My MBA friends often poke fun at business books having one simple concept. The author then pads the content with several hundred pages. I don’t think my friends are wrong about those books. Feels like the old days in college when I had to complete a 2 page essay by midnight and I was always […]
Ernesto with gusto
I used to eat weekly at a restaurant called “Los Cubanos” in downtown San Jose. I remember ordering picadillo for the Tuesday’s specials and if I felt fancy, I’d order the oxtail stew. This restaurant was my first exposure to Cuban food. Unfortunately the restaurant was forced to move when the area was replaced with […]
Crawling through plumbing to glamour
How do you encourage an engineer to work on “uncool” projects? Projects like writing the contents of an Excel spreadsheet into the correct format in the database need to get done. Like checking if the dates are ISO-8601. Doesn’t sound too glamorous. Imagine if you were the engineer explaining the project at a social gathering. […]
Bus factor trends to zero
“We should get our bus factor higher. It’s like 1.” How many times have you heard this? I’ve been in too many meetings ending with a quip about bus factors. If you haven’t heard, bus factor is the number of engineers you can lose before a project stalls. The bus factor on every project starts at […]
Every bug drains one day
Bug pops up. A critical one. How often does this happen to you? I have to stop whatever I’m doing because a customer can’t use the product. I read the bug description on Redmine and think of reasons why the code broke. I eventually reproduce the error and I ask around which developer can fix […]
What do I do if someone on my team gets hit by a bus?
My friend who is also an engineering manager asked me a serious question, “What should I do if one of my guys gets hit by a bus?” I hope that never happens. But most people leave after awhile. Maybe not today or tomorrow. Sometimes there’s an life-changing event you can’t control. Or they don’t […]