Start each day with the thought: "if I got fired today do I have what it takes to bridge it through to the next opportunity, and would there be companies out there in need and willing to hire me". If you can't honestly…
In my experience outline.com does a bang up job of getting all that clutter out. I am not in any way affiliated with them and don't even know how they monetize but I hope they stick around for as long as possible.
"Gosh can anything be worse than a cube?" Management: "hold my beer"
I love WFH. It helps that I have been happily married for many years, I have home cooked meals, more family interaction (well when I am working I am working but whatercooler conversations in your own kitchen are great).…
I joke that my career went downhill from when I started. At first I had my own office, with a door, desk, computer desk, bookshelf with books, two chairs in front of my desk for small meetings. Then I had a large, tall…
When I see the phrase "emailing like a CEO" I imagine mainly not asking for opinions or decisions rather making statements of fact or decisions. For example, I got into the habit of not asking for vacation, rather I say…
We may be looking at this the wrong way. It isn't a question of ageism, rather did that person keep up with the evolution of languages and ecosystems? It is OK to be old(er) as long as one has what companies are looking…
I still have my Faber-Castell slide rule, used it in college.
Amen to that. Where I work I see people adding await/async all over the place because "performance". So now when you get exception stack traces they are hard to follow or flat out useless.
Here's what have been working well for me. I wear dress pants (not jeans, not chino - Izod for example), colorful shirts (Nautica are my favorite) - always tucked in, good looking but comfortable shoes (not sneakers). I…
This is software development. We are not professionals, and I sometimes say there is no such thing as "software engineer". I am an engineer by education (EE) and I can tell you software development is a long way from…
In the company's eyes you should be 100% or even more committed. Perception is everything in this case. But you must do it by creating your own reserve space, where you are really 90% (or less) committed while using the…
I learned the hard way to always be prepared to move on. I keep myself current. I actually assume the project will fail and prepare for it. If it succeed that's great news. I never had and probably never will have…
Yes, absolutely do what your boss expects. But one can be a miracle worker just for so long. In reality you are moving your baseline upwards, and the day you stop being a miracle worker you become a slacker.
I do my best to have someone tell me to fix them. Not because I lack initiative, but because I saw too many times well- intentioned developers get in a lot of trouble by "taking the initiative" to make things better, to…
I look it this way: if I were good/smart/eager enough to decide if something is stupid or a waste of time, I may think about becoming the entrepreneur myself. I am not that person. I am a tool. Someone is paying me to…
Oh you learn that "you just don't say things like that". Interviewing is a lot like sales, where you are the product. So it stands to reason that the "truth" is a movable entity. You build the truth your "client" is…
It probably is. I might never know. People use the words "agile" and "scrum" very liberally at least around here.
"They" like to say yes, that we scrum. Practically I have a manager that calls biweekly meetings and hands out work to be done in one or two weeks. Which usually is more than enough, but I manage to get everything done…
I achieved some level of happiness when I managed to go up the earnings ladder (move frequently, move fast) and stop behaving if it was my own business. It is someone else's business, and I am there to do what they ask…
I wonder how global warming / climate change will end up bringing us back to that. It will be even more sweltering, and I can imagine air conditioning restrictions similar to today's watering restrictions.
Parent of a surgeon here. My son's medical school did away with grades altogether - it's pass / fail. They still have to pass the board exams every year.
At one company I interviewed the director of development was wearing bermuda shorts, flip flops and a worn out T shirt. As I looked around, most all employees were in shorts. All work in a common area. When I started…
Unfortunately many management schools of thought still take the 8 hour as gospel. I worked at a company where my manager's words were "I expect 8 solid hours from developers". Well I gave him 8 solid hours of my…
I wish I had. That was my first job out of school, and I developed the UI for commands and reports, all through the BAUDOT-code based terminal. Our field test switch sat on a corner, with some more modern electronic…
Start each day with the thought: "if I got fired today do I have what it takes to bridge it through to the next opportunity, and would there be companies out there in need and willing to hire me". If you can't honestly…
In my experience outline.com does a bang up job of getting all that clutter out. I am not in any way affiliated with them and don't even know how they monetize but I hope they stick around for as long as possible.
"Gosh can anything be worse than a cube?" Management: "hold my beer"
I love WFH. It helps that I have been happily married for many years, I have home cooked meals, more family interaction (well when I am working I am working but whatercooler conversations in your own kitchen are great).…
I joke that my career went downhill from when I started. At first I had my own office, with a door, desk, computer desk, bookshelf with books, two chairs in front of my desk for small meetings. Then I had a large, tall…
When I see the phrase "emailing like a CEO" I imagine mainly not asking for opinions or decisions rather making statements of fact or decisions. For example, I got into the habit of not asking for vacation, rather I say…
We may be looking at this the wrong way. It isn't a question of ageism, rather did that person keep up with the evolution of languages and ecosystems? It is OK to be old(er) as long as one has what companies are looking…
I still have my Faber-Castell slide rule, used it in college.
Amen to that. Where I work I see people adding await/async all over the place because "performance". So now when you get exception stack traces they are hard to follow or flat out useless.
Here's what have been working well for me. I wear dress pants (not jeans, not chino - Izod for example), colorful shirts (Nautica are my favorite) - always tucked in, good looking but comfortable shoes (not sneakers). I…
This is software development. We are not professionals, and I sometimes say there is no such thing as "software engineer". I am an engineer by education (EE) and I can tell you software development is a long way from…
In the company's eyes you should be 100% or even more committed. Perception is everything in this case. But you must do it by creating your own reserve space, where you are really 90% (or less) committed while using the…
I learned the hard way to always be prepared to move on. I keep myself current. I actually assume the project will fail and prepare for it. If it succeed that's great news. I never had and probably never will have…
Yes, absolutely do what your boss expects. But one can be a miracle worker just for so long. In reality you are moving your baseline upwards, and the day you stop being a miracle worker you become a slacker.
I do my best to have someone tell me to fix them. Not because I lack initiative, but because I saw too many times well- intentioned developers get in a lot of trouble by "taking the initiative" to make things better, to…
I look it this way: if I were good/smart/eager enough to decide if something is stupid or a waste of time, I may think about becoming the entrepreneur myself. I am not that person. I am a tool. Someone is paying me to…
Oh you learn that "you just don't say things like that". Interviewing is a lot like sales, where you are the product. So it stands to reason that the "truth" is a movable entity. You build the truth your "client" is…
It probably is. I might never know. People use the words "agile" and "scrum" very liberally at least around here.
"They" like to say yes, that we scrum. Practically I have a manager that calls biweekly meetings and hands out work to be done in one or two weeks. Which usually is more than enough, but I manage to get everything done…
I achieved some level of happiness when I managed to go up the earnings ladder (move frequently, move fast) and stop behaving if it was my own business. It is someone else's business, and I am there to do what they ask…
I wonder how global warming / climate change will end up bringing us back to that. It will be even more sweltering, and I can imagine air conditioning restrictions similar to today's watering restrictions.
Parent of a surgeon here. My son's medical school did away with grades altogether - it's pass / fail. They still have to pass the board exams every year.
At one company I interviewed the director of development was wearing bermuda shorts, flip flops and a worn out T shirt. As I looked around, most all employees were in shorts. All work in a common area. When I started…
Unfortunately many management schools of thought still take the 8 hour as gospel. I worked at a company where my manager's words were "I expect 8 solid hours from developers". Well I gave him 8 solid hours of my…
I wish I had. That was my first job out of school, and I developed the UI for commands and reports, all through the BAUDOT-code based terminal. Our field test switch sat on a corner, with some more modern electronic…