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 […]
“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 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 […]
Being in close quarters, away from your own bed, pillow, clothes, shower, pots and pans – everything that gives you a sense of home and comfort – can be an extremely stressful time that exposes everyone to each other’s worst behavior. Kind of like a normal project getting close to release. There’s so much to do […]
Pattern In the phenomenally successful 7 Habits of Highly Successful People, Steven Covey describes the time management matrix, in which work is classified as important / not-important, and urgent / not-urgent. This gives us the following set of four quadrants: In a nutshell, the point is that effective people spend their time in quadrants 1 and 2 – it can […]
It seems like forever ago that I took on my first team at TripAdvisor – I was working with two junior engineers (both of whom had more experience with the codebase than I did), some tools and forum code, just muddling my way through. Almost five years later and I’m responsible for six teams, with […]
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 […]
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 […]
Dan Dreams of Coding 