It has been about a year and a half of working three days a week in response to burnout. It took me six months to regain the ability to do anything beyond resting the moment I was done working, and in the past year I have recovered much of my ability to function, though not ...
PS:
This blog post has been converted into a talk, which GDG Melbourne very generously hosted. The audio quality is sketchy, but it has points which are not present in the blog post. It is less evocative but contains more concrete advice. You can watch it here.
I.
A scorpio...
The time is upon us. I'll try keep it brief because I really don't think who I am is that interesting - but there is a podcast link which might actually be of interest if you wish to indulge in my dulcet tones. All links below may give you adblock warnings as I'v...
This post is enormous, clocking in at 7.5K words. Strap yourselves in, make some tea, and I hope you can forgive any typos.
Walsh: That's your opinion.
Hitchens: Well, guess what? Guess who's saying it? That's a very clever thing to say. Shall I ask, would yo...
Last week, I received the following invitation to a compulsory on-site meeting, following management's repeated engagements with some sort of Agile shaman.
You have been invited to:
Compulsory On-Site: Continuous Improvement Playback & Strategy
Notes:
This will ...
We need to talk about the kind of person that loves "flexible" schemas, and why I am unable to disclose what I will do the next time I see one without going on a watch list.
I.
A few years ago, I worked at a company that had received $1M from FAANG (that's Face...
I am just a poor boy, though my story's seldom told
I have squandered my resistance for a pocketful of mumbles
Such are promises
All lies and jest
Still a man hears what he wants to hear
And disregards the rest
I.
I'm somewhat frequently asked how I write. Here...
Two things are true.
The first is going to sound bad in a culture where engineers are encouraged to apologize for existing while it is totally acceptable for a grifter that can't code to insist that they're a "thought leader". It is that, in my immediate pr...
This is the view from my window at this second.
There are two significant things about this picture.
The first is if that you squint very hard at the very center, you can just about make out a chair lying on the adjacent rooftop. Despite living in one of the fancier areas o...
I've believed for a while that, if my company died, the most likely scenario would be dying without a single dollar earned. There are so many ways for this to play out. It's an endless minefield.
There's just not talking to any real humans, which is the number on...
Over the holidays, I picked up a book titled The Basic Laws of Human Stupidity, recommended by Nassim Taleb as a "masterly" work. The introduction to this extremely concise book is as follows:
The following pages are in fact the result of a constructive effort to ...
... and a Happy New Year, as I won't be writing until January.
It seemed like the natural time to talk about the weirder things I've done in the past two years, how they turned out, what comes next, and most entertainingly, how my employer is almost certainly going t...
I was recently introduced to the following paper on the Australian fire service, which is an absolute banger. It starts with the following quote.
The basic state of affairs is ignored, to wit, that modern society has no control center.
It's a wonderful piece on ritual ...
A few months ago, I wrote about saving my employer about half a million dollars by clicking a few buttons in Snowflake. In it, I expressed a lot of cynicism around the likelihood of my employer rewarding me. I had reached out to the most senior person in my organization outs...
We're trying something new today.
I.
The swirling, putrid-green heavens begrudgingly opens its yawing maw and unleashes a lazy torrent of acid-rain-drool upon the slowly awakening inhabitants of Valadia IX. The deluge of thick droplets sizzles through the air, splashing ...
The most talented data engineer I know, and my first manager, is a man that loves cooking. I mean, you might think you love cooking, but this guy loves cooking. The most excited text message I received this year was from him, proudly sharing the goddamn analytics on the heat...
I've mentioned that I'm starting a company with friends - no, this isn't a plug for us. The name of the company won't even be mentioned. We now have five engineers on board, one being a 15-year industry veteran, though we're all working on it part-time. W...
Bad news everyone - today's post is high on reflection and low on inarticulate rage. It's actually two posts. Reflections on lunch with a reader, and my reflections on the many emails I've received over the past few weeks.
Incidentally, I had such a great time ge...
In 1985, I murdered a man in cold blood over something petty. I can't remember what it was - all I remember was the fleeting sense of relief that the struggle was over, then years of panic, trying to hide what I'd done from the authorities.
Thankfully Microsoft relea...
Before I get into it, I'm on Mastodon now. Now I have a platform for all my intrusive thoughts during standup. Anyway...
There is an incredibly patient and kind lead engineer on my team - the kind of person that gives me hope that maybe, while the corporate world is run ...
I had my first interview with a serious tech company - the kind that isn't Google but actually has some name recognition amongst people deeply into the tech space. It starts normal and promising, and then fucking derails in spectacular fashion. Strap yourselves in, this ...
Sweet merciful Jesus, I woke up this morning and my inbox was flooded with horrific stories about how employers treat people. I knew things were fucked, but this was so much worse than I imagined, and that's not even getting into the comments on Hackernews. I am going to...
I saved my company half a million dollars in about five minutes. This is more money than I've made for my employers over the course of my entire career because this industry is a sham. I clicked about five buttons.
Let's talk about why happened and why it's a dis...
This year, I've attended my first two large tech conferences. One was hosted by a trendy database vendor, and the other was a general tech conference in a non-hub that no one should know about. Despite some highlights, I would describe both experiences as "grotesqu...
This is a list of all my favorite articles, accompanied by some brief discussion. I'd like to maintain a list like this somewhere to update periodically, along with the little notes, and notify readers if I've added anything particularly good. Let me know if you are ...
I woke up one morning this week to find out that we're YouTube famous now - my all-time favourite tech YouTuber, Primeagen, ended up reading my post on the social fiction of most organizations wanting to improve things on his stream.
On one hand, senpai noticed me. On th...
With God as my witness, the next son of a bitch to mention Agile is going to get hurled into the ground so hard that I'm going to publish a seismology paper in Nature with the data.
I. I Personally Find Stand-Ups Very Usefu-
Stop.
Those apologists who insist that Agile w...
There is a terrible fight going on.
I.
It is the terrible fight between a wolf that wants to do something halfway productive, and a lazy wolf that wants to chill out because his organization seems to only care about making dashboards no one reads, but they still provide that...
Yesterday's post received a lot more attention than the regular ones do. There are plenty of things to talk about, ranging from my favourite comments (people telling me I'm right), the most useful comments (pointing out flaws in my thinking), and the funniest comment...
Last week, I had a fascinating conversation with a reader around frustration and unhappiness at work. Much of it was totally obvious to both of us, but it occurred to me that this probably isn't to everyone, which is why almost all of my colleagues (in very cushy, non-st...
