#73 Structural lessons in engineering management
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Structural lessons in engineering management
It’s worth talking about the downside of going too far with structural thinking as it pertains to teams and organizations. Let’s take a common area where this structural approach happens, namely that of organizational structures and interactions.
Measuring software complexity: What metrics to use?
“This part of the codebase doesn’t feel right!” This was Dave, your colleague developer, arguing in another never-ending meeting to rewrite a part of your company’s codebase. His arguments? Technical debt, high entropy, and the fear of the legacy system.
Here’s a team. Someone leaves. We hire a replacement. We get lucky and manage to find someone more skilled. Looks like we’re better off?
Mental model is a somewhat overloaded term, but roughly means having a structured view on a given topic. This structured view allows you to predict how changes will propagate across the entire problem, and allows you to rapidly prove or disprove your current perspective on a topic.
Jean, Jorts, and tough feedback
In a workplace that provides services to clients at very sad and stressful points in their lives, there live two cats named Jean and Jorts. Jean is a clever tortoiseshell cat, while Jorts gets himself into a multitude of predicaments (falling in trash cans, getting himself stuck in closets, etc.) and happens to be orange (this is important later!). Jean often helps Jorts out of his predicaments.
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