It is natural at work to get frustrated and want to complain to someone. But just random complaining is not useful and in fact can frustrate the other person. Here’s some advice on this topic: It’s ok to complain about something, but bring a solution or at least some brainstorming ideas as the next step. […]
I saw a social media post the other day. I wish I could find it, because I don’t want to take credit for this, but someone made a great point about “personal productivity” versus “organizational productivity”. Let’s look at this from a different approach. When you are a staff developer, your focus is on your […]
Looking back over my previous posts, what I’m finding is that I’m sort of repeating myself in a lot of ways. Not necessarily by telling the same anecdotes (although that has happened), but realizing that the stories I share all have the same lessons. This led me to realize that there’s probably just a foundational […]
I’ve found myself lately realizing that the hardest problems to solve on a project are usually not coding challenges. I work with really smart technical developers and I’m very confident that whatever the technical requirement is, they will research and grind and figure out how to make the system meet the technical specification. Because at […]
“Transparency” is a term that is tossed around a lot as a positive thing. I’ve heard many leaders talk about how they believe in transparency and it is core to their values. At a high level, this makes sense. Transparency can provide valuable information to drive better decision making, and also can contribute to a […]
As I’ve mentioned before, I’m a fan of Management by Walking Around. One time, when I was a manager, I was wandering around doing my management thing and I was sitting at a desk with an engineer who was working on a project. As they showed me what they were doing, I realized the solution they […]
I remember one time, I was in the breakroom getting a cup of coffee. The counter seemed kind of dirty so I grabbed a handful of paper towels and wiped the counter down. As I was leaving the breakroom, a cup of coffee in hand, another person passed me entering the now-empty breakroom. I heard […]
Sometimes, you have to work with people that aren’t nice, that are just really, really hard to work with. I try to be self-aware enough to know that it is frequently me. I’m not always an easy person to get along with. I used to be really bad at interrupting people so I got in […]
In the past, I’ve studied and attended training specifically for systems engineering and project management, and in both cases, I was struck by an interesting concept, which is that many of the challenges faced by these two roles and disciplines don’t really have good solutions. This ended up being something I encountered again and again in my roles […]
So I was watching a documentary the other day, it was about some celebrity traveling the world and researching some topic. It was interesting stuff, a legit topic, but there were several moments where this celebrity and their friends, I was thinking, “Man, they just live in a bubble, don’t they? Completely out of touch.” […]
Knuggets of Knowledge 