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Latest — Nov 1, 2024

Full-stack vs. Specialists

Structuring your development team is a crucial decision. Do you hire specialists or full-stack developers? The full-stack reality check * Full-stack is actually T-shaped. Every full-stack developer has their sweet spot, a technology where they truly excel. * It's about breadth, not depth. They possess broad knowledge across technologies, not encyclopedic expertise

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Help stakeholders understand technical debt

Have you ever heard this from a stakeholder? "The engineering team keeps talking about technical debt. I don't understand what they mean, and all I get is vague technical explanations." Unclear requests to handle technical debt create a rift between stakeholders and engineering teams. The technical leader must bridge this

Protecting your problem solvers

"You have a hard problem? Sarah will fix it!" As engineers gain experience and tenure, they inevitably face increasingly complex challenges. It's the nature of our field—the toughest problems land on the desks of our most seasoned professionals. While it's gratifying to hear, this praise can mask a hidden

Technical Debt leads to Quality Degradation

I've previously discussed the consequences of technical debt. Let's explore an aspect that's often invisible to non-technical stakeholders: quality degradation. The 3 Steps of Quality Degradation 1. It starts small: adding a few lines to spaghetti code or postponing an update. 2. Non-technical stakeholders are unaware of the problem until

Quality is a choice

“Our product should be perfect, with zero bugs! Also, our budget is limited.” The truth is that quality isn't an exact science. Perfection comes at a cost. What to consider when determining the level of quality: 1. Industry context: Highly regulated sectors demand rigorous QA. For non-critical products, speed to

Lessons Learned from a lost Google Play Store account

Mobile app development has unique challenges, particularly when publishing on the Google Play and Apple App stores. Recently, I encountered a situation highlighting the importance of foresight when creating a new app. The Challenge A client reached out because their Android app had been removed from the Google Play Store

The True Cost of Postponed Upgrades

As tech leaders, we often hear (or say), "We'll do it next quarter" regarding framework upgrades. But is this approach truly serving our teams and products? 🪄 The Illusion of the "Magical Next Quarter" Technical leaders recognize it all too well. Stakeholders push back on framework upgrades, seeing them as low-priority

Auto-generated Home Assistant dashboards

Home Assistant is a fantastic platform. I've been sucked into it for quite some time. Creating the dashboards is fun, but finishing them is very difficult. They are a constant work in progress and take quite some time to get right. In the end, the results can be stunning. But

Manipulating an Excel file with Python

It's one of those things that sound easy but hardly are. There are a lot of libraries and solutions out there that enable you to manipulate Excel files via code. Some of them are expensive, other are open source. A lot of languages have a library to help you manipulate