Category Archives: management
Dear [Under-Capitalized Business-Guy who wants me to work on your site for 'equity'],
[Note: This was cut/pasted from an email response I sent an individual I had a meeting with. I did not enter into a business relationship with this person. I posted this here since it seemed to contain general advice that … Continue reading
What are the best ways to recruit top engineering talent to work on a pre-Series A startup with no funding but big ideas?
I saw this question on Quora and it caught my eye because it’s focused on the area I’m interested in professionally — how to build and launch new businesses that make a real impact. One of the answers, though, I … Continue reading
Should I work at a large company or at a startup?
I worked for a couple large companies doing development early in my career. There main frustrations I felt were: 1. Raises were based more on how the company was doing rather than individual contribution. I remember one year my entire … Continue reading
Question: Should I plan for the future? Or focus on what I need to do today? Answer: Yes.
Being able to focus on what you need to have in place for the future is a good thing. It’s good in that you can’t be successful without it. The challenge is that thinking 3 steps ahead too often will … Continue reading
What is a fair salary for a technical co-founder in a startup?
Here’s the question: “If you’re a software engineer or developer and your asked to do a project for a lean startup to incubate and you’re asked to reduce your price in exchange for equity, what ratio of discount to equity … Continue reading
What are the possible career paths for an interface developer?
This depends a great deal on your personality and what you want to do. As a UX developer, you get deeply involved in how users will use the application — which lends itself well to a Product Management role. Product … Continue reading
What’s the difference between a Lead Software Engineer and a Technical Architect?
Having done both jobs, I’d say that the difference depends on the company. From a fundamental perspective, the role of Architect has to do with overall application design – or at minimum review of designs. Some responsibilities would include: * … Continue reading
Agile Development and Sprints: Feature-boxed or Time-boxed?
When organizing a sprint, there are two ways to ‘scope’ the work for each Sprint: Time-boxed or Feature-boxed. In a ‘feature-boxed’ approach, a set of features, defects and chores are defined to ‘scope’ the work to be done during the … Continue reading
The future of programming? To provide the means for creating innovation.
I recently ran across an Information Week article called The Future of Programming that forecasts a drop in the demand for programmers along with a drop in their stature withing companies. They described off-shoring and the fall-off of the Internet … Continue reading