When I was about eight years old, I was given my very own tackle box; a classic Plano three-tray box in a nice two-tone, dirt-inspired brown -- Model 6303. At the time, I remember thinking that it was extravagant; too much perhaps for one young man to have at his disposal. The fish wouldn't stand [...]
My son recently participated in an All Star tournament for his Little League. Watching him through the tournament, the confidence he built throughout the regular season was clearly abandoned for feelings of alienation and a general lack of passion. When we feel the pressure of highly capable people around us, it can affect our mindset. [...]
When I first started leading software development teams, I was extremely naive about what it meant to be a manager. My father was a small businessman and lead his company and its employees with an unmistakable authority and command-and-control style. I was naturally influenced by this approach early in my career and applied it to [...]
Imagine you've observed a problem that many people around you experience. Like how, for instance, meaningful home automation is still extremely hard for the everyday home owner to achieve. So, being a smart product manager / programmer / entrepreneur / hacker / designer / innovation-generating-machine, you set out to solve this problem once and for all! [...]
Bob Montgomery was a coworker, friend, and cherished family member to so many of us. But for me, he was also a mentor. He and Janie were responsible for the success of my internship at AMD in the Summer and Fall of 1998 and, as a result, much of my career in software that followed. I don't [...]
For many of us in software of a certain age, making changes to and releasing software has traditionally been a perilous activity. Customers had to be hand-held, release sequences carefully orchestrated, and contingencies planned in case of failure. And so, the best releases were done by the best release engineers (remember that title?)--typically release engineers [...]
When was the last time you worked by yourself for any serious length of time? As one of the perks at my current employer, engineering and product teams are encouraged to work from home on Tuesdays. For me it's the best way to re-energize after the "collaboration fatigue" of a typical week. Yet, alone, there [...]
