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Bored People Quit
Much has been written about employee motivation and retention. It's written by folks who actively use words like motivation and retention and generally don't ha
Michael Lopp
Stories about the humans who build software
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Visit randsinrepose.com → RSS feedOn Hacker News Oct 2008 – Aug 2026
Career & Management 28Life, Learning & Writing 17Tech Industry & Business 6Tools & Productivity 5Design & UX 2Society, Policy & Culture 1
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Please learn to write
There's been lots of buzz on the topic of whether or not you should learn to code. As an engineer, I don't have unbiased thoughts on the matter. I tweeted Jeff
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The title cards in Blade Runner are amazing
Appreciating typography is a study in paradox. The primary goal of well-designed typography is to help you read the words, not appreciate how the words are comp
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Happy people don’t leave jobs they love
Resignations happen in a moment, and it’s not when you declare, “I’m resigning.” The moment happened a long time ago when you received a random email from a goo
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Seven Levels of Busy
Level 1: NOT BUSY My schedule is wide open. I can choose infinite paths. Zero commitments. The weekend. I sleep like a baby. Life is good, but am I living my be
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The Nerd Handbook
A nerd needs a project because a nerd builds stuff. All the time. Those lulls in the conversation over dinner? That's the nerd working on his project in his hea
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The Builder's High
When I am in a foul mood, I have a surefire way to improve my outlook – I build something. A foul mood is a stubborn beast and it does not give ground easily. I
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Ok, so you can’t decide
Even if you've checked your work, asked for all the help, and are moving gingerly, there will be decisions where you can't decide. You've considered and reconsi
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Hacking is Important
Back in the early 90s, Borland International was the place to be an engineer. Coming off the purchase of Ashton-Tate, Borland was the third largest software com
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The Wolf
You’ve heard of the 10x engineer, but I am here to tell you about the Wolf. They are an engineer, and they consistently exhibit the following characteristics:
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What we lost
Who is this? Princess Leia, right? End of Rogue One. Wrong, this is not Princess Leia. This is. A photograph of Carrie Fisher in her role of Princ
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The Rands Test
It's hard to pick a single best work by Joel Spolsky, but if I was forced to, I'd pick The Joel Test. It's his own, highly irresponsible, sloppy test to rate th
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The USB Situation
I write this from the latest MacBook Pro. I've been running this as my primary machine for almost a month. When I'm not grinding out the latest soon-to-be-relea
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Bored people quit (2011)
Much has been written about employee motivation and retention. It's written by folks who actively use words like motivation and retention and generally don't ha
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Sometimes your job is to stay the hell out of the way
I wrote a piece a long time ago about The Wolf. It's my personal take on the mythical 10x engineer, except that they aren't a myth. They exist. I've seen them.
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Rands in Repose: Managing Nerds
Ten years ago, the world was collectively freaked out by the Y2K bug. The idea was that when innumerable software-driven clocks flipped at midnight from 1999 to
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Rands in Repose: The Noise
It started that morning when you actually had time to go to your favorite coffee shop on that Wednesday morning. You, like many of us, had a bunch of time off f
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The Ask
Coffee in hand, I sit down in the Cave. Any Tuesday during the work week, a sip, and I parse the calendar. 1:1 — he's fine. Status meeting — listen. Staff me
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A Distributed Meeting Primer
As a leader who primarily values team health, I place great value on the weekly 1:1 because it’s where I assess health. It’s my highest bandwidth meeting, and h
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A Design Primer for Engineers
For a word that can so vastly change the fortunes of a company, it's worth noting that no generally accepted definition of the word design exists. This means wh
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Rands in Repose: How to Run a 1:1
Business is noisy. Business is full of people worrying loudly about projects, processes, and other people. These people have opinions, and they share them all
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The Pond
"Can I work remote?" I cringe. It's Ian and Ian is a senior engineer. He's a rock. He gets it done. I never have to ask him twice and, after six years, Ian has
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Horrible
I can turn a phrase. High school journalism is where I discovered this. Mrs. Wickett kept bringing stories to me in my junior year "Needs a clever headline." I
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Rands: Hurry
Most interesting ideas come to me between 8am and 10am. This is sacred time. The day is young, I am rested, and the coffee is fresh. I spend most of this time i
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Rands in Repose: How to Run a Meeting
I bag on meetings. I bag on meetings because like any nerd I expect the universe to be efficient and orderly and there is no more vile a violation of this sens
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Rands: A Disclosure
My management career began with a misunderstanding. "Rands, you're doing a great job on tools development and I'd really like you to Lead the effort." It soun
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Rands In Repose: The Makers of Things
In the late 1800s, the Brooklyn Bridge was built with no power tools, no heavy machinery, and only a basic, evolving understanding of how to make steel. It's no
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Gaming the System
On my list of creative management solutions to dire situations, I offer the rolling whiteboard. The rolling whiteboard was a curiosity at the start-up. Not a f
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Rands in Repose Gives Dropbox Love
Cloud computing is yet another name for services that have existed for a really long time. Here's the 2008 IEEE Internet Computing quote regarding Cloud Computi
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Your People
In your career as a geek, there's a list of essential career intangibles. These are the things you need to do in order to be successful, which are also maddenin