Culture
A manager’s primary job is to build trust
While interviewing for my new position at Cozy, I was repeatedly asked what the job of an Engineering Manager is.* By the end of the day, I had decided (for myself, anyway) that the most important job of an Engineering Manager** is building trust. Senior engineers must trust you....
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“Do you expect too much from people?”
Last year, a coworker asked me if perhaps I expect too much from other people. I thought about it a moment and said: No. I do not accept the argument that I’m somehow inherently superior to most others. In fact it is because I know I am not superior that...
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You must manage what you can’t measure
We all know the quote: You can’t manage what you can’t measure. The quote is often incorrectly attributed to W. Edwards Deming. Thank goodness, because that sentiment is absolutely ridiculous, and Deming is one of my heroes. In fact, a more accurate Deming quote is: The most important figures...
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Everyone should take vacation at the same time
Throughout my career I’ve always seen people struggle with taking vacation. People are too wrapped up in what they’re doing. Managers can’t allow critical people to go missing. There are weeks of trepidation and handover and “I don’t know how to fix that” emails. To a large extent, this...
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Hiring your cake and eating it too
When evaluating candidates, I have always been a believer that cultural fit and potential to improve is more important than technical ability. Of course I like to review real code samples and give a programming test, but I rarely ask for whiteboard programming. I am not a master of...
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Should a team be able to abort a sprint?
After my second retrospective on a new project, I unloaded some pretty harsh criticism about what we were building. I felt it was a “solution in search of a problem” and “not high value.” After proposing an alternative and convincing everyone to change direction, our sort-of Product Owner blasted...
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There is no essence of Agile
real agile is: talk to the users directly, know their pain point, address it, repeat. -someone on Twitter who I disagree with In many conversations about Agile, especially as of late, I read something like the above tweet. I don’t know where the idea that Agile can be distilled...
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Adjustable standing desks should be mandatory
At CCP’s Iceland office, everyone’s desk is able to adjust into a sitting or standing position. I don’t know who decided this perk. It must have been a huge expense. Adjustable sit/stand desks are already expensive in the USA, and in Iceland I’m sure they were three to five...
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The myth of the brilliant jerk
Do not tolerate brilliant jerks. The cost to teamwork is too high. – Reed Hastings, Netflix CEO So I was all prepared to write about how much I hate this quote, but Freddy Nager already did. It is thorough and insightful and explains how out of context this quote...
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An Unfoolish Consistency: Introducing PEP8 to a legacy codebase
Consistency with this style guide is important. Consistency within a project is more important. Consistency within one module or function is most important. The EVE source code, being initially developed before PEP8 existed, was based on Microsoft’s C++ style. Mostly this is manifested in UpperCamelCase function and method names,...
