Issue 4

Happy Christmas!

This week was a slow one. The most interesting thing happening was George Hotz’s final act on Twitter. A cautionary tale for younger developers and people wanting to build a career in tech. I took some time writing about it. But it’s hypocritical of me to not be honest. A couple of times I too had the same reaction when looking at a codebase for the first time. What the hell am I even looking at? Who did this? They were completely out of their depth. I could have done a much better job. Isn’t this a common sentiment shared by many? I believe it is. The only difference between what I have done in the past and George, is that I would keep my thoughts to myself and a couple of other people. George is sharing this with 170k people. Today I know better. If something is bad, it’s because there’s likely a combination of factors making it so. Tight deadlines, unclear requirements, understaffed team. These are just a few probable causes for something to be bad. What was in the realm of direct influence of the developers when it happened? I wasn’t there, so I will never know.

I also felt that this week I haven’t written as much, or as deeply, as I did in the previous weeks. Am I running out of ideas? Or maybe it was just a lack of time. It might be that I haven’t read enough, to spark new insights. We will see how next week goes.

On side tasks - It’s a tough job to achieve high drive in the right direction. Most of the time we don’t get that from the people we manage. What do we do then?

A quintet of articles - Five articles that I found quite interesting. I am sure you will find something that you fancy.

The lunatics are running the asylum - This was the first post I wrote about George’s endeavours at Twitter.

On Building Trust - I previously talked about trust as the currency of a manager. But I never discussed ways of achieving it.

Humble Pie - This post is also about Geoge Hotz. The first post wasn’t exactly the most constructive piece I could have written about the topic. So I took the time to do so this time around.

Christmas gifts - I spent a few minutes sharing a couple of books that meant something to me. As a gift, a book is always a safe option.

Until next time.