Exploring the human factors that make software engineering so unique, so difficult, so important and all consuming. Learning to work with the systems, not against them.
The Human DevOps - 15th July 2024 - Rain Clouds
|
It has not by any means been a good summer in the Netherlands. It's been very wet and the last few days have also been extremely windy. At work, on the streets and on the roads, there is a tension. I try to take the time to go out for a lunchtime walk at least a couple of times a week and took this photo last week during a gap in the rain. And we head towards the summer break, make sure to take some time to relax before you face the serious business of relaxation. I'm taking a break for a few weeks myself and will be back again in September. Lots to look forward to then including the (for me) much awaited return of the Fast Flow Conference in London. Over a year has passed since the last Fast Flow Conference and in my mind a lot has changed. I no longer view the software world as problem that needs to be fixed, and don't believe that "Flow" is the answer. I believe we simply that we need to embrace the chaos a little bit more in a constructive and personal manner. More on that later in the year. In the meantime I wish you a peaceful summer and that you find the time to rest and recharge this summer. We Don’t Want Utopia: Just A Stress-free Day at WorkPublished on July 14, 2024 Following up on the ideas I talked about in Writing Software Is a Political Act, I discovered Andrew Harmel-Law’s math blog where I found this picture from XKCD. This made me chuckle but it also made me think – where does the software engineer end up in this picture of the universe? Are we looking… Read More »We Don’t Want Utopia: Just A Stress-free Day at Work
|
The Human Engineer
Exploring the human factors that make software engineering so unique, so difficult, so important and all consuming. Learning to work with the systems, not against them.
Conference season hit Amsterdam last month with the global juggernaut that is Kubecon but I eschewed the noise of that particular enormous techie event and went instead to the writer-friendly event "Stories Unfold" at Amsterdam's OBA theatre. This was a very pleasant evening giving a selection of self-published and traditionally published authors a stage to share the stories behind their books and also highlighted a new compilation of short stories. The audience was very much made up of...
Twenty years ago I was living in Taunton in the South-West of the UK and travelling by car to work in Bournemouth to work for a big, famous American investment bank as a technical consultant. I'd been hired to be part of a helpdesk which was on-call to supply first line support to portfolio managers who were booking trades for their clients. But me being a techie, I was there to bring technical expertise and solutions to a team that was struggling. I aced the assignment. Providing a technical...
January is over. The longest month! I managed to get a break in Chamonix, nominally to do some skiing, but for the most part it was marvelling at the beauty of it all. The world around us. So, I'm in the alps taking a break from the uncertainty of the present and facing my own mortality on the gentlest slopes near Mont Blanc. It's wonderful being up there with friends, I feel very lucky, and I also don't feel any real need to push myself like I would have done in the older days. I went out...