This past week I was pair programming. We had to implement a service object that deletes a model. We actually did it pretty fast and well. …

Having goals is very important to make sure we’re productive and delivering value. How to know how much value we’re adding? Having goals means that we can focus and see the road ahead. A nice test we can do the assess the healthiness of our goals is to ask on one-on-ones the following: What are you goals for…

Having a continuous learning mindset is very important. To reap the most benefits we should make a plan and have goals on what to learn. Time bound goals Wanting to learn new things or accomplish something without a deadline may end up being wishful thinking. If we set a date and a goal…

Usually we know RFCs from IETF. It’s that document that for example starts to present the HTML spec. But on this article I’m talking about RFCs (request for comments) in a broader sense. Like a tool that can be used by product/engineering teams to better plan and be productive. A…

Getting the best out of my team is one of my responsibilities. For that I need personal time with each teammate. But taking the most out of these sessions can be very hard. So I started to build a framework to help me. I focus my 1on1s on leveling up…

Being on call can be daunting. Anything can happen in production and we may be all alone and completely out of our comfort zone dealing with a problem we have no clues about, and with the pressure of having the app down and impacting the business. Introduction There is no replacement…

Having a team that is aligned on a set of core values is very important to have a healthy and productive environment. Our actions define what we value Let me share a typical parenting concern: parents want their children to be polite. Children should say please and thank you. It would go like this: Child: Daddy…

I see productivity as value added per unit of time. There are many factors that impact our personal productivity and at the end of the day we’re always part of something bigger, like a team and a company. Productivity challenge There’s a challenge I like to make to my mentees from time…

We leave our comfort zone when we get that anxious feeling in our chest and we are conscious that we’re not in control, and that something may go wrong. Why is this so important? Leaving our comfort zone makes us grow. It can be about having new responsibilities, doing something we’ve never done before, touching…