Month: September 2017

Diligence Is For Lazy People

Diligence Is For Lazy People

By | | Comments 0 Comment

I wrote yesterday’s post almost a full day in advance, which hadn’t happened before in the (admittedly short) history of this blog. It felt really nice when my daily 9am writing reminder went off to simply click “Publish” and get on with my day, instead of hitting snooze and hoping I get back to it later.

It brought to mind my sophomore year of college, where I learned the value of discipline. My fiancée was at a school ten hours away, and I had a randomly assigned roommate with whom I had nothing in common (and despite his pedestrian physical appearance managed to have three simultaneous girlfriends for most the year, but that’s a different story). I also had a class schedule that finished by 2pm every day.

Since I had little reason to get back to my lonely little dorm room so early in the day, I got in the habit of hanging out in the library studying until dinner. I quickly discovered that this routine completely freed my evenings and weekends of schoolwork. And that was awesome. I wasted gobs of time playing video games during those hours, and didn’t feel the slightest bit bad about it, because my work was done.

It’s Elementary

It’s Elementary

By | | Comments 0 Comment

There are really only two tasks a company must perform:

  • Make great products
  • Sell them for a profit

Each employee, no matter her job title or role, must contribute in some way to one or both of those two goals. Any other task is only a means to one of these ends; everyone involved does well to remember that.

And yes, I realize strictly speaking products and services are two different things, but for the sake of pith can we consider the latter a type of the former? Thanks.

Two Days In A Row?

Two Days In A Row?

By | | Comments 1 comment

Back in my days working for a large defense contractor, it was understood that as a developer became senior she would get involved in writing proposals. At the time I thought it an odd expectation; shouldn’t developers stick to doing what they do best, i.e. writing code?

But now I see the wisdom in getting engineers more involved in the process of winning new business. For one thing, it forces them to write, which is not a bad thing, even though it isn’t always fun. Secondly, it helps build relationships between engineering and sales, two departments which are often at odds (this is probably worthy of its own post, stay tuned for that). Finally, it gives them insight into the kinds of features customers are asking for, and allows them to be a part of suggesting creative solutions for those features.

So yeah, I’m a proponent of proposal writing. And in a completely unrelated note, I’ve got a big spreadsheet of proposal questions I need to divvy up among the team for responses. Who’s with me?

Z Is The Most Important Letter

Z Is The Most Important Letter

By | | Comments 1 comment

(I’ve been asleep at the wheel for far too long here, time to dive back in with a truckload of mixed metaphors).

Do you get enough sleep? Americans are chronically sleep-deprived, and a body of research is growing that tells us how damaging a lack of rest is to every other area of life (see, for example, this fantastic article). The particularly troublesome aspect is how sneaky the damage can be, manifesting itself in subtle ways over time.

A large part of being a professional software developer is taking care of your meatspace hardware. And that means getting regular sleep. The image of the late-night coding warrior who bangs away at the keyboard until the wee hours of the morning may play well on TV, but it’s false. The most effective engineer is one who rests.