One of my coaching clients and I developed this framework to help him think about the kind of impact he wanted to have as a Staff+ engineer, and since then I’ve taken it to other clients and direct reports in a way to think about engineering growth outside of any particular job ladder. The four […]
The topic that got the most attention in my previous post about being the DRI of your career is the concept of rent versus buy when it comes to managing your career. Distinguish what your employer rents versus what they buy. I find this particularly relevant when it comes to things like “personal brand”. My […]
Call me a cynic, but I don’t expect software estimations to be accurate. Because software is built by humans – and they take sick days, and vacations, time to help their colleagues (hopefully), have off days as well as good ones. But I still think estimations are worth doing. Firstly, because if we don’t have […]
Today's management lesson: "You have to boil people like frogs, not drown them like rats" — @catehstn — Beau (@beaulebens) June 25, 2018 Beau recently tweeted an observation I made to him, which people reacted to… Something to do with “plague animals” all “ending up dead”. And well… maybe it isn’t my best management metaphor. […]
One of the (many?) things my team may be tired of hearing from me is “empathy is part of our job”. What do I mean by that? Well as mobile developers, we are the closest to the humans that use our product. We need to have empathy for our users – what do they need? […]
I was talking to a fellow escapee of The Conglomerate and we were talking about over-engineering culture. In the sense of “lol things built because it was time for someone to get promoted” and in the sense of complexity. The thing about layers and layers of (debatably necessary) abstractions is that they make things that should […]
I have carried multiple cellphones for about 2 years now. I think as a mobile developer, it’s important to be familiar with both the major platforms (iPhone and Android) and I find the context helpful regardless of which platform I am working on. Currently, I carry an iPhone 5 and a Nexus 5. My Nexus […]
When I gave the Holiday Science lecture, one of the things that I touched on briefly was how my childhood was unrecognizable compared to the childhood of children 10 years my junior. This article – The Children of Cyberspace – from the New York Times elaborates on that further. From the article: “Researchers are exploring […]