Two weeks ago I started a new job as a Technical Program Manager at Amazon Music, after sadly having been part of the COVID-19 layoffs at Rover.com back in the end of March. The collision of music and tech has been a recurring theme for me for decades now, going all the way back to… Continue reading

I’ve been saying for some weeks now that it’s going to be really fascinating to see how work culture will change over the coming months. I think it’s clear that there will be some companies that embrace the changes we’ve all made and decide to keep them – or at least some of them. And… Continue reading

It’s been a long time since I’ve written anything here. Too long. I’m going to try to start back up slowly, but given everything that’s happening these days I’m not sure whether that’s even possible. Maybe it is, or maybe it’s not – and if not then I might write a lot, or nothing, or… Continue reading

A couple of months ago, I started work on a new project – it’s big and complex, with a lot of smart and opinionated people involved, an enormous amount of “legacy” code (mostly C++), and tools and systems that are sorely in need of an update. In situations like this it’s always really tempting to… Continue reading

Someone was asking at work earlier about what computers people had owned or programmed on. I don’t think I’d ever made a list before, so I decided to make one. This list includes computers I’ve programmed on outside of a professional capacity, or owned personally. There are lots more machines I’ve used to greater or lesser… Continue reading

I submitted the form to have my site added to the Facebook Instant Articles (FBIA) crawler on April 11. Nothing. Nada. Zilch. A web that depends on large corporations to determine your site is worthy of inclusion is not the web I signed up for. Continue reading

Rob Fahrni attempts to set the record straight: “Here’s the thing, Apple did not invent Podcasting — Dave Winer and Adam Curry did — Apple just has a really good Podcast directory. Anyone could do the same thing. In fact you don’t need to be part of Apple’s Podcast Directory to have a Podcast. All… Continue reading

As a software project manager, I often run project retrospective meetings with my teams. Sometimes they feel like this: Most of the time, we actually do ship, even with only one wing. 😉 Continue reading

Video (screen capture + audio) of the talk I did at Seattle Xcoders a couple of weeks ago is live: I shared some lessons learned on projects that went off the rails, in spite of having a plan that we thought we could execute on. No promises on it being a particularly good talk. 😉 YMMV.… Continue reading