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A Better Performance Improvement Plan

In Management, Solving the World's Problems, Technology by Pete

One thing that seems unite devs and managers is a distrust and dislike for Performance Improvement Plans (PIPs). The internet is awash with advice to workers that once they’re on a PIP, it’s time to get their resume cleaned up because the decision has already been made to fire them and they’re on borrowed time. PIPs, like meetings or Scrum or SLOs, are a tool an organization has that can be abused and none of these ideas are going to fix PIPs at companies with toxic leadership. But, done well, they can be an invaluable to both employees and employers. Improving the PIP 0. Do it for the Right Reasons If you’re If you’ve already decided to fire the person, …

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The Privilege of Passion

In Programming, Solving the World's Problems, Technology by Pete

An oft-repeated lie in software development is that passion is required for success. Dev Twitter has been on fire with this “debate” for the past few days, but this isn’t new. Early career developers are repeatedly told that they need passion and some misguided hiring managers explicitly look for “passion” as a marker of future success. This is bullshit. The only two things required to succeed at software development are skills and judgement. Passion doesn’t confer those skills — practice does. It’s certainly true that passion can be the motivating factor to do that practice — which can be long, difficult, and boring — but passion itself is neither necessary for greatness nor sufficient to achieve it. So why do …

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Education and Venture Capital are Incompatible

In Programming, Solving the World's Problems by Pete

The issues with Lambda School are making the rounds again on Twitter. I don’t want to detract from the very concerning anecdotes being shared by Lambda School students about the culture of the school, but I want to address what I believe is an incontrovertible problem with Lambda School. The problem: Lambda School has raised $30 million in venture funding. To understand why this is a problem, you have to understand what the goal of a Venture Capital firm is. Put simply: the goal of a VC is to invest in early-stage companies that will eventually make the firm a boatload of money. VCs will make a bunch of bets, knowing that many of them will fail to make a …

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How to do Unlimited Vacation Right

In Management, Programming, Solving the World's Problems, Technology, Uncategorized by Pete

Unlimited PTO may be the second worst1 thing in the tech industry today that companies brag about. The main problem is that it’s an outright, obvious lie. Companies tell the obvious lie to avoid telling the truth. But there’s another problem: Unlimited PTO is really hard to do well. Let’s address the various gigantic fauna in the room: Unlimited PTO was dreamed up as a scam. In states where accrued PTO must be paid out by law, it’s a way for companies to avoid paying you what you’ve earned. What’s more, we know that people tend to take less vacation when they have an unlimited PTO plan. Whatever they might say out loud about vacation, be aware that your company’s …

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Fair Pay: A Blueprint

In Programming, Solving the World's Problems, Technology by Pete

As an engineering leader, one of the most important things I do is make sure that we pay people fairly for their work. The challenge, of course, is that pay is the result of a bunch of different variables, almost none of which are objective. How do we get to fair pay when there are so many opportunities for our own biases to slip in? The answer is to design processes and systems to eliminate or counteract bias. This is usually easier said than done, but I’ve found a compensation model that I think helps.

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Killing the Coding Interview

In Programming, Solving the World's Problems, Technology by Pete

You don’t have to see a person’s code to figure out whether they’re a good developer. Over the past ten or so years, I’ve interviewed a lot of engineers. In that time, I’ve developed a set of techniques that allow me to quickly and accurately evaluate a developer without seeing their code. I’m now convinced that it’s not only possible, but objectively better to do it that way.

The Ultimate Password Solution

In Solving the World's Problems, Technology by Pete

Few things are more annoying than passwords. In theory, they’re fantastic. You keep a secret locked away in your super-computer-brain, and nobody else knows what it is, then you use that secret to prove that you’re who you say you are. Brilliant. Except that, in reality, passwords are beset by several tough problems. First and foremost, you don’t have any control over what the website you plug your password into does with it, so using the same password for everything is foolish. That means that instead of having to remember one password, you have to remember a bunch of them and what services and websites they match up with. Don’t write them down, either, or someone with physical access to …