Search Results: software
the blind side of seniority
…was talking with one of my team leads, a very experienced software engineer. He has architected large systems, worked on large systems, and worked on small ones. We got onto how having a lot of… [more]
What Makes a Senior Engineer Senior, and How Do You Build a Great Team?
…no single part of it. What Does This Have to Do With Software? A long time ago I started keeping character sheets for the people on my team. Not performance reviews. Nothing that went into a system… [more]
What Do Future Engineers Look Like?
…process and organization around the agentic production of software. Two of the four criteria we used no longer have a score of their own. Because the rubric drives your hiring decisions, it is core to… [more]
The Hunt Begins
…Lead Lessons Learned From a Film Producer About Making Software Why Weird Team Names Make Sense Some thoughts inspired by "Toward peer review as a group engagement" Encourage teams to take… [more]
Meet with me!
Come meet with me about software engineering things, career things, business things, or bike things. If the calendar below doesn't work, it doesn't seem to love mobile devices, go here instead [more]
Some Thoughts on Engineering Leaderhip
…leadership before they have learned the day to day work of software engineering. Sometimes it is because none of the more seasoned folks are interested. Sometimes it is to save costs. No matter what… [more]
Last Lectures
…gone. According to one study in 2021, nearly 70% of all software engineers have been at their current job for 2 years or less. This may have changed some since then but probably hasn't changed… [more]
What Makes a Team Lead Great?
…When I was a teenaged in Austin, TX the dominant group of software developers in town were game developers. Game companies paid well, but were notorious for what we would today call death marches.… [more]
Lessons Learned From a Film Producer About Making Software
This last week, I had my leadership team in town for the first time in a while for some planning meetings, and some team building. I am always looking to learn from different disciplines, so I thought… [more]
Why weird team names make sense
…can be extremely useful in organization design, as well as software design. Third, fun names impact team culture positively. I want to just write "yep" here. That doesn't really help the… [more]
Software Engineer vs. Software Developer
What is the difference between a Software Engineer and a Software Developer? Or is there a difference? So I've been building websites and web apps since we used to be called Web Masters. Which is… [more]
Lumio UtahJS Conf 2022
…build strong remote teams and help drive excellence. Sr. Software Engineer We're looking for engineers who love building software, and work well in remote teams. Android Engineer If you're… [more]
2021: Year in Review
…about writing. I think that writing literature and writing software have lots of things in common. They are both written forms of communication, they both involve massive creativity, and they are both… [more]
Encourage teams to take risks
…Maybe don’t let that intern design the core of the software ecosystem all on their own because they are enthusiastic about architecture. But maybe, give them a mentor who can guide them and let… [more]
2020: A year
…exercised my architectural chops, and become a much better software engineer over that time. I'd found strong mentors, and learned a lot about what I was good at. I had started shortly before Inst… [more]
Tech Things I read in 2018
…papers joining is a pretty solid decision. A Philosophy of Software Design by John Ousterhout This one is fine. It has some good stuff. It has some silly stuff. But the discussion about API first… [more]
Quote: Simple. Correct. fast.
When you are faced with these problems, you must seek out the simplest way they can be solved. This may be difficult to do: perhaps the problem is too large, or perhaps you were actually considering… [more]
you’re a journeyman
"The secret is never forgetting that you’re a journeyman actor and that nothing is your final thing, nothing is your greatest thing, nothing is your worst thing. I still consider myself a… [more]
Let's talk about Boot camps
…them the hard way. Over time. If you want to get into software development, and are in a position to do so, get a degree in CS. Make sure you go to a university that has a good mix of practical and… [more]
Language Drift and finding code beautiful
…As I was thinking about this and how it applies to software development, I realized that they arguments we have around code style are essentially this same tribalism. Just manifested in code, which is… [more]
Setting up Speed: Cherokee, Railo and CouchDB on AWS
…up four Amazon Linux AMI instances (go 64 bit, all the software we are dealing with supports it so no reason for 32 bit). Put all of them in the default security group and then create a security group… [more]
Setting up Speed: Cherokee, Railo and CouchDB on AWS
…up four Amazon Linux AMI instances (go 64 bit, all the software we are dealing with supports it so no reason for 32 bit). Put all of them in the default security group and then create a security group… [more]