Uses and Abuses of JiraI’ve been using Atlassian Jira for more than 20 years already at this point, and I have seen a fair share of patterns and antipatterns (that’s Japanese for “fuckups”) and, being the new rambling old man, I feel entitled to spread my dystopian views on the pages of this publication you’re reading right now.
Lucky ManI moved back to Buenos Aires in January 1998: merely 2 days before I boarded the last Swissair flight I would ever take, my girlfriend at the time (and, needless to say, one of the major reasons I had decided to move back to Buenos Aires for) called to tell me that she had unilaterally decided to break up with me.
Filling the Timesheet with HTAsIf you are currently employed or have worked in the past in a Swiss company, you know how important the all-powerful timesheet is to your employer. Every company comes up with their own version of it, particularly those who are cheap enough not to pay a monthly SaaS subscription to one of those gazillion timesheet services online. Most of those home-made contraptions use Excel, because why not.
WFH in 1998The heated “Work from Home” debate of 2024 brought me back memories of my first programming job, when I joined a small “dotcom” startup in the outskirts of Buenos Aires, and for the first few months of my employment I quite literally worked from home… in 1998.
The Great Idea of Async WorkAs I mentioned last week, I’ve been in this industry for exactly 25 years. I started my journey as a software developer on Monday, October 6th, 1997. I’ve had the opportunity of sitting down and writing code for a living for a quarter of a century!
Internet Explorer 4The news recently splashed the demise, disappearance, and final “good riddance” of Internet Explorer. I remembered the first time I encountered the beast. In 1997, Internet Explorer 4.0 was soooooo good compared to anything else, it was hard to believe.
Efficient MeetingsIn this post you will find a collection of interesting book quotes about meetings, and how to make them suck less.
We Are FamilyHere is one of the most blatant lies I’ve heard in my professional career, and sadly, I’ve heard it at quite a few jobs: “We are a family”. For some reason, to compensate for otherwise abysmally dystopian work environments, founders and managers fall into the temptation of telling their staff that they “are like family” to them, or that the whole company “is like one big family”.
The Wrong QuestionI once had a second interview for a job at a small software engineering company. Instead of the common programming questions I was expecting, the person who interviewed me asked the following: “how much do you think a developer costs me?”
Memories of Centralized SCMsIt might sound incredible to younger developers out there, but there was a time when Git did not exist. In retrospect, the fact that Git has reigned supreme in its category for over 15 years was previously unheard of. SCM systems came and went in a steady succession since the early 1980s.
Radio SilenceI have had three episodes of burnout in my professional life, in three consecutive years. Not the best moments, for sure. This story is about the first episode, less than a decade ago.
VSHN.timerSince August 2019 I took the duty of publishing a weekly series of blog posts called “VSHN․timer”.