So a lot of us are at home and adjusting while there is also much uncertainty in what the future holds. There’s a small idea that I want to offer as we get through these changes right now and in your career. Working From Home For everyone working fro...

If great teams deliver great products, what do poor teams deliver? At some point, a team will identify a need to refactor, fix, clean up, re-write, or otherwise undergo a highly-technical bit of rework. Without fail, this will be converted into a wor...

In my previous life as a developer, I would get asked to stay late and work. This happened for only two reasons: There is a production issue. Deadlines Now, I want the projects I work on to succeed. I want the products I build to live up to the hyp...

Team is one of those words that gets thrown around a lot and sadly often means individuals assigned to work in close proximity. Since I specialize in building teams, I have a very different definition. Teams are a collection of folks who have traded...

I have been giving a lot of thought on making the most of the distance I currently have from my clients and teams. One idea that always keeps coming back is around visibility and transparency. It’s easy for people to wonder when there isn’t a call or...

Here’s the situation, you come across some code and you have to start making sense of it. As you read the code you begin to build a mental model of how the pieces work, and then slowly but surely you get enough of it in your head that you see potenti...

Experienced folks, leaders, and new developers share something in common. They fall in love with a specific technology. This favoritism leads to some fairly pointless debate and, at its worst, some poor decisions. Technology Change Is Constant Over t...

Often consultants bring a fantasy of co-located teams to their clients. This is a fantasy because companies have been using remote workforces for the entirety of my career, so thinking that will change is silly. In this particular article, I want to...

At some point, you’ll be interviewing at a company, and you can immediately tell that the interviewer doesn’t want to be there. They might be frustrated or cold, or annoyed. One way or another, your interviewer is unhappy about interviewing you. What...

Early in my career I made a terrible mistake. One that I think many others have made and will continue to make. I ran a remote retrospective with people I didn’t know well enough. I thought I did. I had talked with everyone privately before the retro...