Almost all of the engineers I have worked with have played some role in defining the to-do list of a project. Some engineers are more disciplined, some are laxer. Some like granularity others just want the big picture. Ultimately the team has to have a shared approach. …

Today, I want to share something that I began doing previously and have carried through to my current engineering teams at Nike. I call them fireside chats. They aren’t the typical setup where someone is up on staging fielding questions. They are simply the team getting together early on Monday…

Atomic Habits — Book Review A number of people have recommended James Clear’s Atomic Habits in recent months so I was excited to pick it up. I ripped through it pretty quickly. It’s a great read! Not pretentious. Not condescending. Just a good collection of observations about habits and human behavior. There is a key…

Siri Shortcuts If you have an iPhone or Mac and haven’t given Siri Shortcuts a try, let me show you some simple examples that might spike your interest. This is a deviation from any Ruby or Rust writing, but is a fun deviation. Siri Shortcuts (aka the Shortcuts app) allows you to…

Book Review: Building A Second Brain Do any kind of search for digital note-taking or digital organization and inevitably you are going to run across a reference to Building A Second Brain. The author, Tiago Forte, has written a book describing his thought process and methods for offloading as much as you can to a digital…

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…

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…