Software users get critical when confronted with an issue. There is also a good chance they will tell their friends they hate your software.
If you are a technical writer, the time when a customer can’t make head or tail of what you wrote is the best time to receive feedback. A technical writer’s challenge is to deliver the right information at the right time, without adding frustration.
Defining a baseline is one of the best things you can do if you want to deliver things fast. It sounds like a pretty simple concept, but the truth is that many software engineers do not understand that there should be a baseline in everything.
I personally try to find and impose baselines in everything I do, as this helps me improve work products. This happens in a pretty simple way – the baseline “forces” me keep track of modifications I make and at the same time it makes me more responsible about them. Let’s review some use cases.
It all started about 10 hours ago and I am still fresh, hopefully due to the amazing coffee. And nothing compares to the feeling of being useful on your first day at work, then receiving your first task as a trainee. I am used to “The Writer” nickname. I always like to write down things, it helps me keep them organized and up to date.
I remember I woke up early in the morning to be one of the first to come to the office. First impression as I entered the door: young team, smiles on their faces, a friendly mode of saying “Welcome!”.
The other day, during a team meeting, someone brought up the issue of tools that make students’ lives easier than it was years ago. I was stunned to learn that I can be the “esteemed” author a of a scientific paper in a matter of minutes, using the proper tools. 😀
Bear in mind the fact that my career is correlated with the science papers at the level of a 10th grader. I hold an MA, would love an MS, but I never considered using this to get it.
Computer guys tend to lack imagination, especially when they work with acronyms. This may lead to a lot of funny stuff. Let’s look at the following acronyms, for instance: URI, URN, URL, and IRI.
In interviews I like to ask this question and only once a guy was able to give an almost 100% correct answer. Somehow, I was not particularly surprised about it, as even widely adopted specifications contain subtle mistakes.
The most important thing parents should teach kids are the mechanisms for self-improvement. This is basically what differentiates people from computers. When computers will be endowed with such a power, they will become more powerful than humans. And most likely humanity will disappear 🙂
We thought that you might be interested in a couple of software engineering positions opened in Bucharest, Romania. We will start sharing them on the blog.
In a previous article, we mentioned 4PSA’s Pineapple crazy team. Pineapple is the code name for a new product; the kind of stuff everyone needs, but not many know how it’s going to look like.
In a previous article, we promised you a better insight on how we are organized internally, namely the product-oriented teams we built. So, let’s start to review the teams 🙂
This software engineering team is handling the low-level aspects of our software engineering, i.e. most of the stuff other teams need in order to develop their products. Because we are lazy, we like to keep things standardized. 😀 This means that all frameworks (with one exception) are developed at this level.
Most programmers think they know what this means. I’ve heard it many times because I often ask developers on job interviews to tell me what they prefer.
Might sound like a trivial question, but it is quite relevant. Programming languages are just tools and we want to know whether our possible future colleague is able to understand how things work.
Until recently, 4PSA has had a pretty standard organization, with function-based departments – Sales and Marketing, Software Development (with many teams), Technical Support, Administration, Human Resources etc. This worked decently for many years and that is why I still recommend it as the default organization for any company really focused on a single product.