Observations and (hopefully) timeless information originating from a 30 year career in computer science.
If you are new to this site, be sure to read How the Website is Organized and How (and Why) to Support Us. You can also start at Start Here for the big picture.
Who is this for?
If you are in this list (or want to be), this blog is for you!
- Software Creators
- Software Engineers, Software Developers
- Software Architects, Staff Engineers
- Software Supporters
- QA Engineers
- DevOps Engineers
- Technical Support for software products
- Customer Service for software products
- Managers of Software Creators and Software Supporters
- Includes hiring managers
- Product Development Professionals
- Business Analysts
- Product Owners
- Project Managers
- Executive Leadership
- Directors of I.T./I.S.
- CTOs
- VPs of Engineering/Technology
- Human Resources for any of the above
- Recruiters of any of the above
I have direct career experience with each of the roles in purple italics, meaning I have performed those roles professionally for a significant amount of time that I feel comfortable making the claim that I have experience in that role. I included other roles that I have not performed, myself. But, I have extensive experience interacting with people in those roles, often hiring or managing them.
What's not in the list? There are many other roles, positions, and titles in the world of software creation and support: network engineers, database administrators, data scientists, reporting positions, graphic artists and designers, and the list goes on. If you are not in the list, I simply have not had direct experience myself or enough experience in my interactions with those roles to provide meaningful content. At least, not yet.
What do I provide?
I offer different stuff for different roles.
For the software creators, I have career information both from the creator point of view and from the manager point of view.
For the managers, I offer insight into what it's really like to work on a software project, why some things can seem hard, why some things are easy, why small changes are sometimes simply much larger than they seem, and what the heck all those terms mean that you hear your team use.
For the product development professionals much of what I include for managers will be relevant. But, I dig a little deeper into the types of knowledge and experience that applies to you: not just the how things work and what they mean, but how to more properly understand your timelines and what you really need to focus on (it's often not the way a button looks but whether it can exist and do the thing it needs to do).
For the executive leaders, you can benefit from everything for managers and product development professionals, but I also look at cost of things, how to approach long-term strategy realistically, the impacts of upsizing or downsizing an I.T. department, what to truly expect from outsourcing, and whether the new shiny thing really does bring value to your business.
Finally, for HR and recruiters, what the heck do all these job titles and skills actually mean, and how to truly be effective at recruiting or retaining tech talent.
Articles have a common layout
Each article includes a tech rating and target audience (See Start Here for details). The content will all follow this pattern:
- Executive Summary (TL;DR)
- Possible Foreword with a personal anecdote of experience
- Definitions of anything particularly relevant to the article
- The content, separated into sections with headers, following an outline
- References / Resources (sources for my citations and data)
- Updates (if the article is updated, what changed)
This is not career advice!
That's my disclaimer in a nutshell. I am sharing information and observations from a long, successful career. This is how I did things that worked (or didn't work). This is what got me from point A to point X on a project or in my career.
But not everything will be relevant to all situations! You must take what I share and apply it to your own circumstances. Any decisions you make that are informed by my writing are ultimately your decisions. Neither Leet Enterprises LLC, the brand A Humble Genius, the site humblegenius.blog, nor the author(s) of any content on this site are responsible for any actions or decisions taken after reading any of the content on this site.
Updates
- 2024-08-05: added the common layout
- 2024-08-26: updated wording and formatting