Sociotechnical systems - Jennifer++

Jennifer++

Sociotechnical systems

We are part of the systems we build

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Letterbook Featured

Letterbook

We build tools, but we are also shaped by the affordances of those tools. I'm building Letterbook. I would like it if you join me.

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Sociotechnical systems

Mental maps, part 2: incidents and observability

We map the system so that we can change the system, so then we must remap the system. That's the tight inner loop of software development.

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Sociotechnical systems

Complex vs complicated

A quick and practical summary of what it means for a system to be complex, or not.

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Sociotechnical systems

Mental maps for navigating software systems

Learning and exploration in complex systems happens continuously, forever. We need to constantly update our mental maps, or they'll lead us astray

Named Things

This is a cautionary tale. It's the story of an internal tool development project. We'll call it Astro, because naming things is hard, and the reasons why are very instructive.

Culture Fit

We don't evaluate candidates purely on skill. We also assess them socially. I'll explore how to do that, without falling into the trap of dismissing someone as "not a culture fit" due to bias.

Interviewing Software Engineers

Interviewing Software Engineers

Artificial white board programming tests are the wrong thing, but they're easy to assign. Doing the right thing is going to be harder. So what we really need to do is identify what we're looking for in a programmer

Falsehoods programmers believe about gender (and sex)

Falsehoods programmers believe about gender (and sex)

Sex and gender are complicated. If you want my advice, it's that your app probably doesn't even need to collect this information.

Enabling Refactoring

To succeed at refactoring, you need to make small, incremental improvements. It needs to be continuous. It needs to be habitual. And it needs to be proactive. Because it's not special; it's just a regular part of development. This is continuous refactoring.

Sociotechnical systems

The worst interview homework ever

I completely get the point of interview homework. You need to assess whether a candidate can actually do the job you're hiring for. Whether they're even viable. And your time is valuable, so you have them do it offline and just show the results. Then you check the results, which

Software Engineer

Process Featured

Software Engineer

I am a software engineer. What I'm not is a programmer, or a developer, or a coder, or a ninja. Simply writing code is the easiest part of developing software. Anyone can write a competent for loop given a day or two of training. The difference between that and engineering

Sociotechnical systems

Some things I DO miss about big companies

I previously discussed some things about working in a large organization that I was happy to be rid of. This is the other side of that coin. These things are by no means exclusive to large companies. They are rather hallmarks of a mature one. But, it has been my

Sociotechnical systems

What I don't miss about big companies

Update Sep 2017: I later wrote about some of the good parts. After you're done here, you should check that out, too. I got a new job recently. Go me! The old job was at a very large financial company. I won't say which one, but you would likely recognize

A Note on the Daily Standup

Apparently, (scrum) standup meetings are broken. It seems that way at least, because making suggestions for how to fix them seems to be a seminal favorite topic in programmer blogs; so it must be true. Right? Either way, I'll add my two cents. I should say up front that I'm