Glenn Stovall

Antifragile Interviewing

Interviewing for a technical position is stressful. It burns out and breaks down many a developer. But with the right mindset, you can use the process to improve your interviewing skills and become a better developer. When it comes to interviewing, you need to be more antifragile. In this article,

The Wolf Test

Dealing with recruiter spam on LinkedIn, for good. I've recently implemented a change to my LinkedIn profile, one that helps me filter out automated recruiter spam. I call it "The Wolf Test" Here's how it works: Replace your first name with an emoji of your choice. I went with the

Indie Dev

When the client won't pay for testing

If an agency or project manager ever tells you "the client won't pay for testing." This comment is a process smell, a surefire sign of communication and project management issues. Here's what to do instead:

Writing

Name Your Next Product With This Exercise

How do you come up with a product name? or a business name? Naming products is a hard but learnable skill. There are agencies that provide names-as-a-service. ZinZin’s existence corroborates the idea that naming can be distilled into a repeatable process. When you’re feeling stuck, it

Indie Dev

Squads: The Cure for Indie Isolation

Since reading this essay, I can’t stop thinking about the concept of squads: people working independently in an interdependent fashion. If you are curious about what squads are, how they can be helpful, or about starting or creating one, this is for you. I encourage you to read the

Deep Forest Tech

Birds Aren't Real: The Lies of Tech Twitter

This entry is part 2 of 2 in the blogchain Deep Forest Tech Social media can give developers a false sense of the tech landscape, especially if they are newer and don’t have as much real-world experience. understanding why requires understand what drives tech content. The new drives

Deep Forest Tech

Exploring Tech's Deep Forest

This entry is part 1 of 2 in the blogchain Deep Forest Tech The tech industry isn’t what you think it is. When people think of the tech industry, they tend to think of startups. They see the companies that make up the FANGMAN stocks. They think about

Tech Strategy

SaaS Under The Surface

The Unknown Unknowns of Building a SaaS Application Some vital parts of a sustainable software business easily get overlooked. Building a Software-as-a-service(SaaS) is much more complicated than it looks on the surface. Creating a piece of software that you charge other people money for means that you have added

podcast

Production Ready Season 1 Summary

Everyone has their pandemic hobbies. Some people bake bread, others play Animal Crossing, I started a podcast. I’m looking for ways to connect with people online and have more conversations about the “non-technical side of software development.” I enjoy coding, but I’m tired of most of

Tech Strategy

Move Fast, Break Things, Slow Down

Facebook started with a saying: “Move fast and break things.” Later on, they updated it to say: “Move Fast with stable infrastructure.” Why did Zuck change his tune? First, we need to understand why he had the initial statement. The phrase is common in startups, although

tech tempo

Scrum: Tempo Codified

I can’t think of a more clear example of rhythms in software than Scrum. Scrum is an attempt to codify tempo and wield it as a project management tool. Scrum sets the rhythm with recurring ceremonies: planning meetings, daily scrums, sprint reviews, and sprint retrospectives. You can take

tech tempo

Thinking In Tempo

Since reading Venkatesh Rao’s book Tempo: timing, tactics and strategy in narrative-driven decision-making, I’ve been thinking about how tempo works as a useful mental model when it comes to how software gets built. All software companies, teams, and projects have a tempo. A mental model

Tech Strategy

How to decide when to build software vs. when to buy

All software choices fall somewhere on the build-buy spectrum, & all companies fall somewhere on the ‘tech company’ spectrum. A piece of technology’s ubiquity, price, and proximity to a company’s core competency all play a factor in where it fits on this spectrum. In

Career

Is Your Engineering Focus on Product or Craft?

There are two types of developers in this world, those who care about the product they produce and those that care about doing their craft well. You can tell them apart by how much they ask “why?” Traits of a Product Engineer I was first introduced to the

Career

Stop fighting holy wars

There are many “holy wars” in tech, and you’d be best served to stop participating in them. These discussions are bikeshedding: Spending an outsized amount of time and energy on trivial details. And when talking in public, they don’t paint you in a good

Career

My best developer interview experience

There are many less-than-ideal practices when it comes to interviewing software developers. Some people give whiteboard interviews, which treat your craft like trivia and put you spot. Others provide you with take-home projects that can seem like free labor. Developers looking for work don’t have time to

Career

How software can be racist (and what you can do to stop it)

An audio version of this essay is available as this week’s episode of the Production Ready podcast. Software is powerful and can shift the balance of power in society. Look at how social media has impacted how we talk about politics, and everything else for example. If politics

Remote Work

Quarantine Work is Not Remote Work

I’ve worked remotely for nearly a decade: Either self-employed or at a job, it was always completely or partially remote. I can count myself as blessed during the current situation; I have a full-time job in an industry that hasn’t taken much of a hit. My

CSS

How to position an element at the end of a flexbox row

Flexbox rows may not work quite the way you think. If you want to have a row of elements, and you want to align one element at the end of the row, many CSS rules won’t work. Floats do not apply to elements using flex, so you can&

Writing

The Dangers of Content Platforms

Platforms are a useful tool, but it dangerous to use them as the primary home for your content. If you want to start publishing, you aren’t required to set up your own domain and personal site. There are platforms available now that allow you to post instantly. The most

Writing

Which Shapes To Write? A Guide to Choosing Content Forms

How you write, what you write, and where you write should change based on your current goals. Your content strategy should be fluid. When setting goals, this is why it’s good practice is to review periodically. Here are some ways you can adjust your writing

Indie Dev

Side Hustle to For Investment, Not Income

If you have a side hustle, How much money does it bring in compared to your job? Have you considered the possibility that you could one day quit working for others and instead work for yourself? It can be hard to imagine moving from employment to making money solely off

Writing

Blog Posts As Bets: An Expectancy Analysis of Publishing Content

When I shared a story about getting clients via content, I received some feedback I wanted to address, paraphrased here: “The example given about the Angular article seems like sheer luck. There are hundreds of similar articles on the web that have no traction. What’s the real difference

Writing

An Actionable Definition of "Content Strategy"

While publishing more is almost always better than publishing less, it would be better not to publish randomly. For years, I fell into the trap of writing was Rochelle Moulton calls “a flea market of ideas.” The only overarching topic was “what Glenn is interested in this

Software Engineering

5 Ways to Carve Large Pull Requests Into Bite-Sized Ones

Substantial, complicated updates break software in large, complicated ways. Smaller, simpler changes break in smaller, simpler ways. It would help if you considered applying the “ship more, ship smaller” mindset. It’ applies the single responsibility principle to your pull requests. Avoiding large pull requests also means avoiding arduous code reviews