Mike Veerman @MikeVeerman@mastodon.technology

Sustainable pace means taking a break from time to time.

Sprint after sprint after non-stop sprint of churning out features is unsustainable by definition.

"You start each morning with boiling a 10 liter bucket of water. You carry it up 15 flights of stairs and then pour it out. Deal?"

"What? No! Why would you do something so wasteful and time-consuming? What's the point?"

That's how we feel about the daily commute.

All companies already have a process that works.

Outside consultants can help gradually improve things, but "transformation" is a silly sales pitch.

September is Crazy #Recruiter Cold Call Season

There are a lot of bad recruiters out there, but developers underestimate the work.

"If ice cream showed up on my doorstep, I wouldn't pay the guy in the van."

Cutting out the middleman means you need to do the sales yourself.

Don't call yourself a "non-technical" founder.

Tell us what you do bring to the table.

Managers set unrealistic deadlines in an attempt to "push" their team a little. They believe it stimulates higher productivity.

Set your teams up for small win after win instead. That's better for morale and way more sustainable.

September is Crazy #Recruiter Cold Call Season

Developers getting too many messages from recruiters is a luxury problem. Boohoo, you're getting flooded with opportunities!

However, it's important to look at this from our perspective. It increases your odds of getting through.

https://mikeveerman.be/2019/09/18/async-hard-sales/

September is Crazy #Recruiter Cold Call Season

If a girl is wearing headphones while reading a book, how do I get her attention?

That's what half of recruiters scheme about.

It's simple: You don't.

Strut your stuff on LinkedIn.

Chat up available devs.

Don't bother people.

September is Crazy #Recruiter Cold Call Season

Private number ->🗑️
Cold call without voicemail ->🗑️
Voicemail without proposal ->🗑️
Voicemail with "I'll mail the proposal" ->🗑️

It 👏doesn't 👏work.

If you have to cold call, send an e-mail or LinkedIn message with ALL THE INFO.

Constant pressure is kryptonite for long-term productivity.

It might work for one-off creative endeavors and high-school papers, but a team that's constantly stressed is burning out.

Keeping the pressure on is an anti-pattern.

The best team building activity is building great products together.

Middle management is repeating "it's going to get worse before it gets better" to both your upper management and product teams.

A manager "challenging" developer estimates is a clear sign you're working in a Software Factory.

If you are said manager or dev: you can do better.

The opposite of a dynamic and lean company is not dumb lazy dinosaurs that don't care.

It's smart, hardworking people in a counterproductive, wasteful environment.

It takes two to tango. Businesses that put a fixed price on a vague scope know full well their vendors won't be able to deliver.

So, when does a Fixed Price Project work?

https://mikeveerman.be/2019/09/12/the-price-is-fixed/

A lot of the Digital Transformation / Agile literature is about large enterprises because that's where the money is.

If you are a smaller company and you feel a bit neglected: it's not you. It's us.

Heard about another Big Fixed Price Project gone south.

The thing about tragedies is that the audience knows it will end badly, but the actors can't seem to fight it off.

https://www.mikeveerman.be/2017/11/24/software-sales-a-geek-tragedy/

When everyone in your company comes up with hard deadlines, but nobody ships, you are collectively lying to yourselves.

https://mikeveerman.be/2018/07/11/deadlines-are-killing-your-company/

✅ We are disrupting the industry!
✅ We solve the big challenges!
✅ We have a Can-Do mentality!
✅ Innovation is in our DNA!
✅ We change the world!
🚫 Work from home? Ah.... No, that's just too difficult...

Want to attract the brightest legal minds? Organize a "Lawathon" where they can document awesome pretend court cases!

Sounds dumb, right?