Frankly, the idea that originated this blog post is not mine. It has all started with some observation (unfortunately, I can't recall the author, but maybe some of you, readers, will help me with that, for the sake of correct attribution) made in one of the heated Internet discus … | Continue reading
I frequently get questions about my opinion on the future of computing. Can anyone threaten the position of (current) hyper-scalers? Didn't the progress of computing (from a technological standpoint) become predictable and ... boring? Aren't the times of exciting breakthroughs ov … | Continue reading
Working in many different environments provided me a good perspective on what scaling models are applied by different companies. Today I'd like to spend a bunch of keystrokes on one of the worst scaling models I've ever encountered. I call it: Scaling by bubbling the problems out … | Continue reading
Last week I introduced you to Inteligo (online banking experience straight from 2001) and presented its brief story (... of permanent stagnation). Now we can smoothly transition into comparing it with "modern banking customer experience" (the one you know from any bank you're usi … | Continue reading
How can one recognize whether a product company has a chance to be truly successful, or well, it's doomed for a somewhat vegetative existence? If I had the decent answer to that problem, I'd probably be crazy rich already - so the fact is: I don't. But I think I | Continue reading
I've bought another mechanical keyboard (technically - I've backed the Kickstarter campaign). Feel free to call me an addict - I don't mind. It's my 4th and all three that I already have work well until now, so I have no valid reason to complain about them. Why waste money | Continue reading
Sometimes you encounter a striking figure of speech, comparison or just a metaphor that illustrates some concept in a much better way than anything you knew until now. It's so good you can't let it get unnoticed. In my case, it happened e.g. when I've learned to think about | Continue reading
Categorization, classification, segmentation - we, human beings, love labeling things and separating them into buckets. I am not an exception, and as someone who builds & develops engineering teams, I have a habit of classifying ... engineers. Of course, there are many ways o … | Continue reading
(*) in software development (**) during almost 20 years of professional journey Career development ain't easy. There's no single path - equally right for everyone. It's highly contextual, dependent on individual strengths, advantages ... and aspirations. And of course, there's th … | Continue reading
Have you noticed how easy it is ... ... to sabotage an idea/initiative? By inventing countless "special cases to consider" (of the negligible meaning) and potential weak spots (to prove that the solution ain't perfect). By triggering more and more "what-about" side-subtopics and … | Continue reading
I bought a bicycle a few months ago. Nothing really extravagant, it cost less than 700 EUR - which is enough to acquire solid two wheels and a bit of proper equipment (full aluminum frame, Shimano Sora groupset, hydraulic disc brakes, etc.). I didn't own a bicycle for years - | Continue reading
Pros and cons of both product-oriented and project-oriented development are well known, but some companies try to mix both paradigms, apparently to get the best of both worlds. How does it look alike in practice? Does it make sense? What are the drawbacks? Let's start with the ba … | Continue reading
Sometimes you encounter a striking figure of speech, comparison or just a metaphor that illustrates some concept in a much better way than anything you knew until now. It's so good you can't let it get unnoticed. In my case, it happened e.g. when I've learned to think about | Continue reading
People are super-creative when it comes to using tools - in a good and ... not-so-good sense. Sometimes they dig out incredible new scenarios the tool's creators never thought about, but sometimes they twist, exploit and spoil good intentions for the sake of their personal conven … | Continue reading
(no, this is NOT a blog post about football)Yesterday, Legia - currently the best football team in Poland (no, I'm not their fan, so I have no emotional attachment towards them) has dropped of the Champions League (CL) qualifications in the 2nd elimination phase (of 4). That happ … | Continue reading
The recruitment interviews I host aren't pure practice. One of the stages I explicitly distinguish is called "engineering background check". Some do call it "the theoretical part" (because I ask candidates to explain a particular term to me), but it's only half-true. The purpose … | Continue reading
I believe everyone is familiar with the popular saying that one can have 10 years of experience or 10 x 1 (the same) year of professional experience. If you don't get the difference - it's all about being exposed to new experiences (that can be substantial in spurring your person … | Continue reading
How do you learn and expand your skills since you've graduated and started your professional career? Obviously, a blog post is a one-way communication, so I don't know your answer, but let me tell you what I expect. Generalizing a little bit - I see two models here, related to | Continue reading
When it comes to recruitment interviews, there's an overwhelmingly popular opinion (on the Internet) that one should test candidates in conditions that do resemble real-life work scenarios as much as possible. Tasks & challenges should mimic the ones that the candidate would … | Continue reading
I still remember some of the (written down) expectations I faced when I joined a high-profile consultancy in 2001. One of them was: "to effectively solve poorly-defined problems"The "poorly-defined" is the interesting part here. But at that point in time, it made a lot of sense. … | Continue reading
Picking your next professional endeavor ain't easy. There's plenty of advice regarding that on the Internet. Usually, this topic is covered from junior's perspective - how to choose your first job, what to avoid, what kind of questions to ask first, etc. But in fact, it appears t … | Continue reading
One of the most valuable lessons I've ever learned (when it comes to building software) was: "Keep it simple, as simple (boring) stuff usually works best".It's usually accompanied with some sort of complexity consideration: what's essential (inherent) complexity and what's accide … | Continue reading
Story #1I'm a serial note-taker. I've used dozens of apps to improve my note-taking: tag information, simplify formatting, improve navigation, etc. I wasn't limiting myself to free software only: paying for software was never an issue - as long as the software was adding some rea … | Continue reading
Since I can remember, designing solutions to complex problems was my favorite software development-related activity. The conceptual shaping of elegant, fit-for-purpose thought constructs was always (in my case) much more pleasant than coding itself. As my work-products were (IMHO … | Continue reading
Even if you've read just a bunch blog posts of mine, you've probably identified my key mantras: about the importance of the trench-level leadership (setting the correct example in real-life situations when your colleagues can observe you directly in action)about the A2E (ability … | Continue reading
Diversity is "the word" in the software development industry these days. The FAANGs do advocate it. Plenty of high profile IT people ("celebrities") support it. There are folks who pretty much make a living out of evangelising it (and hunting its opponents ...), while some other … | Continue reading
Software development is expensive. It takes time, requires various & uncommon skills and on top of that - the developers' salaries are among the highest ones in the company. It's also affected by hard-to-grasp, unfavorable factors like technical debt that tend only to accumul … | Continue reading
I'm not keen on this word. "Grooming". I've been doing it (sort of) long before I've learned about the thingie named Scrum, but until this very day I haven't convinced myself to call it that way. Grokking domain, crunching through problems, knowledge mining, functional decomposit … | Continue reading
It seems that the technical debt is one on my favorite topics ;P Looking back just a few months, I've assembled at least three posts on the subject. One of them is particularly on the cost of running software (https://no-kill-switch.ghost.io/the-cost-of-running-software/), but .. … | Continue reading
A few days ago, I started reading "Semantic Software Design" by Eben Hewitt. I haven't finished it yet, but I believe I can already state that it won't become my favourite book on software architecture ever (more about that in the forthcoming review on Goodreads). Nevertheless, t … | Continue reading
Disclaimer: sorry, but this ain't a post about architecture, leadership, software development, neither any other usual topics you can find here. But I believe its content is more needed today, in the situation we're facing. COVID-19 didn't just disrupt our lives. Its influence se … | Continue reading
Ironically speaking, COVID-19 has sped up digital transformation in many organisations across the whole globe ;P Remote work is the new standard, even if some were far from ready (that's why I call it remote "leap of faith"). Teams are facing the challenge of brainstorming (& … | Continue reading
This article is about how finance-related decisions can lock your career development down if you don't understand what you're really paid for ... Reader, meet XX starts his software development career. X doesn't know much about the job market, local companies, their specifics - h … | Continue reading
Without any lengthy introductions - COVID-19 has sent plenty of people to work remotely. Companies that would never (or at least unlikely) consider such a scenario, have jumped (somehow reluctantly) straight onto remoteness bandwagon to secure their daily operations in the times … | Continue reading
I tend to "spend" a lot of keystrokes on various aspects of technical debt and/or poor engineering practices. The list seems endless: component coupling, shallow modeling, leaky boundaries, inconsistent conventions, not-sufficiently-expressive design, incapacitated development ag … | Continue reading
I've always been praising the value of maintaining a stable rhythm (cadence) of the software delivery - frequent, regular, habitual, nearly continuous. That's why as a Kanban aficionado I've never minded the concept of a sprint - and in particular the specific idea of a sprint go … | Continue reading
... #1The author of "Weapons of Math Descruction" (Cathy O'Neil) raises the alarm - we not only generate, but also process more & more data. Usually in a non-transparent, unclear way - the consequences of mistakes or imperfections (e.g. over-simplification) affect people's li … | Continue reading
"Leadership" is the thing these days - ones able to get others moving, ones who act as a multiplier to others' work (due to leverage effect they make), ones that do inspire their peers & actively shape the culture around them - they are worth their weight in gold. But | Continue reading
Quo vadis? (lat. Whither goest thou?)Last week I attended this year's edition of one of my favourite software craftsmanship-related conferences: DDD Europe. It was a good time, I've met interesting people, attended a few workshops, enjoyed beautiful weather in always welcoming Am … | Continue reading
As a person who actively builds teams for many years, I can share with you what's the first thing that happens after I publish a new open position post/ad (in social media or on specialized job boards): nearly instantaneously, I get contacted by ... no, not by enthusiastic candid … | Continue reading
I am yet to see a company in full control over its technical & model debt, with long-term stable development agility and the unshakeable ratio between new development & maintenance work. Usually, it's an inevitable downslide with a varying speed & acceleration. Develo … | Continue reading
During my mindfulness studies, I've encountered an interesting concept - a very simple but powerful one: neutral thinking. The best definition I've found on the web is credited to Trevor Moawad (actually I've just learned he's going to publish a book about this concept next month … | Continue reading
Let me start with some observations: the most popular tech meet-up talks are about the most hard-core, niche, infrastructure-level optimisations & techniques - while 97% people in the audience never encounters any practical scenario these apply to (e.g. web MVC-style app prog … | Continue reading
Late September 2019, I've decided that it's time for a career change, so I've started searching through the job market and talking to various companies in need of a Senior Engineering Leader. It's not that I enjoy the process of looking for a job, but I can't deny that it | Continue reading
Just like in the previous years (... , 2018, 2017, ...), I'd like to re-visit what I've read within the last 12 months & pick the most valuable gems I could recommend to you without blenching. In general I tend to focus primarily on the fresh stuff (from known/promising autho … | Continue reading
I love diving deep into how/when & why work is getting done. Into the differences between environments of high velocity & insane productivity VS ones where the air seems to have a consistency of a gel, slowing everything down to crawl ... There are several factors that ha … | Continue reading
The dualism of effectiveness & efficiency (some would even say: the dichotomy (!)) is one of the most favourite topics of all Lean aficionados, Kanbanistas & other Agile-minded peeps (including prophets of Scrum ...). To be frank I've written about it on several occasion … | Continue reading
Let's daydream a little bit: You build stuff in a work environment of virtually endless repertoire of ideas to be implemented. Your work is all about new features, extensions of existing features, feedback-based improvements of sub-optimal features, etc. Obviously, it's not that … | Continue reading