Every time someone says "that's a technical decision" or asks if you're on the "technical side" or "business side," they're perpetuating one of the most harmful myths in modern workplaces. The word "technical" has become semantically
One day while I was having coffee with a friend of mine, he offhandedly mentioned that he wished there were more good gay romcoms. That there was no reason why the queer audience should have Hallmark-Movie-level romantic stories all over the place, but apparently no one knows how to make
Being disabled is an exercise is redefining capacity on an almost daily basis, and then trying to make sure that expenditures stay below the limits of that capacity. In many respects it resembles my experiences working in the IT industry: unpredictable, inarguable, autocratic. And there is always, always debt dragging
Ideally, what a DevOps implementation looks like is a cross-functional, integrated team of Developers and Administrators who take responsibility from end-to-end on the features and fixes for which they are responsible. The specific developer who pushed the piece of code which is showing up in the error logs is responsible
I was reminded (by Stephen Colbert, of all people) of the commonality and connection between tradgedy and comedy and how finding and celebrating that connection can be a balm in trying times. I used to get up to, and in to, a lot of very sketchy situations when I was
The most expensive part of any business, but especially the software business, is payroll. If you are spending more money on anything else, stop. I'm not talking about Capital Expenditures; but your monthly expenses should be almost entirely devoted to headcount. To be clear, this is a good
I started using computers when I was eight. I built my first computer when I was 14. I got my first job in the Information Technology sector when I was 19. I worked in customer-facing, operational, and on-call roles until I started managing teams full time in 2015. I have
In the beginning was the word, and the word was "code". Wait, let's skip forward so we're not here all day. So, skip knitting, skip weaving, skip the Jacquard Loom, skip the Analytical Society and Babbage, skip Countess Lovelace, skip Sophie Germain and Alan
There are five things you need to have in your toolbox to be a successful manager, especially if you're working in the Tech Industry. Note that these are not the only things you need, but you need at least these five. 1) The ability to listen. This is
And neither is this newsletter! I should probably have mentioned this before the holiday, but I took the Junteenth holday as a 4-day weekend with my wife to cuddle up and relax in the pleasant cool glow of LEDs and animated pixels. We made every effort to avoid the outside
As a general rule, changing the people on your team is exceptionally disruptive. If you're removing someone from the team, either voluntarily or involuntarily, then there's work to cover, budgets to revisit, future planing to revise; it's a bumpy road even at the best
This isn't going into the book, at least not in the current manuscript, but an uptick in reported COVID infections in the wake of the discovery of the NB.1.8.1 strain has pulled me into at least one argument about the long-term effects of COVID infection
My father was a life-long union member, supporter, and organizer. He had a scholar's grasp of history, a teacher's methodology of communicating, and an Irish Catholic's sense of collective movement towards Salvation for all. Of all my teachers and educators, my father was the
There are developers who find great success as founders or leaders or CEOs. But even the hagiographies of their rise to greatness shows that they aren't actually good managers (and often, aren't particularly good developers). Lots of companies are convinced that being a developer is a
Some people like to dress up in special clothes, get together with like-minded individuals, and then spend 90+ minutes running back and forth over a hundred-meter rectangle of grass. Others like to wear scarves and yell at the first people. I confess to not being fit enough to do the
"The default state of technology – any technology from stone axes to modern computers – the default state of technology is 'broken'." --Dr. Don Norman, experiential designer and founder of the Nielsen Norman Group Technology by definition is something that is created and thus must be maintained. The