People

Hustler Exposed

In the past several years, an undercurrent exhorting the virtue of the hustle has taken place in Silicon Valley and beyond. It is not enough to be an entrepreneur, you need to be a hustler too! The word "hustler" has been co-opted as a shorthand to convey a virtuous sense of grit and determination on the part of the individual.

Sadly it too often seems to be interpreted as a license to legitimize the coercive, forceful or deceptive behavior that real street hustlers have been exhibiting throughout the ages.
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Who Is in Your Kitchen?

Analogies are useful to describe complex systems. Software engineering is opaque to most non-technical entrepreneurs. Let’s try cooking as a software development analogy.

Much like creating software, cooking involves ingredients, planning, tools, techniques and a certain amount of intuition. And like cooking, it is driven by people with various degree of talent and experience. As an entrepreneur, you can't settle for serving food that's merely suitable for human consumption. You're seeking to delight your customers. How do you achieve that?
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The Siren Call of Contingency Recruiters

If you are hiring for a technical position, sooner or later, you are bound to find yourself on the receiving end of this kind of email.

My name is X, and I’m a technical recruiter with Y. I’m writing to introduce a strong candidate who has extensive knowledge in technology Z. He has an A degree from B university and previously worked as a lead at C.

He’s currently actively interviewing and he’s very interested in your company. He won’t stay long on the market!

I would like to arrange a meeting right away, as well as set up a time to learn more about your hiring needs. Please give me a call at 415-555-1212.

Lucky you. You’re indeed trying to hire someone with these skills. This candidate seems like he could be a good match. It might be the quick fix to your recruiting headaches. Except, it’s not. What’s wrong with this?
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Hazards of Being a Manager

“Dude, you just got mooned!”, he quipped. Indeed. I’m staring at my laptop in disbelief. Did that really happen?

Video chatting with random strangers, what else should I expect? But this was no Chatroulette. And these were no strangers. Au contraire. I was testing our video chat product at Spotlife, a startup company I co-founded during the dot-com boom. And I had just witnessed the naked posterior of my employee’s wife splashed in all its white glory on my screen.
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7 Sins of Doomed Teams

Software development teams are not created equal. Some are great. Some aspire to be great. Some are very dysfunctional.

Here’s a run down of ways engineers can err. As dreadful as it sounds, rejoice. Salvation is right around the corner. Watch for those signs of trouble and lead the way to redemption.
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My Disastrous Interview at BitTorrent

“Let’s go thru it one more time,” he said. I’m sitting across the table from Bram Cohen, the creator of the BitTorrent protocol. In front of him lays a printout with a dozen lines of Python code.

“Well, I’m not sure what this code does anymore,” I replied. I was nervous. I did not expect to be asked to reverse engineer an algorithm on the spot like that. Specially not as a first interview question for an engineering management position and in a language I knew nothing about. In fact, I did not know what to expect at all when I stepped foot in that San Francisco office.
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One Question to Rule Them All

It’s 10:43 am and the candidate is standing by the white board, giving me a blank stare. With fifteen minutes left in the interview, I still can’t decide whether the guy is faking it or simply nervous.

I walk over, grab the marker and draw a rectangle, setting up the stage for my perennial technical question that should settle this for good.
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