Career

Two things that are important to me are being honest and treating everyone with dignity. However, some situations make it difficult to do both at the same time. It is possible, though. It takes effort, creativity, and a bit of trust, but it gets easier with practice.

When I talk about being honest, I actually mean being candid. Candor means both being honest and also communicating in good faith. Many fantasy authors have written about characters who never lie but are also fundamentally dishonest. Candor eliminates this loophole. I push myself to communicate everything that feels important, even if it’s uncomfortable or to my own disadvantage.

I am very pleased to announce the launch of my new company, Pragmatic Potato Software.

Pragmatic Potato is helping customers with software architecture and development. We can help with architectural investigations, software design, development process, interviewing, and even development. You can find out more about the kind of services we’re offering on our spiffy new website: pragmaticpotato.com/services/.

If you’re interested, contact me through my website. Let’s have a quick conversation and see if we can help you.

A junior developer needs to strengthen their technical skills to advance. An intermediate developer needs to strengthen their organizational skills to advance. Senior developers need to master these and also demonstrate that they can move multiple teams forward together. Influencing people (and especially developers) is no easy task, but a positive reputation can do a lot of the heavy lifting. One of the easiest ways to amplify your reputation is to put some extra effort in when choosing a name.

When I was promoted to the role of architect it was a new role in the organization. The stakeholders I had to work with were not used to talking to an architect, and weren’t sure what I did or when I should be involved in a conversation. I started using recurring one-on-one meetings with each stakeholder separately. It worked great. It’s also made me a much better communicator.

One of the first and most important lessons I learned as an architect is that you can’t design a good architecture without a good understanding of its requirements. You can design a system in a vacuum, it’s also much easier to do it this way, but it’s far less likely to serve the organization. Gathering, validating, and documenting technical requirements is tough work, but an essential part of being an architect.

Unless you work entirely alone, alignment is a big deal. When you are well aligned with your company’s goals you are a more valuable employee. When you are well aligned with your manager they can keep you on the right track and be an ally against obstacles. When you are well aligned with your peers you can keep each other focused on the most important work.

On the other hand, when you have poor alignment you can see all sorts of problems. When teams are misaligned they can undermine each other’s efforts. When you are misaligned with your manager you can find yourself being over managed or left out to dry when things get rough. When you are not aligned with the goals of your organization you miss opportunities to demonstrate your skills and advance your career.

I recently had the pleasure of attending the 2023 Polyglot Unconference in Vancouver, put on by the Polyglot Software Association. I’ve been attending these for years. It is my favourite local conference.

An unconference, sometimes called an open spaces conference, is a participant-driven event where attendees choose the topics of discussion and provide the content themselves. They are meant to be open and inviting, and build interpersonal relationships. This year was no exception.

Developing software is an excellent career. Software has touched almost every aspect of our world, and its impact is always expanding. Many new things have become possible because of software, things that couldn’t have been dreamed of even ten years ago. The industry is continuing to expand. Tools are getting better. New opportunities are appearing everywhere… So why haven’t you gotten a promotion in ten years?

In the early days of my career, I got new responsibilities, promotions, and raises fairly regularly. It took a bit of luck, a lot of hard work, and a few years (but not very many years), to work my way up to a senior developer position. Senior means different things at different places, but eventually I got to a place where there was no easy next step, and I had a good number of peers in exactly the same position.

It takes some time to integrate into a new team. I always feel like an outsider at first. As I build friendships and trust, I’m able to contribute with increasing effectiveness. Having noticed some patterns, I’ve been able to make the process faster and smoother using a few simple tricks.

Tuckman’s Stages of Group Development describe what happens when a team is formed. His theory has four stages: forming, storming, norming, and performing. As I stared writing this post, I noticed that the stages I was describing lined up fairly well with his. It’s important to note that I’m talking about joining an existing team, where he talks about a team being formed entirely from new people.

During the summer I started a difficult but important journey to reorganize my life. The first step was organizing my daily tasks. I was successful, but becoming productive again has created new issues.

When you change from trying to do everything to doing what’s most important, you need to decide what important means. Figuring this out for myself has proven difficult. I still don’t have all the answers, but I am constantly making progress.

One of the best things about working in the software business is the high rate of change. Not only do we work with machines that radically change in capability every few years, but new techniques and technologies are constantly appearing on the scene. It is a fascinating new frontier that never gets dull.

One of the worst things about working in the software business is the high rate of change. If you only focus on your job and stop paying attention, you could wake up one day unemployed with an obsolete skill set. Keeping up to date is a lot of work, and it becomes harder every year.