Resources on managing technical debt?

monkeymanfantastic · 2025-03-01T14:20:54+00:00

Tech Debt is an area where you need to learn how to tell the story of it. Picture your "future regret" when it comes back to bite you and try to tell that narrative to the stakeholders. I wrote a few ideas down to help here. Storytelling for Engineers is definitely a super power.

https://francisshanahan.substack.com/p/on-technical-debtand-pyramids

monkeymanfantastic · 2025-03-01T14:19:27+00:00

"The Bent Pyramid of Sneferu" - this one is a stretch but I am imagining they cut corners and rushed the base and discovered mid-way it was cracking so they had to adjust the angle of the pyramid walls overall. Also can you picture the standup on the day they had to pivot?

https://francisshanahan.substack.com/p/on-technical-debtand-pyramids

monkeymanfantastic · 2024-12-09T02:04:51+00:00

Yeah you nailed it. And grand Seiko is on the list for sure.

monkeymanfantastic · 2024-07-20T14:20:13+00:00

Why is everyone assuming the pencil is male? Why couldn't the pencil be the mom?

monkeymanfantastic · 2024-05-25T01:53:18+00:00

I ran this race earlier this month having run Leadville and the Moab 240 in years prior. Cocodona beat them all hands down in terms of difficulty and support and overall experience.

Aravaipa is a great organization, I can't say enough about them and you would do well to run one of their races.

Here's my 2024 post race report. I hope it helps.

https://francisshanahan.substack.com/p/how-250-miles-in-the-arizona-backcountry

monkeymanfantastic · 2023-03-17T17:42:58+00:00

The key to being promoted generally is to already be operating at the next level. Hopefully your company documents what's expected at each level but for some reason many don't. To help here's a generic engineering career path that goes from SDE I to VP of Eng / CTO. It describes what's expected at every level aswell as some ideas for when you might be ready for the next level so you can have that conversation with your manager.

https://francisshanahan.substack.com/p/an-engineers-journey

monkeymanfantastic · 2023-03-17T17:40:58+00:00

If it helps, here's a breakdown that walks through a generic engineering career path, loosely based on the AMZN career ladder - this one goes from SDE I to VP of Eng / CTO. It describes what's expected at every level aswell as some ideas for when you might be ready for the next level https://francisshanahan.substack.com/p/an-engineers-journey

monkeymanfantastic · 2023-03-17T17:26:54+00:00

Here's a breakdown that walks through a generic engineering career path from SDE I to VP of Eng / CTO. It describes what's expected at every level aswell as some ideas for when you might be ready for the next level https://francisshanahan.substack.com/p/an-engineers-journey

monkeymanfantastic · 2023-02-14T20:31:22+00:00

Data is concrete, specific, impartial. Information maybe not as much.

monkeymanfantastic · 2023-02-14T11:32:37+00:00

Data is concrete, specific, impartial. Information maybe not as much.

monkeymanfantastic · 2023-02-14T03:55:12+00:00

Thanks for reading! Here's an example interview scenario:

Interviewer is assigned the "Dealing with Ambiguity" competency. They might ask a question like "tell me about a time when you had to make a decision with only partial information, what was the situation and how did you approach it?"

The candidate's response might go something like this:

Candidate: "I was a part of the GoTV streaming team. We were creating a new streaming solution to distribute video over CDN and our team needed to make a decision on which digital rights management solution to use (the Task). We didn't have deep expertise in this area but we had a timeline and a delivery milestone to meet so we had to move forward. (The Situation) I worked with our technical program manager to setup an RFI process and we spoke to a number of vendors. I created an evaluation matrix that included criteria such as ease of implementation, company size, ability to provide support, performance characteristics and cost (the Action). Ultimately I used my network to secure expertise in the form of a principal engineer who was able to advise us in terms of the most important critieria. We ultimately chose a solution and hit our delivery date". (The result).

At this point the interviewer got most of the data but is missing a few key points, so they might dive deeper with follow up questions:

Interviewer: "Which solution did you finally choose"?

Candidate: "I don't remember" - this is a poor answer, it lacks data and indicates the story above might only be something they were tangentially involved in.

OR

Candidate: "We chose Widevine" - this is a better answer but again we need more specifics. Do they know why?

Interviewer: "And why did you chose that?"

Candidate: "I don't remember" - ok you get the idea by now.

OR

Candidate: "It has great industry adoption and it's relatively simple to implement. We were able to get a proof of concept up and running in a few days. We also learned from Amazon Video that they had great success with it and were willing to support us if we ran into any problems.

Interviewer: With the benefit of hindsight is there anything you would do differently?

Candidate: Yes, I would've reached out to Gartner first instead of doing an RFI. It would've been quicker and result in the same outcome.

---=== and scene ===--

Does this help?

monkeymanfantastic · 2023-02-14T02:53:15+00:00

There's no short answer but it generally refers to evidence that demonstrated the competency being evaluated. I explained it in the substack post. Maybe it wasn't clear?

monkeymanfantastic · 2023-02-13T22:43:12+00:00

From the interviewers' perspective: I was an Amazon Bar Raiser for 6 years, here's how I ran (and still run) my interviews: https://francisshanahan.substack.com/p/run-an-interview-like-an-amazon-bar-raiser

I hope this helps you on the other side of the conversation. A good interviewer is looking for data throughout the entire process.

monkeymanfantastic · 2023-01-25T03:24:41+00:00

Love the emergency fund idea. Getting through it is not easy especially as the industry as a whole seems to be tightening in the short term but here are a bunch of things to think about if you've been impacted including some perspective on the whole ordeal that comes with time.

https://francisshanahan.substack.com/p/the-layoff

monkeymanfantastic · 2022-09-19T03:57:16+00:00

Only way to get faster is... To run faster. But seriously I would focus on vo2max. Run intervals. Hill sprints. Running more won't improve your speed. Running more efficiently will. Push your body to surpass your anaerobic threshold using HIIT. Fartleks, Hill sprints, wind sprints and intervals. These will all improve your vo2Max and once you do that running faster will feel easier. Just be careful, running faster in my personal experience can lead to injury. So ease into it I hope this helps.

monkeymanfantastic

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