Ep 66, The Blameless Postmortem
A Programmer, Refactored
Have you ever worked in a blame-focused culture? It's a toxic culture, to say the least. Searching for blame after a bug has shipped accomplishes little and promotes bad politics. A listener emailed me an article from Code As A Craft that talked about Blameless Postmortems. It's a great concept, and it accurately describes some of the better cultures I've worked in, though it has its downsides. In this episode, I deep dive into the various concepts.
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Ep 65, Technical Professionals With Non Developer Backgrounds
A Programmer, Refactored
Have you ever had to work with senior technical professional who didn't have a background as a developer? It can be a tricky relationship. In this show, I respond to a listener's email who'd recently been assigned to work with a solutions architect that didn't have a developer background.
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Ep 64, Fighting Against Company Culture Is Often A Losing Battle
A Programmer, Refactored
Have you ever worked at a shop where you loved the coding aspect, but hated the culture? Maybe they were too concerned with ship dates, or overly preoccupied with architecture, or spent too much time chasing frameworks. When we find ourselves in these predicaments, we often strive to change those parts we don't like, typically with poor results. In this episode, I dig into that phenomenon.
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Ep 63, Where Does The User Fit In All This?
A Programmer, Refactored
The user's place in the software development has changed a lot in the last ten years. Way back when, the user was a faceless entity that we tended to avoid. Today, thanks in no small part to the Agile movement, users and user representatives are often key stakeholders from the beginning of the SLDC. In this episode, I dig into how I think the user fits into today's software development process.
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Bonus Ep 3, Reputation: A Cautionary Tale
A Programmer, Refactored
Reputation. As programmers, we tend to hang most of our reputation on our coding abilities, if we even think about our reputations at all. As very technical people, sometimes we fall into the trap of thinking that reputation is for managers and other political game players. The truth is, however, that reputation is highly important, and ignoring that can have horrible consequences. In this episode, I give a cautionary tale of a programmer who didn't heed that lesson.
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Ep 62, Gatekeeping and Shadow IT
A Programmer, Refactored
Gatekeepers, those IT professionals who become so possessive of their systems that they become more of a hindrance than anything else. In this episode, I talk about gatekeepers in the context of software development and how they lead to shadow IT efforts.
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Ep 61, The Art of Self Management
A Programmer, Refactored
The ability to self-manage is one of those things that separates an average programmer from a senior developer, in my opinion. In this episode, I talk about the importance of being able to manage your own time and work and strategies for doing so.
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Ep 60, People Skills vs Developer Skills
A Programmer, Refactored
Software development is only partially a technical skill. As your career progresses, your people skills become as important. This is true even if you're never put into a leadership role of any kind. In this episode, I cover three tools I've used to help with my people skills game: Non-confrontational language, tactical empathy, and open-ended statements.
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Ep 59, How I Moved Past Writing Code Professionally
A Programmer, Refactored
Last week I talked about how I realized I no longer want to write code professionally. In this week's episode, I go into how I arrived at this point in my career and how tech turnover pushed me into thinking beyond just implementation.
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Ep 58, I Don't Want To Write Code Anymore
A Programmer, Refactored
The other day while sitting at my desk, I had a sudden realization: I don't want to write code professionally anymore. I still enjoy it as an intellectual challenge, but professionally I'm in a different place. In this episode, I dig into the topic and go over some honest truths I've realized recently.
info_outlineWhen I first began my career as a programmer, the world of software development seemed like this endless realm of possibilities. Today, I feel like I'm in some sort of no-mans-land. I don't fit in with the under-30 crowd nor do I want to go into management.
In this context, I've found myself asking, "Knowing what I know now, would I do this all over again?" In this episode, I explore that topic.