I have been thinking about writing a follow-up to my post on Eight Reasons why Most Technical Interviews Suck, more from the perspective of the person being interviewed, as the two different perspectives are crucial for both the employer and the job-seeker to understand.

However, I saw a post (via LifeHacker) on Shiyan Koh’s blog: 5 Questions to Ask before Taking a Job, and it covers some pretty good and salient points, many of which I would echo. And there are some things I would add to it.

Continue reading »

Being in the internet industry (or outside of it, as well), its likely you’ve either heard people say they hate Flash often enough, or you yourself say it. But have you ever stopped to wonder at the hypocrisy and complete bias shown by this statement?

Continue reading »

In August 2009 I had the privilege of being able to see an early screening of Waking Sleeping Beauty, a documentary about Walt Disney Animation during the renaissance years from 1984-1994. For those of you who don’t know, the early 80s were a dark time for The Walt Disney Company. There were corporate raiders at the gates, and animation was nearly dying. But that all began to change during the 10-years represented in this film, what some call the golden age: you know, when things like Beauty & the Beast, The Lion King, and Who Framed Roger Rabbit (just to name a few) were made.

Continue reading »

Over the last year or two I have heard the phrase and idea of “T-Shirt Sized Estimates” come up more and more often in the software engineering/technology world, typically by people that I would think should never be allowed to talk about software estimation. To me it doesn’t seem to be much of a coincidence that people I have known to be horrible at estimation are often the ones who bring this faux estimation process up, and there are some clear reasons why one should never use this type of estimation.

For background, t-shirt sized estimates seem to follow the rule of asking for a small, medium, large, or extra-large estimate against an effort. And, more often than not, the reason why people ask for this type of estimate is because the required information to make good, well-thought out estimates is not available at the time. So, in what passes for a natural response to these people who couldn’t estimate the number of crayons in a box, t-shirt sized estimates were born and make sense…to them. But they make zero sense.

Because they are lies.

Continue reading »