Savvy software comes from savvy people.
Perhaps you have an idea of what this post will be about.
If you have read my writing on tech hiring before, you might expect this piece to be a case against hiring based on vague and ill-defined criteria like smart or assertive or someone I’d like to grab a beer with. While that is also a tech hiring scourge that I hate, this post is not about that.
Andrew Ng knows a thing or two about machine learning. He cofounded Coursera and instructed the seminal machine learning Coursera class, then served as the VP and Chief Scientist for Baidu before recently launching a new project called Deeplearning.ai. Ng has made an enormous impact on modern machine learning and machine learning education.
Continue reading “Takeaways: Machine Learning Yearning by Andrew Ng, Chapters 1-14”
Last Thursday and Friday, I had the opportunity to participate in the Alexa Challenge. This hackathon at the HCSC Blue Innovation Lab focused on ways that Alexa could help Blue Cross customers use their insurance.1
Recently, we talked about some of the day-to-day events in a company culture that’s headed in a bad direction. Now, it’s time to examine some of the positive day-to-day practices that send a company’s culture in the right direction.
I once talked about why your selection process gives advantages to some applicants based on ethnicity and gender. That post assumes that readers want to have a diverse workplace, but today I’d like to take a step back and look at why it’s important so that you have more ammo to talk about this with your managers, clients, and colleagues.
Dear Corporate Marketing People,
I get it. The Pride parade has a massive audience. Getting your name in front of that many people can boost your customer base and your recruiting efforts. Sponsor away.
But please do not cannibalize your company’s Diversity and Inclusion budget to do it, Because what you are doing is not allyship to the queer community.
Continue reading “Dear Corporations: Read this before you sponsor Pride”
Total compensation (or total comp) represents the quantified sum of what you get in exchange for working for a company. It includes more components than just your salary, and everyone recommends that you calculate this prior to changing jobs.
Continue reading “Advance Your Tech Career: A Guide to Evaluating Total Compensation”
You already wish you had more budget for custom code. An hour of a programmer’s time costs a lot; in some cases it approaches the hourly rate of lawyers. So if your programmers pair program, that cuts the amount of code your programmers crank out per hour in half...doesn’t it?
It doesn’t. This is why.
A few years ago, Seth Godin wrote this book called Linchpin. Among other things, the book suggests that you hoard relationships, knowledge, and context at your job so it’s impossible for the company to replace you.
People who read books like this presumably want to continue to grow, learn, and advance in their careers. In order to do those things, you’re much better off enabling other people to do everything you do.
A programmer might refer to this as deprecating yourself. It’s a critical leadership skill that you will need to build a tech team, rise through the ranks, or otherwise level up your tech career.
Continue reading “Advance Your Tech Career: Why make yourself replaceable, and how?”
