Mike Veerman @MikeVeerman@mastodon.technology

The future is distributed.

"But what about IBM? They reversed all their remote work policies, right?"

"What about Kodak? They doubled down on film photography..."

Here's something that baffles me...

Companies that do encourage remote work often don't put that in their job ads... Why would you leave that out?

Software isn't developed ticket-by-ticket. It grows organically. It's the invisible stuff in-between that matters.

https://www.mikeveerman.be/2019/04/20/scope-is-a-lie/

The secret sauce of project management?

The one who screws up phase 1 is not responsible for delivering phase 2.

It's a game of tag.

It's gotten to the point where I'll take 50 euros off my day rate if the project doesn't involve Scrum.

Taking months to craft pristine software is easy. Rushing a messy and unstable train wreck out the door is even easier.

The hard part is building something that's good enough fast enough.

Project management skills are a superpower for developers. It makes the difference between being a "resource" or a partner.

People get productive when they can focus uninterrupted on one thing at a time. That's not exceptional. It's how the mind works.

What we call "hyperproductivity" is the norm. Your planning and meeting culture is the problem.

There is this dogmatic Twitter trend to look down on developers who love to code alone. To vilify individual creative agency.

Sure, pairing can work magic, but so can solo coding.

Developers with good communication skills can do both and should pick the right tool for the job.

"You can work from our HQ or from one of our satellite offices."

What they think they say : "We offer flexibility."

What they really say : "We acknowledge that you can work from wherever, but we still want you to stay in your cage. We own your time."

User stories and their estimates have an expiration date, just like food.

Would you eat in a restaurant where half the fridge should have been thrown out last month? No?

Then why is your backlog full of rotting stories?

Every project kick-off presentation has a big slide about Total Cost of Ownership. The numbers are pulled out of thin air, but at least the font is huge. TCO is a vital part of any software project and it’s treated as an afterthought.

https://www.mikeveerman.be/2019/03/18/complexity-costs/

Software reuse is a dumb fetish in most cases.

How would you know?

It's a waste of time for those who don't dare to ship simple, small things...

In a corporate environment, holding on to a dying mammoth project is considered an almost heroic move. Taking small lean steps at a time is often thought of as not trying hard enough.

It takes guts and vision to build something small.

Most methodologies and frameworks are designed to take the creative out of software development.

That's why they don't work.

The believe that software development can be a predictable ticket-based step-by-step plan, is fundamentally wrong. It's creative chaos.

Hot take: Stack Overflow's bad reputation is unjustified. Yes, there are rude, pretentious assholes out there, but they are more than cancelled out by the folks who go out of their way to give answers to difficult problems.

For free. For strangers.

#lookForTheHelpers

Agile is not a religious cult.

http://mikeveerman.be/2019/03/04/agiletology/

I'm seeing a lot of job posts include "Master degree in CS".

If a hiring manager is more interested in the degree you got years ago than in the book you are currently reading: walk away.