Oct 31, 2022The 3 highest ROI technical skills for software developersIf a skill has a very long lifespan, it’s worth learning, even if it takes a long time to learn. For this list, I’ve chosen technical skills that meet two criteria: Useful across a long timespan (22 years, in my case) Useful frequently (used at least once per week on average over 22 years) I believe these skills will continue to be useful for many more years. If I were…4 min read4 min read
Dec 20, 2017How to metricThis article will teach you how my software engineering teams have learned to cut through the lies and uncover the glorious truth that your metrics are begging to tell you. Metrics exist because humans don’t have the capacity to fully understand how software systems behave. Two reasons for this: 1.)…Metrics8 min readMetrics8 min read
Sep 30, 2016How we do Engineering Peer Feedback at HireVueI am the engineering director at HireVue. We have a great team of high performing, kind, and smart engineers who want to get better. Getting better takes effort, so we designed a feedback system that lets engineers get regular feedback from their peers. The objectives When we started the system, we had…Feedback6 min readFeedback6 min read
Aug 18, 2016Developer Conferences Should be Safe for EveryoneI’ve been a volunteer organizer at the annual UtahJS conference for two years. I do this because I love the Utah developer community, and hey, the wealth[1] and fame[2] don’t hurt either. We strive to create a safe and welcoming environment where every participant can learn, socialize, and grow in…Conference5 min readConference5 min read
Aug 2, 2016More than CodeWhat if I told you that being a great engineer takes a lot more than coding skills? None of the best, most useful, most impactful software products in the world were developed by a single individual. Not a single one. They all came from teams working together. …Software Development2 min readSoftware Development2 min read
Mar 28, 2016Engineering: Science, Economics, CommunicationFor a long time I thought of engineering as the intersection of science and economics. To me, it was that special place where that which is possible through the laws of nature meets that which is economically feasible through the laws of market forces and scarcity, like this: But I’ve…Software Development2 min readSoftware Development2 min read
Mar 28, 2016Fake Rule TransferSometimes developers mistakenly transfer rules from one domain to another. This is particularly true when learning something new. We bring with us all the accumulated knowledge from previous domains. For example, let’s say you are a PHP developer learning JavaScript. Out of habit, you might be inclined to prefix your…Programming4 min readProgramming4 min read
Mar 23, 2016Creating Custom Celery CommandsMy team has a half dozen Celery servers running in production using RabbitMQ and pre-fork. We recently had a need to run some custom code on each of the servers’ master processes. We couldn’t use a regular task for two reasons: Tasks run in the child processes, not the master…Programming1 min readProgramming1 min read
Published inA Digital Scrum Master at Work·Mar 20, 2016Are your standups awesome?Daily standup meeting can really suck. If your standup sucks, there’s a good chance you are doing it wrong. Before throwing out the baby with the bath water, take a moment to assess why you do standup in the first place. In my experience, standup meetings have 3 purposes. I…Agile5 min readAgile5 min read
Published inWe’ve moved to freeCodeCamp.org/news·Dec 31, 2015A developer’s guide to interviewingAlternate title: How to interview a company — Have you ever been in a job interview, and the interviewer looks across the table and says, “do you have any questions?”, and you just stare back and say, “umm, I don’t think so”. …Software Development17 min readSoftware Development17 min read