Team-Driven Developer A newsletter with tips and tools for building software as a team A quick note before diving in: I'll be skipping an issue for Thanksgiving 🦃 in the next few weeks and then skipping the last issue in December for Christmas 🌲. Onto the issue! Trust is a complicated topic. Some might disagree with that. They might say trust is simple: you trust someone or don’t. Others might think trust is impossible to attain - it’s an ideal, not a real thing. Regardless of what others...
about 2 months ago • 2 min read
Team-Driven Developer A newsletter with tips and tools for building software as a team I came across a wonderful talk this past week from Carol Lee, PhD from the past LeadDev conference. Her talk was centered around some important research she and a fellow scientist, Kristen Foster-Marks, conducted about how developers experience code review anxiety. The TL;DR is that code review anxiety exists among engineers of all levels, and we must develop proper skills to manage it effectively. They...
2 months ago • 3 min read
Team-Driven Developer A newsletter with tips and tools for building software as a team A few weeks ago, I co-authored an article with some friends at Greptile about AI vs. human code reviews. It was a blast working with Greptile’s co-founder, Daksh, on the article, as he brings an insider perspective about the new AI technology helping software developers become increasingly effective at their craft. One of our key points was around something that was likely unexpected to a reader: the idea...
3 months ago • 3 min read
Team-Driven Developer A newsletter with tips and tools for building software as a team Hey! Welcome to another edition of the Team-Drive Developer.I'm trying something different this week: I'm including the entire article in the email instead of asking you to click through my site. Let me know what you think! If you’re a frequent reader of this blog and newsletter, you know I’m a big advocate for two core components for building software: Iterative development (constant refactoring, focused...
3 months ago • 7 min read
Team-Driven Developer A newsletter with tips and tools for building software as a team Software companies love to talk about innovation. Whether they are building a product that will “revolutionize the way teams do X” or plan to “disrupt the market”, there is real value in convincing investors that a company is doing something unique and innovative. You’ll also see this idea on job postings or in advice on how to grow your career. "To get to the next level, you must innovate, challenge the...
3 months ago • 2 min read
Team-Driven Developer A newsletter with tips and tools for building software as a team Many developers are aware of the power of gamification. From video games to board games to even personal hobbies, there is something powerful about creating a competition or structure around leveling up or completing challenges. I’ve been thinking about this recently as I’ve been reading a book called The Power of Moments. It talks about how we miss out on pivotal moments in our lives, careers, and...
4 months ago • 2 min read
Team-Driven Developer A newsletter with tips and tools for building software as a team I returned to work last week from a short vacation. When I logged back in, I quickly saw there had been some problems while I was away. Some code that processes authentication requests was running extremely slow.As I read through the thread, I realized this was code I had worked on😳And for the rest of the week, even though my team had solved the problem quickly and prevented an outage, I kept apologizing...
4 months ago • 2 min read
Team-Driven Developer A newsletter with tips and tools for building software as a team “Does it scale?” This is a frequent and familiar question in the software world these days. In the world of SaaS and the ability for software users to ramp quickly, we all want to make sure our software scales. But beyond just scaling software, I want to consider a different function that also needs to scale: Your engineering team.Scaling your team is non-trivial (probably harder than scaling software!),...
5 months ago • 2 min read
Team-Driven Developer A newsletter with tips and tools for building software as a team There are a lot of growth hacks, tips, and tricks available for software engineers today. And while those hacks and tips are great, there is a key to growth that you can't hack through, and that's getting feedback.Unfortunately, feedback can be difficult to obtain. And you can't wait for feedback that comes once or twice a year during a performance check-in. This week, I'm sharing some of the tactics and...
5 months ago • 2 min read