it! Crypto in slightly-less-short-but-still-high-enough-level-that-I-hope-you-understand.

Just realised how long this section is. Well, I did call it "too much detail" for a reason.

Now, next question is what exactly is and isn't encrypted using HTTPS.

Well, as I said earlier, it's basically just the source IP:port and the destination IP:port. In fact, this information is actually communicated on the logical layer below the application layer HTTPS is on, known as the transport layer. Again, as I said before, you can't really encrypt this unless you don't want your data to reach the place you want at all.

Also, DNS is unencrypted. A DNS request is a request that turns a domain name, such as tumblr.com, into an IP address, by asking a special server called a Domain Name Server where to find the website you're looking for. A DNS request is made before an HTTP(S) request. Anyone who can read your internet traffic can therefore tell you wanted to go to Tumblr.

But importantly, this only shows the domain name, not the full URL. The rest of the URL, the part after the third slash (the first two slashes being part of http://), is stuff that's interpreted by the server itself and so isn't needed during transport. Therefore, it encrypted and completely unreadable, just like all the content on your page.

I was going to show a Wireshark scan of a web request using HTTP and HTTPS to show you the difference, but this has taken long enough to write as it is, so sorry!

I could probably write more, but it's 1:30am and I'm sleepy. I hope you found some of this interesting and think twice before purchasing a VPN subscription. Again, there are legit good uses for a VPN, but they're not the ones primarily being advertised in VPN ads. It's the fact that VPN ads rely so heavily on false advertising that really grinds my gears and made me want to do this rant. It's especially bad when it comes from somebody I'd think of as technologically competent (naming no names here, but if you've worked in tech and still promote VPNs as a way to keep data safe... no). Feel free to ask questions if you want and hopefully I'll get around to answering any that I feel I know enough to answer.

Nighty night Tumblr. Please update your software. And use a (free) password manager. And enable two factor authentication on all your accounts. But mostly just update your software.

[i-mybrunettelady]

How about 21 - “we’ll face this together” kisses From that writing kiss prompt list?

Thank you for the submission! This is a very wholesome prompt and again, IBS feelings come to life so... Angst + fluff?

Under the cut for spoilers of the recent episode!

--- prompt: we’ll face this together kiss

--- Dragonstorm, 1334 AE

The battlefield is strangely quiet and empty. It feels as if yesterday she was flying in the faces of the twin dragons, watching people die for Tyria’s future, listening to shouts and yells and screams of people around her and likely adding some of her own too.

Now, there aren’t even traces of blood. Not even Ryland’s. She personally oversaw the taking of his body for burial, even if the protruding wound from his belly triggered uncomfortable memories of Balthazar’s sword hanging over her before it delivered the final blow, because her discomfort was nothing to Rytlock’s pain. And she couldn’t subject him to that. Now, even that is gone.

Nyra is happy, yes. Nyra is happy she’s won, she’s happy the world is safe and that Braham is fine and that they aren’t dragons’ meal. But it’s a kind of happy she knows all too well, one laced with grief, with loss, holes that can never be mended again. It’s a painful happy, but better that than murderous rage she’s felt towards Phlunt, the Arcane Council, for even letting the war drag as long as it has.

Coldness bites her cheeks but she doesn’t mind it. Forgal often reminded her how resilient she had to be to the weather, because most of wars don’t happen when you wish them to, when you feel most comfortable.

Forgal. She smiles tersely. Icebrood killed his family and now she helped bring Jormag down.

“He’s dead,” she whispers, as if he can hear her. A shiny, icy remnant of Jormag’s power catches her attention and she walks over and crouches to pick it up. “They’re avenged, Forgal. What did you say their names were? Alfhild, Einar and Bodilla?”

“Commander!” a voice tears her from her thoughts, familiar but unexpected, and she turns around to see Laranthir waving at her, Trahearne by his side. “Nyra!”

“Laranthir?” she asks, heading towards them. “You’re back?”

“I may be small, but I’m here too!” a new voice adds firmly.

“Efut!” She stares at Trahearne. “Did you bring them over?”

“In a manner,” he confirms, studying her expression. “We all happened to come see you at the same time.”

“Warmaster Efut, if you will, Commander,” Efut corrects without any real grievance. “I still outrank you.”

“If we’re doing titles,” Nyra salutes, “Grand Warmaster, Warmaster, Marshal, sir!”

“I’m no Marshal,” Trahearne murmurs, a little laughter shaking in his throat. Nyra’s heart grows a little bigger. He’s healing. “And technically, you outrank me, Lyss. I’m only your second-in-command.”

“How roles change,” Laranthir muses gently. “You’ve grown since then, Nyra. You’ve earned the right to be in charge.”

“Laranthir, if this wind wasn’t killing the skin of my cheeks, I’d blush.” She knows she has, but it’s still different to hear others admit it. Almorra did, two years ago. Nyra doesn’t boast, she doesn’t brag, lets her achievements speak for themselves, mostly because then doubts stay safely in the confines of her mind when they arise.

Almorra. She has yet to attend Almorra’s proper burial. They didn’t have the time to during the war. “Laranthir, Efut,” she says, weightily. “I’m sorry. I didn’t reach Almorra in time. She was murdered by-”

“I know,” Laranthir offers sadly. Judging by Trahearne’s gentle, worried expression, she knows his sorrow is deeper than he lets on. It has to be. She knows how it’s like to lose a friend.

Forgal, Apatia, Eir, Trahearne, Blish, Aurene...

“Jhavi told me. Nyra, it’s not your fault. You can’t have known before you were lured here and that was too late.”

“That’s the problem! I was too late! Champion of Tyria, Champion of Tyria, what’s a champion that’s too late to save the world!” Her voice breaks, unable to withstand the assault, and you’d think she was used to this by now, to loss, to grief, it’s not new but it hurts all the same, and she knows what that stupid fucking asura told her, but she doesn’t know what to do with that information at the moment so she turns away, walks to where Ryland died and chokes on a scream.

“Lyss, shh, shh,” Trahearne engulfs her and it feels safe to shake quietly. “It’s alright.”

“Don’t tell me it’s not my fault,” she says, swallowing her own tears. “It doesn’t help.”

“I wasn’t about to,” he replies simply and she looks up, suddenly wondering if it’s humanly possible to love someone as much as she loves him right now. “I may later, but not right now.”

“At least you’re honest,” she says in a strange voice.

“I have no reason to lie to you,” he says. “So trust me when I say, we’ll face this together.”

“What the fuck did I do to deserve you?” she asks incredulously and lets the remaining words die on her tongue as their lips meet and she hugs him close, eyes closed and thanking the Alchemy, or gods, or whatever is willing to listen.

“That ditch you asked me to dig you 9 years ago is still around, I think,” Efut informs against the cold, loud wind and Nyra turns to stare at her. “The one you wanted to throw yourself into if your crush on Marshal dear didn’t work out, you must remember it.”

“I do,” Nyra extracts herself from the embrace unwillingly, tears freezing on her cheeks and she’s aware she looks a little silly, “and you can  fill it up. Because... How to tell you... It did work out?”

“There was a ditch?” Laranthir and Trahearne ask in unison.

“Nine years ago, yes,” Nyra deadpans. “When I was a strikingly big number of 19 years old.”

“Noted,” Efut says.

At least you have time to note, Nyra thinks. We have time to joke like this. A week or so ago, we didn’t really think we did.

“Boss, come back,” the comm springs to life from her backpack with static, but nevertheless making Rox’s message clear, “envoys are already here and they’re asking for you. We’ve been trying to reach yo- but sta-ic there is just -ful.”

“All in a day’s work,” Nyra comments under her breath. “I’m coming, Rox! Will you keep me in suspense as to who to expect or will you- oh, signal’s lost. Still. Laranthir, Efut, I’m sorry for the interruption, but we can talk later?” Distractions, Nyra, you’re just making distractions. “And, Trahearne, would you like to come with me, or?”

“I would. Snow doesn’t quite appeal to me either, I’m afraid.”

“Let’s go then. Gods know how difficult envoys can be. Best not keep them waiting.”

[thumbkenya76-blog]

4 Proven Strategies For Retaining Your Best Sales Employees

Editor’s Note: This article first appeared on the Avenue Talent Partners blog here.

If you’ve been in startup leadership for any amount of time, when I say retaining sales employees is especially hard right now, you probably know exactly what I mean.

It is PAINFUL when your best people leave you and you’re left figuring out how to rebuild. But if you’ve experienced this first hand, you’re not alone – some of the data swirling around on sales retention for tech startups is a little scary:

The Tech/Software sector has the highest turnover rate of any industry (13.5%)

Salespeople turnover at twice the rate of the rest of the labor force (27%)

The average tenure of a VP of Sales has shrunk to just 19 months

Why is this so hard right now? Can you eliminate or reduce it?

Without a doubt, yes. There are ways to combat this (it’s why I founded ATP in the first place) and there are two sides to it: your processes as a company and know which people are the right ones to hire in the first place.

Each of these is a substantial topic, so in order to make this practical, I decided to split this into two articles. We’ll focus on what you can do with your business and your leadership to increase the chance that your sales reps will stick around in this one.

Let’s get into it.

Why Do Salespeople Leave?

Type that question into Google and you’ll find a variety of articles on the topic. Most of them point towards compensation as being the number one reason. However, I think compensation is just the tip of the iceberg.

Great example: while not specific for sales, a recent study on why 10,000+ professionals left their jobs by LinkedIn suggests other factors are the bigger culprits:

Compensation only comes in at #5 (Courtesy of Linkedin)

However, here’s the thing: my experience talking to people every single day about what their missing pieces are is consistent with these data points – especially for top performers. And while yes – top performing salespeople need to have top-level compensation ($ for value folks!), the real reason you’re going to actually retain them isn’t as simple as throwing money at them.

Simply put, all-star talent has a different mindset… or to paraphrase Simon Sinek, “they see compensation as a result, not an end.” They know that the real game they need to play is to better serve their customers… and that the better they do this, the better they’ll be paid (or should be).

They also know things like the mission of the company (a big piece of culture), product/service, opportunity, and leadership are the foundations for allowing them to do that. So no amount of money is going to make up for failures in those things, since it’s going to stop them from winning the game they need to play (cue Einstein’s definition of insanity).

So that said, here’s what it takes to fight the reasons for departure above and hold on to your best people.

1. Create Continuous Opportunities For Growth That All-Stars Can’t Resist.

What do most top performers in sales want? To grow – both themselves and the startups they work for. That’s what makes them top performers! So the moment that potential stops existing is the moment they’re going to get bored and start looking for something new.

This can include everything – from compensation to title to responsibilities. And to keep A+ salespeople engaged, you’ve got to keep raising the stakes for them across the board at the right frequency.

While this will look different for every team, the best way I’ve ever seen this done is with a “feeder system” of promotability – or in other words a strategically designed, transparent system of targeted milestones that increase in difficulty and responsibility over time.

An Example

If you have SDR’s, know what it takes for them to be successful and help them earn a promotion to AE inside of the first year (including a comp boost). This “quick win” for a newer hire is the way to “set the hook” in young, hungry A+ talent with the grit to succeed (it’s the reason why people who hit the jackpot at a casino often end up having gambling problems later in life).

From there, set the milestone a little bigger. Offer the opportunity to progress to Mid-Market and make it a little more difficult to achieve. And so on and so forth to Enterprise to Team Lead to Director and more.

Not only will this help you keep your talent engaged and excited, it’s also the best hiring strategy around. It promotes from within, saves a lot of $$ on churn, and you’re only hiring for a skills gap from the outside to compliment the team.

Something To Keep In Mind…

Your advnacement plan has to be fair, achievable, and you’ve got to do your part as a leader to help your people actually hit the milestones. Remember, top performers want to see and feel results. Furthermore, this has to be well-defined, easy to digest,  and transparent. You should be discussing and explaining it to those you hire in from the outside in interviews so that expectations are properly set.

2. Be A Leader All-Stars Trust.

It’s been said that “people leave bosses, not companies.” I think truer words have never been spoken. It’s really hard to do great work if you’re facing obstacles where you need to be receiving support.

I’ve written an article previously on what great leadership looks like and how it has impacted the businesses I’ve been personally involved with throughout my career. But to summarize what it’s all about, being a leader that world-class talent trusts really boils down to empowerment.

How To Be A Great Leader:

Create psychological safety. Google studied what makes teams more productive and this was the single most important factor. Essentially, this means creating an environment where your team believes they are safe to take interpersonal risks.

Become a master listener. Great leaders take their team’s contributions seriously, and go out of their way to show their people that they’re valued by truly absorbing what they say.

Communicate clearly. Keep in mind, doing this is more than just your words. It’s everything you do to connect with your team, including your presence, actions, attitude, tone of voice, the way you phrase things, your timing, and more.

Know your “why”. Inspiring leaders have well-defined, well-articulated, and unwavering vision for what needs to be achieved. After all… if you don’t know where you’re going, how will your team?

Operate with integrity. Your people can’t trust you if you don’t do what you say you’ll do. Period.

3. Build A Magnetic Culture

Nope, I’m not talking about ping-pong and free beer. Real sales culture looks like the team at Inspire, a clean tech company with a mission to help consumers and businesses tap into the power of clean, renewable wind energy led by my dear colleague Zac Lowder.

What do Zac/Inspire get so right? They have built their culture on clear and compelling mission and work their tail feathers off to make sure they hire and empower all-stars that have both the skills and desire to join them. The result? 2-3x growth (there’s a reason they call themselves Avengers).

A+ salespeople care about culture – one they can believe in, and will be excited to get out of bed in the morning for. And, one that will support them on their quest to serve your customers better. Here’s some of the best ways to do that:

Have a vision your talent can get behind. And be able to articulate it in a compelling way.

See the point on leadership above. It all starts from the top.

See the point on opportunity above. Allstars crave a bigger stage.

Set the tone with a strong candidate experience and onboarding program. This going to require an entire point all by itself…

4. Roll Out The Red Carpet During Interviews And Onboarding.

I’ve added this last point about interviews and onboarding last for one very important reason… you can do all the work on points 1, 2, and 3 above and still totally blow it on this last step if you don’t get your candidate experience and onboarding done right.

When you go to hire, you MUST make sure the things your candidates will really experience when they join you shines through transparently. Difficulties, rainbows, and all.

You can’t fake this if you want talented people to stick around… you need to give them a chance to make an honest assessment if it’s right for them. Failing (or choosing not) to do so just makes the inevitable more painful for both of you.

Not everyone always realizes this is happening, so here are a few things I’d recommend incorporating into your interview process and onboarding experience if you’re not already:

Get your candidates involved with the team pre-hire. And not just a half-hour handshake… give them a real chance to live and breathe what it’s like to truly work with you. Have them ride along for a day or jump in on a few brainstorming meetings – really try them on for size!

Answer their questions completely and honestly. Pop up the hood and show them what’s inside. Don’t deceive here – let them (no, encourage them) to ask difficult questions and give them straight, no B.S. answers in return.

Get real with them about the difficult parts of the role. Be open with them about the challenges what they will face, either through exercises during interviews or by letting them “experience it” before they have to do it.

Show them different parts of your business, not just the sales team. Have them spend time with client success, product, finance, etc. and let them see how the organization really works.

Set the tone with onboarding that matches your culture. In other words, if you expect it to be fast moving and competitive, the onboarding should mirror that. Ask for feedback and implement that which you receive. This is still a two-way street!

It doesn’t stop after offer. Get them immediately setup with a mentor. Map out their first month with the team. Have their equipment ready and waiting. Schedule proper kickoffs that first week. Have the “welcome wagon” waiting. Create a concierge type process. Remember the golden rule here, it will pay off and then some.

Final Thoughts

We’ve covered a lot here, but if you take these to heart, you’ll not only keep your best people, you’ll build a workplace environment that A+ salespeople won’t be able to resist. The reason I started here is none of that knowledge really helps you if you don’t have your company and culture solidified first… even if you find great talent, they’re still not going to stick around.

The other piece of retention is really knowing who is going to pan out in the long run and who is not. I’ll tackle that in another post, so stay tuned!

Source: https://labs.openviewpartners.com/how-to-retain-your-best-sales-employees/

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A Review of the Filmic Pro Firstlight Photography App

Those of you with more than a passing interest in smartphone film making will undoubtably heard of Filmic Pro. It is an app designed to get the very best video quality out of high end Apple and Android phones.

It first shot to prominence in 2015, when it was used to capture the award winning Hollywood film Tangerine. This was shot using just three iPhone 5s and edited in DaVince Resolve. Since then Filmic Pro has gone on to become one of the most important apps available for mobile film makers.

It enables such features as log color and 100 mbps plus recording rates on our devices. Now, the Filmic Pro team have turned their attention to stills photography with their new Firstlight app. Today we are going to take a look at it. 

What Is Firstlight?

Unlike certain other apps, Firstlight is purely designed for capturing the image. It gives the photographer as much control over that capture as possible. What it is not, is either an image editing or image management program. There are, however easy to use workflows to bring your images into editing and management apps such as Lightroom Mobile. 

Currently Firstlight is only available on Apple IOS devices and requires IOS 13 or later. An Android version is in development but there is not indication on a release date.

Yes, there’s a free version!

The app is available both as a free version and also as a premium edition with a number of extra functions. The premium edition costs 99 cents/pence per month on a subscription basis or $7.99/£7.99 per year. Given the number of tools available, its a very good price.

So let’s look at the differences between the free and paid versions. 

The Firstlight interface is clean although the verticle exposure information takes getting used to

Firstlight Free Version

Despite its free price tag, the basic version of Firstlight offers a decent amount of functionality to the smartphone photographer. Chief amongst these is the ability to shoot in DNG, Adobe’s proprietary raw format. As with larger cameras, the ability to shoot raw, gives us a greater latitude of control over our images.

As well as raw you can shot JPEG, TIFF and the new HEIC format. 

You can control different aspect ratios such as 4:3, 16:9 and 1:1 and use burst mode, self timer and control the flash. 

You can also overlay grids to aid your composition.

One useful function for Filmic Pro owners is the addition of a dedicated quick launch button. This allows you to quickly move over to shoot high quality video.

The downside?

The main limitations of the free version is that you can only shoot in AE, auto exposure mode. This means you have no control over shutter or ISO.  

Shot at night in the AE basic mode on DNG and edited in Photoshop

Firstlight Premium

With the premium version you get a raft of very useful additions, most important of which is shutter and ISO priority. This is useful particularly in low light situations. Here, you might want to hold the ISO down to a low value whilst using the phone on a tripod with a slow shutter speed. 

Another useful addition is film simulation modes to give your images a specific look. These however, do not work when shooting DNG raw. 

The film simulation modes are limited at the moment and only available in JPEG mode

You can configure the burst rate from low to normal to high. The actual shots per second will vary depending on the phone you are using.

One very useful addition is the live analytics. This allows you not only to see a live RGB histogram but also zebra patterns denoting the under and overexposed aspects of the image. You can also focus manually with the aid of focus peaking.

What You Need to Know About The Firstlight Interface

When you first open the app, you will see the main image viewer slightly left of centre in landscape format. To the right is a large and quite prominent shutter button. The phone’s volume button can also be used to trigger the shutter.

Below the shutter is the exposure mode selector. On the free version this is defaulted to AE. Selecting ISO or Shutter Speed will inform you that you need an in app subscription. With that subscription you can drag up once for ISO priority and twice for shutter priority. Sliding either of these left or right will change the ISO/Shutter Speed.

Using shutter priority with the shutter speed locked to 1/800th

You can adjust both focus and exposure by swiping left/right or up and down on the main viewfinder section. Focusing manually will show focus peaking aids and exposing manually will show zebras for over and under exposing. You can configure the colours for the focus/exposure aids in the settings.

To the left side of screen is your exposure and format information. This is written vertically which is odd at first but you soon get used to reading it. Top left of the screen in the settings icon.

Firstlight Settings (Premium Version)

The settings menu is a very clean and easy to use interface. On the main screen you have five controls. These allow you to change file type, self timer duration, flash on or off, overlay grid type and aspect ratio. Below you can turn on or off geolocation, histogram and burst mode. Note that burst mode is not available in DNG or TIFF formats.

You also have access to advance controls such as the analytic colours and metadata. 

There is a good number of settings to play with

Firstlight In Use

Being a long term Filmic Pro user for video, I took easily to Firstlight. The shooting interface is intuitive and contains plenty of useful information without that information becoming intrusive. The  Filmic Pro quick launch button was very useful enabling me to switch over to video very quickly.

However as yet, I do not see a return to Firstlight button on Filmic Pro. This kind of negates the advantages. I am sure they will add that in in a future update.

One really useful feature I found was that as I had Filmic Pro setup to use my DJI Osmo Mobile gimbal. I could trigger the shutter button directly from the Osmo. The vertical exposure information takes a while to get used to but it does allow the interface to be clean.

And quality?

Its difficult to comment on image quality. This would technically differ little from using other apps such as Lightroom Mobile, particularly when shooting raw. However in JPEG, the film modes are very nice although somewhat limited in number at the moment. They will be added to in future updates for premium subscribers. 

A JPEG in the Electum grain/black and white simulation mode

Final thoughts…

Overall I am very impressed with Firstlight. My go to app for more serious smartphone photography had been Adobe Lightroom. However it always felt a bit of a faff to navigate through to shooting modes.

Firstlight dispenses with all the extras and concentrates on being purely a capture app.

Because of that it will become my app of choice when shooting on the iPhone. I rarely edit on the go but Firstlight still incorporates an easy way to get your images over to Lightroom. Given the very reasonable subscription price, I think it’s a bit of a no brainer to get the premium version. 

You can download Firstlight for IOS here.

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Tags: app, Filmic, Firstlight, photography, Pro, Review

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