Compendium of Wondrous Links vol III

Good tech lead, bad tech lead. Can we please please stop telling people that coding is easy? Confessions of an Intermediate Programmer. The perception and psychology of competence. The Science of Making your Story Memorable Some interesting advice about presentations. The presentation itself used as example is interesting as well. Thirty percent feedback to iterate faster. The classic “your problem with Vim is that you don’t grok vi” response in Stack Overflow. A very nice list of Python articles. Best Python 2013 Companies and startups are different. Not only in size, but qualitatively. An… Read More

Respect Driven Development

I think that one of the most overlooked components on any sane company culture is Respect. That’s probably true also for any relationship, also outside work environment, but I think is usually forgotten when nice places to work are described. When I look back about the things that bothered me the most, most of them are related to disrespect, even in relatively minor form. It can be personal disrespect or not respecting the work itself or even the customers. Probably because is something engraved, it’s easy to take for granted when it exists, and… Read More

First job in a startup considered harmful

Well, at least is not ideal from my point of view… At the moment there seems to be a lot of hype about startups. And why not? They are the places where the cool stuff happen. Filled with purpose, excitement, high stakes, fantastic teams, growth opportunities and the rare chance of maybe becoming a multibillionaire at a young age. I’ve worked in big and small companies (including startups), and I definitively prefer to work on smaller ones. You’re impact is bigger, the team works closer, way less corporate BS, etc… But, while… Read More

In defense of resting

I have been watching recently some documentaries about software development, including the classic Triumph of the nerds (available in YouTube in three episodes, 1, 2 and 3) and Indie Game: The Movie. They are both very good  and I’d recommend them not only to developers, but to people interested in technology and/or entrepreneurship in general. But they are very good exponents into something very present on the software scene, which is presenting crunch mode, working insane hours, in some sort of glamourised way. It is part of the usual storytelling and, and probably,… Read More