Sabbatical week one is complete, and I’m finally finding some time to blog about it! I had a pretty active week. It started with hurricane preparations as Dorian burled toward Florida, however in the end we suffered a very light glancing blow. In short, we got off easy. The Bahamas did not get so lucky, however, and got pretty messed up. I’d love for you to take a moment to donate to their recovery here: https://www.| David Haney
One of the most amazing perks of working at Stack Overflow is the sabbatical. After 5 years of FT employment, you are entitled to 20 paid days off (outside of normal vacation) that you can spend however you please. My sabbatical officially begins on Tuesday (as Monday is a holiday). Practically speaking, I am out from Aug 31 - Sept 30, returning to work Oct 1st. This is an amazing opportunity and benefit, and I can’t thank Stack Overflow enough for how well they treat employees.| David Haney
This post is for those of you who hire developers, and also junior developers who want to be hired. Let’s talk about how developers are just like individual stocks in the stock market. Time for a little role-playing: you’re now a stock market investor. As a financial advisor, your company has given you $2,000,000 USD to invest in the stock market. It’s made very clear that the future of the company depends on the return on investment (herein called ROI) – “gains” – that your inv...| David Haney
Intro I’ve had a good career so far. I began working full-time as a programmer in 2008. At that time my title was Junior Developer. I had a decent boss and cool co-workers, and I cut my teeth on Java and .NET. It was a good experience. After 2 years at that gig, I felt that it was time to move on. I contacted recruiters, and one eventually found me a promotion: Systems Analyst.| David Haney
Intro Almost exactly 1 month ago today I found myself on a video call with Joel Spolsky. It feels insane to write that, even now, as it was a banner moment in my career. For me it was the equivalent of meeting a movie star who I had idolized since I was old enough to know what movies were. There had always been this Joel Spolsky guy throughout my career that I regularly read about and whose opinions on software development agreed with mine, and suddenly I was talking with him face to face.| David Haney