Weinberg’s Second Law
If builders constructed buildings the way programmers write software, the first woodpecker that came along would destroy civilization. Gerald Weinberg, an early computer science professor and practitioner, may have made…
Let’s Play Office!
Did you ever play School as a child, perhaps with your sister as a teacher and you and your siblings as the students? Or raided your mother's pantry for canned…
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…
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…
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.…
Daft
Jim Ratcliffe, new minority owner of Manchester United, is making news for expectations for a corporate workplace. First he said the office untidiness a disgrace, especially calling out IT. I've…
Meandering Thoughts #24
My employer recently opened an near-shore office in San Jose, Costa Rica, rapidly growing and not approaching 200 hires. Some had doubts about how well near-shoring works, but to date…
Best. Joke. Ever.
One of Dell's acquisitions was based in Israel, with which my development center was integrating our storage solution. Their technical leaders flew to Minnesota for a week of meetings, typical…
The Impact of Technical Ignorance
I knew a Chief Software Architect from a major financial organization who was an anomaly: he had never developed software professionally. His undergraduate degree is in Accounting and Finance, and…
Return To Office Insanity
March 2020. We anxiously watched COVID spread, first through Asia and then Europe before it really impacted the United States. Second week in March retail businesses started closing and office…