productivity is elusive... buff.ly/4alHyKX

If you are allowed to deliver iteratively and incrementally so long as you deliver all predetermined features exactly as originally specified by the deadline, you might be working in a bad system.

This week's video will teach you practical techniques for splitting large stories, avoiding overly technical tasks disguised as user stories, and ensuring your features meet user expectations. (link to the full video in my bio)

Gabor Maté dedicated his life to curing childhood trauma. He once said: "The attempt to escape from pain is what creates more pain." As a father and social worker with 15+ years guiding transformation… Here are his 5 lessons to rewire your brain and save yourself: 🧵

There is no magic in understanding that if you take 3-5 days to do a task, and you have 10 in the queue, it will be 30-50 days (ish) before you can take on a new task without delaying any of your assigned jobs. Why does this seem baffling to software managers?

Scatter and gather All tasks are in progress now Yet nothing is done

What is the purpose of a programming language? If you said, "to write instructions for the computer", then you have fallen into the same trap millions of software developers fall into. What is language? Language is syntax we use to take the ideas that are floating around in our

TL;DR 01: What is a USE CASE? this is a png - get all 5 for free as PDF w proper hyperlinks at alistaircockburn.company.site/Epub-TL-DR-06-…

If leadership thinks software engineering can be replaced with LLMs, they likely have low-quality engineering, which is ultimately a management problem. Leaders who've done the work and done it well know the difference and have more realistic expectations.

Leadership wonders why AI tools haven't significantly improved development teams' output. The obvious reason is that we don't spend most of our time writing code. The less obvious reason is that the processes surrounding development were the real obstacle all along.

Developers, STOP fighting continuous integration!

996 is a diversion from the real issue. (BTW I understand the need to crank sometimes--I do it too). The times I've overworked, I've gotten less done & gotten too tired to realize I'm getting less done. That can't possibly make me *more* successful.

The attached screen grab should make everybody who programs AI systems pay attention. As programmers, we should never forget that so-called AI is just numbers and probabilities. Because of that, LLM-based systems are inherently insecure, not from exploiting bugs—the way standard

Most people fail at estimates because they use time A simple do/estimate workflow: If it takes 2 minutes → do it now If it takes a few minutes → call it 1 hour If it takes a few hours → call it 1 day You’re not here to prove speed You’re here to buy enough space to ship

"Collaborative and meeting cultures are fundamentally at odds. Working alone, then having a meeting to resolve problems, is not collaboration; it's working alone."

Most people overestimate what they can do in a day And underestimate what 1% does over a year 1% better every day = 37x better in a year 1% worse every day = nearly zero Same starting point. Opposite outcomes James Clear nailed this in Atomic Habits. In software, we call it

There's a gap between finishing one feature and starting the next. There's pressure to fill it immediately. That gap is where you work on your futures—the things that make the next feature easier.

Terrific new paper in the ACM from Scott Hanselman 🌮 and Mark Russinovich, proposing an apprenticeship model for junior engineers. dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/37… I'll add one thing. At every place that I have seen start hiring junior engineers in the last few years, that charge was led and

𝗪𝗵𝘆 𝗶𝘀 𝗖𝗿𝗶𝘁𝗶𝗰𝗮𝗹 𝗧𝗵𝗶𝗻𝗸𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝗮 𝗚𝗮𝗺𝗲 𝗖𝗵𝗮𝗻𝗴𝗲𝗿 𝗙𝗼𝗿 𝗗𝗲𝘃𝗲𝗹𝗼𝗽𝗲𝗿𝘀? I was often asked whether doing a Ph.D. was worth it, given that I left academia for industry. The clear answer is yes, because there I learned skills that, as a developer, I