Philosophy

On Sabbaticals

Sabbaticals - a long(er) term paid break from work - used to be the preserve of academia. But, more and more companies are choosing to offer sabbaticals to their longer-serving employees. It’s a tremendous benefit for employees (and, as I’ll argue below, a great benefit for employers too).  »»

Imperfect allies

Acting as an ally is hard, and mistakes are costly. This shouldn’t deter allies, but merely change how they approach their work.  »»

Putting the Ops in DevOps

I was recently made aware of The Road To DevOps, a piece on the ActiveState blog, which reminded me that I’ve been meaning to write this post for a while, and finally got me to write it.  »»

An accidental Argentinian

So, sometimes I’m mistaken for an Argentinian government agency.  »»

A/B testing complexity

We tend to think of A/B testing as a tool for testing the validity of product decisions, or for empirically determining them. Should this button be blue, or red? Does moving more pictures above the fold increase conversion? These are good and useful questions that A/B testing can help answer.  »»

Random acts of leadership

One of the things I like best about working for Etsy is how easy it is to enthuse about the people I work with. There are various anecdotes I can tell about “business as unusual”, but one of my favourites came from when I was only a few months into my new job.  »»

Why I’m OK with the BBC Homepage Clock disappearing

So, the BBC Trust (the group charged with keeping the BBC honest) has upheld a complaint about the clock widget on the bbc.co.uk homepage, and has decreed that it should be removed.  »»

Advice to future software engineers

Software engineers write code for a living. It’s our job to make computers do what we need them to do, to take our ideas and the ideas of others about how the world can be made better with technology and actually make the world better.  »»