Two people arguing about a decision (at least past the point where any new information is emerging) is a bad sign. I'd ask myself a few questions: (1) Has the incentive system within your company encouraged competition? 1/11

Leadership is a characteristic of an individual. It is NOT a position to which somebody can be appointed.

A periodic reminder that leadership and management are two entirely different things. Calling a manager a "leader" is an appalling bit of doublespeak. You cannot appoint or assign a leader. 1/6

If you’re canceling subscription services with giant companies with ties to terrible people, you should think about replacing them with a library card. Many library systems give you access to physical media (some of which you can’t find on streaming!) as well as other great stuff.

I want to cut through the "Agenic AI" gatekeeping BS for a moment. Putting the conclusion first: If you know how to build a microservice and make a REST call, you're an "AI-Agent Developer." Congratulations! Everything else is trivia. 1/10

A question for the language nerds among us. I was taught that you hyphenate compounds only when they're used as an adjective. For example, "self-managing teams." Grammarly, however, wants to hyphenate non-ajectival use (e.g., "teams are self-managing"). Is that legit?

I long for the day that this speech feels more like science fiction again.

The last political column I was allowed to write in the @washingtonpost.com was a criticism of Obama. His people took issue with my piece, but we were respectful. Now he is tweeting in support of me. This is how free political speech and respect for debate *actually works*. Or used to work.

Biology Department xkcd.com/3140/

Bluesky, the supposed "left-wing echo chamber," is suspending people for making jokes about Charlie Kirk. I've been skeptical of Bluesky since they went out of their to protect notorious transphobe activist Jessie Singal, but this is a new level of siding with the far right.

This is the person they are suspending people over btw

Ya know. I keep hearing how AI will eliminate "junior devs," but the same tech requires senior devs to fix, validate, and test the generated code. How are we to create senior devs if there are no junior devs? Just askin'.

There is an inherent problem in building an "ecosystem," as compared to an application. My Apple TV is currently useless because the sound (routed: Apple TV→HDMI→TV→HDMI→sound bar) is almost half a second out of sync with the video (which has only one hop). 1/10

Who says that AI doesn't create programming jobs?

<rant> The gatekeeping associated with AI is beginning to annoy me. I have to stay on top of this stuff, so I watch a lot of videos from sources like O'Reilly as well as conference videos. Most of the stuff I watch is useless. 1/5

One of the critical issues surrounding AI chatbots is user trust. We've all experienced some lame support bot providing *no* support at all. 1/10

AI-generated code is here to stay, but there are issues. One thing to consider is the sheer size of AI-generated code. An LLM is not particularly concerned with creating small, elegant solutions. It just puts together things that (mostly) "work" by copying from places like GitHub. 1/8

The attached graphic is an excellent summary of everything that a good Product person does. You will note that "_project_ management," "manage tickets," "compel or browbeat people to build X," and "use Jira" are nowhere to be seen. 1/7

A worthy cause and also an indictment of our society, in which teachers have to beg the public to get basic classroom supplies. Education is essential in any country that wants to succeed in the world economy. We in the US are attacking it on every level. The economic consequences will be dire.

Demanding a certification in a single process (like Scrum) is like demanding that a Michelin 3-star chef be certified in water boiling.The problem with being certified in a single process is that no single process is adequate. 1/2

Learned helplessness happens when you are regularly exposed to punishment for things you have no control over. You learn that punishment is inevitable, no matter what you do. The result is passivity. You don’t bother to try to improve because there’s no point. 1/12

I have often been told when advocating for team autonomy that some teams want to be told what to do. They often feel uncomfortable when making decisions. 1/9

Any kind of formula you use in a meeting (like a retro) is problematic to me. Following one by rote seems the opposite of agility, and an imposed formula violates team autonomy. That said, a formulaic approach might have its place in certain conditions: 1/5

This is one of the main anti patterns of recurring ceremonies: you tend to wait until the meeting to solve the problem

I'm not a fan of Scrum Retrospective meetings. My two main issues are that they don't happen often enough, and they often follow some ridiculous formula. Addressing the first issue, I'd rather follow Kaizen principles. Improve every minute of every hour of every day. 1/6

<another><rant> I'm also getting sick of the Scrum stans trotting out the "Scrum predates Agile" chestnut. Kanban, XP, Crystal, pretty much all of the "Agile" frameworks predate Agile. 1/4

<rant> Scrum ≠ Agile. I get so tired of posts that equate the two. Nobody needs SMs, POs, Sprints, backlogs, "accountability," or any other practice or meeting (I refuse to call meetings "events" 🙄) that Scrum prescribes. We'd all be better off without any of that, I think. 1/4

Whenever I read about AI, the phrase "vast potential" seems to pop up. I agree with that, but it's a problem when decision makers confuse "potential" with "real." All too often, when I read some CEO interview, it seems like the speaker thinks that the future is now. 1/3

Whenever I talk about what I think of as effective ways to work, somebody always pushes back with "But <some behemoth company> doesn't do that and they're successful!" Sure. When you have enough money, you can work in ineffective ways. So, I have a few questions for the skeptics: 1/5

Was asked: What are the pros and cons of an "Agile" approach? Here's my list, but bear in mind that I am NOT talking about Scrum or SAFe or Kanban. I don't see those frameworks as even slightly Agile, at least not inherently. 1/7

One huge advantage of AI is that it's forcing companies back to in-person interviews. Scanning AI-generated resumes and administering remote tests when an AI lurks in the background providing the answers just doesn't work. Companies that don't realize that will be hiring only 2ⁿᵈ rate people.

"It’s kind of weird, right? Why would my mind make me recall that the Russian Revolution was largely ignited by a devastating economic crisis, social inequality, and the ruling class being aggressively out of touch with the suffering masses?"

Before you add something you imagine is "security" to your website, take a look at how sites that need real security (e.g., banks, PayPal, etc.) do it. One trend I've seen lately is sites with "prove you're a human" tests that are so complicated that humans cannot pass them. 1/6

I often hear "The customers will *love* this!" No. They won't. Customers will happily tell you what they need. They do that every day when they call tech support, for example. Talk to them. Pay attention. 1/2

There are two ways to approach new-product creation: Model 1: Start with a "great idea!!!!". Find potential customers; Build small pieces of that idea incrementally and get continuous feedback as you're building. 1/8

I was watching Project Runway last night (don't judge 😄), and this particular season's dysfunction-for-entertainment aligns closely with the problems of many (certainly not all) software shops. Let's discuss. 1/11

As we lurch into a place where AI-assisted programming becomes possible, it's ironic that actual documentation (in well-crafted English) is now becoming extra important, especially for APIs. LLMs do not "understand" what code does—what it's supposed to accomplish. 1/7

I can't emphasize this👇 too much. Our job is not to build the most sparkly "innovative" pie-in-the-sky "unicorn" idea. Maybe one in 10,000 of those take off, and I'm being conservative. Instead, address the pain. 1/3

The tragedy of venture capital: you raise it by pitching the smartest, most innovative ideas you can imagine. But you win customers by solving their dumbest, most annoying problems. That misalignment kills so many startups. So glad Prefect is now funded by the people who actually use it.

One of the essential rules of coding is "no surprises." The behavior of your system should not be surprising at any level. Here are a few examples. Perhaps you could add some to the list: * Method names that don't describe what the method does are a source of surprises. 1/8

"Can we make this smaller?" is a very different, and much more useful, question than "How big is this?" People say that the discussion surrounding estimation is more important than the estimate itself. 1/5

Yet another defense of story points over on the Lean-and-Agile group [https://t.ly/BrLp9] got me thinking I should repeat the following as a public service announcement: Re story points (vs story counting) don't work. Story points require estimation. 1/9

<rant> I was just reading through some Python code that made heavy use of its insanely complicated exception system. The code used everything from nested exception groups to else clauses on except statements. 1/13

There's an interesting cognitive bias called the Misinformation Effect. It is very easy to study this. Take people, show them a video of, say, a man buying a hot dog at a street cart. Then, make them read very confident but very wrong descriptions of that event.

I keep reading about things like detailed up-front Sprint plans, about "failed" Sprints, about people panicking when a Sprint doesn't go according to plan, etc. There is no agility in that thinking, whatsoever. 1/7

Some people seem to think from my posts that I'm an AI Luddite when it comes to programming. That's not true. I am, however, an AI-hype antagonist. AI, even an LLM, is an essential incipient technology that's here to stay, and we all need to learn to use it effectively. 1/9

Yes, it's true that an AI can slop together a prototype faster than we can. The question is whether or not that actually saves us time overall. 1/7

I'm copying this BlueSky post👇 for amplification [t.ly/lSbSF]. "The results surprised us: Developers thought they were 20% faster with AI tools, but they were actually 19% slower when they had access to AI than when they didn't." Far from a big enough sample set, but the 1/5

We ran a randomized controlled trial to see how much AI coding tools speed up experienced open-source developers. The results surprised us: Developers thought they were 20% faster with AI tools, but they were actually 19% slower when they had access to AI than when they didn't.

I thought I'd throw this out as an example of the worst UX I have ever seen. All of us have occasionally wanted to rewatch a series on Amazon Prime Video, but have been frustrated that you can't just reset the series to "unwatched." Turns out you can, at least one season at a time. 1/5