Unexplained Career Trajectory
Technical recruiters and their firm are a mixed bag, to say the least. For ever recruiter who listens to their client and submits only qualified, viable candidates, (too) many tech…
Return to Office Insanity Part II
A follow-up to my previous post. Previously my employer emphatically declared a no enforced return-to-office policy, in whatever form, at least as long as the current VP ran engineering. Wednesdays…
Good News, Everyone!
Robot Santa, "Xmas Story", Futurama (1999) In Futurama's Xmas Story, Santa Claus is a robot whom judges (almost) everyone as naughty and attempts to kill them. As Professor Farnsworth explains:…
Over-Architected? Maybe, Maybe Not.
An oft-heard criticism of way-to-many software solutions is that it's over-architected, implying that the design, abstractions, implementation, deployment, whatever is unnecessarily complex, difficult to understand, unmaintainable, unnecessary, wrong. Criticisms often…
Compound Interest on Software
"Compound Interest Street Sign On Wall Street" by investmentzen is licensed under CC BY 2.0. Many articles and posts online show how regular, small, incremental change result in much larger…
Software Engineering Grief
Human beings resist change. This is not personal opinion, it's our defense mechanism against uncertainty. If you narrow your target to software engineers and technologists - whom, in almost all…
Luddite Technologist
Saw this sticker on someone's computer at my local coffee shop and laughed. My life as a confirmed technology nerd is countered by my love of physical books. Unlike my…
Windows IRL #3
from Craig Hettich/The New York Times video Today, the largest IT outage in history hit the Windows operating system when a Crowdstrike patch caused reboots to fail. Catastrophic. While this…
Duct Tape
Today I was called out as my team's duct tape. Intended as a compliment, it's anything but. Culturally, duct tape is vernacular for a fix-anything solution, which is completely justified.…
Candidates Cold-Calling You!
For years, recruiters have cold-contacted me for roles that don't match my background no matter how hard you try to spin it, sometimes so disconnected with reality that a hiring…