Using Avro in Ruby At Blue Lava, we’re evolving our monolith to be more event driven. We’re not exactly breaking it up, but we are getting a few things outside of it. We had already put events and pub/sub in place using ActiveSupport::Notifictions. We decided to use events in response…

link: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0BHTXYMZD/ Amazon Summary: Technology companies weren’t the first to experience pivots, growth pain, or mismanagement, but they dominate the conversation today. I’ve always worked for technology companies as a software engineer/manager, whereas my father was an automotive engineer/manager. He and I have discussed in length the similarities and differences…

Lead Positions This may come as a shock, but some engineers don’t want to be promoted. They’re happy being an engineer. They want to focus on code and building, not on leading, or mentoring, or helping define process. I’m speaking from experience. As an engineering manager, I’ve been surprised many times by…

Engineering Team Roadmaps Most roadmaps for engineering teams commit the sin of only including new features and functionality. This does a major disservice to the engineering team. how do you balance engineering wants and needs vs. product demands? how do you get engineers to focus on meeting priorities? should roadmaps include technical investments? …

Reframing Failed Software Projects The word failure comes with a negative connotation, but should it? I’ve been grappling with this question the last few weeks. If an attempt isn’t successful, is it therefore a failure? Is there no middle ground? Does failure imply a boolean? A few years ago, I built an app that…

I spent the better part of two decades as an individual contributor on teams resisting the management career change until I felt I was ready. So, this is a question I can directly relate to. I’ve mentioned this topic before. I’ve seen this come up a lot lately in industry…