Blog

April 21, 2017

Greg Thomas

You Don’t Need to be First

First to finish your code. First to tweet. First to identify the problem. First to break the build. First to complete your tasks. First to volunteer. First to order. And simply because you are not first, does not mean your opinion, your idea and your suggestions are not welcome.  In fact they are probably more welcome and needed at a time when not everybody in the room agrees with what is being discussed.  Or perhaps where a different perspective on a problem is needed to ensure that people are getting the information they need.  And even to ensure that what

April 20, 2017

Greg Thomas

The Primary Pain Point

You can’t deploy to Production because you didn’t fill out these forms. You can’t use this library because it goes against our standards. You can’t change that code because we don’t know what impact it will have. Some sample issues you probably hit as a developer that reveal themselves to be the problem. But they aren’t the problem, they are the symptoms. And you won’t always recognize them as the symptoms and not the primary pain point until you’ve gone through the fire a few times, taken a step back thereafter and looked at what the real problem was from

April 19, 2017

Greg Thomas

Write Software is the Opposite of Running

Here’s how. When we Start Software – We can’t wait to begin, the project is all new and shiny and full of so many possibilities. Running – Getting up is a pain, we know it’s good for us, we know we should do it, but it’s so hard to get going. In the Middle Software – Things have become muddled, there is so much work to do, we’re not sure how it’s going to get done, but we keep on plowing through. Running – The end seems so far away, we have a stitch in our side, but we’re not

April 18, 2017

Greg Thomas

LinkedIn Automation Gone Bad

LinkedIn is a great tool for meeting people in your field of expertise or finding those with similar interests that you might share. But where LinkedIn has an inadvertent habit of going bad is where it has started to provide stock responses to invites. “Congrats on the new Job” “Not Interested” “Thank you” The intent is there to make our interactions faster to process so we can continue on the line to more, more, more but the quality is decreasing. Prompt me to congrats a colleague on their promotion but leave the content to me so I can write something personal they will appreciate it.

April 17, 2017

Greg Thomas

Breaking the Cycle

Things are going rough, not getting better and you’re not sure where the end in sight is. You don’t feel driven, your motivation is in the tank, you wake-up and the first thing you do is grimace at what the day has to offer. You’re waiting for someone to realize what level of despair you’re in and charge forward to help you and pull you out of it. Only problem is you’re too good at hiding it, I mean we’re talking Ninja-mode stealth tactics where no one can see that things aren’t going well. You’re on your own and you