A funny thing about cognitive dissonance is that we all tend to be a lot better when it comes to spotting it in others. When someone else comments on their values or productivity habits, for example, you’ll easily quip to yourself, “Yeah, right,” if that person, in fact, doesn’t adhere to what’s stated. But when […]
I don’t know if it is still common, but “back in my day,” there was a distinct stage in an engineer’s career: the complexification. That was when one would first find out about some topic, often the phenomenal Design Patterns book, and go into a frenzy trying to force one’s newfound knowledge into use. It’s […]
While the vast majority of my work nowadays is advisory work for CTOs and CEOs, I sometimes help companies bring in a new tech executive. This week, I thought it might be interesting to share what are the things that I look for when I participate in these interviews. Even if you’re not looking for […]
The average tenure for software engineers and other tech professions has been around two years for a while now. We seem to have accepted this as an axiom, but I beg to differ. If you’re looking to create world-class teams with an incredible impact-per-engineer, you need a strategic effort to make your tech people’s average […]
Leaders of teams of all sizes often find it problematic to make their people operate with urgency. By “urgency,” I don’t mean stress, nervousness, or anxiety, but a general sense of striving to achieve their goals earlier rather than later. While it is commonly attributed to growth—more people means that things move slower—I’ve seen this […]