Failures & Observations
by Allen Plummer
Below are some random things I’ve learned from very specific failures in my career:
(In no particular order):
- Don’t assume everyone understands me.
- When in doubt, keep my mouth shut.
- When creating meetings, I need to have the right place, time, agenda, and people.
- It seems like more work up front, but I should design solutions with testing in mind (can be called TDD).
- Always strive for efficiency - even if it means changing team ceremonies up, or changing roles around.
- Treat infrastructure like cattle, not pets.
- Treat people like people.
- Think scale now - even on a very trivial application.
- My teammates want to know they are contributing to the company’s bottom line.
- The people that work for me are my teammates.
- Keep priorities straight - there’s a pink slip somewhere with my name on it.
- Either keep immaculate records, or keep none.
- Much time is wasted with “life hacks” and organizational tips.
- Work-life balance is an esoteric term and hard to quantify; I’ll know it when I see it.
- Brevity over verbosity.
- Emoticons/emojis can help soften what is considered terseness. 🙂
- Don’t overuse emoticons/emojis.
- Continue hacking and slinging code - it is cathartic and keeps the blade sharpened.