Category: managing
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Good Process
Every functioning software development team or organization has a process. It might be formal or informal, functional or dysfunctional, chaotic or stable, but their is some way to describe how things get done. I don’t think there is any one best process, but I do think there’s some markers of what makes a good one.…
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Talking Like a Manager
Whatever your challenges are as a manager you are going to need some solid skills in communication to be able to deal with them. As an IC you can sometimes code your way out of problems but when you are a manager you are almost always having to talk or write your way to a…
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My Rule of Meetings
Every meeting which consists only of managers is a bad meeting. Managers might actually be good people but putting them in a room with other managers usually brings out the worst in all of them.
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Do the hard thing more often
When we were developing Uru the game build process was pretty complicated. We had built all of our own tools etc from scratch including 3DSMax plugins to generate game data and we also had a custom asset management system. A lot of complexity had accreted over time to make just creating a stable build of…
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Could vs Will
A long time ago, when I was working at Cyan on Uru we had a visit from a tech guy from the publisher. He was trying to assess where things stood. He interviewed all the devs on my team before talking to me and he then met with me and said. “You are more than…
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Productivity of Software Teams
People love talking about productivity in Software development. So much so that this conversation is probably a key contribution to low productivity. Since Covid, we’ve been asking if remote work is as effective as in office etc. Many of the bigCos are now pushing people to go back into the office. They give all kinds…
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Better Management Through Incompetence
There’s alot of talk on the internet and even on this blog about how to be a better manager. There’s also alot of talk about how to be a better parent. In The Blank Slate Pinker makes the case that being a better parent doesn’t really matter much. He cites research showing peers and genes…
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10 Things your manager should do for you if you are a coder
A friend of mine has been working for a while now as a coder without a manager. Not having a manager seems like fun but really I dont think it is. By not having one you miss out on alot of things they should do for you. First some context. Much of what’s below applies…
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Hiring Programmers
I’ve made both really good and really bad decisions when hiring programmers so even I would take my own advice with a grain of salt. Nevertheless, I thought I’d Jot down a few Ideas about my trials with this. When you are trying to evaluate programmers there are lots of things you might consider. For…