Advice

I’ve been doing a lot of thinking lately on a particular topic and I have come to the conclusion that I have a confession to make. I withdrew late from my MATH 153 course in first-year university. There, I said it. It doesn’t seem so bad once I write it here, it’s almost laughable, but I have hidden this information as a deep, dark secret my entire adult life. I even allowed it to become a core part of my identity. Let me break down what happened, because this confession is more about shining a light on something that wants to remain in the dark than it is about just me talking about the past. ...

This week I was tasked with discovering what my core values are. The context around this was that I needed to understand what my core values are so that I can understand how they are being violated, in the hopes that I can understand how a disagreement was created with someone else. That got me thinking: what are core values? It’s nothing I’ve ever really thought about before. Sure, I know about honesty and timeliness, but I wasn’t aware of the full suite of core values. Where do I begin? ...

One of the common patterns in my life is to surround myself with people with whom I allow to abuse me. And one of the popular refrains of these people is to tell me this phrase: You need to stop taking things so personally. And I find that phrase interesting because it is really difficult not to take things personally when they are targeting me with their abusive words. But, as I said, this is a common refrain of abusers in my life. In fact, most of the people that have mistreated me in various ways have also found a way to abdicate any responsibility for their actions by using this phrase to place the blame squarely on me. ...

I am taking the wraps off of my first product ever: Security Awareness for Busy People. Those who know me know that I’m not the type of person to shout my accolades from the rooftops, so this is a bit out of my comfort zone right now. Regardless, I’m proud of my work and I want to share this with the world. Background As I mentioned, this is my first product ever. Throughout my career I have helped other companies build software, maintain secure systems, or train their employees to be better developers/operators/administrators. I have done this as both a full-time employee and as a consultant. I always have these ideas to create products and yet never deliver on them for a couple reasons: ...

This post will be a living document that stores all my favourite quotes. At this point, I’m not going to comment on the quotes themselves, or why I find them good. I typically keep these in a private document, but I want to just share them with you and maybe you will think about how they fit into your mindset. Or maybe the quote means nothing to you and you move on. That’s fine too. ...

I’m learning how to relax for the first time in my life. It’s sounds crazy but no one, not even parents, taught me how to relax. And things that could be relaxing (videogames, reading, playing, talking) were given a negative value because they weren’t seen as productive. One of the symptoms of not relaxing is the inability to let go of things. Another is a mind that races when trying to fall asleep. ...

I have worked for many companies in my career and noticed some basic trends regardless of size, industry, or composition. I’m labeling these trends the Four Horsemen of Companies, and each one is named after a specific type of inflammation (-itis). My advice to budding job seekers is to work for a variety of places so that experience and understanding can be gained. If you only work for one particular type of company, you and the company end up being more prone to these horsemen than you think. If you are already employed, consider whether any of these horsemen are already present in your organization. ...

Recently at Unbounce we have been talking about what it takes to move between the ranks of junior, intermediate, and senior developer 1. Some very good discussion came out of it, but one key piece was left out for my personal interest 2: where do developers go after becoming senior? At a certain point in the career of a software developer they are told to make a choice: keep programming and developing a deeper understanding of software (The Guru), or go into management and lead software developers to the possible detriment of deep programming skills (The Manager). Over the past decade I have found myself revisiting this dilemma but have never spoken about my dislike for it. I view it now as a false dilemma but, that being said, it is a common practice to take one of two paths. ...

Don’t hate. Create. It is easy to feed the part of you that hates the broken and inefficient things you see every day. Instead of feeding that negative emotion, you can in turn convert the feeling into an opportunity to create something better. If everything worked perfectly and was the most efficient solution, there would be little work to do and life would get quite boring. It is easier to write in red than black. ...

R-E-S-P-E-C-T, find out what it means to me. - Aretha Franklin I’m feeling a bit crabby this morning, perhaps because I had to deal with a take-home exercise that passed for an interview. But that’s another story. Today I want to focus on respect and how the software industry is mishandling it. To service the above quote, I also want to provide some insight into how I, just your average humble software developer, choose to define the term. ...