I went to CTO School Session 1 on Monday night. Charlie O'Donnell interviewed Mark Uhrmacher, CTO of Ideeli. I was in the back of the room and couldn't hear all that well but I used FreeMind to make a mindmap of what I did hear. These are my notes:
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hiring
- distributed ok
- timeshift
- mumbai, canada, ukraine, us, spain etc
- look for people who can think at all levels of stack
- ask lots of technical questions fast and furious
- distributed ok
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key technology decisions
- chose Rails (early on)
- max dev productivity
- no time to rewrite
- two modes: what sticks? and omg it's working
- chose Rails (early on)
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dev methodology
- 2-week sprints
- keeps QA in sync w/out drifting
- no religious philosophy
- 2-week sprints
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biz-minded CEOs who don't understand tech
- how to provide visibility to non-technical CEO?
- agile methodology helps b/c short timeframes
- short timeframes: less deviation b/w biz side and tech realization
- have to appreciate you have a better understanding of the tech
- set expectations and beat them slightly
- if someone asks for the impossible, say it's impossible
- be transparent
- "share your risk"
- here's what at stake
- here are the tradeoffs
- becomes join risk/decision
- engineers have a tendency to want to please
- keep that in check
- you are managing for shareholder value
- "share your risk"
- being the best technologist is not a requirement for a CTO
- communication is the key thing
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how does structure of org change over time?
- QA:
- outsourced in phillipines, india
- never as automated as he would like
- they do full regression tests
- product manager
- hired at 10 people
- while rebuilding UI
- actually needed someone w/ good proJECT mgmt skills to corral different aspects
- outsourced, distributed dev team
- program mgmt becomes more important
- program v product v project
- program: set of projects. mixture of product and project
- requirements gathering, feature definition, herding cats
- program mgmt becomes more important
- QA:
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any conflict about who is managing developers? (product v cto v ?)
- did not happen
- could happen where people are more naive about dev process
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at what point did developers become managers?
- first dev became manager, was doing both, started to flame out
- hired head of development to replace him, moved him to architecture manager
- organization truck number:
- how many people have to get hit by a truck before you are dead in the water?
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how much do you think about developing roles?
- cool think about growth companies is they are ruthlessly merit-driven
- lots of room at the top
- if your skills exceed your years, this is the place to be
- no need to "pay your dues"
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how do you find a peer group of other managers?
- there is a CTO club in nyc
- range from technical people to great managers
- there is a CTO club in nyc
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characteristics of good hires
- curiosity
- thinking at multiple levels
- initial impression of NYC dev market was people were looking to fill particular roles/niches
- but doesn't think that's a good thing
- need people who can adapt to changing roles/products/technologies as opposed to experts in one particular one
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how do you manage communicaton w/ distributed time
- skype
- mingle (thoughtworks product), didn't scale past 20 devs
- now use jira
- card tracking/bug tracking
- added confluence for wiki (recently)
- most dev and ops guys live in skype
- and in card tracking tool
- IM
- long-lived dev chatrooms
- it's a tough environment to write code in
- very obvious who is phoning it in
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any formal processes to keep in touch aside from ticket tracking?
- daily scrum call (they have to shift time to get on that call)
- break into smaller groups as opposed to all 70 devs on one call
- daily scrum calls keep things working
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how did they manage outsourced QA, making sure they had a test plan etc?
- for regression tests, for every bug they'd automate a test or put in their plan
- work from the same user stories used to develop features
- for critical functionality, or something subtle, program managers would write out test cases
- now they have product managers do further user acceptance test
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growth period
- 15% month-on-month growth last 40 months
- just keeping the wheels on the train is a challenge
- things that are annoying now become unmitigated distasters in 180 days if not handled well
- 15% month-on-month growth last 40 months
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big advantage of distributed team
- they can fix problems overnight
- interesting: much higher productivity from developers who are not in the office
- offices are distracting
- corporate culture is very interrupt-driven
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how do you measure productivity?
- "how full is the parking lot at 6pm" -- fairly standard metric (in SV)
- cards are either getting done, or not getting done
- look at your 2-week sprints...what is getting done?
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how do you balance time to market v code quality? (esp when you are small, starting up)
you WANT to get a product to market
willing to incur tech debt to get there
the hope is you get large enough that eventually you can get a "team B" who can pay down tech debt in parallel w/ new features
12-24% of SW development bandwidth goes to refactoring
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what is the value YOU personally contribute now to your company?
- worried about org structure
- how good are they at getting thigns done? (features, bug counts, happy customers?)
- is there a better way to organize?
- continuous improvement model
- Am I putting pieces in place to ensure future success?
- if it's too hard for devs to figure out what to build, bring in product person
- worried about org structure
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how do you build trust and recruit developers internationally?
- finding people who knew rails was hard
- in NYC mostly impossible
- had to look elsewhere
- building trust: spent many hours w/ open skype sessions...like sitting next to him
- finding people who knew rails was hard
Sep 7 11
DFW Words
I read David Foster Wallace's The Pale King
in April. These are some of the words I looked up while reading it.
in April. These are some of the words I looked up while reading it.
- specular
- obtrude
- cruciform
- applique
- gimbal
- incursion
- chert
- invaginate
- connubial
- parenchyma
- irrupt
- divest
- umbrage
- exacerbate
- merrythought
- sally
- discursive
- thanatology
- plaint
- imperious
- imbrication
- cowl
- spindle
- prolix
- dyad
- dyadic
- labial
- agnate
- anfractuous
- stridulate
- carmine
- blancmange
- iterant
- timorous
- bandolier
- forbearance
- prostrate
Jan 27 11
Every Book I Read In 2010
Every book I read (from cover to cover) in 2010, and the date I finished it. The ones with stars are my favorites.
Looking back, there's clearly no pattern. I was a bit of a book slut in that I read anything anyone recommended to me (if I could make it through it). The attitude for last year was: read at any cost, just keep reading. This year I am going to be a little more selective (but only just).
I read more YA books than I ever did when I was a YA myself (thanks, Guillian and the generous bookshelves of Simon & Schuster). Somewhat disappointingly there are no math or science or tech books on here. I've already improved on that this year.
Best fiction: Special Topics in Calamity Physics. Total edge-of-seat, keep-me-up-at-night read. The final third of the book is a graduated series of shocking plot twists and revelations. Unputdownable. Marisha Pessl: Release Night Film, already.
Best non-fiction: Open. The writing style was cloyingly precious at times, but the story was very interesting and inspiring for me. World Lit Only By Fire was a very close second.
Most forgettable: Spook Country. Took me 15 minutes just now to remember what it was about.
Thanks to all my friends who gave me recommendations and especially the New York Public Library. Keep the recommendations coming; my goal this year is to read more than I did last year.
- ✩Lush Life by Richard Price (January 4th, 2010)
- The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo by Stieg Larsson (January 12, 2010)
- Close to the Machine by Ellen Ullman (Jan 16, 2010)
- Zodiac by Neal Stephenson (Jan 21, 2010)
- Lowboy by John Wray (Jan 28, 2010)
- black swan green by David Mitchell (Feb 23, 2010)
- how to lose friends and alienate people by Toby Young (Feb 14, 2010)
- ✩The believers by Zoe Heller (Feb 12, 2010)
- ✩Chronic City by Jonathan Lethem (Feb 5, 2010)
- Kite Runner by Khalid Hosseini (Feb 10, 2010)
- Bridge of Sighs by Richard Russo (Mar 29, 2010)
- Ender in Exile by Orson Scott Card (April 11, 2010)
- ✩Stones from the River by Ursula Hegi (May 7, 2010)
- The Nimrod Flip-Out by Etgar Keret (May 11, 2010)
- ✩Although of Course You End Up Becoming Yourself by David Lipsky (May 15, 2010)
- Spook Country by William Gibson (May 20, 2010)
- The Girl Who Played With Fire by Stieg Larsson (May 31, 2010)
- ✩A World Lit Only By Fire by William Manchester (June 30, 2010)
- ✩Before I Fall by Lauren Oliver (June 10th, 2010)
- Distracted (June 15th, 2010)
- Asterios Polyp by David Mazzucchelli (July 1, 2010)
- ✩Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins (July 26, 2010)
- Catching Fire by Suzanne Collins (August 5th, 2010)
- ✩Special Topics in Calamity Physics by Marisha Pessl (August 10th, 2010)
- Logicomix by a group of folks (August 14, 2010)
- The Girl Who Kicked the Hornets' Nest by Stieg Larsson (September 1st, 2010)
- Vurt by Jeff Noon (September 7th, 2010)
- ✩The Secret History by Donna Tartt (September 20th, 2010)
- Mockingjay by Suzanne Collins (Sep 24th, 2010)
- Wake by Lisa McMann (Sep 26th, 2010)
- The Mortal Instruments by Cassandra Clare (Oct 4, 2010)
- ✩The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake by Aimee Bender (October 24, 2010)
- ✩Open by Andre Agassi (November 7th, 2010)
- ✩Inherent Vice by Thomas Pynchon (November 19, 2010)
- ✩The Unnamed by Joshua Ferris (November 23, 2010)
- I, Claudius by Robert Graves (December 26th, 2010)
- Netherland, by Joseph O'Neill (December 29th, 2010)
- ✩Shades of Grey by Jasper Fforde (December 30, 2010)
Jan 13 11
Destiny is a thing to be achieved.
"Destiny is not a matter of chance; but a matter of choice. It is not a thing to be waited for, it is a thing to be acheived."
— William Jennings Bryan, my great-great-grandfather.
Jan 11 11
Year in Cities, 2010
My yearly retrospective. These are cities I spent the night in during the year 2010. You can also see lists for 2009, 2008 and 2007. Asterisks indicate cities I spent non-consecutive nights in.
You can also see this in map form, somewhat, at my Family 2010 World Map.
- January
- Maho Bay, St John, USVI* (pictures)
- Brooklyn, NY*
- February
- Red Hook, St Thomas, USVI
- Maho Bay, St John, USVI*
- Bangkok, Thailand (pictures)
- Chiang Mai, Thailand
- Chiang Mai Highlands, Thailand (Trek)
- Chiang Rai, Thailand
- Luang Prabang, Laos
- March
- Koh Samui, Thailand
- Logan, UT*
- April
- May
- Allentown, PA (Father-Uncle-Son Road Trip V. pictures.)
- Strasburg, PA
- Gettysburg, PA
- Front Royal, VA
- Charlottesville, VA
- Blowing Rock, NC
- Asheville, NC
- Pigeon Forge, TN
- June
- East Hampton, NY
- Bovina, NY
- July
- Jersey Shore, NJ
- Maipú, Chile
- Santiago, Chile
- Reñaca, Chile
- Great Barrington, MA*
- August
- St Louis, MO
- Montauk, NY (pictures)
- September
- Montauk, NY
- Great Barrington, MA* (pictures.)
- October
- Binghamton, NY (Nat'l Mini-golf championship. pictures )
- Seattle, WA (Visit Jenna. pictures)
- Key West, FL
- Manhattan, NY*
- Fort Lauderdale, FL*
- November
- December
- Maho Bay, St John, USVI* (pictures)
