Be Careful What You Post Online
The political events in the last couple days have caused a firestorm of social media posts – some being quite extreme. I have heard reports of people being fired for their social media comments and a few organizations closely watching their employees for the same. Instead of my more heavily curated and edited posts, I…
It’s a Girl!
This week, my wife gave birth to our daughter. I don’t plan on posting pictures or turning this into a parenting blog, but if I start making references to parenthood, you’ll know why. I’m not in the habit of sharing life updates here, but those of you who haven’t seen me in a few years…
AI as Magic Fairy Dust
AI is taking the world by storm. There’s nowhere on the internet you can go without stumbling into it. They call it the revolution of our time, the greatest invention since the Industrial Revolution. Be you supporter or skeptic, it’s hard not to get swept up by the wave of enthusiasm. But is it just…
Being an Interviewer
Recently, I’ve had the privilege (and sometimes burden) of conducting first-round interviews. After participating in quite a few, I thought I’d talk about my experience. Yes is the Default Interviews are a series of filters, with each a bit more granular than the last. The first round isn’t to determine if we should hire someone,…
Perception is Reality
People make decisions on what they think is true, not on what actually is. We cannot make decisions with knowledge we don’t have and it’s not possible for anyone to know everything going on at all times. This might sound like an obvious observation, but in practice it can be easy to overlook and I’ve…
Professionalism
Back in January, I had a bicycle accident that shattered my left elbow, leaving me unable to ever fully extend it again. Part of my rehab required a brace to help my mobility. After being measured at the medical office, I was told it would take 2-3 weeks to get and that they would call…
Delivering Value to Customers
Something that has stood out to me in most of the organizations I’ve worked for is a high degree of inefficiency, both at a technical and process level. In my last post, I mentioned that, although I dislike bureaucracy, I’ve come to understand its necessity and the problems created by excessive avoidance of it. However,…
Learning the Value of Project Management
I don’t like bureaucracy. I’ve typically considered it a hinderance to my work and so, over the years I’ve become quite adept at circumventing it – managing to fit in small requests outside of the process to get them resolved much more quickly. I’m not so crazy as to believe in having no process whatsoever,…
Black Box Unit Testing – Making the Old New Again
After my previous post, I began a journey to discover better ways of unit testing. I had come to the realization that I had been following the cargo cult and that we as an industry don’t seem to be very good when it comes to understanding and executing automated testing. Perhaps you would disagree, but…
The Case Against Scrum Masters
I’m not a fan of Scrum Masters, not as a responsibility passed around inside of a team, but the kind of Certified Scrum Masters that generally have it as their job title. I’ve worked with a few of them in varying capacities over the years, but I’ve noticed the same reoccurring problems. To be clear…
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Adam Lif 