Communication, Leadership & Ethics

How to convince people you’re not there to automate them out of a job

When your job is automation, people sometimes think you're trying to put them out of a job. Here are some of the ways I fight that perception.

AWS re:Invent 2018 - The Vendor POV

I attended AWS re:Invent 2018 as a vendor and it exposed me to a whole new perspective on the conference. Read all about it!

The Infamous Free Slurpee Story - a Tale of Integrity

A story about Slurpees containing a lesson about integrity. Sure, it's an unlikely combination but you have to admit, Slurpees are pretty tasty.

Beware the Interview Feedback Policy

Many companies are instituting policies against interview feedback. You should ask if such a policy exists the next time you interview for a position.

Tips for Cross Cultural Communication with Worldwide Partners

Working globally, I participate in cross cultural communication all the time. I've put together some tips for making this communication more effective.

Differentiate Yourself - Two Quick Lessons From a Bad Electrician

An experience I had with an electrician taught me two important lessons about how to differentiate myself professionally from my peers.

What PowerShell Summit Showed Me

PowerShell Summit was a blast. I learned some great new skills and connected with a ton of folks who are as passionate about technology as I am. But even though PowerShell Summit is a conference about Windows PowerShell, attending it opened my eyes to some other important lessons that apply to everyone in IT.

Worst Practices: Confusing an Estimate with a Target

In software engineering, there is a subtle but significant difference between an estimate and a target. This difference is often overlooked, and can easily lead to conflict that disrupts the progress of a software project. With all of the other potential causes of disruption, software engineers have to eliminate as many risks of this type as possible.

What I Learned from the Pink Mohawk

Never Let the Boss be Surprised

The Ambulance Down in the Valley

A while back, I was discussing some of the nonsensical actions that people take in the software industry with my parents during a visit. my mom told me to look up a poem called The Ambulance Down in the Valley. I wrote it down and forgot about it for months because I was in the middle of the last semester of my Master’s degree. I finally got a chance to look it up, and it really is a beautiful illustration of the strange way we look to solve problems sometimes.

Password Strength is Relative to Attack Algorithm

Passwords are everywhere in our technology laden world. The number of accounts a single person has grows constantly (I sign up for a new web site or service at least once a month). Because of this, it’s of ever-increasing importance to be smart about how you secure your accounts and choose passwords with a high password strength.

Why I Would Not Get a Facebook Phone

The Reposting Epidemic

I’ve been seeing an interesting trend ever since Pinterest has begun to rise in popularity - repost fever. I know this feature has existed in different ways on many social networks, but it seems to me that the usage of repost functionality on these networks has been changing recently.

Microsoft vs. Apple, the Fabricated Rivalry

I spotted this headline today:

Worst Practices: Anti-Social Networking

Pro Tip: If you have a company Twitter account, use it for more than blasting out self-serving advertisements. You are wasting the perfect opportunity to connect with your customers, improve their experience, and address their complaints and concerns!

Who Put This Spam on My Tab?

The next time you receive text message spam, watch out! It’s apparently possible for a third party to add services to your account without your consent. I received a text from “Horoscopegenie Alert” at short code 27140 (the “phone number” that shows on the message). It said I would be charged $9.99 a month and to reply STOP to cancel the subscription.

Worst Practices: Thinking You are Done Learning

In the field of software engineering, you are never done learning. That should probably be one of the first ten rules of the profession.

What Motivates Us

I found this video from the Royal Society for the encouragement of Arts, Manufactures and Commerce (RSA for short) to be very insightful.

Clean Code: A Handbook of Agile Software Craftmanship

Author: Robert C. Martin

Sinking the Titanic

Imagine, for a moment, that you are Poseidon, god of the oceans. The RMS Titanic is sailing in your waters, and you don’t like that. You decide that you want to sink the Titanic and make an example of her for other sailors of the world, so you order your minions to construct a giant iceberg that will crack her hull and sink her.

The State of the Art

There is an enormous discrepancy between our understanding of Software Engineering as it should be practiced and the ways that we actually practice Software Engineering on the job. We know that proper designs and methods can save tens of thousands of dollars down the line, yet we continue to make messes of our systems. Why does this happen?

Buzz words

Having just attended Microsoft's PDC 2008, including the introduction of the new Azure services platform, I don't think I ever want to hear the word "cloud" again. Buzz words like "cloud computing," "extensible services," and many more can be useful but more often than not I think they have a negative impact on developers. These effects can be seen both outside and inside the development department.