My intern, being a pretty humble guy, put an “X” in each “Met” column and left no comments for himself, unsure of what to put. It looked something like this:

So I decided to “help him out” and provide some feedback since I think he did a very good job this summer. I made my edits and sent it back to him with a note saying we’d review it together the next day.

At our daily standup the next morning he looked pretty depressed and dejected, which I noted, but didn’t think too much about. He sheepishly slipped into my office later that morning for our meeting, and only after we started talking did we realize that something was amiss. You see, I’m a native English-speaker who has spent my entire life in North America. As such, I have learned to read and process information from left to right. When I think about data, I put the lower value on the left and the higher on the right: lower < higher.

Unfortunately, while filling out the review I had skimmed the table and just started editing. So what my intern received from me looked like this:

After my intern started breathing again, we had a good laugh about it. Well, I apologized and laughed and he laughed with relief in the “just got a last-minute pardon” kind of way.
There are two lessons here:

1. Don’t make assumptions. (I should’ve read the document more thoroughly.)
2. Understand your user’s context. Present information in a way that flows with how they naturally think.

I love you.

Oh wait, no, that was supposed to go in the email to my wife.

Know your limits.

Consider this phrase as just one aspect of the golden rule as it relates to leadership. For example, I am a person who loves to dig into details and who tends to struggle with intentionally staying at a high-level view of a project. As the team grew, we had 8 people each working on a different project. With my natural hands-on style, I found myself inadvertently ignoring half of the team, barely keeping up with the current state of their projects, while digging into the other half of the projects.

I realized that my current limitations were preventing me from giving attention to my co-workers and their projects that they needed, and at the same time I was growing increasingly stressed out and frustrated from trying to keep up with everybody. In the spirit of “doing to others what I would want done to me” I knew that my co-workers deserved proper attention and focus from their manager. I also knew that the more stressed I was, the less effective I was.

The solution in my situation? Find and/or develop another Technical Manager and split the team up, allowing each manager to provide an increased level of focus to their teams.

We split the teams about a month ago and the day the split went into effect I swear I felt a literal load taken off of my shoulders, and the result for both teams has been wonderful.

Team mitosis and optimal team size is an interesting topic that perhaps I’ll muse about more in-depth in a future post.

Grandpa’s skills grew over time and, as it’s a natural thing, he began informally mentoring junior machinists. It wasn’t long at all before management at the factory noticed both his skill and his mentorship and did what any good manager would do. They promoted him to a supervisor.

My dad tells me that my grandfather was never the same.

Being a supervisor sucked the life out of my grandpa. Everything he loved about his job was gone. He no longer worked with peers, he oversaw employees. Reviewing their work, approving their vacation, dealing with "poor performers", and spending less of his time creating.

Grandpa’s managers made an all-too-common mistake. They assumed that because grandpa was good at his job, he’d be good at managing other people doing the same job. Sound familiar? Thought so. By no means is it limited to any one industry, either. I’m pretty sure that eons ago there existed a caveman who was good at killing mammoths, and as a result was promoted to "branch manager", and probably ended up killing his coworkers ’cause that’s all he knew how to do.

A lot has been written about this problem. And it’s definitely a problem.

But it’s not so simple. Managers need a good measure of domain knowledge. There are two ways to get a manager with domain knowledge: hire a "manager" and teach them the domain, or promote a domain expert and teach them to be a manager. Because domain knowledge tends to be more specific and more detailed, and because managing is incorrectly viewed to be "easy", the default is usually to promote a domain expert. Add more mundane logistics like the fact that domain experts tend to already be employees and it makes the decision that much "easier".

In the software world the problem is amplified by the nature of "domain experts". The majority of us can hardly interact with any other human being, not to mention "manage" developers.

Unfortunately, because of wrong assumptions, most organizational structures are set up in a way that assumes a career path from developer to manager. In Code Craft, Pete Goodliffe calls these people "Reluctant Team Leaders".

"This is the organizational classic; a developer who’s been promoted to team leader when there was no further technical route for him to advance. You can plainly see that he is uncomfortable in this role. He doesn’t have the correct skill set, and he struggles to keep up. He is a programmer, and he wants to program. This guy is not a natural organizer or manager of people, and he is a bad communicator."

Organizations with an outdated organizational structure have got to wake up and change before it’s too late. They will either lose or ruin their people. Either way, the company loses because people are the company.

I do think, though, that it is possible for a developer to successfully become a technical manager. There are some developers that have the skills, nay, more like the potential, to be good technical managers. We’re seeing more and more developers with "people skills". Partly because the barriers to entry have lowered. For example, you don’t need to have a secret love affair with bit twiddling 1’s and 0’s in order to write software. Higher level frameworks like Java, .NET, and Ruby/Rails enable more people to create something great than has previously been possible.

So what are the characteristics of a good technical manager?

1. Communication. Communication is where developers struggle the most. The world with two personalities (1 and 0) is vastly different than the world of billions of personalities. Each personality type communicates in a different way. And as a technical manager, one of the most challenging tasks is to help a group of individuals communicate and work as a team. A developer has a ONE-TO-ONE communication path: developer to their manager. A technical manager has a ONE-TO-MANY communication path: from the manager to every person on the team. Often a technical manager will find themselves proxying the communication between two developers.
2. Technical savvy. A technical manager has to maintain the respect of their team, and software developers tend to be an elitist group – if you can’t keep up, good luck. You don’t have to be technically "smarter" than your team, not by a long shot (otherwise you should stay a developer), but you should keep up to speed with current trends, best practices, new technologies, etc. In my experience, technical managers can "cherry pick" smaller features, but should never be in the critical path for a project. I’ve been there, it’s not fun. Open source projects are a great way to keep up with both deeper and broader design and implementation techniques.
3. Organization skills. A normal developer keeps track of many things: bugs, features, ongoing email threads, and of course current designs, implementations, etc. A technical manager must track all of this, but at a higher level and for several people across the team.
4. Priorities. Your primary job responsibility is no longer writing code. A technical manager has to come to terms with that before accepting the job. But a technical manager’s job also isn’t to dictate or control the team either. A technical manager needs to understand the business, and needs to set a vision for the team, but the primary role of a technical manager should be to clear the path of developers to make them the most productive they can be. Read about the ScrumMaster role in the Scrum project management process. It’s a great description of a technical manager’s priorities.
5. Humility. Developers have egos. As much as I’ve tried to pretend that’s not true, it is. It’s crucial to understand that for a technical manager to successfully bring a team together, the "I’m the boss of you" attitude can never show it’s face. A manager who assumes they are superior to the people on their team both promotes the wrong assumption that managers are "above" developers (how do you think the wrong organizational structures came to exist in the first place?), and provides a horrible place to work.

In addition to the character traits of technical managers, it’s critical for a developer to have a clear grasp of what the job role will include, in terms of day-to-day activities. Andrew
Tokeley has a good write-up of what you can expect. I think most developers considering a move to a managerial role force themselves to believe delusions like "I can still write a lot of code" in order to make the move more palatable. I’d argue that, depending on your company culture, you’ll probably write less code than even Andrew indicates in his charts.

Over a year ago I took the plunge from developer to team lead. It’s been an interesting ride. Frustrating, rewarding, educational, and enlightening. For the right type of person, it’s a good move, if you’re ready for it. For the wrong type of person, you’ll never be ready for it, so avoid it like the plague. If your company forces you to become a manager to "move up", either be satisfied staying put, or find a new company that has a clear technical career path. But overall, do what you enjoy, and do it well.

Maybe.

Certainly there are a lot of new twitter client apps being made, some with lofty aspirations, but more importantly I see a twitter client as the new "Hello World" for desktop applications. And I think it’s a great choice. The days of a Hello World application consisting of a Console.WriteLine are long past. To dig in and learn something new, you have to implement something with at least a little substance to it.

A twitter client has the key components one needs when learning a new technology:

Simple

In terms of base functionality, a twitter client has a very simple task. Heck, Twitter itself is built around the simple premise of asking "What are you doing right now?" and letting you answer. A twitter client, at it’s core, needs to do two things: display your timeline and let you update your "status". Simple as that.

Easy and intuitive API

Twitter’s API is easy. Really easy. When you’re writing a real-world Hello World application, you want to focus on what you’re trying to learn, which is the technology, and not a complex API or other things that simply distract.

Options

Like most applications that have a user interface (and even those that don’t), there’s always room for choices. Depending on what you’re trying to learn (I’m a UI guy) you have different approaches you can take. If you’re learning WinForms or WPF, you can play with different presentation models, learning how to accomplish what you want. If you’re learning deeper back-end programming, you could play with the windows services APIs, or WCF, or whatever. It’s flexible.

Room for expansion

A twitter client can move beyond the basics I mentioned above and incorporate more features, with the limit practically being your imagination. Just look at twittervision.

My friend Mike has been diving head first into .NET (he’s an MFC guru), and decided to create a great twitter client (Bitter) not to create the ultimate one, but to learn the technology. Which is good, because an ultimate twitter client has already been created. It’s called Twitterific.

If you’re not going, you should really consider it. The FAQ from the site lists those who should attend, and I think it’s safe to say that this describes 90% of you. Easily. (Is the sarcasm dripping enough yet?)

• MVPs: Exchange and OCS MVPs heart of community
• Online Influencers: Active in online communities and have broad influence
• Key Partners: Our key partners in GSIs, key ISVs, and VPPs
• IT Professionals, IT Decision Makers and Business Decision Makers, and Influencers: Exchange, network & telephony teams; IT directors and non IT business unit directors who influence IT from managed accounts orgs
• Developers: Exchange and OCS developers working towards UC
• Analysts: Key influencer analysts

I myself actually fall into the influencer/developer role, as lately I’ve been working some with Office Communications Server and Office Communicator.

Anyway, if you happen to be in the 0.01% of the online population attending this event, let me know and let’s meet up! It’s in San Diego from April 8-10. And if you just live in that area and have any good sight-seeing ideas, or want to meet up, let me know – I’ve never been out there before.

Valentine’s Day is the quintessential “Hallmark holiday“. But Hallmark has done a great job: our “significant others” continue to expect something for Valentine’s Day, even though they acknowledge that it’s a made-up holiday.

When I was dating my wife in college, I had a great combination of free time and resources. I worked in what was called the Educational Technology Center (ETC). That means I had a near unlimited supply of “arts and crafts” stuff, computer labs with Corel Draw and Photoshop, audio and video editing equipment, and lots more. It was fantastic. My time at the ETC helped form me for the future, both in mentorship from my boss and in the well-rounded experiences it gave me that have served my career in software development well.

But I digress. This isn’t about me, it’s about my wife, Mindy.

Because of my situation, I was able to produce an inordinate amount of creative gifts for my future wife. When the real world hit, however, that creative gift giving slowed waaaaaay down. Like a screeching stop kind of slowing down. And now, having two kids that are almost 2 and 4, my creativity operates more in line with the evolutionary theory of Punctuated Equilibrium than anything else: long periods of non-creative gifts like flowers, etc. and punctuated “spikes” of creative thoughtful gifts.

This Valentine’s Day, I decided to spend some time and combine the nerd part of me with the romantic part and hit a “punk eek” spike (“punctuated equilibrium” == “punk eek” … get it? It’s how all the cool kids say it.)

Warning: don’t try this at home, kids! I’m a trained professional. Mixing different aspects of your personality can have catastrophic effects.

I don’t care who you are, when you spend the large portion of your day with two small children and have limited contact with other adults, it can drive you crazy if you’re not careful. Heck it can drive you crazy even if you are careful! For that reason, I work hard to give Mindy a break from the kids when I get home, and throughout the evening, while balancing time for her, and time all together.

So, playing off that, I created a 7th grade science fair project depicting an experiment where I hold constant everything except “my actions when I arrive home from work”, and I measure Mindy’s response.

(Click the image for the big version – I’m thought the “Procedure” part is funny, which you can read in the large image.)

My hypothesis is that if I help with the kids when I get home from work, Mindy will be happier than if I sit on the couch, or check my email. Turns out my hypothesis was correct. (Shocking!)

Now that I’ve wasted your time, reader, this entire post is to say that I love you, Mindy. Even on a made-up holiday that’s been invented by the corpor…. whatever. You’re amazing, and I love you!

How about you, reader? What have you done that’s creative? Have you successfully combined geeky/nerdy and creative/cool? How do you show your significant other they’re special?

They took the words spoken by one of the whack-job contestants and made them kinda catchy!

XO is built from free and open-source software. Our commitment to software freedom gives children the opportunity to use their laptops on their own terms. While we do not expect every child to become a programmer, we do not want any ceiling imposed on those children who choose to modify their machines. We are using open-document formats for much the same reason: transparency is empowering. The children—and their teachers—will have the freedom to reshape, reinvent, and reapply their software, hardware, and content.

Look at the software and tools they’re exposing on the laptop. It’s a smorgasbord of modern languages (Python and Javascript) and applications (RSS reader, VOIP client). And it includes the kitchen sink: a debugger.

We are using components from Red Hat’s Fedora Core 6 version of the Linux operating system; we are tracking the main kernel fairly closely.

We will support five programming environments on the laptop: (1) Python, from which we have built our user interface and our activity model; (2) Javascript for browser-based scripting; (3) Csound, a programmable music and audio environment; (4) Squeak, a version of Smalltalk embedded into a media-rich authoring environment; and (5) Logo. We will also provide some support for Java and Flash.

Applications will include a web browser built on Xulrunner, the run-time environment used by the Firefox browser; a simple document viewer based upon Evince; the AbiWord wordprocessor, an RSS reader, an email client, chat client, VOIP client; a journal; a multimedia authoring and playback environment; a music composition toolkit, graphics toolkits, games, a shell, and a debugger.

Libraries and plugins used by OLPC include Xul, GTK+, Matchbox, Sugar, Pango, ATK, Cairo, X Window System, Avahi, and gstreamer.

I’m impressed by the capabilities of the little green machine, but I’m skeptical as to how much of its capabilities a 3rd world student will actually make use of. But really it doesn’t matter. Getting this in the hands of impoverished children (and their families and parents!) will give them books, encyclopedias, a video camera, drawing pads, etc. Stuff that will both educate and inspire creativity. It’s already having a positive impact in Peru. Maybe a small percentage of them will delve deeper into the guts of the machine itself (you can pull up a linux shell ), but that’s not the main intent.

Here’s the best news: you have until December 31st to buy one of these for an underprivileged child in another country with the Give One Get One program. And, as the name implies, you buy one for yourself also. We purchased one when the program started, and received it fairly quickly. We’re giving ours to some friends with small children who live in a poor part of Angola (Africa), so we were able to have both laptops used for a good cause (and we got to play with one before we sent it off ).

But you (like most folk) will probably keep the one you get – and good for you! My daughter Hannah played with the XO nearly the entire time we had it out of the packaging, and I was amazed at how quickly she picked up using it, and how it captivated her attention so thoroughly. I wish we could’ve kept one. There’s already a growing body of enthusiasts here in the US. (Chat with them on your XO via Jabber.)

The XO (and more specifically the One Laptop Per Child program) got a 9-year old’s seal of approval, and it gets mine as well. Do a good thing and send one to someone who needs it today! Considering how relatively cheap it is to us compared to how valuable (and out of reach) it is to them, how can you not?

Oh the weather outside is frightful,

But the fire is so delightful,

And since we’ve no place to go,
(I’m on vacation and my car is in the shop.)

Let us code! Let us code! Let us code!