minware

The #1 benefit of AI copilots is that they force you to write better code (comments, variable names, etc.), otherwise they won’t work. Rewarding developers for writing down how their code should function by letting them type less is how we should be thinking about AI’s productivity impact. In a way, making the least experienced developers (and students) use it more may help them get better faster than directly writing code.

Researchers discover 9.5% of developers have no commits. Customers who’ve used a particular competitor tell us commits disappear due to squashes, rebases, and force pushes. Coincidence? 🤔 #dataquality

I hate having to talk to salespeople or submit my email so they’ll spam me. It’s like being forced into a car dealership before Tesla. Soon we will look back on SaaS companies who gate stuff behind email forms or don’t have full self-service product demos like e-commerce sites that used to make you create an account before checking out. Remember that?

VCs are pouring billions into AI writing code, while engineers spend hours filling out Jira tickets, tracking time, and writing status reports. Instead of replacing engineers, maybe first we should automate tedious non-engineering work that wastes their time.

So much of this AI hype is people who have never experienced automation getting access to the equivalent of a very junior engineer for the first time. Saying it will replace developers is like people who take one JavaScript class thinking they can build Facebook. For senior engineers, AI is like a squire — it may clean mud off your boots (and be good value at $20/month), but it isn’t going to fight your battles.

“We can’t start doing sprints without daily stand-ups, or the Agile Police will come for us!” Too often, teams wait until there’s a crisis and then attempt a painful agile transformation because they view sprints as an all-or-nothing decision. The reality is that there are many practices associated with sprints, and you can adopt them independently of each other. This article breaks down those practices and offers recommendations about how to decide whether each one is right for you. Decisions about whether to use ticket estimates, short iterations, velocity metrics, and stand-ups depend on a number of factors including product maturity, individuals’ level of experience, and team size. If you’re currently feeling pain from stakeholder demands, bugs, or deadline pressure, this article offers helpful tips about how to optimize processes for your team.

If you’re in a room full of engineers and CEOs and want to start an argument, just bring up technical debt. “I waste so much time fighting fires due to outdated infrastructure, it’s crazy we haven’t fixed it yet!” “But like, how much time exactly?” Both perspectives are valid. The problem is that tech debt is notoriously difficult to measure. The pain is real, but engineers lack the tools to put a dollar sign on it. You can actually measure tech debt. I have done it and others have done it too. This article outlines three manual approaches for measuring tech debt you can use today (along with real numbers from two years of data) and shows how to establish automated tech debt reporting in your organization.

Came up with this new graphic for our home page today -- life's too short not to have fun!

A disagreement about employee compensation almost killed the sale of Collage.com to private equity back in 2021. A top employee wanted a raise, but the buyer was concerned because he was already being paid above the 90th percentile for his job role. The problem was that he was a 99th percentile employee, not a 90th percentile employee. We knew that he could get a job at Google for the salary he was requesting, but the buyer had no good way of verifying our claims. This problem is pervasive at the top end of the talent market because it’s difficult for most companies to tell the difference between great people and the very best. As a result, information asymmetry creates a lemon market where the top engineers are the most underpaid. This article explains why you should hire the most expensive engineers you find (they are the best bargain, even for small/bootstrapped companies!), and how to pull it off without ending up with a lemon.

If YCombinator jumped off a bridge, would you? It’s shocking how many people make life-changing HR decisions based on what’s happening in Silicon Valley. My previous start-up Collage successfully bootstrapped over a decade without an office. Remote work is still better for many companies, especially those with a strong culture who care about efficiency and aren’t backed by venture capital. Before ditching remote work, it’s important to look beyond obvious factors like the cost of rent and closer communication. Other benefits like long-term talent acquisition are more subtle, but can have a huge impact. Read more about the less obvious things to consider before recalling your team to the office, and when it really is time to force people back on site.