Getting ready to speak at a technical conference can be as nerve-wracking as it is exciting, especially if it’s your first time.
Having had the opportunity to present at notable events like AWS re:Invent, Monitorama, DevOps Days, and GopherCon, I’ve learned a thing or two about preparing for the big stage.
Continue reading Prepping to Speak at Tech Conferences: From AWS re:Invent to GopherCon
Star Trek
has inspired huge numbers of people to become scientists, engineers, and programmers. I’m one of them. It often inspired me to work hard, build quality systems, and never give up when looking for the root cause of a tricky bug.
I’ve mentored, coached, managed, and reviewed many software developers throughout the years. There are many different areas one can discuss, but my most importance advice for engineers early in their career has never changed.
Continue reading Mentoring junior programmers: What I tell them is job number one
Sometime ago I was asked where to begin to learn data engineering. It was a broad question, and it took some to understand what exactly I was being asked.
I’m not old enough to remember Jimmy Carter in office, but I did see him speak once in 2013. With a B.Sc., and some training in nuclear power, his background was always somewhat interesting to me — particularly how someone with a technical education approached politics at the highest levels.
Continue reading Jimmy Carter and the Failures of Management
After almost 20 years in the San Francisco Bay Area, I am moving to Pittsburgh, PA, to accept a management role with Google. I am very much looking forward to working at a world-class software company.
It was a great two years at Percolate, and I wish all my old colleagues there the very best.
I’ve been programming for many years, and have spent most of the last few years managing development teams. I’ve written plenty of closed source software, and for a time made my living writing open source software too.
One thing stands out: a shared code base does not a software team make.
Continue reading A shared code base does not a software team make
Last night Percolate hosted the San Francisco ReactJS Meetup.
I acted as host, and we had great speakers and presentations.
Slack: Where work happens
Something is happening at companies that use Slack. Slack, the company, may claim it’s work, but it’s less and less productive work, and it’s having a destructive affect upon my own field of software development.
I like really Slack, Flowdock, Hipchat and their ilk — I’ve written about it before. I couldn’t do my job without them. But it’s time to confront the damage these tools are causing.
The new Analytics system, built by my team at Percolate, allows our end-users to program their own custom calculations, offering them the ability to precisely customize the product for their needs.
At the center of that feature is a Pratt Parser. Percolate recently presented on this topic at the San Francisco Python Meetup. You can find the slides here, and code here.