Lessons Learned at My Most Recent Job
Today is my first day of “unemployment” in the last 12 years. I’m switching jobs, soon to start at NerdWallet. This time, I decided to take a couple of weeks...
Recent Posts
Introducing the Software Engineering Fireside Chat Podcast
I’m pleased to announce the first episodes of the Software Engineering Fireside Chat podcast are available for download. Along with my colleagues Scott Lobde...
Topics for One on Ones
I like to ask other managers what kind of questions they ask during their one on ones. Everyone has their own style, so I often get some interesting response...
Thoughts on Object Oriented Class Design
The problem with object-oriented languages is they’ve got all this implicit environment that they carry around with them. You wanted a banana but what you...
Creating a Budget and Sticking to It
The hardest part of doing anything is starting. If you’re someone who has delayed getting serious about retirement savings, or budgeting in general, I would ...
Sync dotfiles with GitHub
What are dotfiles?
My favorite coding interview question
Every software engineering interview I have ever participated in has involved a coding exercise. For one position, I would expect three two five separate cod...
Picking a place to live in the East Bay
My wife and I recently bought a house in the San Francisco bay area. Having no family in the area, and no real ties to any neighborhood, it was surprisingly ...
Why software engineers should maintain a blog
I have a few pieces of standard advice that I give to anyone starting out in software engineering. Join a startup, max out your 401k and start a blog. Why sh...
Creating International CSV files with Python
You might assume that reading and writing files using the CSV format, being a simple and human-readable implementation, would be relatively pain free. You wo...