Weekly List Archive

Do you need a technical co-founder to succeed?

Well if you already have one, it's certainly not going to hurt you. But that's not the position a lot of founders are in. The answer is, it depends. Most startups are about packaging up some useful domain knowledge that you have, making some process more efficient,...

Why do you need a client-facing technology focus?

Because developers know code. They do not know your business or your customers. They don't know how your customers use your product or what problems they use it to solve. They don't have the empathy or skills to understand what it's really like on the ground talking...

Developers don’t understand your business

Founders/CEOs: Got a remote team? or offshore? You have to get good at deliberate communication and providing the context, "the why". Humans are really bad at this, we think things that are obvious to us are obvious to everyone. You run into big trouble here with a...

Want to future proof your tech career?

Know how to triage customer issues, explain customer issues, talk with customers, reproduce bugs - both simple and ones that require specific user data from the production environment. Know how to talk with sales, marketing and product about what they need. You can go...

The emerging tech job of the future

The person who can enable a distributed team. Let me explain. The # 1 reason why any project of yours failed in the past with an outsourced or remote team is because of a lack of context or understanding of your business domain knowledge... On one side you've got...

Fixed fees in software projects are a trap

As a founder it sounds like a smart move to know what it's going to cost you. The problem is it ignores the reality of software development, which is one of constant discovery and unknown unknowns. It may "never" be done. It creates a misalignment of objectives. The...

Technical skills are not enough

Seeing a lot of CEOs struggle with this They're using offshore dev teams, external companies or lots of contractors. And even though they're happy with the output, they struggle to tie everything together for calls and meetings about new partnerships, integrations or...

The currency of engineering leadership

I think engineering leadership today is all about having enough technical credibility that the team respects you. And an extension of that is the ability to have empathy for what they are going through. You don't need to be the super technical genius on the team. No...

The near future of work should be based on hub cities

Let's use Brisbane, QLD, Australia as an example. Beer fridges, ping pong tables and pizza is a culture. Trust, autonomy and results-based work is also a culture. Truly valuing employee time, health and family balance is a culture. I get it, there is a lot of risk in...

The “contract to hire”

I think the "contract to hire" will be front and center in this new flexible/remote working world. In the past these were a bad deal for developers. Nobody wants to move across the country without some certainty. And I get it - employers want to avoid costly hiring...

How to save yourself time with Upwork or freelancer sites

Here's a way to filter through proposals quickly, save yourself a lot of time and find someone easy to work with: Place a sentence at the end of your project description that you expect the work proposal will answer. Then disregard any proposal that does not answer it...

“Why can’t we release software on time”? -CEO

It's a common problem in development and endlessly frustrating. There is a 100% foul-proof way to estimate though: 1 - Do all of the work first 2 - See how long it took to do the work 3 - Make that the estimate This is not very useful of course, it provides no...

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Guide: Fixed Fees in Software Development Are a Trap

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Hire a Dev Team Checklist

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Guide: How to Prevent IP Theft With Offshore/External Dev Teams (As a Founder)

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