Articles for category: Initiative

9 months ago

Greg Thomas

Make it You

I don’t know why we still ask for Cover Letters, they are pointless. They are boilerplate, now AI-generated letters that are general highlights of your resume. No one reads them, no one wants to read them. When I was interviewing 4 -5 developers a week for weeks on end, I did not care to see their Cover Letter – show me their resume – show me the goods. Today I wrote a cover letter that was short and sweet and sounded most like me. “Hey, I see you need some help with the apps you’ve built, I have experience working

9 months ago

Greg Thomas

Idea Generation

Sometimes I sit down and try to come up with as many ideas as I can. I’ll set a goal that I will not stop until I write down 25 ideas. Then I get stuck at 15. I used to get up, go do something, try to think of more, but then I realized that was forcing the problem. The best way to get more ideas?  Is just to start doing it. Start writing. Start coding. Start drawing. Start working out. Then the floodgates open and the ideas spring forth. You don’t need an Idea Generator, you need and Idea

9 months ago

Greg Thomas

Taking the Lead

There is a shift that happens internally when you take the lead. You’re no longer sitting on the sidelines complaining. You’re no longer putting your hand up in meetings to have your say. You’re no longer asking for permission. You’re taking the reins, you’re mobilizing the team, you’re moving forward. You’re taking the Lead.

9 months ago

Greg Thomas

Gotta Plan?

A plan can be on a napkin, on post-it notes, a bullet journal, a piece of cardboard, or a ripped piece of wood. Plans on computers are good, but they aren’t great. The plans are not on computers; those are the ones we touch and commit to – each task is an assignment we are giving ourselves, and each time we scratch it off is a measure of achievement. You can’t get there from task apps or project plans. Your plan doesn’t need to be elaborate or understood by anyone else, it just needs to be written down and understood

9 months ago

Greg Thomas

AI’s Got Nothing on My Comments

Reading the comments of those who came before me and writing my own comments in moments of frustration have always been the greatest outlets for any developer. Remember those times where you checked in code 7x in 15 minutes, thinking this was the LAST fix, but it wasn’t? Those comments were golden. Or when you finished a mammoth task and committed it to main and wrote “Here goes nothing?” Or maybe it was as single word on a bug that stumped everyone, and all you wrote was “Believe”. AI will probably not have as many colourful comments as we do.

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