Rule article published: Good Leaders are Good People

About 15 years ago, I read somewhere that people who make good leaders tend to look favorably own their own leaders. (I liked it so much that it is now Rule 39.) The opposite is also true: people who will be bad bosses tend to see their own bosses as bad bosses until proven otherwise. It seemed like a revelation at the time. The more I thought about it and the more I observed people around me, the more I realized it made perfect sense. The way a person looks at their boss tends to also be the way they look at everyone around them. I discuss it in a new post “Good Leaders are Good People” along with why it matters. I even throw in some research this time!

Rule article published: How Incentives Backfire

A new article discussing Jim’s Rules has been published. Read about how incentives backfire and how that relates to Rules 41 and 53. I’m a bit long winded this time (this time?), but I hope you find my pseudo-history of how obtaining money went from a task to an objective is at least mildly entertaining. More importantly, I hope I’ve started to introduce those two rules in a way that helps you in your day to day.

I also hope you enjoy my dabbling around with AI generated art. I created the image “Climbing a Treasure Pile” with much tweaking using NightCafe. See my other experiments at https://creator.nightcafe.studio/my-creations

Launching the Rules

With 20 something years in software development, most of it as some mix of developer, architect, and manager, I’ve learned quite a bit on how to survive and thrive in software development. Or, at least I’ve learned a few things about what I think has helped me survive and thrive. I love sharing what I’ve learned works for almost anyone, what I’ve learned works for me, and general observations. After joking about “Jim’s Rules Regarding Everything” for quite some time - and with some encouragement from co-workers - I started writing down my little tidbits and now am making them available. While there are some things specific to software development, many of my rules are really about people and teams. Because of that, I hope many more people get benefit from these rules than just people in the software business. Click here for the master list of Jim’s Rules. Keep reading this post to learn more about the background of the rules and what to expect.

On Pages Now

I’ve finally cut the site over to GitHub pages after procrastinating too long. The frankenstein deployment process I had before is now gone. Now it’s super simple.

Why Choose Consulting and not Product?

When looking for a new job, or your first job, in software engineering, there’s several types of company you can choose to pursue. I started out in what we would call Enterprise, went to a Product company, then went into Consulting, then back to a Product Company and now am back into Consulting. Even during my Enterprise days, many of my projects were actually Products in that they were software solutions sold to customers. In a nutshell, I’ve been doing product work for a good part of my career, yet here I am in consulting. While that may (and probably will change), what are the advantages I see in choosing consulting? Warning: Opinions Ahead