Tag: career

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.

Tools of the craft

Developers should feel empowered to configure their environment and development tools to their liking and contribute to the shared team standard. They should know the libraries they picked and why they picked them. They should be able to articulate why they like one programming language over another. As part of their job, each developer should be able to state clearly and in actionable terms how they’d like to work.

On elephant graveyards

An elephant graveyard, when applied to a corporate setting, is a team, company, or some other set of conditions in which otherwise bright engineers are forced into positions or assignments where there is no hope for future career growth. In this post, I hope to define the conditions that must be present for an elephant graveyard to form, how to detect them, and how to navigate them.

What does a Chief Software Architect do?

For many years I couldn’t understand what software architects do. Early in my career, I thought they were useless. As a young developer, I felt that I could do the job of a business analyst, software architect, and developer all at the same time. Now, seventeen years into my post-college career I am one myself. I am trying to learn what it means to be a good software architect, and I hope to be one myself.