The New Year is an excellent time to tidy. I’ve been sitting on the same browser information structure for years, meaning cruft has been acquired. My initial plan was to describe the current structure and then describe the proposed changes. As I evaluated my current set-up, a slew of apparent inefficiencies showed up, so this… More
The Software Developer’s Career Handbook
I am delighted to announce The Software Developer’s Career Handbook has been published. I call it the Bird Book because, well, there’s a bird on the cover. The Bird Book is the second edition of Being Geek. The absence of the words “being” and “geek” in the title hints that something is up. Reading the… More
The Business 2023
You’ve had a small number of career-defining moments. These are the select few moments in time when the trajectory of your career changed instantly and drastically. I have two buckets of these: ones I expected and ones that completely blindsided me. While the surprise and subsequent scrambling involved in being blindsided are chock full of… More
Ask Questions, Repeat The Hard Parts, and Listen
One of my least favorite moments as a leader, specifically your leader, is when you ask me to make the decision. First, yes, I know it’s my job to make these decisions, especially the complicated and high-risk ones. Second, it’s true I’ve acquired ample experience over the last thirty years, and the chance I can… More
The Quest for Interesting X
The almost immediate challenge with the introduction of the Internet presented was, “How do I find X?” Now, the actual first challenge was, “I wonder if X exists in this new world,” but that’s still “How do I find X?” This quest made search services the killer app of the Internet. AltaVista was a thing… More
Better, Faster, and More
I’m rewriting The Business for the next book. This piece is almost 15 years old, much has changed in negotiating an offer letter, and I have more advice on how to analyze those offers. So much advice that I am idea paralyzed™ trying to rewrite this piece. So, this is just a section of the… More
Prestige Writing
I am a short-form writer. A thousand words or so. Sometimes more, often less. I like to think I like tight prose and succinct thoughts, but I also know I’m impatient and have a short attention span. Over the years, familiar article structures and narrative flows have repeatedly crystallized into familiar templates. The most obvious… More
The Sabotage List
Imposter syndrome. It’s the feeling that pure happenstance or just dumb luck is the reason you’re in this current role. It’s a sense you don’t belong, you aren’t good enough, and – real soon now – everyone is going to see you for who you really are. You might have felt this before, and I’m… More
Ok. So, You Can’t Decide.
Even if you’ve checked your work, asked for all the help, and are moving gingerly, there will be decisions where you can’t decide. You’ve considered and reconsidered your pro/con lists, you’ve had endless debates with informed humans, but you remain mentally paralyzed. I have an observation regarding this paralysis, and then advice. First, the paralysis… More
The Metronome
Tick tock. Morning. Sit down at the desk. Hit the spacebar and wake up the displays. Calendar first. What is happening today, and how do I need to prepare? Any last-minute edits? Conflicts? New meeting additions to the day? Ok, which meetings are unfamiliar? Look at attendees—map names to the organizational chart. Assess political machinations.… More