Posts by Marcus Blankenship

When you talk to your boss about refactoring code, do they exhibit floccinaucinihilipilification?  If so, you might struggle to get approval for the project. (In case, like me, you haven’t heard of “floccinaucinihilipilification,” it means “the act of estimating something as worthless.”  Now we both know! <grin>) When I read this definition, I saw a bit…

Many teams wish they had more time for four activities: 1. Rewriting code 2. Refactoring code 3. Training and improving skills 4. Experimentation with tech and techniques The problem is, these events don’t look like adding features, which is what bosses and clients want. Everyone is doing it. All software teams do these things, but…

At our last Tech Leads Mentoring group, we discussed how to handle a load of reviewing 15-30 resumes per day. My primary suggestion was to create clearer filters that HR/recruiters could use to test for what you cared about: culture, tech skills, etc.  This would allow you eliminate many unqualified candidates quickly, and pursue the best…

Have you noticed I tell a lot of stories?  Falling off a cliff.  Deleting 50k lines of code.  The time I was told I didn’t have the, ahem… _backbone_ to manage a department. You might think I’m naturally a storyteller, but you’d be wrong.  I learned to tell stories the first time I led a…

I got some interesting feedback yesterday about my #SoftwareManager slack room. It turns out it kinda sucks.  Ouch. Not because it’s full of trolls, or because we post random HN stuff.  In fact, the discussions are consistently high-value, interesting, helpful discussions. So, why does my slack channel suck, and yours probably does as well? Because…

Customers, bosses, and clients don’t understand why software takes so long.  After all, it just looks like typing, so how hard can it be?  Houses, cars and other physical things benefit from obvious complexity and codified standards.  Software development often has neither. For example, when I asked my home builder to add a small deck on my…

I had a thought this morning:  What’s your #1 goal of pull-request reviews? Pick only one: [   ] To catch bugs which could cause downtime [   ] To ensure your team adheres to best practices [   ] To improve code before it hits production [   ] To improve your team’s coding and…

Picture this: My first real coding job out of college, my first big project.  “Create a Direct Bill / Credit Memo entry system in the ERP.  Model it after the Order Entry system.”  Six weeks into the project, on a Tuesday at 11:13 a.m. I type a command to remove all the temp files that…

15 years ago I fell off a cliff on the Oregon coast. I was walking too close to an edge covered in brush.  My wife and three small kids were standing about 20 feet away, safely behind the railing, as I said those famous last words: “Stay there; I just want a better view for…

I’m studying for mid-terms, getting ready for eight days of vacation, working with a designer on a new book cover, and feeling a bit stretched. When I searched for a book cover designer, I thought: “All I need to do is hire the right book designer and then book sales will take off.” Even as…