Let’s also set aside the question of trade-offs for the moment, except to say, trade-offs are the very heart of engineering and engineering leadership. Software as a medium is so malleable that functionally anything can be made to work. Any language, architecture, approach, style, process, etc can be made to work given sufficient effort. Meaning we find ourselves not asked to choose between right and wrong answers, but between trade-offs.
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If your team is producing defective code, consider that it may not be because they all suck at their jobs. It’s probably because the environment isn’t allowing them to produce quality software.
In my time observing managers, one observation seems to repeat again and again: good managers write well, and bad managers write poorly. In fact, the best managers I’ve ever had were not just good writers, they were terrific. And the worst managers I’ve ever had were not just bad writers, they were uncommonly shoddy.
Today I will share some of the software engineering soft skills I have learned from my first 10 years on Google Chrome, where I am a Senior Staff Engineering...
When I came out as trans and started seeking medical care, I worked at a large employer that directly paid for the medical costs of its employees and dictated how their insurance networks process claims. I had the benefits I needed because other trans people fought for them and the company could unilaterally choose to provide them. Startups don’t have this luxury and are at the whims of insurance companies to keep the cost of hiring and retaining employees manageable. Meanwhile, insu...
Managing teams has taught me a lot about my own behaviors and motivations. For example, I overworked for a long time. This left me continually teetering on the brink of burnout, and I had no energy left to absorb the typical sorts of organizational changes that happen at any company. Despite doing good work, I handled change poorly, and I picked up the reputation for being difficult to manage.
I’d like to say that I learned from my mistakes directly, but the honest version is that I ...
What does it mean when we say that developers spend most of their time figuring the system out?
Why is it important?
And how else could we look at this problem?
You probably need to do fewer things right now. Prioritization, the other definition There’s two loose definitions of prioritization. Prioritization(1): Ordering a todo list. You make a giant list of things you could do, things you should do, things you’d like to do… and then you put a unique number...
As a Director of Engineering, I have monthly 1:1s with all of my direct reports. A 1:1 (one-on-one) is a recurring meeting with no set agenda between a manager and one of their reports. The internet is full of valuable insight into how to run them from my perspective, (ex. The Update, The Vent, and The Disaster) but somewhat more limited in advice on how to make the most of them if you’re on the other side of the table.