Blog

September 10, 2015

Greg Thomas

The Case for Overtime

I’ve read a number of blogs and articles on the horrors of overtime and what it can do to your mind, body and soul. They are all true. Working 16 hour days is a schedule you won’t always be able to keep up. Staying in at lunch to code a few for bugs might give you a crick in the neck and make you moody. Helping someone over that hurdle of how to run the build machine or understand a new feature while your work sits there waiting to be done will probably decrease your “Me” time on this day.

September 7, 2015

Greg Thomas

Forget the Small Stuff

A member of your team has just entered the office, quickly throwing there bag at their desk, omitting their usual morning schedule with their only intent to sit down with you. They are almost out of breath. Without skipping a beat, they whip through a new idea to solve a problem or maybe they show you some code they just wrote that could solve a problem the team is having with the latest builds or maybe they wrote a design spec for a new feature that Product Management missed. And what you focus on… How hastily they have prepared for the

September 5, 2015

Greg Thomas

The Big Computer Reset

Two nights ago we had a big thunderstorm – the power was going in and out the whole time.  It was the first time I can ever remember seeing all the lights in my house dim to their lowest potential and then come all the way back up.  As I watched it happen a few times I thought to myself that this cannot be a good thing.  Doing an on/off would have to a much safer approach to all the electronics in the house. Despite having a surge protector power bar and after all the power being abruptly cut, that

September 4, 2015

Greg Thomas

The Working Uniform

You can pretty much search anywhere to see people either wearing the same thing to work or adopting some kind of uniform that they wear.  The most famous of those being Steve Jobs – I can tell you without looking or knowing the brands – white sneakers, jeans a black top (long sleeved).  I probably missed some specifics, but you get the gist. Thinking about this the last few weeks as I get up every morning, I’ve come to identify that in myself.  I am always most comfortable in a t-shirt, flip-flops and jeans.  They are my purest working clothes

September 2, 2015

Greg Thomas

Years <> Experience

I’m continually blown away by the argument that years = experience. That a developer with a resume of 15 years of projects can have that count as experience. But a developer, with heart, passion and drive that has learned and built more in less than 3 because she has more curiosity for how things work, has gone beyond the projects she works on in the confines of her office to develop her own side-projects and start her own github forks. Ask me which I would choose and I can give you my answer without a second thought – I want the