A failure worth doing; issue 15 of Beyond Writing Code
Us vs. them thinking and why some failures are worth experiencing.
Posts in communication
Did I chat with an AI?
I try to avoid posting about AI, but today I found myself wondering: did I just chat with an AI? Trying to decide which of several products to purchase online, I used the company’s website chatbot, wh...
Technical or not, issue 12 of Beyond Writing Code
Are people "technical"? Labels matter, and kindness matters more.
I attended networking events so you don't have to
People say that networking is important. Does this mean you should attend networking events? I say no. Not that these events are completely useless, but I think there are better ways of building your ...
Hotdogs and scrum
In the midst of a recent LinkedIn discussion about whether scrum is a methodology or a framework, I considered a few questions: Geeks are often quite opinionated. I am sure some of my friends could ha...
How can I help?
My first full time job after college was as an administrative assistant at a health insurance company. I did a lot of what you might expect: directing incoming phone calls, keeping our office supply c...
Language learning
My Romanian coworkers were impressed when I started learning Romanian. I’d say “bună” (hello), complete with the ă, and they’d be shocked by even this basic effort. What confused me, though: several o...
Have you been giving your employer money?
I suspect most people would not spontaneously and voluntarily give back part of their salary to their employer. I don’t mean donating to a cause, or chipping in for board games to play at lunch. I mea...
Lessons from Uncle Sidney
Uncle Sidney was notorious. I think even he’d agree to that. He might indeed be someone’s uncle, but he isn’t my uncle or the uncle of anyone I know. He was the main instructor for one of the programm...
The dangers of "who" and "why": post-incident reviews
Five valuable lessons, including one that really threw me for a loop when I read it.
Three reasons not to bring hostility
I enjoy challenges to my “conventional wisdom” about how developers and dev teams work. We can improve. “The way we’ve always done it” isn’t necessarily the best way. Luckily, I have found people on s...
Why people do what they do
I’m a huge fan of the Enterprise Technology Leadership Summit. Disney’s Jason Cox is a fine speaker and storyteller, and my favorite Disney character. His presentation on Creating Digital Magic gave m...
Why Everyone Else Knows More Than You Do, and What To Do About It
The developers you work with know stuff that you don’t, and you know stuff that they don’t. Obvious, right? So why does it seem like everyone else knows more, and you’ll never catch up? Why does it se...
Something's gotta give
You’ve already got a full schedule when the boss asks you to take on a special project. Or maybe an urgent issue just jumped up above everything else you were planning to do this week. Or you’ve got m...