I’m now a very senior engineer. I don’t even know what the right title is (once I got “CTO” titles kind of stopped mattering), but at Gusto I’m an L6 and there are seven levels at the company. One of the great things about working at a larger company is how many people I get […]
Category: development
Looking back: ficlets launching
I was going to just post a quote for today’s NaBloPoMo, but I was looking for old posts and stumbled on this one about ficlets launching. Re-reading it, sixteen and a half years later, a few things jump out: Most of the hundreds of projects I’ve worked on over the years (LOL, decades) blur together […]
Be kind, but have boundaries
After yesterday’s post, Amy asked another question that I’m ill-equipped to answer, but I’m going to try anyway: Ok, tough question: a thing I struggle with, (maybe as a woman or maybe just my family of origin), is me behaving in a kind manner often means being seen as inherently weak or (shudder) useable to […]
The intersections of kindness, humor and privilege
On Mastodon this morning, as I sat watching football (aka soccer) and drinking coffee, I asked what I should write about. Amy came through for me: You’ve always seemed to put a lot of thought into kindness and humor (you++). I’d be very interested to read your thoughts on that – not just as a […]
Web-based faith restored
In yesterday’s post, I was pining for a simpler web and today, I’ve found it! I’ve spent the last hour or so messing around with HTML, a little CSS, a little git repo and some hosting, and ta-da, I’ve launched a new temporary homepage for my little non-profit (DNS things might still be updating; you […]
Pining for simplicity
I run a teeny tiny nonprofit, TechSAV, and we have a poorly maintained WordPress site. We picked a very professional-looking thing eight years ago, and haven’t changed it since. Well, now our hosting company says the version of PHP we’re on is end-of-life (RIP) and we have to upgrade, but there’s something in our ancient […]
Playing
We have a monthly thing at work where someone picks a conference talk, we watch it together and then discuss. This month, we talked about Playing with Engineering by AnnMarie Thomas from this years Strange Loop. It was really good, and it’s definitely worth your time. While watching it, I realized that it’s a great […]
The 3 Options
I guess this is part four of my one part series (parts one, two & three) on layoffs and reorgs. For the record, I was right about the reorg following right behind the layoff. In part three, I talked about the loss of control that layoffs cause. Reorgs just pile on to that, and then, […]
The Illusion of Control
I’ve been talking to a lot of people since the layoffs last Wednesday, helping them (and myself) come to terms with the colleagues that are no longer here, all of the survivor’s guilt, uncertainty and fear that comes along with it. I’ve talked about some of those things in the previous two posts (this one […]
One Last Layoff Lament
In my last layoff-related post, I tried to talk through some of the emotions you’ll feel, and why no question you’ll ask will get an answer that will satisfy you. Well, I’ve still been thinking about them, and how we navigate them. A layoff confronts us with suffering we can’t turn away from, can’t reason […]