Management

Friction, Pain, and Failure

People bitch. Like, all the time. It’s 8:35am on a Friday and I’ve already bitched twice: once about the weather and another time about the power flickering on and off. At work, Frank bitches as a last resort, when all else has failed, so I know to pay careful attention. Matt bitches all the time… more

February 27, 2014 1 Comment

Context Reports

I’ve been hating on status reports for a long time and it comes from my first knee-jerk reaction when my manager asked for one. My unspoken thought was, “Why, wait, what?” I didn’t understand big companies, I didn’t understand politics and bureaucracy, all I understood was that it felt like a waste of time to… more

February 9, 2014 11 Comments

Inbox Reboot

At some point in the last year there was too much email. I’ve considered myself a competent manager of email and to-dos for much of my career, but the quantity of email that needed my attention exceeded a heretofore unknown ceiling and I began to understand how the smallest parts of my inbox policy could… more

February 6, 2014 18 Comments

Tear It Down

When I do speaking gigs, I open with a few questions to get to know the audience. I’m looking for a couple of key demographic numbers to gauge how much to focus on and tune different themes in any given talk. I ask: How many self-identified Apple people? (Typography jokes = ok.) How many engineers?… more

November 21, 2013 11 Comments

The Codename Rules

A long time ago, there was a big fight between Engineering and Marketing regarding the name of a new 1.0 product. I was not there, but the fight went something like this: Engineering: “So what are we going to call the product?” Marketing: “We’re not sure yet. The focus group data isn’t complete.” Engineering: “A… more

October 2, 2013 10 Comments

Entropy Crushers

When it was five of you sitting in the same room, it was easy. When someone needed to know something, they stood in the middle of the room and asked, “Who broke the build?” When a decision needed to be made, you looked up at Phil and said, “Phil, this needs to scale from day… more

July 15, 2013 21 Comments

Triggers

Mad. Furious. Instantaneous rage. I’m not proud to admit it, but there is a short list of seemingly inconsequential events that give me blind, piercing rage. It’s an embarrassing list that I cannot fully share, but here’s a few: When a single key on my keyboard is slowly failing. When you chew with your mouth… more

May 28, 2013 14 Comments

Titles are Toxic

You have a job and it has a name. A name of convenience. It exists so that when someone asks, “What do you do?” you can simply say, “I am a software engineer” rather than saying, “Well, there are these things called computers and computers run software and humans write software and I am one… more

March 19, 2013 37 Comments

The Process Myth

On the list of ways to generate a guaranteed negative knee-jerk reaction from an engineer, I offer a single word: process. Folks, in order to make sure that we hit our ship date, we have a new bug triage… process. You’ve heard the groans and you’ve seen the rolling eyeballs and made the fair assumption… more

January 1, 2013 19 Comments

You’re Not Listening

I don’t want to write this article. I believe there is no way to provide advice about listening without sounding like a touchy-feely douchebag. But I’m going to write this article because there is a good chance that your definition of listening is incomplete, and what I consider to be obvious and simple ways to… more

August 28, 2012 20 Comments