Category: engineer
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Learning at Splunk via Technical books
6 offices in San Francisco, Santana Row, Vancouver, Seattle, United Kingdom, Boulder and Sydney are received 145 copies of 3 books. Pragmatic Programmer, The Code Complete & 97 Things Every Architect Should Know. Happy reading fellow engineers!
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Meeting time, maker time
Everyone needs maker time at work. Otherwise either you work more at home, or you often feel unaccomplished. My maker time is about 60%.
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Walk over and ask to see a demo
(The photo is one of my favorite pencils I borrow from my daughter. I finally used up all the lead in the pencil) 20 minutes, that’s all it takes. “Could you show me how you work?” Let’s turn on screen capture. Oh, interesting, what else? Why do you like this over, let’s say this other…
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In the areas of learning and development
(This post is not for you, it’s for me) It started out as 5% of my time. Just a 4-hour hands-on workshop with new hires once a month. Now it’s the following 1 engineer working on developing a hands-on workshop that will track start, finish, and verification. Able to track usage, validate answers and replace…
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Prioritizing with difficulty x cost x quantity = value??
Could it be that simply to calculate the value of my backlog at work? I once heard on a podcast that a simple way for a startup founder to prioritize all the product backlog in order to focus is via a spreadsheet and do hard ranking. Difficulty x cost x quantity == value? While…
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Experiment : Operating at 2 levels ahead
Last week a senior software engineer who has deep knowledge in a very specialized and high value skill (Machine Learning) for our company asked me for advice on getting more exposure and impact for her work. She was in a situation where her skills and opinions are sought after by senior leaders in engineering, product…
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Pick one, and go deep
As an engineer, I’ll give you 4 attributes to define your work to choose from Ownership Customer focus Data driven Cadance You have to chose at least one of these to drive your work. Pick one and focus.
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Impactful work takes planning, preparation and follow through
(The art piece is done by a SF local artist of migrant workers working in California central valley) Yesterday, my direct report, a principal software engineer who is an expert in our C++ code base presented to over 150 engineers on a piece of code walk through of a “Life of a single data event…
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The profile of an engineer
(The photo is a piece of in store made of thick bacon from Luke’s, Cole Valley, San Francisco) A potential engineer doesn’t have to like math, abstract thinking, typing on the computer all day creating software. I head an interview with a IBM Fellow, who happens to be a woman say that she didn’t fit…
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Communications habit
Last week at work, I learned that an executive has been working on a diversity and inclusion effort monthly. They really care about moving the needed to increase the gender and under represented diversity in our engineering ranks. I was pleasantly surprised that they are so active in this area. I personally have not heard…