Tips for Introverts
If you are an introvert (as I am), remember to slightly overcommunicate in your daily emails and chats. What you perceive to be overcommunication is probably closer to the appropriate level expected by others in your team.
Keep Your Commits Clean
Keep your commits clean. Address only ONE issue per commit. Make sure the project continues to build and run at each commit. Your future cherry-picking or reverting self will appreciate it.
PS: And no sneaking in small, unrelated changes to avoid a code review! You know who you are.
Embrace Conway’s Law
In a sufficiently large organization, embrace Conway’s Law. Create software that mimic organizational structure, or modify organizational structure to mimic software architecture. Any other arrangement leads to chronic friction.
As a corollary, refactoring of organizational structure can be a forcing function for refactoring software architecture. It may take time, but your software will eventually reflect your new organization.
#inadvertently
I made a topical cartoon.
Remembering 9/11
Credit: Jeffmock CC-BY-SA-3.0
On this 15th anniversary of 9/11, I recall my most vivid memory of the events. I drove in to work at Honeywell Aerospace in Kansas City after watching the second aircraft crash into the Twin Towers on live TV. Partway through my drive, I saw something I’d never seen before or since: arcing contrails, all over the clear blue Kansas sky. It wasn’t after I got in to work that I found out that the FAA had grounded all aircraft in flight. Those contrails showed where aircraft turned around and landed where they came from.
We didn’t get much work done that day. Someone hooked up large screen TVs and we watched as the towers fell.