Notice board at Ericsson, Stockholm (pic by DeirdreS ) Many of us have worked with them: the engineering jerk who is brilliant at what they do, but treats others like trash. Some companies have a poli
Now that I lead a team of 25 there are a lot more decisions to be made. Fast decision making is a major advantage to being a small company and something I’d hate for us to lose as we grow. To help, I’
There are many benefits to reading more books , but perhaps my favorite is this: A good book can give you a new way to interpret your past experiences. Whenever you learn a new mental model or idea, i
University of Virginia, Department of Computer Science CS655: Programming Languages Spring 2001 Daniel H. H. Ingalls Learning Research Group Xerox Palo Alto Research Center BYTE Magazine, August 1981.
The scary leap from SysOps to DevOps Rebuilding a career, jumping into the unknown I have at least one existential crisis a week during which I stress out about how much there is to learn and the finite amounts of time and attention I have to do that learning. Someone releases a new cloud service, a…
This post from Valerie Aurora, Mary Gardiner and Leigh Honeywell is so perfect. I n addition to the long list of powerful and important recommendations for doing away with “rock star” culture they’ve
Content note for discussion of abuse and sexual violence. In the last couple of weeks, three respected members of the computer security and privacy tech communities have come forward under their own n
3 min read · Jul 15, 2016 -- Software security has been in the news a lot lately, between various high profile social media hacks to massive data breaches it feels like people in the industry are alwa
Many companies that have trouble delivering software on time exhibit acommon pathology. Developers working on the next release arefrequently interrupted for production support issues with the currentr
5 min read · Jul 15, 2016 -- Photo credit — jdhancock I believe that many team leaders feel constantly under fire because nobody tells them the entire story. They are too busy loading the ship with go
6 min read · Jul 12, 2016 -- I am told that the manner by which others understand that I am busy is when my writing coherence suffers. This primarily occurs in email when whole words are dropped, sent
2016-07-04 I see developers, especially juniors, stress about learning new things. Oftenthey compare themselves to a developer who already knows what they arelearning and they feel like they come up s
May 17, 2016 Holistic Management When new managers start out, they tend to become hyper-focused on what’s right in front of them: the designers they manage, the product team(s) they’re responsible for helping, the way design is getting done in their product group, etc. That focus is not only…
Editor’s note: This is the first in a series of posts exploring the trials and tribulations of first-time managers. Camille Fournier, former CTO at Rent the Runway, is often asked for advice on how to
Hi there. You opened an issue with my project on GitHub, and it’s getting kind of stale by now. I am aware of it – GitHub was kind enough to send me an email containing your report, which I scanned one morning a couple of weeks ago while I ate breakfast. I’ve even thought about it briefly a couple…
I went through a phase earlier in my career where I thought design patterns were the be-all, end-all of software design. Any system which I needed to design started with the applicable patterns: Facto
Credit: Wikipedia I’m lucky to have a large and broad network, internally and externally. Well, I say lucky. I work at it. I stay in touch, ping people to say hi, schedule lunches, arrange to meet up
One of the best and most unexpectedly compelling things I read last month was Jason Brennan’s post on the value of stating the obvious . So, in the spirit of stating the obvious, I’m going to try to d
And 25 other lessons I learned as GM of Vine 5 min read · Feb 19, 2016 -- For the past two years I worked at Vine , first as Head of Product, then as General Manager, overseeing the ~50-person NY-base
I’ll be straightforward at the start of this post: I firmly believe that the most important issue a company deals with is how it reconciles itself with technical debt. Period. Now, here’s the real poi
by Will Hughes Being a productive developer is something you can learn through experience, books, or trial and error. But, one of the best ways to become a productive developer is to learn directly fr
We work in a strange industry. There is a much higher need for developers than can be satisfied by new developers coming into the field. This is a problem that has existed for years, and it is getting
I woke up this morning to a text from Andrew. It was a link: http://elitedaily.com/life/culture/optimistic-people-have-one-thing-common-always-late/1097735/ “optimistic-people-have-one-thing-common-al
The mission of a DevOps team is to eliminate itself. Image source. DevOps is a practice, not a role. It's like agility . Does your company have an agile team? From Dave Thomas's agility redux: You are
This week everyone’s been talking about an article in the Economist explaining how men’s use of language undermines their authority. According to the author, a senior manager at Microsoft, men have a
This cop threw me to the ground, cos hip hop is violent,Said “You got freedom of speech, just choose to remain silent” – Hilltop Hoods, Mic Felon Effectively communicating with people in and around yo
What is it? One definition could be: Delivery engineering team enables others to deliver business value faster. Others, in this context, relates to product/project software delivery teams. It seems to
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