Dec 28, 2021The senior engineer career humpAs a software engineer approaches or reaches the senior engineer role, the things they need to show to progress further become very different. Many engineers don’t explicitly plan for this, and get stuck at what I call the “experience hump”. Here’s how to move past it. Note: It’s not mandatory…Software Engineering4 min read
Aug 14, 2021Can individuals write code?Can individuals write code? I think that your answer to this question will, to a large part, predict your attitude towards software engineers being asked to return to the office for all or some of their working week. …Remote Working9 min read
Published in The Startup·Feb 25, 2021Improve Your Security By Talking About GardeningI am convinced that banging on and on about warfare is hurting our ability to make pragmatic, cultural changes that protect our software and our organisations. It’s dangerous to just accept metaphors as a way of describing the world. In many cases, that act of description changes the way you…Security8 min read
Feb 4, 2021Continuous integration: Pipelines or jobs first?Recently I found myself wanting to express an opinion about continuous integration pipelines to my team, but I lacked the language to do it. I’ve been searching the web for days now, and asking on Twitter, and I still can’t find any good description of what I’m talking about. …Software Development8 min read
Jan 31, 2021Why I’ve stopped holding people accountableI’m extremely sceptical about the commonplace notions of “accountability” and “responsibility”. I think there is a fundamental tension between these concepts and a desire to create psychological safety on a team. …Agile5 min read
Jan 13, 2021The resilience of mixed seniority engineering teamsA couple of weeks ago I wrote this line in some lessons learned from building a new digital service for the UK Government: I’m extremely proud of how we managed to do that with an unremarkable budget and a team with multiple junior members. It seemed to resonate. A few…Software Development4 min read
Jan 3, 2021Lessons learned from building a government serviceLast year, I was fortunate enough to spend some time with MHCLG as the technical lead on a project to replace the ageing Energy Performance of Buildings Register. Kev Keenoy has written a good summary of the work. …Digital Transformation4 min read
May 13, 2018It’s not Google Duplex, it’s youIn Asimov’s Robot series, several societies uphold the custom that robots must introduce themselves with the prefix “R”. For example, Daneel Olivaw, the humaniform robot so convincingly lifelike that it can deceive most actual humans, introduces [it/him]self as R. Daneel Olivaw. If you’re not particularly interested in tech ethics, you’ve…Artificial Intelligence4 min read
Jan 6, 2018What I learned from getting rid of most of my possessionsI travel a lot for work. Last year I traveled in excess of 300 days. For all of that time I was renting a place in central London, and it was a pretty great place. It was a short walk from everything I like to do in London, and I…Minimalism4 min read
Published in Education Reform·Jul 17, 2015Was Teach First worth it?I’ve just finished the last week of my job as a computer science teacher on the Teach First leadership development programme. I won’t be returning to the classroom next year, instead I’ve accepted a position in the software industry. The past two years have undoubtedly been the most difficult of…Teaching7 min read
