article feed for designfrontier.net, thoughts on leadership, software engineering, the world, and how they intersect
This article was originally published on the Voze Engineering Blog and is republished here for posterity. What do you look for in an engineer when that engineer is not the one writing most of the code? That question sent us back to our hiring rubric 1 early, as we reshaped our engineering process and organization around the agentic production of software. Two of the four criteria we used no longer…
I don’t want to be interesting. I want to be good. – Ludwig Mies van der Rohe
Welcome to the lab! This is a list of simple experiments and projects that will be updated as new ones are made. Check them out, use them... whatever! Mazes a simple maze generator I made for my kids. You can change the size with a size queryparam. https://designfrontier.net/maze?size=75 is the perfect size to print a letter size page of paper for instance. qr codes a simple tool for recording the…
So for the last 10 years I've been adding songs to my Spotify liked songs. It's great but every once in a while a song comes on and I think... "do I really still like this song?" I decided that I wanted a way to archive my likes annually and then clear them 1 . So with a few minute and a desire to experiment with Claude.ai and it's code authoring I described what I wanted the code to do: create a…
Megaphones are amazing. For nearly as long as we have organized into large groups, we have rolled materials into tubes and spoken into them to help carry our voices to the back of the audience. With the advent of the transistor, handheld powered electric megaphones became practical for projecting our voices 1 . Now we could reach levels we never imagined! At what cost, though? If you've been to a…
Recently I found myself with some time on my hands... so I wrote a simple module for managing engineering team member information in automation projects. Basically I was working on some automation between Slack, OpsGenie, and JIRA to simplify the on call and support process. What I realized was that the more automation built that needed engineer meta information (github ID, email, JIRA ID,…
Today my hunt for a new role begins in earnest. So I am dropping some thoughts and links here. Why am I looking for a new role? The company that I was at (Lumio) has ended in bankruptcy which puts me out of work. I had a fantastic team, and was with them to the end. It was a wild ride and now it's time to find the next adventure. Why should you talk to me? I have a track record of building high…
What kind of man makes it through Hell Week? That’s hard to say. But I do know—generally—who won’t make it. There are a dozen types that fail: the weight-lifting meatheads who think that the size of their biceps is an indication of their strength, the kids covered in tattoos announcing to the world how tough they are, the preening leaders who don’t want to get dirty, and the look-at-me former…
Come meet with me about software engineering things, career things, business things, or bike things. If the calendar below doesn't work, it doesn't seem to love mobile devices, go here instead
I've been trying to read more poetry this year. Which has honestly been refreshing. I dove into Rilke after re-watching JoJo Rabbit 1 where it his poetry is quoted. I wasn't sure were to start and so I started with the Book of Hours. It was beautiful. Rilke wrestles with his relationship with God, and others, but mostly with God. We all have to wrestle with our relationship with Diety but he does…
So this article started as a thread of tweets . I want to expand on it, so I am going to quote all the tweets here and then try to explain more about the topics they are touching on. Try to take it a little bit out of stream of conscious and into something more fleshed out. Here we go! Some thoughts on engineering leadership a thread (and not a long one) -> — Daniel Sellers (@daniel_sellers)…
Way back in my year end review for 2021 I wrote, As part of that effort I’ve worked to build a culture in engineering where people coming and going is normal. We’ve started doing “Last Lectures” for all engineers who leave the company, and it’s been a good way to express our appreciation and also normalize shifting staffing. The setup is pretty simple, each person is given an hour to talk about…
Review-How to live safely in a science fictional universe By Charles Yu If I said the words: “Primer with daddy issues” how would that make you feel? If it makes you feel intrigued then you might enjoy this book. If not, then, maybe not. I could say more about how I thought it was going to be a fun, sci-fi, time travel, story, and then it is. But it very quickly turns into a cerebral discussion of…
Review: Stranger in a Strange Land by Robert Heinlein As someone working in computers the slang term grok is pretty synonymous with understanding. It turns out that it originates here in Heinlein’s Martian language, with similar meaning but a lot more nuance. Which is perhaps out of order in this review, but seems like a decent place to start. Stranger in a strange land is a sci-fi classic. It was…
“Well, don’t you think that you as the commander have an obligation to create a vision for your command?” It was more of a statement than a question. “No, I feel that my job as the commander is to tap into the existing energy of the command, discover the strengths, and remove barriers to further progress.” The class supervisor looked at me as if I had three heads, but I knew he wasn’t going to…
This last week, I had my leadership team in town for the first time in a while for some planning meetings, and some team building 1 . I am always looking to learn from different disciplines, so I thought it would make sense to impose that on them as well. Innovation is nearly always some sort of cross pollination from another discipline 2 , so I wanted to bring someone to speak to us who worked…
This afternoon I was reading a theological book ( Jacob: a brief theological introduction by Deidre Nicole Green ) when I happened on a quick mention of power over vs power with. It sounded familiar, and so a short google search later I was reading this PDF from Brené Brown . Personally I really enjoy Brené’s writing and research. It could be because she works at my alma mater (Go Coogs!), it…
This covers a bit more than a week, but it’s been wild over here. Onboarding into the company that acquired us, the whole family getting COVID (we’re all doing better thanks), and the associates quarantines, mixed with one of our cars being in the shop has made for lots of craziness. But let’s talk about some mindset shifts for the new year! The first article in the category for the week is…
I've been thinking about France and French culture, and why it is that a country that only recently in the broad scheme of things adopted more equal policies around gender, is also a nation where anti-immigrant sentiment runs so deep. This is a problem that is growing in the world right now at an alarming rate. Anti-immigrant policies are splattered all over the world, and they are growing at an…
It’s another week of DHH causing waves, which probably shouldn’t be surprising (not linking because I don’t really want to provide him a larger platform). But it does highlight one of the things I find fascinating about the Ruby community. First, Ruby is probably one of the best first languages out there. It’s syntax is friendly to no and slightly closer to English. I mean it has some odd logical…
Review: Elantris by Brandon Sanderson The original Cosmere novel, that had somehow slipped through my reading list until this week. I was reading an article suggesting some ideas for how to jump into the Cosmere novels and they mentioned that Elantris is the first, but not anywhere near the best, and I am inclined to agree. Sure, there is the subtle mention of Hoid part way through as a beggar in…
Review: The Emperor’s Soul by Brandon Sanderson No one does magical systems better than Brandon Sanderson. That’s a pretty absolute statement but one that I am comfortable with 1 . This novella is an exploration of a magical system and of what I means for each of us to be human. Boom, yeah that’s a big premise. But as Shia works out how to counterfeit a human soul her exploration of the complex…
Review: A million miles in a thousand years This was a fun one. It’s nominally cycling and philosophy and discussions of story so you know it’s going to be one I like. 1 The power of story is one of those things that was ingrained to me at a young age by being surrounded by story tellers. 2 It takes center stage for much of this book as Donald Miller discusses the power of the narratives we tell…
Review: Getting to Yes By Roger Fisher and William Ury This is a quick read with some really good insights into negotiating that isn’t focused on tricks or manipulative tactics. It emphasizes the need to focus on identifying the motivations and interests of everyone at the table before working towards agreement. Humanizing the person you are negotiating with and clearly stating desired outcomes…
Just a quick note to say that there is now a literature section in the nav menu and on this site. I wanted to migrate all the nanofiction/twitter size fiction I've written over the years off of Tumblr and somewhere I had more direct control over. So now if you enjoy reading sometime decent, and sometimes terrible, writing there is a place to do that here. Honestly some of those nanos I love, and…
Review: Aloha Rodeo: Three Hawaiian Cowboys, the World's Greatest Rodeo, and a Hidden History of the American West by David Wolman and Julian Smith Strap yourself in for a story where cowboys aren’t the agents of American imperialism, where they don’t fight the indigenous population, and where the cattle they work have a nasty habit of killing people. All of which sounds like an alternate history…
Review: The Ocean at the End of the Lane by Neil Gaimon I have a mixed experience with Neil Gaiman's work. Not because he isn’t a brilliant story teller, because he is. It’s more a content thing for me. Not all of his writing that I have read resonates with me. I can say the same thing for Neal Stephenson. Perhaps that is just how I relate to authors named some variant of Neal… Either way this was…
Review of "The Road to Valor" by Aili McConnon & Andres McConnon I have love cycling, a fact you should be aware of if you intend to stick around here. Coupled with my love for history, as evident from my college degree, this book was destined to find its way into my reading list. "The Road to Valor" delves into the life of Gino Bartali, one of the great Italian road racers. Bartali's claim to…
There are moments where the lightbulb comes on for you and things that have been bouncing on the tip of your brain just drop into place. This week I had one of those. And it was about why people leave companies, and how to help them stick around longer. As an added bonus it is probably applicable to western democracies and the initiation of revolutions. But hey, we're not in the middle of anything…
Delays and technical issues bias us against others experiencing them. This comes from "Why are you so slow? - Misattribution of transmission delay to attributes of the conversation partner at the far-end" , a paper by Katrin Schoenenberg, Alexander Raake, and Judith Koeppe. I found this paper while reading Digital Body Language by Erica Dhawan. So far the book is good but I paused to dig into this…
I've managed teams named, among other things, Python-Brug, and Banpo. Named for bridges in different cities, while we worked on a product named Bridge. A lot of people look at those names and think, why name teams after bridges? Why name them at all? And if you are going to name them, why not name them something logical? First, let's remember that naming things is hard. Very hard. Second, let's…
What is the difference between a Software Engineer and a Software Developer? Or is there a difference? So I've been building websites and web apps since we used to be called Web Masters. Which is a long time. And I've watched the industry change a lot over that time. I've even discussed some of those changes in a talk I gave at Utah JS conf a few years ago. The long and short of it though is that…
These are rough thoughts and should be taken as such. Think of them more as the interesting points that deserve thought in a context that the author of the paper (Andrea Bonaccorsi) was not specifically considering when writing it. Which is a good place to start this: this paper was written about academic peer review and not about code review. I personally find these to be close cousins to each…
Welcome! I've been at Lumio for a few months now (ok fine 8 months) and I am looking for more people to join our rapidly expanding team. Check out the jobs, and more information about our team below! Open Jobs Team Lead We're looking for people centered leaders who build strong remote teams and help drive excellence. Sr. Software Engineer We're looking for engineers who love building software, and…
It has been quite the year! As the pandemic has been dragging on, ramping up, slowing down, generally continuing to drag on. Thoughts I am excited for 2022. 2022! How did that happen? This year has been a real learning journey for me. On the business/work side of things I helped prep for an acquisition and participated in the due diligence for the acquisition from the acquired company’s…
In any given moment we have two options: to step forward into growth or to step back into safety. — Abraham Maslow This last Sunday we went on a light hike with my mother-in-law who is in the process of converting her Ford Transit into a small camper van. Part of the process is cutting a hole in the roof to install a vent fan to keep air moving and keep it cool in the summer. As you can…
In 1096 the crusaders, Christian religious warrior pilgrims, set out for Jerusalem. Their cause was nominally to protect their Eastern Orthodox brothers and sisters from the encroaching Islamic empire. Whatever the reason each of those individuals started with, they quickly found themselves off the rails. In their march down the Rhine, still firmly in Christendom, their violent anti-Semitic…
This has been a crazy year, but honestly an exciting one for me and my family. We've lived through multiple natural disasters, moved, changed jobs, survived a pandemic, had a new baby join us, and tried to normalize all of the wild shifts that everyone else is living through. It's been wild. Just ask me when the last time I rode my bike with another human being was. It's been a year. If you are…
Recently we had our second child, and that meant digging through a bunch of boxes in the basement to find leftover baby clothes and gear. After not being able to find a few things we were pretty sure we still had I realized that there had to be a better way. Now, there are a bunch of solutions out there on the market that do this, but they all had subscriptions to use them. I was really tempted to…
This is going to be a pretty straightforward list of what tech related reading I did this year. It doesn’t include hundreds of blog posts and forum discussion. I’ll break it into two categories, things worth reading, and things not worth reading. Hopefully this will save you some time. I’ll also toss in a some notes or thoughts about a book where it seems reasonable. Things Worth…
I am playing with some graph databases right now, for a fun project I may write about later. When I first started out I was using Neo4j, which has an excellent local development story, a lovely web based UI for visualizing your data and CYPHER, which is a pretty easy to grasp graph language. All great marks in its favor. However, since the rest of the project was going to be a series of lambdas…
When you are faced with these problems, you must seek out the simplest way they can be solved. This may be difficult to do: perhaps the problem is too large, or perhaps you were actually considering the solution before considering the problem. Though difficult it may be, it is your most important job. You need to take problems apart, identify smaller problems within them and ruthlessly remove…
Jobs’s taste for merciless criticism was notorious; Ive recalled that, years ago, after seeing colleagues crushed, he protested. Jobs replied, “Why would you be vague?,” arguing that ambiguity was a form of selfishness: “You don’t care about how they feel! You’re being vain, you want them to like you.” Ive was furious, but came to agree. “It’s…
The really, really short answer is that you should not. The somewhat longer answer is that just because you are capable of building a bikeshed does not mean you should stop others from building one just because you do not like the color they plan to paint it. This is a metaphor indicating that you need not argue about every little feature just because you know enough to do so. Some people have…
"The secret is never forgetting that you’re a journeyman actor and that nothing is your final thing, nothing is your greatest thing, nothing is your worst thing. I still consider myself a novice." - James Earl Jones in this fantastic article from 2014
Prompt: "You are tasked with making the world most beautiful. Where do you start?" My first reaction is that I start with furniture. I believe that our perception of quality and beauty, which I don’t think are separable, are largely shaped by the environment that surrounds us. I’d love to say architecture, the thing that defines our environments, but good architecture is inaccessible…
Hi friends! I realized that because of the certain set of skills I have been honing at work for the last decade I have some quick ways of vetting websites for content accuracy that the average non-nerd (read cool person) hasn’t been exposed to. So read ahead for a quick summary of how I vet web media outlets. For anyone interested in how to quickly vet websites as to their reliability:…
Hang tight... this is going to get a little esoteric. The expirement really begins with three realizations. 1) That no one seems to agree on the direction that previous and next should be in blog navigation, 2) that no one really goes back and reads a blog’s archive, and 3) that the web is both a new age of ephemera and completely permenant. Ephemera, if you are unfamiliar, are the cheap…
Last week I did a bit of programming for Game Of Codes in my "free" time which lead me to a couple of interesting observations. 1. Number of passing tests is more important then compute time This makes sense right? If you pass more tests then someone else then the speed with which you did it is kind of irrelevant. This is a decidedly startup mentality. That getting things done is better then how…
If you hadn’t noticed from this post and the last one... I am feeling grateful and like I need to give back to the community a bit. So while Hack Night SLC is ramping back up I thought it would be good to try out office hours. I recognize that the fact that I can do this is a deep privilege, and that I’ve been lucky enough to have mentors and friends help me throughout my career. I really wouldn’t…