For the past four months, I have been working on my Wharton Executive CTO Program. There is no new content to learn or assignment to do this week, which means it’s a good opportunity to reflect on progress. I am a Distinguished Engineer at ADP, a Fortune 500 technology services company. Today, I am one … Continue reading On the role of Distinguished Engineer and CTO Mindset
Tag: career
My giant follows me wherever I go
My giant follows me wherever I go In his "Self-Reliance" essay, Ralph Waldo Emerson said: "At home I dream that at Naples, at Rome, I can be intoxicated with beauty, and lose my sadness. I pack my trunk, embrace my friends, embark on the sea, and at last wake up in Naples, and there beside … Continue reading My giant follows me wherever I go
The day I became an architect
What triggered my professional growth spurt and promotion was an epiphany that I am more effective if I help engineers grow rather than do things myself. Historically, I would build things and then pass them off to engineers. Instead, I realized that empowering the team to make a collaborative architecture decision and grow together is a hell of a lot more rewarding than the way I used to do things.
Leadership is About “We,” Not “I”
Every now and then I hear a leader boast, "I created a multi-million revenue generating product for my company." Such a statement makes me wonder if this person worked alone on the project. Authentic leadership isn't about self-promotion but recognizing the collective effort. Behind every successful software product lies a dedicated team. Engineers, analysts, testers, designers, sales, … Continue reading Leadership is About “We,” Not “I”
On luck and gumption
In our industry, gumption is what gets us to try new things, experiment, and build new products. Sometimes, it means trying new programming languages or frameworks with nothing else to explain the decision than your gut feeling. Sometimes, it means ignoring the prevailing management methodology to run your team as you think it should. So when opportunity knocks, have the gumption to answer.
The Toxic Clique
Working with the same group of people for 20 years is probably as bad for your creativity as working on the same project for the same company as long. Your skills stagnate, your ideas become inbred, your work becomes outdated, and your growth becomes limited by the Clique that helped you earlier in your career.
Why don’t they tell you that in the instructions?
The nature of our jobs as software engineers is such that we must deal with externalities. Hardware will crash. Services will auto-scale up and down. Garbage collection will occur. Humans will make mistakes and use our software in ways we did not anticipate. Someone will write configuration instructions for you on how to setup your dev environment, and they might not apply perfectly to your setup.
Good developers can pick up new programming languages
We shouldn’t be recruiting developers based on some single technology they know but on what they can learn and apply in the future. A generalist developer that can pick the right tool for a given taskand articulate why they made such a decision is a lot more valuable than a specialist.
Am I getting old or is it really ok now to trash your employer on social media?
Employers do search candidates on social media — and so should candidates. No one wants to work for a company that trashes its’ former employees and candidates. No one wants to hire a candidate that trashes their former employer.
Good idea fairy strikes when you least expect it
I am the wrong Chief Architect for the Good Idea Fairy to prey upon. You see, I am a very practical and pragmatic Chief Architect. I know what I know, and I know what I don’t know. I solve problems by writing code — I have the background and the training to do that. I can see through the bullshit.
The Dulin Report 
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