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Why overpaying your developers is the cheapest thing to do

February 13, 2013 By 1 Comment
Mythical Man Month meets Dilbert

One of the crew posted up an article citing the Mythical Man Month today. This concept first came to me through an old co-founder who was a smart PhD type, he'd just read the book in the 1990s and I based all of my startup recruitment around this idea - it worked fab. Pay people who are brilliant "way too much" because it's the cheapest thing to do... I use a rough square law to extrapolate something more useful... simple project → 1 year, 1 coder complex project → 2 years, 1 coder → 1 year, 4 coders Or pu another way, if you can get a good engineer who is 2x as productive, … [Read more...]

Filed Under: Engineering, Programming, Working Life Tagged With: , , , , , , ,

Developing at Enspiral

December 9, 2011 By 2 Comments
feat_prog_skunkworks

“Always be the worst guy in every band you’re in. - so you can learn. The people around you affect your performance. Choose your crowd wisely.” ― Chad Fowler, The Passionate Programmer: Creating a Remarkable Career in Software Development I came to Enspiral in March this year. When I first met JV I told him that I wanted to come to an environment where I could sharpen up my programming skills and learn from people better than me. It did not take long. Pretty soon Joshua, Allan, Will and I conducted our own kind of ‘Skunk Works’. It went like this: We travelled to a … [Read more...]

Filed Under: Programming, Staff Stories Tagged With: ,

Design Patterns Are Your Friend

August 30, 2011 By Leave a Comment
Settings Class

So you have started writing applications for mobile, a noble cause.  Unfortunately mobile is such a fast paced landscape with typically very very short deadlines.  Not deterred, good for you! On the plus side mobile is getting very busy. Right now let’s start looking at programming tricks that will make your life easier.  You have probably come across a few already. Yet haven’t really put stock into how powerfully particular tricks, or in programming lingo ‘patterns’, are and how generally you can take advantage of them.  For example iOS uses heavily the concept of Delegates, … [Read more...]

Filed Under: Mobile, Programming

Website Launch Checklist

August 9, 2011 By Leave a Comment

Launch day is one of the scariest and most stressful times in web development. Getting everyone on the same page in terms of what's going to happen and when it's going to happen goes a long way in making the entire process smoother.   Things are less likely to go wrong and people are less likely to start throwing recriminations around if the processes for deployment and dealing with issues are well documented.   The following is a list I've been building up in my notes of some of the things that should be done in preparation for launching a new site or major … [Read more...]

Filed Under: Programming