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To make an even broader point— I used to be very impressed with people that wrote programming books, spoke at conferences, and so on. Decades on, I look at the

To make an even broader point— I used to be very impressed with people that wrote programming books, spoke at conferences, and so on. Decades on, I look at the best programmers and managers I’ve ever worked with and notice they’ve never done these things. On the flip side people I’ve worked that were always off doing this kind of thing never seemed all that impressive when it came down to building our products and business. There’s only so many hours in a day—-are you using them to build software or your personal brand? One engineering leader I worked with lost out in a corporate power struggle and left to “spend more time with his family.” While he was doing that, he produced a series of blog posts. Once he found his next role the posts petered out. This strikes me as a publication model for actual high performers.

lupire 3y ago
Viaweb/Yahoo! Shopling co-inventor and HN host and inventor Paul Graham wrote a few books On LISP. OTOH, even Graham would say that his partner Robert Morris was the technical leader of the pair.
pbronez 3y ago
It’s tricky to balance Doing Stuff and Broadcasting Stuff. You need both. If you spend 100% of your time heads down, even delivering huge value, nobody will notice and your career will suffer. If you spend 100% of your time bloviating, you’ll never build anything of value. As so often in life, I find the best solution is to team up. Partnerships between an 80 build / 20 tell and a 20 Build / 80 Tell change the world. Woz + Jobs is just the best known example. The book Rocket Fuel calls these “Integrators” and “Visionaries” https://www.eosworldwide.com/rocket-fuel-book https://www.eosworldwide.com/rocket-fuel-book
- bradleyjg 3y ago
  Unless you are building tdd software, you don’t need anyone telling the world your team’s thoughts on tdd. It’s sold as part the recruiting effort, but I’m dubious as to the ROI.

lupire 3y ago

Viaweb/Yahoo! Shopling co-inventor and HN host and inventor Paul Graham wrote a few books On LISP. OTOH, even Graham would say that his partner Robert Morris was the technical leader of the pair.

pbronez 3y ago

It’s tricky to balance Doing Stuff and Broadcasting Stuff. You need both. If you spend 100% of your time heads down, even delivering huge value, nobody will notice and your career will suffer. If you spend 100% of your time bloviating, you’ll never build anything of value. As so often in life, I find the best solution is to team up. Partnerships between an 80 build / 20 tell and a 20 Build / 80 Tell change the world. Woz + Jobs is just the best known example. The book Rocket Fuel calls these “Integrators” and “Visionaries” https://www.eosworldwide.com/rocket-fuel-book https://www.eosworldwide.com/rocket-fuel-book

bradleyjg 3y ago
Unless you are building tdd software, you don’t need anyone telling the world your team’s thoughts on tdd. It’s sold as part the recruiting effort, but I’m dubious as to the ROI.