TweetSo professionally, this was an interesting week for me. Wednesday, Chegg shipped their new eReader which is the project I’ve been working on since August. It’s HTML5, and its a faithful representation of the books (more on why that’s important in a bit). Thursday, Apple shipped an upgraded iBooks, announced a new textbook initiative...
TweetSo Chegg launched our new eReader today so I thought I would take a moment to talk about writing a Project Charter per Johanna Rothman’s excellent book on project management. Johanna recommends that for every project you sit down and write out a project charter. The project charter states the purpose of the project,...
TweetA friend of mine who is job hunting (he’s looking for a job in Software QA if you know of any positions) emailed me this morning for help with his job hunt. Here’s my tough-love answer: Your job right now is looking for work. If you’re not spending 35-40 hours/week on looking for work,...
TweetThere’s a scene in the movie Good Will Hunting where Matt Damon tells this stuck-up guy in a bar: ” You blew $150,000 on an education you could have gotten for a $1.50 in late charges at the public library.” Bar Scene from Good Will Hunting Something I’ve done for years is prowl around...
TweetI was talking with a recruiter about a position at their company the other day and after reading the job requisition I commented to her that it was a “Bigfoot” requisition; the kind of req that reads “Must be a Lawyer and a Pastry Chef”. There’s no way that the recruiter will be able...
Tweet Background: This is the first time I’ve ever really applied myself fully to hunting for a job. Looking back, I’d always done a mediocre effort at it while simultaneously working full time. Job hunting requires 20-30 hours/week of work to be effective. Only about 4 hours/week of that relates to submitting resumes; the...
TweetOk, so you’re working at a non-Agile shop, possibly even a shop with bad project management. How do you get them to being Agile if you’re not the CEO or VP of Engineering? By doing something I call: CrockPot Agile CrockPot Agile is my term for converting your shop to Agile development by making...
TweetOne of the useful concepts I learned in martial arts was the idea of a well of success. I’ve found the concept useful both for managing people in general, and for understanding while Agile teams report such large productivity increases. Every person has a success well. If you try something...
TweetIf I call the recruiter at the company too soon I’m desperate. If I wait too long, I’m not interested. share: Digg this post Recommend on Facebook Share on Linkedin share via Reddit Share with Stumblers Tweet about it Subscribe to the comments on this post Print for later Bookmark in Browser Tell a...
TweetRecently, I was at a company website browsing for jobs. As usual, I ran into a typical catch-22: Every career advisor on the planet will tell you to customize your cover letter and résumé for the position, but I have yet to run into a website that lets you upload a different résumé or...
