And you are here why?

You know how, when you turn on the tap, the water initially comes out all nice and smooth and neat and transparent? And then as the flow increases, things start going a little wonky? This is the difference between Laminar  and Turbulent  flow, between water that is coming out neatly, all lined up, and in layers, vs water that is irregular, chaotic, and mixing with itself all over the place. And yeah, there is very definitely an analogy to be made with organizations here. Take Laminar flow. Smooth, well-running, oiled, process-oriented, "everything in place" - nice adjectives to associate with your organization, right? It makes sense after all, the last thing you want is chaos all over the place, with stuff constantly breaking, nobody knowing what's going on, seventeen different ways of doing things, and so on. And I'm not here to disagree with this - you actually  do  want these characteristics in most (if not all!) of your internal systems, processes, and services....

Many many   many   years ago - during the DotCom era - I was at a company that unicorn-ed overnight. Mind you, before the craziness, we were a   tiny  company, a handful of people at that. But then - DotCom bubble, websites, and   BOOM! , we were growing like mad. It was pretty awesome, I have to tell ya 🤗 At the time, I was young, full of beans, and pretty certain that the world revolved around me. And the hyper-growth certainly only served to accentuate this - after all, it was obvious that I had something to do with all of our success, right? Somewhere along the way, we brought in a couple of people who were, well, capable of doing what I was doing. And, what’s worse, they had been doing it for a lot longer, and at a much larger scale, than I was. Thing is, I  knew  that I was better, stronger, faster than them, I just needed some way of showing everybody that I was all that and a bag of chips. And I needed to do it  right damn now  becau...

It’s a pretty nifty saying, isn’t it? Unfortunately it only works for when You don’t understand how it works, and/or You’ve got too many other things to worry about. The problem, of course, is that  if you don’t understand how it works, how do you know it’s not broken?  Murphy’s law being what it is, you know that the break will reveal itself at the single most inopportune time, right? Ok, that’s not actually fair to Murphy. Broken parts tend to fail under stress, and fail disastrously at that. And stressful situations are typically the situations in which you need the largest amount of cognitive bandwidth to deal with the ongoing chaos, and the last thing you need is something (critical!) rupturing on you. So yeah,  of course , the break will reveal itself at the worst possible time. And that is kinda the point he re - if you don’t understand the mechanism, saying “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it” ‘cos it  seems  to work is, quite possibly, the worst possible t...

What actually matters in your organization - the People? Or the Process?  OK, that's a bit of a trick question, right?   I mean, of course  the people matter, because you're all People Persons, and y'all care about your peoples, and y'all want to do The Right Thing, etc. etc. But, and this is one of those things that is kinda hard to face, is that actually true ? After all, there are very few companies out there that basically come right out and say "Yeah, we don't care about our employees". Instead, what you'll find is any number of declarations along the lines of  • Our employees are our most important assets • We foster personal development • We are honest with each other, and don't play politics etc. If anything, the more sociopathic the organization, the more likely that their ostensible values are the exact opposite (probably thanks to some very judicious word-smithing courtesy of their Marketing/PR wings 🙄) And that very sociopathy is what ...

Ever been a Systems Administrator? I have (first job I ever had!), and I have to tell ya, it’s a pretty thankless gig. I mean yes, there is the satisfaction of a job well done, the joy of knowing that everything is up and working to spec, etc., but, behind all of this, you are left with the knowledge that  Nobody Cares Till It Breaks  😔. Mind you, it’s not that they don’t care at all. It’s more like, from their perspective, “It’s Working” is normalcy, steady-state, the way things should be. You don’t get into a Toyota Camry, and say to yourself “ Hmm, I wonder whether the engine-block will fall out of the car on the way to work ”. Engine-blocks remaining in the car is the default state of existence, and if one  does  happen to fall out of the car, then hey, it’s definitely Bizarro-City! And that, my friends, is what SysAdmins — and software engineers in general — deal with all the time. As far as users are concerned, systems are Toyota Camrys, and are supposed...

What does “ Professional Management ” mean to you? It’s not an idle question, because the answer can have significant impact on your workplace environment. Think about it this way — if your company has had any degree of success, then, at some point, it’s probably going to bring in a “grownup” to deal with the inevitable issues around growth. These may be current issues (“ we need to scale our sales and marketing efforts ”), or upcoming ones (“ we’ll need a *real* customer support organization ”), but regardless, you’ll need to bring in someone who has learned from their mistakes elsewhere  . In this situation, there are typically two different approaches that can get taken here. You can bring in someone who has cut their teeth in  StartupLand, and has experience growing small companies into larger ones, and can do the same for you. Or, you can bring in someone from  EnterpriseWorld , who has seen how things work at scale, and can apply those lessons to your organiza...

/via http://turnoff.us/ You know how, when you go on vacation, it takes you almost an entire week to just unwind? How that second week is so much better than the first one, and how you spend it  actually having fun , instead of stressing about all those 47 things that might be going on at work? Well, weekends are like that too, in short form. If you don’t take the time to actually chill over the weekend, you’ll enter the next week with a bunch of pre-existing cognitive load. Which’ll just cycle into greater stress over the week, which cycles into even greater cognitive load the following week, etc. The bottom line — take the time off over the weekend. Don’t think about work. Try not to stress about that bug. Yes it’s not going anywhere, but then again, a clear mind will help immeasurably… And yes, this only applies if you have agency. Then again, if you do have agency, make sure that your team does this too!

The — truly — sad part is that I’ve seen pretty much all of these applied at some point or the other. It is actually particularly prevalent in small/lean/agile/rapidly-growing companies who bring in “professional management” to “take them to the next level” (scare quotes intentional). You see — in enterprises the above “professionals” tend to act as checks&balances on each other, cancelling out their own worst impulses.  However , when they are provided the unfettered power of a small company, well, all bets are off. Oh, they  might do good, but more likely, you end up with some significant subset of the above stupidity…

Hang out in the world of Software Development for pretty much any length of time, and you’re sure to hit a  DeathMarch  (•). You know, the kind that goes, “WE HAVE 17 DAYS TO RELEASE ALL HANDS OF DECK LATE NIGHTS MOAR COFFEE …”. Oh, there might ben occasional “justified” one — I recall an instance when a Very Important Client basically told us to add a feature within the month, or they’d switch, and switching meant that we’d be out of business. Result — lots of pain and suffering on our part, but it was that, or around 45 people being out of jobs. (And yes, we did, eventually, manage to rebalance our clients so that this wouldn’t happen again…) That said, most of them tend to be due to  some  form of screwup in the development process — be it requirements, expectations, or whatever. However,  there are those organizations (quite prevalent in #TechBro culture), where late nights are a way of life. Beware these! In particular, look out for two specifi...

“ When you live on the shoreline, you can forget that there are people out there who don’t even know the ocean exists ”  —  Me Remember when you started in the world of Software Development (or, frankly, any field whatsoever)? How wide open the vistas were, how challenging the problems were, and  how much you didn’t know? And how, years later, the vistas are  still  just as wide open, the problems are just as challenging as they used to be, and you’ve realized that, if anything,  there is even more  that you don’t know? (•) The thing is, it’s not that you haven’t learned anything. The more in depth you get into a field, the more nuance you discover, the more weird/fascinating edge cases you find, and the more complexity you discover when you pull back the curtains.  Edge Cases  and  Nuance  essentially become the cornerstone of your existence, to the point where most of your discussion with your peers revolve around them. And the...

You’ve probably seen some variant of this diagram, right? It’s really quite an interesting blend of cynicism and pragmatism. What you have is 1.  Where Marketing Meets Engineering : The nice folks in Marketing have looked at everything that the Market asks for — or they have seeded the Market with . They then match that up against the universe of everything that Engineering could ever deliver (“ Rollerblades. With energy harvesting brakes that charge your phone ”) 2.  Where Revenue Requirements Meet Marketing : So yeah, the company actually has to make money, right? Which means it actually needs to sell stuff. So the happy folks in sales look at their sales targets, and match that up against what the Market is asking for (“ Rollerblades with propellers! That can fly! People would actually pay $100K for them! And if I sell 10 of them a year I make Quota Club! ”) 3.  Where Engineering Meets Revenue Requirements : And finally, the engineering team should really ...