Posts by Marcus Blankenship

Nathan Chen is my spirit animal. Your balance. Striving to keep your balance is a fool’s errand. Instead, learn to improve your balance, allowing you to recover your balance faster. Consider an Olympic ice skater. They work very, very hard to keep their balance. And yet, they fall. Just like we do. If anyone would…

For my upcoming leadership book I’m trying to figure out if the analogy between learning to program and learning to lead is helpful. Would you take a minute and hit REPLY with an answer these questions? There’s no right/wrong answer – I just want to see if what ideas/insights the analogy brings. ==== On learning…

When my kids were in elementary school, I didn’t talk openly about sex or drugs. See, I was afraid if I talked about it, then they’d do it. So I just pretended that sex and drugs didn’t exist. Which taught my kids to pretend the same thing, at least in front of me.   When…

My friend Desi wrote a Solitaire game for the Amiga 1000. It was 15,041 lines of ANSI C… all in the main() function. He didn’t create any other functions but had a crap-ton of GOTOs. He’d applied many of the important concepts of C – variables, constants, conditionals, loops, comparison, arrays, pointers, and of course…

Hey you – thanks for just being you. For stepping into the line of fire for you team. For doing the dirty work that no one notices. (If you’re not cleaning the actual toilet, some of your job certainly resembles it!) If this is a holiday week for you – enjoy your time off. If…

My work world is filled with fascinating situations – and I wouldn’t have it any other way. One client recently spent four weeks, and thirteen people, responding to their CEO’s request to “add this small feature today.” The teams work well until they are blindsided and rushed – and then the poo hits the fan.…

For the past few years, I’ve been doing a secret experiment. I’ve been getting groups of tech leaders together to talk about their work. Sometimes it’s part of a workshop, or ad-hoc at a conference, or at a dinner. What I find is, without fail, people give and receive enormous value. Life-changing, confidence building, problem-solving…

PRE-S: I’ve got some free time in my consulting schedule. If you want help thinking through a sticky problem, tackling a change, or finding new options to move forward – I’m your guy. Just hit REPLY and let’s make magic happen. 1) It’s annual employee evaluation time – known in some companies as “the third…

Last week a lot of you told me you were on board with the ideas about a future where all programmers had a great boss, on a safe team, in a productive environment. This week I’ve been wordsmithing a vision and mission and wanted to share a working draft with you. Vision: All software teams…

For the past five years, I’ve been working to help managers improve their work. Yet, there’s one question I continually hear:” Why?”   After all, I’m one guy in rural Klamath Falls, Oregon. A town where the biggest parade is at the Potato Festival. (It’s true, look it up.) Why would I care if you’re…

When you’re honest about your struggles, it will connect you with some people. But it will surprise and confuse others. To them, your honesty might be seen as a lack of confidence, lack of skills, or lack of motivation — an admission of failure, or of giving up, or giving in. This is because transparency…

PRE-S: Software Leader Seminar returns in Jaunary 2020.  Start the new year by boosting your EQ, leadership, and communication skills. (Plus, you can write it off your 2019 taxes!) A friend of mine who’s Sr. VPEng at a mid-side SaaS company in a competitive market told me a story, and I’ll share it with their…

Hiring programmers is hard, expensive, and takes forever. You spend countless hours on job descriptions, hiring rubrics, and checking references. You put candidates through the gauntlet: coding tests, whiteboard problems, panel interviews, culture interviews, and so on. If they make it through, then you roll the dice and make them an offer. Despite all your…

“No one can see their own back.” Some of you wanted to know how to get more feedback from your team, so you don’t feel like you’re driving blind. So, I whipped up thirteen questions which will give you more insights into how your team perceives you: “What would you do in my situation?” “How…

Last week Dan asked, “What advice do you have for addressing the insecurity I feel that my team can’t see the value I’m adding?” You sent in some answers, which I want to share. I also want to share my thoughts. But first, I’ll identify the two meanings of the question: How do I reduce…