You’ve seen this before, perhaps even lived it. A new person starts at the company, and from day one, she’s on fire. Everything she touches turns to gold: her projects magically complete ahead of schedule, she’s able to pull the thread on long-standing intractable problems until they’re worked out, everyone enjoys working with her, and […]
Category Archives: Management
Learning a language is hard. In addition to grappling with a new grammar, bizarre pronunciations, unfamiliar vocabulary, and in some cases an alien writing system, you also have to build an entirely new set of skills. Chief among these is the ability to memorize massive amounts of completely random data. No matter how smart you […]
A couple of years back, one of my team members wrote a job that caused load on one of our live site databases to spike. When the problem was traced back to him, he laughed, looked into it, and fixed the problem. OK, no biggie, everyone makes mistakes, we knew not to do that again […]
Procrastination is triage with a machete and a blindfold. Hackers are min-maxers. Python is the programming language equivalent of juggling one ball. In order to exceed expectations, you first have to meet expectations. The bottom always eats the top. You have to be nice before you can be mean. With very few exceptions, every single […]
TripAdvisor has been growing ever since I joined almost five years ago. In that time we’ve gone from around 80 to 200 engineers, and occasionally I’ll be asked in an interview whether I’m concerned about how fast we’re growing. The thing is, I’ll reply, there are two ways to scale an engineering organization – fast, […]
I screw up, all the time. Mostly little stuff, but sometimes not. Most of the time I’m letting myself down – not working out when I’d planned, snacking at work, staying up later than I should because I’m surfing the internet (do people even call it that anymore?). Nothing, though, equals the gut-churning feeling of […]
Dear _____, Welcome to the team! We’re very excited that you’re finally here. Here’s your desk, your MacBook Pro, your Linux workstation, monitor, etc. etc. Of course, get whatever keyboard you want (this one is surprisingly popular), and let me know if you need any other equipment. Most people use Eclipse, but feel free to […]
A Tale of Two Cities A couple of years ago, I got the dreaded phone call. I left work, packed up my family, and drove down to Philadelphia to say goodbye to my dad. As we drew close to the city and my mobile phone’s battery hit single digits, we randomly chose a hotel near […]
Growing up, I always imagined that there would come a time when, suddenly, I would be an adult. When I would look like the adults around me, talk like them, act like them, and feel like I imagined they felt. Childhood stretched into adolescence, I left for college, lived abroad, took on different workplace responsibilities, […]
The following are concepts from psychology that are important for you to understand. They form a key foundation for understanding why people do the things they do, particularly in extremis. All of these phenomena relate specifically to decision-making, will power, and reacting under intense pressure – most are also common experiences, which is why it’s […]
Dan Dreams of Coding 