"5 sure signs that a good startup is going bad" came up in my Zite magazine. It's a pretty good read, well worth jaunting over there to read it. (Go ahead, I'll wait until you return.) It's written for entrepreneurs, and it got me thinking about my list of start-up warning signs for employees. Employees … Continue reading When should you leave a start-up?
Tag: career
Vague post of the week
Sometimes you need to keep your powder dry when you work in a start-up.
Development commitments have two edges
My friend Kirk has run his dev team in a mostly Agile system. Code sprints, agreeing on tickets for the sprint, declaring victory at the end of the sprint, etc. But now Kirk's boss says: I need you to commit to achieve certain goals by various dates over the next year. Once you agree to … Continue reading Development commitments have two edges
How not to determine a raise
A friend, whom I'll call "Kirk," works in a startup. A really good developer, whom I'll call "Amy," reports to him. Kirk lobbied his boss for a big raise for Amy. He thought about this the right way: I've researched the current market rates for developers of Amy's level and abilities. She's very good, she's … Continue reading How not to determine a raise
Thought of the day: Where to draw the line?
You've got a trip scheduled, say a vacation or technical conference, and you're looking forward to it. If the company asks you to cancel it because now's not a good time to be out of the office, should you? Is there ever a good time to be out of the office? When do you bend, … Continue reading Thought of the day: Where to draw the line?
Integrity is all There is
Personal and professional integrity matter. They're the most important gifts you can give yourself. I'm reminded of this by an article I read today about a firm. I know a lot about this particular company. The article was, essentially, a marketing puff-piece, the kind of thing you read in a rag like the Puget Sound … Continue reading Integrity is all There is
Life
We still haven't upgraded our iPhone 3GS to a 4S. We're now less then two months until the end of that phone's contract, so I'll take another run at them this week. This week, I suddenly got a hankering to dive into GNU Emacs customization. Every 10 years I go berserk with it, like a … Continue reading Life
Life
What's shaking down on the farm... Whilst dealing with many interruptions, the PCT/IPC improvements to my company's product are nearly ready to go live. Sometime this week, we'll start storing international patents in our datastore, with fully hooked-up classifications. It'll be flippin' neat-o! With the back-end (importing, deciphering, parsing, storing) improvements done, next comes the … Continue reading Life
Long time no post
I've been remiss. I can hear your wailing and gnashing of teeth from here. Lots going on in my personal and work lives. Lots of fun at work. My current task is parsing XML International Patent Classification (IPC) data. Oodles of goodness. More later!
Product unveiling, redux
Our product was unveiled. On the day of the PR release, the company website got fewer hits than this blog gets on a so-so day. Um...
Seek Nuance 