With each episode of The Important Thing, I find a smart person on the planet and we talk about one thing… usually. In the second episode, I am excited to be joined by my fellow Guardian John Siracusa to discuss the video game Destiny. Proudest moments, total time wasted, and the reality of the Hunter… More
Rainbows and Unicorns
Peggle is a casual game developed by Popcap. Originally released in 2007, the game is memorable because of it’s absolutely over the top level finishing sequence. In an explosion of rainbows, fireworks, unicorns, and Beethoven’s Ode to Joy, you are generously emotionally rewarded when you finish a level. As a friend commented at the time,… More
The Tinker List
Tinkering is a deceptively high-value activity. You don’t usually allocate much time to tinkering because the obvious value of tinkering is low. You don’t start tinkering with a goal in mind; you start with pure curiosity. I’ve heard about this thing, but I’ve never used it. How does this thing work? I’ve always wanted to… More
Debugging Westworld
I inherited Eli’s code. He’d left for a start-up, and he’d written the import/export code for our application half done. He’d left in a hurry which meant I got a sixty-minute whiteboard session where he explained where he was at and where he was planning on going with his code. The whiteboard was pleasantly covered… More
Bear: An Elegant Combination of Design, Whimsy, and Voice.
Without fail, when you tell me about a new productivity system, editor, or typeface, I will drop everything I am doing and give your new productivity system, editor, or typeface a whirl. This happens weekly. It’s a problem. The majority of these excursions are brief and can be summarized thusly: Install the thing. Use the… More
Five Leadership Hacks
MIT has a storied history regarding hacking where the act is viewed as a “clever, benign, and ethical prank or practical joke” at the University. Hack is also defined as the act of breaking into computers or computer networks. My definition is a combination of both. To me, a hack is a clever or unexpectedly… More
Gossip, Rumors, and Lies
Everyone is just… sitting there. Six of you. All managers who report up to Evan, your boss, who decided two weeks ago that “it’s probably a good idea for this leadership team to get together on a regular basis and talk about what is up.” He dropped an agenda-less, sixty-minute recurring meeting on everyone’s calendar… More
How to Recruit
From a recruiting perspective, the best engineering manager I’ve worked with established her reputation with two hires. It went like this: ME: “We need to build an iOS team, and while we have talented engineers, we don’t have time to train the current team on iOS, it’ll be faster to hire.” HER: “Great, who should… More
The Situation
Pressure’s on. I can tell from the silence in the meeting that something is up. There is no how’s-your-weekend chat-chit and everyone slowly looks at each other wondering about the source of the suspense. I write the agenda on the whiteboard knowing that we’re likely not doing anything on this agenda because…. … there’s a… More
The Cave Essentials
My favorite feature of my home office is the paint on the walls. It’s blood red. I’m talking deep scarlet burgundy. The ceiling is a single solid red, but the walls are a macabre mix of every horror film red on top of a slightly textured wall. When people walk in the office, it’s this… More