When fixing something small, don’t forget to step back and look at the bigger picture. Does this apply elsewhere? Can we make this better in other parts of our software? What is the impact of deploying this elsewhere? What if as part of this work, we start building a framework that we can keep building on? Fix the immediate problem, don’t get lost in the forest, and plan for the next iteration. You wouldn’t put…
We ask kids to work together to solve problems. We ask kids to play on teams to solve problems. When young adults go get jobs, we ask them to reach out to coworkers for help. When they start their first full-time job, we implore on them to ask questions and bring others into the conversation to resolve issues. Work as a team, be a part of the team and support everyone else. But when it…
It’s getting harder to show your work. What are you going to show when asking a question to a search engine? Your question? What about ChatGPT? Your prompt? Work is important, it matters, but showing what you are working on, and how you are arriving at your answer is changing. The question of how you got to that answer needs to change as well. I tried this, then I tried that, I didn’t agree with…
Ever looked at a project and thought – “This is a gut job”? Take it right down to the bare bones, save nothing, and start all over again, from the foundation up? It’s our first instinct when something is wrong – “Let me rebuild it the way I would do it.” But what we often forget when it comes to the Gut Jobs; The overages (because they will happen). Living through it (because you will…
When the tools you have don’t work, sometimes you need to take on the arduous task of building your own. From there, it becomes a question of whether you’re going to share it with the team and others in its stable form or go the route of sharing how you built it with others (a la Github) or not share it with anyone at all. The first option is pretty safe, people can’t see what…