How should engineering organizations make big decisions?

My series of professionalism: the set of workplace behaviors that are generally expected at work. These behaviors are largely unspoken, but they do exist: there are consequences for violating them. In this series, I aim to write down some of these rules and explore their implications.

Why and how to check references, and what to do with the information that comes up.

Work sample tests are an exercise, a simulation, a small slice of real day-to-day work that we ask candidates to perform. They’re practical, hands-on, and very close or even identical to actual tasks the person would perform if hired. They’re also small, constrained, and simplified enough to be fair to include in a job selection process.

Work sample tests are a critical factor in effective hiring. Interviews aren’t enough; hiring without work sample tests risks selection people who excel at interviewing but can’t actually perform the job.

This series builds a framework for effective work sample tests, and gives a bunch of examples of effective tests.

Most managers know that delegation is part of their job, but the vast majority of management texts are incredibly non-specific about what delegation means. This series on delegation tries to fill this gap. I’ll cover the principles and theories that guide how I think about delegation, ending with a concrete example: how to delegate meeting attendance.

A series sharing some of the questions I use when I interview for technical roles. I’ll unpack the question, when to ask it, and how to evaluate answers.

Articles I’ve written for r2c, a security startup I consult for. They’re building semgrep, a code search tool that understands Python syntax (and many other languages).

R2C pays me to write these articles for their blog, and gives me permission to cross-post them here.

Documenting my local Python Development environment.

A series of articles laying out the tools, tips, and techniques I’ve learned over the years I’ve spent helping to write Django’s docs.