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Good Software Development Habits
Zarar Siddiqi: engineering leader and consultant in Toronto. Building products with care, and helping teams do the same with AI in the loop.
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A career-ending mistake
As software engineers, we're constantly making detailed, elaborate plans for computers to execute. Isn't it weird that we rarely give a moment's thought to the program for our own careers?
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How to do things if you're not that smart and don't have any talent
This is a blog post aimed at people who want to do important work or make meaningful contributions to work, but feel they aren’t that smart and don’t have any talent. Thanks for reading Adaobi’s Newsletter!
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Intel’s board, and an example of when boards and short-termism fail
Pat lost his seat because of an incompetent board. Let's meet them.
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Mistakes as a new manager
Transitioning from an individual contributor to a manager is tough but rewarding. The key is to delegate, find new sources of fulfillment, focus on quality over quantity, maintain proper engagement…
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Story points are pointless, measure queues
Their creator has disavowed them. The measure and definition is different for every team that uses it. They sow confusion, create conflict, unreliable
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Managing my motivation as a solo dev
One of the biggest sticking points of being a solo dev is maintaining motivation. I’ve been keeping a journal entry about how to hack my motivation, what works and what doesn’t. Here are the things that have worked. Convert external sources to motivation I’ve always known that I’m more extrinsically than intrinsically…
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When did estimates turn into deadlines?
Tip: In complex software modernization projects treat estimates as guidelines, not deadlines.
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Preferring throwaway code over design docs
If you have discipline to throw away your first idea, draft, throwaway PRs often drives more progress than a design doc.
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I run a software book club
How I run a software book club
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From a lorry driver to Ruby on rails developer at 38
This post shares the story of Pedro David Garcia Lopez, a Ruby and Rails developer based in UK, who used to be a Lorry driver.
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Life, death, and retirement
I haven’t been blogging much lately, and it turns out there is a very good reason.My last technical blog post was October 1st of last year. After I hit publish on that one I went to get ready for b…
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Breaking down tasks
Something missing from this series on estimation, until now, has been a discussion of how to “break down” a project into a well-defined task list. I’d not previously written about this because, to me, it’s largely intuitive. But it isn’t for everyone, so this post fills the gap, and explains in detail how I break down…
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Be a thermostat, not a thermometer (2023)
As I’ve learned more about how humans interact with one another at work, I’ve been repeatedly reminded that we are very easily influenced by the mood of thos...
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Cautionary tale on using Chase bank for indie business
A cautionary tale of a business owner's nightmare with Chase Bank, revealing crucial banking lessons for entrepreneurs.
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The biggest source of waste is untapped skilled pragmatists
The biggest source of waste is not low performers or having too many employees.
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How to Be More Agentic
On a supposedly difficult thing
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From engineer to manager: what I love, what I hate
It's been almost 2 years since I moved to a team lead role, then to a full-time engineering management position after the expansion of our team. I've been a front-end developer for 7 years before that, and initially I took the "advanced individual contributor" career track before doing the management turnaround. How's…
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Does “building in public” work?
When everyone builds in public, no one builds in public.
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Goodbye Auth0
My 6 years at Auth0 ... how it all started, what Auth0 meant to me, and why I will proudly wear that shield for as long as the swag holds up.
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Automating processes with software is hard
We have decades of experience trying to automate processes. My biggest lesson is that automation is not about the easy and known flow, but about exception handling.
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Mastering Programming (2016)
FEBRUARY 5, 2016 · FACEBOOK
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Hell is other people: performance management at Big Tech
The lofty theory and the sordid reality of "perf".
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Against Best Practices
I have come to believe that by and large “best practices” are doing more harm than good. Not necessarily because they’re bad advice as such, but because they’re mostly pounded by either 1) various types of zealots, idiots, and assholes who abuse these kind of “best practices” as an argument from authority, or 2)…
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Oh shit, my app is successful and I didn't think about accessibility
Speedrunning A11y in SwiftUI
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What I learned selling my company
At my first company, I internalized the standard advice to never think about M&A. The consensus was, and is, to just keep growing the business and good things will come. I did that, and I was lucky that good things did come in the form of a $130M acquisition
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Think more about what to focus on
Including me