A number of years back, I saw that my company was going to be facing a particular challenge, and that we could get ahead of it if we took some risks and made some difficult but important changes immediately. If we waited for the crisis, the problem would be that much worse, and it would […]
We completed performance evaluations in January, and one of the conversations I’ve been having with my team members is, “what can you do to be a star in 2017?” It’s an important discussion to have, for a couple of reasons. First off, most people haven’t even considered the question. They have the idea that stardom is some […]
It’s been a couple months since I got back to TripAdvisor, and while in some ways it’s been as comfortable as slipping on an old shoe, my time in startup-land has given me a new perspective, especially with respect to my own role. What, after all, does a middle manager do? I’m not the player/coach I was at […]
Dear readers, I haven’t been entirely straight with you. Three years ago, on the eve of New Years 2014, I started on a diet and exercise regimen – every month I added another rule, until there were over twenty separate restrictions, each infraction punished by a $100 donation to charity. I did this for eighteen months, during which […]
When I left TripAdvisor a year and a half ago, I wasn’t expecting to return. I’d had a great time over the preceding six and a half years, learned a lot, made an impact, and climbed the ladder. I’d worked on a dozen different teams across the Core Product department, finished up with a helping […]
Most people think of networking as something to do when they need a favor – they’re looking for a new job, mentor, advice, etc., so, time to start sending out the emails. This is the worst method, of course – people like to be treated like people, not favor dispensers. Good networkers are always trying to keep up with professional […]
Interviewing is a stressful process. And oddly enough, one of the most stressful times can be after you’ve received an offer. You’re still interviewing, you think the offer’s a good one, but they want an answer in 48 hours, and you still have another week’s worth of interviews lined up. What do you do? It can […]
I was recently giving a friend some advice on how to set up a minimal stack for a starter project, and somewhere along the line realized that my MVP was approaching a dozen different AWS services. Time to stop and start reevaluating life decisions, people. So, I went back to the drawing board, and set up […]
It’s almost inevitable. At some point your boss is going to pull you aside or ask in a meeting, “Can’t you make the team work harder?” Sometimes this is in response to a project that’s slipping, sometimes they just don’t feel that the team “has a sense of urgency.” After all, how committed could they […]
Every engineering hire is a miracle. – Etsy CTO Kellan Elliott-McCrea on the Craft of Hiring Engineers When you’ve reached a certain scale, hiring entry-level engineers becomes a fairly deterministic process – you go to university career fairs, gather resumes, schedule interviews, and hire N members of the graduating class. Yes, it’s a huge oversimplification, and I’ve […]
Dan Dreams of Coding 