Do you find yourself easily distracted? Would you like better focus? Here’s a productivity tip for time allocation. I use Gmail for work. If you look at the calendar view, each slot is separated by half-hour chunks. For a typical 9-6 day, there are 18 half-hour slots for a total of 85 slots a week. […]
Career advice for junior engineers – don’t end up like me
For every junior engineer I mentor, I tell them many things. One of them is, “Don’t end up like me.” They’d laugh – “I’ve never heard any engineering manager say that.” I’m serious. Took me ten years of setbacks and dead-ends to grow to where I am. If they don’t like what they see, then […]
Always extend into unknown sectors of code
What do you do if you come across code you haven’t worked on? I’ve been in many situations where ownership of a system is in question. Fixing a bug, documenting a system, or deciding the future direction of a product. My career advice to engineers wishing to grow is if you don’t know who the […]
What do you wish for the team?
What do you wish for your team? When the startup’s future was uncertain, I worked weekends and nights to guarantee the team a safe landing at another company. I remember creating slides, writing technical documentation, and sketching out system diagrams with Draw.io. I worried about everyone. Some had mortgages. Another had a young family. College tuition […]
Feedback for yourself
Would you like to be a better manager? I hope so. I’ve found difficulty receiving actionable feedback to improve. 360s or anonymous mid-quarter surveys might tell you a fraction of the truth. You will never get the complete story how you’re doing as a manager. You’ll get feedback when you leave, after a few years […]
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. […]
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