I can’t code all the time. I end up patching code here and there. What I’ve noticed is I can trace programs easily. Explaining why something broke is no problem. Carving up the code base is ok – I can see how things are put together. If I remove myself from the code base for […]
Backend is my darling
I encourage engineers to explore and find new projects to improve the overall system. I began noticing most projects were backend instead of the frontend, which was around 90%. This also meant 9/10 engineers eventually became backend-focused. Most of the fires and outages came from the backend meaning my attention was spent there. I’m also […]
Shadow teacher
My friend has been managing for some time. He assigned an engineer to a project. He was very hands off, and the project took 3 months to complete. He claimed he would’ve been able to finish the feature in a day. I couldn’t resist teasing him about Captain Hindsight (was he really able to code […]
Managing with only your voice
Can you lead a team of 7 other people to show up at 4 AM and not pay them? I’ve only been able to do this in a video game called Guild Wars. Players make their own decision to wake up in the middle of the night to come play with me. I could call […]
Don’t harp on code style when asked for help
An engineer pulls me over to look over his code. He can’t figure out why a method is executing twice, and I immediately blurt out, “Hm.. why are you checking your errors this way with if (err == nil) {} ?”He didn’t ask for my opinion on his code style. He was looking for someone […]
Code dilution
Expect to lose control over every feature you once wrote as an individual contributor. I remember my first feature as a newbie web developer, tracking user queries in the database. As I gained more experience, I created new systems and contributed to about 50% of the code base in about two years. I was responsible […]
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