Engineering Manager @ Meta working on Kustomer Christian, Husband, Father x2, enjoy 🏀, ♖, 📘, 🏋️♀️ Also @ben@benmccormick.org
Durham, NC
Joined May 2009
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Ben McCormick retweeted
Spread the word: daringfireball.net/2023/03/t…
Really enjoyed these reflections on LLMs: medium.learningbyshipping.co…
"AI, ChatGPT, and Bing…Oh My"
Setting Expectations: 4 key areas for performance management: benmccormick.org/2023/02/13/…
Setting Expectations: 4 key areas for performance management: benmccormick.org/2023/02/11/…
Ben McCormick retweeted
"Doing well at a start-up is not simply about skill, it is about mentality. A start-up mentality values action over correctness, results over process." via @joulee
3 Pillars For Effective Work: benmccormick.org/2023/01/13/…
Basically from a “quality triangle” perspective – execs can control costs or time, but holding the line on a minimum quality bar is essentially a core piece of my job, and nobody wins when you try to promise impossible combinations of scope/quality/dates.
In an ideal world, org leaders define goals and teams figure out what to do. But top down asks happen. How I decide whether to push back on top down asks as an EM:
a. Fine to be asked for a date or a scope (not both)
b. Never ship something likely to cause an incident
Ben McCormick retweeted
“Optimism 95% of the time, strategic pessimism 5% of the time” is a much smarter idea than optimism 100% of the time.
The idea that things become hits mostly due to a small number of large audiences rather than point to point viral sharing seems intuitively correct to me: lennysnewsletter.com/p/viral…
Or at least the large audiences “seed” the viral behavior
As employees return from holiday break, [Shopify] said it’s conducting a “calendar purge,” removing all recurring meetings with more than two people “in perpetuity,” while reupping a rule that no meetings at all can be held on Wednesdays. Big meetings ... benmccormick.org/2023/01/03/…
I love this clear visual summary of a Staff+ Engineer’s role from Tanya Reilly’s The Staff Engineer’s Path amzn.to/3WEO8oq
Growing as an engineer is less about being right more often and more about finding ways to stop being wrong quickly
When working on a “stretch project”, it’s tempting to keep your plans high level when getting review / sign off. This sabotages feedback - the value of experience is in the details.
Write out specific plans and then seek out feedback from folks who’ve done work like it before.
Ben McCormick retweeted
Both can be true at the same time:
- software stacks have gotten way too complex over the last decade, and engineers who primarily were responsible for this get very defensive about it
- it’s also unwise to make baseless claims like Twitter only needs 20 engineers to function
This is a nerdy but helpful way of explaining an important management concept – an org can’t prioritize if people don’t say no till its too late. xitter.cf/benskuhn/status/160640…
