Cabel Sasser of Panic dropped a shirt off with me shortly before my first presentation at WWDC. For those of you still using Lynx, the shirt reads, “Hi, I make macintosh software.” While Jimmy Eats World was ripping the tunes at the WWDC campus bash, I proudly wore the aforementioned shirt all over the campus.… more
As a manager in any software engineering organization, you’re going to be subject to a lot of interpersonal angst amongst the team members. You’ll be walking to lunch and Engineer A is going to be ranting and raving about Engineer B on another team… “Man that guy bugs me. Have you seen his code? Wow!… more
You and your software development team are close. So close. Just a few more bugs and you’re ready to get those bits out there. You can taste it, but… the bugs keep showing up. Five in the morning. Ten in the afternoon. Oh shit, fifteen more during the weekend. Each day… anything more than zero… more
I hate meetings. Everyone hates them because we’ve all been to so many that have sucked so badly that we now walk into a conference room, sit down… arms folded, and think, “Ok, how long until this one is going to suck?” And then it does. Time is wasted. Hot air is created. Silent frustrations… more
At a start-up, there are two organizational inflection points which drastically change communication within the organization. The first change occurs around fifty or so people — this is the moment when, if you’re an early employee, that you first see someone in he hallway that you do not recognize. This is troubling to you because,… more
My all time favorite line from The West Wing is, “We’ve got a thing.” There are variations of this favorite line which all revolve around the same word. “Is this going to be a thing?”, “Have you heard about the thing?”, “So, here’s the thing.” I immediately applied a generous helping of Thingdom to my… more
As already discussed, Managers are not evil. They’re often just stuck in translation hell where they need to say one thing in one way to one team and say the EXACT same thing to another team in a different way. This constant verbal tapdancing looks sketchy to you, the Average Joe, and you start to… more
I recently got into minor war of words with a co-worker regarding the proper solution to a problem with one of my products. As an aside, let me say that email is never ever ever never ever the right way to resolve controversy. Too much subtly is lost when you’re YELLING IN ALL CAPS. Don’t… more
One of my teams is facing a big fat decision regarding future product direction and the process has split the team in half the “Yes We Shoulds” and the “No Way in Hells”. The manager of the team is facing a minor rebellion and spending much of his time trying to drive the team towards… more
Somewhere between individual contributor and middle management, it became essential that I have a to-do list. I resisted this for years, secretly hoping that I could keep track of all the crap I needed to do in my head or an a conveniently located post-it note, but then stuff started spilling all over the floor… more