Month: February 2021

Joined At The Hip

Joined At The Hip

By | | Comments 0 Comment

Anyone remember this commercial (and the lead-in to it)?

If the kid is me, the doll is Python. Anywhere I go, it goes too. If I have a problem to solve, it’s the tool I reach for nine times out of ten. We’re like peas in a pod, Python and me.

In all seriousness, though, the comparison is apt. I’m a generalist at heart, and I don’t know of a better general-purpose programming language than Guido van Rossem’s masterpiece. Only recently did I make this association, but it fits.

As a team leader, I aim to be adequate or better with any part of the tech stack, so I can plug myself in wherever I’m needed. But it’s unlikely I’m the best one on my team at any of the tech either (in fact, if I am, the team probably doesn’t have an ideal mix of talent). That’s an awful lot like Python, which is the second-best language at everything:

  • Need a quick one-off script? Bash is a bit faster to write, but Python is pretty easy also.
  • Building microservices? Sure, Go is the new hotness, especially if performance is king. But most of the time Python will do the job just fine.
  • Serverless? Oh yeah, Python is money, even if Node.js might be more popular.
  • Doing data science? The nerds use R, but Python’s a great choice too.
  • Putting together a giant enterprise application in all its OOP glory? Most would reach for Java, but object support in Python is great.
  • Functional programming purist? Haskell is your language. But if you want to dabble, Python will get it done, and provide you more flexibility if you need to violate the paradigm for expediency.

Besides us both being generalists, Python and I are both minimalists. It eschews superfluous bits like delimiters, and you needn’t bother declaring types if you’re in a hurry and the situation doesn’t demand it. I also don’t like clutter, e.g. consider my primary workspace:

I stand about 80% of the time, and the kneeling chair takes care of the rest.

Did I mention Python is really easy to learn? And the community is great? And it’s just plain fun? As far as I’m concerned, Python is the Holy Grail.

P.S. It also has a great name. And that’s not nothing.

It’s The Little Things

It’s The Little Things

By | | Comments 0 Comment

We talk all the time about customer obsession, it’s the first amongst equals of our Leadership Principles. The general idea is that you always imagine the customer is in the room with you when making decisions, and consider their preferences when implementing a feature.

As email got more prevalent (and with it, junk emails), one feature that came along in the spirit of customer obsession was one-click unsubscribe. Me being a person who strives for inbox zero, stopping email subscriptions easily was a welcomed capability. But who knew it could be done even better. Behold, zero-click unsubscribe:

How cool is that? Recognizing that I haven’t interacted with any of their emails or visited their site, they automatically unsubscribed me from their lists. That’s customer obsession in a nutshell.

The really surprising thing about this capability is that it’s surely dirt simple to implement. I bet I could pseudo-code it off the top of my head in one minute. Ready, go!

all_emails = database.get_mailing_list()
for email_address in all_emails:
last_contact = database.get_last_contact(email_address)
if datetime.today() - last_contact > ONE_YEAR:
database.remove(email_address)

See how easy that was? Any marketing email system worth its salt already knows when you click on a link in any of their mailings, so the data is there. Just takes a company thinking more about their customers than the size of their distro.

Like All Good Things

Like All Good Things

By | | Comments 0 Comment

The Morning Paper is wrapping things up, as explained in its final post. A treasure trove of computer science deep dives, it will be missed. But I can certainly relate to the desire to move on, especially when a global pandemic has brought life’s various priorities into sharper focus.

Luckily for all of us there is a rich back catalog of posts that could keep one busy for months. Do check them out. Need a place to start? Here’s my absolute favorite: Applying the Universal Scalability Law to organizations.

It’s A Small World

It’s A Small World

By | | Comments 2 comments

Several weeks ago I recorded a half-hour talk for our big annual kickoff meeting. It turned out to be quite the production, with ring lights and lav mics and a team of people helping me set up and run the recording. Not to mention the time that went into prepping the content and having it peer reviewed and copy edited.

There was a moment amidst the mayhem when I wondered if it was worth it, especially considering all my other responsibilities. I briefly thought about calling it off altogether. But it’s an honor to be selected in the first place, so perseverance was appropriate.

Turns out it has been a singularly rewarding experience hearing positive feedback on the session. Not just from my own team, but from people all around the world. Twelve countries at last count (in order by timezone):

  • Myanmar
  • India
  • United Arab Emirates
  • Israel
  • Sweden
  • Italy
  • Switzerland
  • Germany
  • France
  • England
  • Brazil
  • United States

I happily responded to every email and Slack message, even had a couple quick video chats about it. Pretty darn cool.

Ketchup

Ketchup

By | | Comments 1 comment

I’ve written a couple of posts in the past that provide an outline of my career progression. Today’s update is in that vein, as I’ve taken on a new role as a technical manager, getting back into people management after a few years off from it.

I was chatting yesterday with one of my new team members, and he asked me a pointed question. Paraphrased, “Given your technical background, why would you choose to be a manager?”

On my résumé, I describe myself as having

a keen interest in architecting systems that are secure, scaleable, and cost-effective, and then building the organizations best suited to implement them

And therein I think lies the reason. I’m a builder at heart, to which this blog’s domain name testifies. And building great solutions requires building great organizations, and it’s that latter team construction which is a manager’s primary responsibility. So I think it makes sense that the builder mentality can carry over to people, even if the technologies involved differ.

Here’s a great upcoming year!