Writing

Our articles and podcast episodes on software engineering, management and collaboration.

How to interview your future manager

We often get the chance to interview our future manager, but usually it’s while being evaluated for a new job. What do you do when you find yourself getting to interview your current manager’s replacement? Know your priorities When we are consid...

A primer on setting up your remote employee

Last night, I was talking with a tech lead of a local company. He was struggling with supporting two of his teammates who are newer to their roles (let’s call them Alyssa and Ben). Alyssa, like nearly all her teammates, works in the local office, ...

A brief adventure in ActionMailer debugging

Shortly before our winter break, I ran into the following error message while updating a mailer: (object doesn't support #inspect) Here’s the code: def notify mail( from: 'me@...', to: 'me+testing@...', subject: 'it works', ...

Designing Your Apprenticeship Program for Outcomes

Want to learn more about apprenticeship? Read our previous article introducing software apprenticeship. There are many reasons to invest in an apprenticeship program. You can use them to: Bring more domain expertise to your team Level up yo...

Understanding, Owning and Leveraging Your Privilege In Tech

Despite millions of dollars in investment by companies such as Google and Facebook the needle of diversity in Silicon Valley has barely shifted. Ellen Pao’s recent article in the New York Times evaluating if anything has changed concludes there’s ...