Stephen Miessner

What would be the polar opposite of "Big Hat, no cattle"? That old Texas saying applies just as much to flashy status symbols as to embellished personal portrayals. As a software developer in charge of recruiting, I love meeting hidden gems who do the opposite.  They do not have a shiny LinkedIn profile but have a proven track record and a valuable skill set. They may not spend hours tricking the algorithm, but they spend hours adding value to their organizations. They have scrawny commit graphs in GitHub because they send pull requests to private repositories almost daily. What are the equivalents in your line of work for this phenomenon? What is a classic sign of a hidden rockstar in their field? #texasSayings #workEthic #addingValue #unassumingLeadership #lowProfile

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"Our documentation is great!" said no one ever. It is always interesting to talk to folks about this problem. It'ss a problem that can be hard to grasp, measure, and even harder to solve. That is; unless you think about it in a different way. A little bit of simplification, structure, and even some AI might do the trick. I also found a new AI tool, Unblocked, while at LambdaConf this week. I am excited to start experimenting with Unblocked and think it could be a game changer when it comes to managing documents across an organization. Check out my latest article where I talk about #knowledgemanagment. Dennis Pilarinos Daniel Horton

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3 Discovery blindspots from 50 Discos: 1. It's not a real Discovery! 2. Ignoring crucial context 3. Lack of value https://lnkd.in/e3U4tde2 What've you spotted? #discovery #productdiscovery #continuousdiscovery #disco #discoinferno

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The latest version of Claude let's you create rudimentary, but powerful interactive forms with it's new Artifacts capability. I've personally created simple browser based games that can be played. This is a *very* rough example of a request to mock-up an interactive Lightning Record page, that follows the best practices of the SLDS. No, it's not pretty, but this is v1. Tools like Avonni (paid apps that let you build from scratch) likely have a short lifespan of relevancy once this improves. Interestingly enough, none of the generative AI use cases from Salesforce are focused on designing beautiful experiences for users to interact with. Instead, I've seen "copilots" perform a myriad of lower value tasks - such as: creating objects and fields, diagnosing security issues, or my favorite - drafting an email (because that's just so hard to do). #claude #artifacts

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I'm seeing a lot of these "expert answers" about frontend development and what does HTML, CSS, and Javascript do. So many of them over complicate it: HTML is content authoring. You are writing a document and should use the tools and formatting available to make it as clearly understood as possible. Most people should be able to write some HTML much like most people can post dross on social networks. However there is a big difference between a coherent, semantically correct HTML doc and some div/span catastrophe. The latter is more like the local racists latest rant with no punctuation, swimming with spelling mistakes, and they've tied themselves in knots over the fact there was once a rainbow flag in Morrisons. CSS is not just about making things "look nice". Yeah it'll make things look better but it's main purpose should be to improve usability, legibility and make your content more understandable. Finally Javascript - Javascript is usually unnecessary and I reckon 90% of the internet could do without it. A lot of the things that Javascript has introduced has made the internet worse, less stable, and less accessible. It's main purpose has been to make frontend development more like a programming discipline, rather than the design discipline it originally was. This is coming from someone who has built their career around frontend development 🤷‍♂️

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Great article by Ray Carnes. In my 20+ years in the software industry I've seen companies learn and relearn the basics again and again because each generation of leaders think things are "different this time" because of such and such technology. The frameworks, platforms, underlying technology changes but the principles and foundations are still the same. #softwareengineering

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Yet another good article to ponder. Knowledge changes constantly. What was fact yesterday is no longer fact today. How something works or how to do a task can change quickly and often (like our software and policies), Previous truths are debunked and changed with new research. I've mentioned it before, but I remain stunned that no one is talking about strategies to manage the combined models and content for scalable and sustainable generative AI change management. I firmly believe this is the next widespread crisis lurking in the wings as the engineers creating and training generative chatbots, who don't own or manage most of the content, are sucking significant volumes of company content into their models from multiple internal sources that they don't manage nor control and haven't given any thought to the plethora of complex technical, organizational, and administrative problems they are creating for themselves. As the article points out, no one seems to know the effect of continually fine-tuning these models (or even knowing what content has changed and when), introducing a high risk of increased hallucination and overfitting (loss of the model's ability to generalize due to excessive fine-tuning). I still believe part of the answer is graph-driven RAG made maintainable with structured (intelligent) content, but that addresses only the technical side of the equation. Do you know any team that has come up with a comprehensive generative AI content change management strategy? Honestly, I don't know of a single shop implementing generative AI that has. https://lnkd.in/esVVxNwm

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The more senior you are, the less likely you are to attend professional events. So where do senior tech professionals find community? I was sad to learn about #IxDA's shutdown. IxDA was a big part of my professional identity as a junior- to mid-level UX researcher. At the same time, it’s also been 8 years since I attended an Interaction-style conference, and nearly a decade since I attended an official IxDA event. There’s been a lot of talk lately about how #UX as a discipline has changed. But I’ve found myself thinking more about professional community, and how the needs of senior practitioners are so different from when we are earlier in our career. Way back in 2011 and 2012, Vitorio Miliano and I collaborated on large-scale surveys of the Austin UX community, and we noticed this trend: the more senior you are, the less likely you are to attend professional events. This is not because senior practitioners don’t need community, but because the kind of community you need is so much harder to get. When I was a junior researcher, IxDA gave me two things I needed: 🤝 Professional connections 📈 New professional skills Senior professionals need these things too, but as you become more experienced, the bar gets higher: 🤝 You have less time and more people wanting it, so it’s more important for each new connection to be meaningful. 📈 When you’ve been working in industry for years, it gets harder to find skills training at your level (or that is even relevant when you’re no longer executing, but directing). It’s an interesting coincidence, then, that IxDA is folding at a time when the original audience it served in 2005 is now in senior roles, with needs that are much harder to address. But the need for professional community is still there; senior professionals just have to address it in different ways. I’ll talk more about what the research says about this in a future post, but for now, I’d love to hear your thoughts.  If you’ve been in the tech industry for 10+ years: ❓ What human connections do you value most at this point in your career? ❓ Are there professional organizations you’re still active in? ❓ Where do you turn for help and support?

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not to brag... but I inspired Circleback to build a better Notion integration 💁🏼‍♀️ Here's a quick overview of how you can now add meeting note action items to any of your databases: https://lnkd.in/gWvZcrZ3

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One of the most common questions I hear is: "What is the easiest way to land a job in tech?" Often, people recommend roles like frontend development or QA as the “easy” entry points. But that’s a lie. ❌ There's no universal 'easiest way'. What seems easy for one person might be challenging for another. Me personally, if I have to land a frontend role first, I don’t think I ever would have landed a role as a software developer. Also, opting for a supposedly 'easier' role just leads to a second transition when you want to move from that role to the role you actually wanted. Because guess what, if that “easier role” isn’t what you want to be doing, then you are just building skills you don’t need. Every career is unique. Don't let others decide what is easy or hard for you. Instead, stay focused on your specific goals. What looks “easy” from the outside, is often just relentless focus. --- 💬 let me know your thoughts in the comments 👍🏼 like and share if you found this interesting ➕ follow for more career content #careercoach #careerdevelopement #softwareengineering #softwaredevelopment #interviewskills

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Tech leaders don't need to code all the time. They need to lead. I once faced a tough decision. Our project was behind schedule, and I felt the urge to dive back into coding to catch up. But I realized my team needed my leadership more than my coding skills. I delegated tasks, trusted my team, and focused on strategic decisions. We turned the project around, and my team grew stronger. Below are the most important lessons I learned and are for every tech leader: 1. Delegate coding tasks ↳ Trust your team with coding responsibilities. Empower them to solve problems and grow their skills. ↳ Focus on mentoring and providing guidance rather than doing the coding yourself. 2. Focus on high-level technical decisions ↳ Spend your time on strategic planning and architecture. ↳ Ensure that your technical vision aligns with business goals and drives the project forward. 3. Stay technically relevant while leading ↳ Keep learning new technologies and trends. ↳ Participate in code reviews and technical discussions to stay connected with the team's work. 4. Balance leadership and technical skills ↳ Develop strong communication and leadership qualities. ↳ Use your technical background to make informed decisions and lead by example. 5. Embrace continuous improvement ↳ Encourage your team to adopt agile methodologies and best practices. ↳ Regularly reflect on your leadership style and seek feedback to improve. 6. Build a culture of collaboration ↳ Foster an environment where team members feel comfortable sharing ideas and feedback. ↳ Promote teamwork and collective problem-solving to enhance productivity and innovation. 7. Manage time effectively ↳ Prioritize tasks that have the most significant impact on the project and team. ↳ Delegate non-essential tasks to free up time for strategic thinking and decision-making. 8. Lead with empathy and respect ↳ Understand the challenges your team faces and provide support. ↳ Show appreciation for their hard work and celebrate their achievements. Make 2024 the year you lead your tech team to success! Share your biggest challenge in balancing coding and leading below!

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The term “Developer Ecosystem” has been rolling around in my brain lately, so let’s discuss. Here’s the problem I’m noticing. The term #developerexperience is experiencing a similar problem to the term #technicaldebt. It correctly explains the problem for folks who have experience working in software and organizational systems that are inefficient and ineffective. The struggle of just getting good work out the door is real, and we know how we could make things better. We get it, so using these terms feels good because we finally have a phrase that describes a more abstract concept that we feel is important. But the value we feel in using these terms in our familiar domain doesn’t quite translate to people who don’t have experience working as or with software developers. The meaning gets lost in translation and the people who have the most influence into what organizational initiatives get funded can’t conceptualize the benefit. As I’m observing the trends in the #devex movement, I’m seeing that metrics like DORA, SPACE and the DevEx Model are highly focused on an *integrated* experience, not an *individual* experience. It’s about ensuring developers are working in concert with the organizational system instead of fighting it. The struggle is often strong and significant, but it’s easy to think it’s trivial if you haven’t been there. This nuance is pretty hidden, so it’s understandable when it gets glossed over or misinterpreted. I think this is why folks in other domains think about DevEx as emphasizing the productivity of individuals or assuming that devs want to be pampered and treated better than their colleagues. I’m curious if framing the overall problem as ecosystem health would help influence change. Would CEOs and CFOs grasp and fund initiatives more? My hunch is yes after so many years of selling the value of modernizing legacy systems, but I’m curious to hear your thoughts.

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It is impossible to scale your product delivery if every single decision must be approved by an individual or even a single team. Your business will not be able to maintain the pace it needs to compete. Yes, this even applies to security. Instead, security should be everyone's responsibility. All this insight and more is available for free on Optimism Otter https://lnkd.in/ehU32926

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If you've ever had to deal with inconsistent UX, multiple generations of design systems, and the perpetual back and forth between UI and backend developers - there's hope, you are not alone. And let me just say it out loud - there's no "full stack" development - it is simply impossible for an engineer to stay up to date on all the development across JavaScript, frameworks, Node.js, Kubernetes, Java, etc. You either have deep and somewhat narrow, or broad and shallow. These problems are quite common for everyone who has inherited an existing product (which is like 99.9% of us). This blog post by Kyle Shevlin about building a tightly-enforced composable design system resonated with me. #UI #designsystem #react https://lnkd.in/gStEWHtC

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I adore this. ❤️ I tend towards saying the things I think need to be said in business, even if I’m uncertain or I worry they’ll paint me in a bad light. I have learned through my career that if I care passionately about the business and want to improve it this is essential. There are routinely two outcomes from me speaking up. 1️⃣ It goes badly In a good organisation I learn from this, and it doesn’t discourage me. In a bad organisation, I get a strong signal (which increases over instances) that my voice isn’t required, that change isn’t appreciated, and that I am not a fit for the organisation. When this later happens, it’s time to get out. “Change your culture, OR Change your culture!” 2️⃣ It triggers discussion, debate, and improves outcomes Even if my view is wrong (and it sometimes is, of course) it starts a discussion, and typically what we want in organisations is discussion, debate, healthy conflict, and shared improvement. This is critical to improvement in business, and should be embraced by all leaders. ——- When I coach and mentor leaders, one thing I routinely do is cover the above with them and implore them to find their voice in an organisation. It is one of the more powerful things you can do as a leader, and in the right organisation will help you grow yourself and the quality of the outcomes around you. Go find your voice!

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I believe that when people lament about tech debt, it's a misdirected complaint. Engineering teams will always be producing some amount of technical "debt." Even if we write beautiful, well-tested code that fits some noble architectural paradigm and meets every standard we can come up with, it is guaranteed to be deficient in some way--either now or to the team's (or our own personal) future views on what constitutes good code. When we write code, we come to some consensus as a team around what approaches we generally accept and what trade-offs we are generally willing to tolerate. And that's completely normal and unavoidable. But when we complain about tech debt, what we are actually complaining about is a deficient process. All software teams need to have dedicated time to revise our work. Far too often, we prioritize feature development over all other things. The end results of that deficient process are, invariably, twofold: a product with shiny new bells and whistles and a sea of spaghetti under the hood; and a team of stressed out engineers who have to work in a messy, frustrating codebase every single day.

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