Articles for category: Drive

10 months ago

Greg Thomas

Long-Running Jobs

There are jobs that cannot be made to go faster. They can be optimized, they can be tweaked, they can be upgraded. They can have all of these wonderful things done to them, but at some point, they can only go so far, and then what is left for them to do is the job itself. The grinding work. The back and forth. The inputs and outputs. Many years ago, a colleague of mine took a screenshot of a job that ran for over 24 hours (there was probably some room for optimization), but beneath it all he wrote was

10 months ago

Greg Thomas

Make it You

I don’t know why we still ask for Cover Letters, they are pointless. They are boilerplate, now AI-generated letters that are general highlights of your resume. No one reads them, no one wants to read them. When I was interviewing 4 -5 developers a week for weeks on end, I did not care to see their Cover Letter – show me their resume – show me the goods. Today I wrote a cover letter that was short and sweet and sounded most like me. “Hey, I see you need some help with the apps you’ve built, I have experience working

10 months ago

Greg Thomas

Idea Generation

Sometimes I sit down and try to come up with as many ideas as I can. I’ll set a goal that I will not stop until I write down 25 ideas. Then I get stuck at 15. I used to get up, go do something, try to think of more, but then I realized that was forcing the problem. The best way to get more ideas?  Is just to start doing it. Start writing. Start coding. Start drawing. Start working out. Then the floodgates open and the ideas spring forth. You don’t need an Idea Generator, you need and Idea

10 months ago

Greg Thomas

My Bad Writing

AI gets it perfect. My writing is not so much. When I was writing Code Your Way Up, the editor called me the “King of Run-On Sentences”. Not too bad a crown to wear. I won’t be writing with /tone any time soon. And that way, you’ll always be able to know it came from me.

10 months ago

Greg Thomas

Gotta Plan?

A plan can be on a napkin, on post-it notes, a bullet journal, a piece of cardboard, or a ripped piece of wood. Plans on computers are good, but they aren’t great. The plans are not on computers; those are the ones we touch and commit to – each task is an assignment we are giving ourselves, and each time we scratch it off is a measure of achievement. You can’t get there from task apps or project plans. Your plan doesn’t need to be elaborate or understood by anyone else, it just needs to be written down and understood

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