Having a pile of work, coupled with a fully booked calendar is enough to make you start hyperventilating. After all, you have deliverables that need to be done, and discussions that need to be had. The two are not mutually exclusive, both need to get done. The tendency is push one of the two off. “I need to work, these meetings can wait a week” And then those meetings turn into more work, fires, and…
Not the company merge, but the CODE merge. Minor CODE merges aren’t a problem, but the big ones, the ones we have drifted so far apart on for too long, that we have been afraid to merge back in because “it’s not going to be run anytime soon” – those merges, those are the ones that strike fear into a developer’s heart. The first question a developer will ask is – “how long”? And if…
I live in software where buzzwords abound and I can barely stand them. But – “Bleeding Edge” – this one gets me all the time. What we want to write code that is bleeding off the edge of a knife? Did someone die for our software to compile? Are we attacking Orcs at dawn? When I ship this code do I make a blood sacrifice to the elders of my keyboard? Oh wait, is this…
When you work side-by-side with people, there is a hum and rhythm that helps you organize and deliver your work. It’s not a push, but an ongoing nudge that says – “this is the way to do it” or “this is what we should be working on” – it can manifest as simply leaning your chair back and asking someone for 5 seconds of advice. Right now if you were to lean your chair back,…
Recently, I have spent most of my Friday mornings trying to avoid watching spoilers. It’s not easy when whatever app you open up is blasting you pieces and clips of what you have missed. The projects we work on should be the opposite, when we see a spoiler, we should watch it. We should want to dig in and find the spoiler that is happening before it gets revealed to us (i.e., what is about…