Posts by Marcus Blankenship

Look, can I get real for a minute? Your boss doesn’t care about Tech Debt. Neither does your customer, your VPE, the owner of the company or anyone who uses your software. They don’t give a golly-gosh-darn about how bad the last person left the code. They don’t care that it’s not “elegant,” or it’s…

I like agile, but I’m starting to wonder if it likes me back. I have every reason to like agile development: it saved me from the dangerous, isolating waterfall processes that I suffered under for ten years. Heck, I wasn’t even allowed to talk to the internal customers that used my software! That job was…

This quiz was given to a group of 4-year olds. See if you can guess how they answered. Jimmy is running through the house after being told not to, and accidentally breaks one of his mother’s plates. Helen is helping her mother put away the dishes and accidentally drops four plates, breaking them all. Who…

Programmers are liars. I was. You were. Maybe you still are. Sometimes I still am. Here are a few gems I’ve heard… 1. “Yeah, I tested it.” 2. “It worked on my machine.” 3. “It was too simple for a code review.” 4. “Everything is fine.” The last one is what I wrote about yesterday.…

  When Tim gave his two-week notice to leave the company, I was shocked. He was the first developer I’d hired at my business, Creo. I hired him as an untested, unproven intern his senior year of college. I’d groomed him, invested in him, trained him, and been friends with him. So when he came…

“JUST” It’s one of the worst four-letter words I know. Whenever I catch myself using it, I stop and apologize. And when I hear it, I hold up my hand and stop the person speaking. Let me give you some examples from last week… “Just put a form up to collect their e-mail…” “Just make…

  When I was in high-school the worst phrase a guy could hear was “I like you as a friend.” Oh, the anguish and trauma of unrequited love! It was a curse to be a”friend” with someone you were sweet on. It was practically impossible to move from “friends” to “more than friends.” These days,…

Sitting in my office, door slightly ajar, I heard Jimmy, the QA guy, talking loudly and sarcastically to of my programmers. “So, Vinuth, will it work this time?  Huh?” I sat up, listening intently. The dev mumbled something, and Jimmy snorted and left. As he passed my door, he smiled and pleasantly said, “Hey boss!”, giving…

At my last job, my boss told me I had the knack of “Stepping on someone’s toes without scuffing their shoes.”  I didn’t understand that at the time, but eventually, it sank in.  I’d learned the art of giving feedback without being offensive.  As a Tech Lead and Software Manager, that skill proved to be…

What do these questions all have in common? “Would you like me to poke you in the eye?” “Shall I get out my home movies?” “Did you want to talk about Trump?” “Would you like to see my goiter?” “Do you have any feedback for me in our last 2 minutes?” The answer? You’ll probably…

  Turagd emailed me this question a few days ago: “How did you know you wanted to be an engineering manager?” Like many of you, I didn’t set out to be an engineering manager. In fact, I understood completely when a coaching client told me: “I never prepared for this move in my career.” Let…

In the 5 second survey I sent, I asked: What is your hardest problem at work right now? You said that  you don’t have enough time to get everything done. You stated the problem in different ways… “Balancing development with being able to delegate responsibility.” “Balancing management tasks with actual work.” “time management with many…

Today Samuel wrote me this question… “Would you count moving a meeting from 1:30 to 2:30 as a broken promise? I have to do this a lot as nobody respects blocked calendar time in this corporate culture. I want to know if this kind of schedule tuning would be perceived poorly.” Great question Samuel! Yes,…

“Marcus, you don’t have the backbone for this job. You simply don’t have the balls. I’m telling you this for your benefit.” Writing that today makes me nauseous. In my mind, I’m instantly transported back into Jim’s office. See, I’d just interviewed for a job I thought was already mine… I’d been promised the promotion…