my thoughts on technology, management and life in general
Focus on early wins (Note: This post is part of a series for new technical leaders that are joining a new company, or taking over a new organization or team; and while written for new CTOs, VPs of Engineering, or Software Managers, could be applied to other technical positions. This is also written largely for [...]
(Note: This post is part of a series for new technical leaders that are joining a new company, or taking over a new organization or team; and while written for new CTOs, VPs of Engineering, or Software Managers, could be applied to other technical positions. This is also written largely for smaller to mid-size teams [...]
As any experienced mobile developer will tell you, it requires 100s of hours to craft a great mobile application. So much of that time is invested in pouring over the myriad details critical to delivering a quality user experience, carefully designing and coding the interactions, workflow and functionality that will blow people’s minds. However, all [...]
Over the last few years since I started paying attention to SEO I have noticed many “developer guides to SEO”. Largely, these guides are written by developers and not SEO experts. At this point, I am neither of those, but since I spent the last few years working for an SEO tools company, I managed [...]
I wrote this post for a good friend who asked me for some questions he could use for interviewing a Systems Engineer. They are also easily adapted for System Administrators and Network Engineers (and there is a pdf of the questions you can print out below if desired). When I think of the great systems [...]
One of the more popular posts on this blog has been the one on how to interview your manager. And one of the questions I am often asked is how technical does a VP engineering, or software development manager need to be if they aren’t writing coding day to day? And moreover how do you [...]
I can’t help myself – but I am super frustrated. Developing for Android sucks compared to iOS. It is more expensive. It takes more time to test, and special case for so many different devices and different capabilities. All the assumptions you get for free with iOS go out the window on Android. This adds up to [...]
Since earlier this summer I have been working on a book chapter for the Architecture of Open Source Applications text book. It is a pretty cool project because there are a lot of great contributors, and all of the profit made from text book sales goes to Amnesty International. My chapter assignment was Distributed Systems, [...]
Once upon a time (and isn’t that how all good stories start)…. I was managing a software team and we were working several initiatives. The way projects were assigned was based on who was available, their skillset, and their developmental goals. This ended up resulting on two developers, let’s call them Mary and Melissa, being [...]
So a few weeks ago one of my friends who is a CTO at a very successful consumer facing startup was talking to me about how they do vendor selection. We were discussing this as my team was pondering an upcoming vendor selection for a new project. It was apparent almost immediately our two companies [...]