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
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
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
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
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
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
A few years ago I wrote a piece that romanticized the state of the sky falling. The article is not about fixing disasters, it’s about preventing them, but no matter how much you prepare, disasters happen. The romance surrounding disasters is history speaking. When the disaster shows up and you see it, no one but… more
It’s hard to pick a single best work by Joel Spolsky, but if I was forced to, I’d pick The Joel Test. It’s his own, highly irresponsible, sloppy test to rate the quality of software, and when anyone asks me what is wrong with their team I usually start by pointing the questioner at the… more
Management has a set of power words that it’s appropriated as a means of giving it a sense of identity. This list is endless and entertaining. When these words are spoken, they are said in such a way that you are meant to wonder in awe, “What does that mean?” but you don’t ask for… more
Much has been written about employee motivation and retention. It’s written by folks who actively use words like motivation and retention and generally don’t have a clue about the daily necessity of keeping your team professionally content because they’ve either never done the work or have forgotten how it’s done. These are the people who… more