The old-timers have it, of course. They started it, built it, went through hell to ship it, stepped up and created something from nothing in the midst of one disaster after another. You bet your ass they feel a part of what they created, feel like part of a special club, know with a justifiable sense […]
Category Archives: Management
I was running late. I needed to get to work and was on my way out the door when I suddenly remembered that I’d forgotten to make lunch. Not a big deal – I usually just slap a PB&J together – but I was already late, bundled up and mentally on my way. It was going to be […]
Back in the day, when I was working in the video game industry, I worked with a designer named Fred. Fred was passionate. He cared deeply about the quality of the product, and wanted desperately to ship a great game. But more than anything, he wanted to get through the next milestone without the game getting cancelled […]
Every company optimizes for something. Sometimes this is an external measure – price, quality, security, customer service, etc. Sometimes it’s internal – hiring, project/risk/change management, and so on. Of course every company wants to do everything perfectly, but when you look at how they make decisions, there’s usually a central organizing theory. At TripAdvisor, the […]
When I started hiring, I used to look for the 10x programmers, the rockstars, the embarrassingly named “ninjas” (I blame you for starting the trend, Srinija). I quickly learned that these were impossible to hire – they looked exactly like every other “good” programmer, until one day you realized that they’d significantly improved performance by rearranging […]
“Two nations; between whom there is no intercourse and no sympathy; who are as ignorant of each other’s habits, thoughts, and feelings, as if they were dwellers in different zones, or inhabitants of different planets; who are formed by a different breeding, are fed by a different food, are ordered by different manners, and are […]
I recently wrote a post about negative feedback, and how useful it was to learn ways in which you could improve. By itself, of course, constant negative feedback would be incredibly depressing. We also need to know when we’re doing well. This sounds trite, and yet it’s the rare manager who consistently gives positive feedback. I remember […]
In a strong engineering organization, there are typically two main technical leadership tracks. Different companies have different names for them, and their responsibilities can sometimes overlap, but for the sake of this discussion let’s call them “leads” and “managers.” The lead is the alpha nerd – this is the engineer who guides the team technically, […]
I had a conversation with a coworker a while back, who asserted that every manager would take out his bad mood on his direct reports. This was said without rancor, challenge, or apology – it was stated as an axiomatic principle, in the same tone of voice that might convey a lack of interest in […]
It’s campus recruiting season again, which means that career fairs will soon be flooded with hopeful companies looking to find the next generation of amazing students to build their paradigm-shattering, game-changing, world-beating visions of glory. Or CRUD database apps. Whichever. This is also the time when people like me write blog posts about how to […]
