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From Behind the Chair to Behind the Keyboard: How Hairdressing Prepared Me for Network Automation

Every developer lead has been there. You’re mid-phone call with a client who is experiencing an outage or chaos in the system. She’s stressed out, balancing feedback from stakeholders across her organization, weighing the potential impacts of the issue, and relying on you for advice and solutions.

In these pivotal moments, I’m often hit with a sudden sense of déjà vu from when I was 16, working as a hairdresser in my first full-time job, facing a customer whose hair color was left on too long and oxidizing, causing the microscopic outer layer of hair follicles to peel back and release green color pigments.

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The Lessons We Learned From Programming at Google w/ Hyrum Wright and Titus Winters – Part 2

The second and final episode of Dev Interrupted's two- part series with Senior Google Staff Engineers Hyrum Wright and Titus Winters has premiered.

If you haven't listened to their first episode, I highly recommend checking it out. Both guests bring a deep understanding of software engineering to the show: Hyrum is semi-famous as the "Hyrum" of Hyrum's Law; while Titus is responsible for managing 250 million lines of code and over 12,000 developers.

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Uncover the Real Senior Developer — Dev Interrupted on DZone

Should you be hiring a software developer or a senior software developer…and what’s the difference? And how can you know during an interview?

To help me answer exactly what it means to be a senior software developer, I brought in Tomasz Waraksa, a tenured Senior Software Developer with decades of hiring experience. In this episode, Tomasz helps me understand:

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How Should You Structure Your Engineering Team?

Team structure makes a huge difference!

It’s been a few years since the “Spotify Model” became the latest trend for structuring an engineering team. Like its predecessors, the model based on tribes and squads has some pitfalls. How to structure an engineering team is a question that’s been covered at length, from the strengths and weaknesses of common team structures to a matrix of organization based on risk and scale to why you should choose your model.

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The Path to Application Modernization

Is THIS the path to application modernization?


Recent research says that the global market for application modernization services is poised to reach $25.6 billion by 2024, compared to $10.5 billion in 2019. This shows that organizations are willing to spend top dollar to remain competitive in their chosen domain of expertise.

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A New Way for Developers to Tame Their Notifications

This morning, I woke up with 52 new emails from Jira. 52 is actually an okay day, it could be much worse! And like every day, I spend half an hour going through all the updates. I go through those updates and open a page in my browser for the tickets I need to have a better understanding of. After that, I have dozens of Jira browser tabs open, and then I go through each one of them, one at a time. This is a loooong process every day. And the worst of it is that when I’m done, I feel like I should be happy about it, but hey — here comes a new update. So I don’t even get that feeling of relief. The only way to cope with this is to book some notifications-off time in my day. I know some people who just turn them off; I feel like I should do that as well…

Does that sound familiar? But maybe, just maybe, there could be a better way…well, a LOT better way.

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Open Offices Are in The Best Interest of Executives, Not Companies

We’ve all been part of this debate about whether we should have an open-plan office or not. In general, executives would advocate for the open-plan office, while the individual contributors will say, “Please, no!!!” Executives won’t listen because they feel they are the only ones who can see the full picture clearly enough to make this decision. Apparently, 70% of all offices now have an open floor plan.

So I was wondering if maybe we could make a very rational analysis of this matter with an objective methodology. Then, perhaps, we can agree on what’s the best for the company (although you may never convince an executive what’s the best for your developers, unfortunately). And finally, we can discuss what can be done if you’re stuck with an open office.