I’m listening to the Ask Your Developer book and something the author Jeff Lawson said really resonated with me. “Business people should share problems, not solutions.” To me this includes Product Managers all the way up to C-level. I 100% agree to this point as it has been my experience. Developers are incredibly talented and when giv...

Yesterday I decided to switch my personal blog from a GitHub pages hosted Jekyll site to HEY World. Boy was that a good move. Being able to compose an “email” to write a blog post is amazing and I can do it directly from my phone which is what I’m doing right now. Writing has never been easier and I’m motivated to write more because th...

I've talked to close to 30 salespeople over the last few months as I've searched for some tooling for 2023. • 10% were really good • 20% were really bad • everyone else were pretty (less than) average salespeople And I'm talking to some big billion-dollar tech companies. Why do I care? Because if I can't effectively communicate my need...

The last 2 years have been a whirlwind for me and my family with our baby girl being born 14 weeks early (she’s doing well 16 months on), the ongoing health crisis, and all the mental battles that come along with a crazy life. But I’m back baby and wanted to share something a little different. Today’s topic is money. In 2021 I went dow...

Building software is hard. It’s an uphill battle and you need endurance as the software matures. Building software is also super satisfying and such an amazing adventure, especially when you start seeing momentum as well as a multitude of happy customers. I think the best software companies aren’t the ones who write the best code but t...

We have been using Domain-Driven Design and Hexagonal Architecture for several years in both legacy and newer products we are building. This post is dedicated to why we use Domain-Driven Design and Hexagonal Architecture. One of our engineers, Josh McRae made the call all those years ago to utilize these approaches and I’m glad we did....

Something on my mind at the moment is the importance of engagement, especially in a distributed workplace. The people who are going to do really well at distributed work are those who engage. What do I mean when I say “engage”? • Participate in your team and company wide meetings. • Communicate to your internal team effectively. • Comm...

I’ll admit, when I started my first company 9 years ago, security wasn’t something that crossed my mind. I just wanted to build great software and fast. I think a lot of start-ups have this same mentality. Get the product out the door and worry about “all the things” later. This article talks about some of the things start-ups should b...

I’ve read Jason Fried’sbooks and really like them. I’ve known about his software Basecamp for years but always thought of it as some project management tool I’d never need. Boy was I wrong. Basecamp to me isn’t a project management tool anymore. Basecamp is a communication platform. And it comes with a philosophy around how we should c...

No matter who you are, a leader, a peer, a follower, valuing someone by encouraging them is big. Whether you’re all in the same room, on the other side of the office or working remotely, it’s quite easy to fail to remember to encourage those around you. Some people are just natural encouragers. Others, like me, not so much. Some people...

We started rolling out Scrum across our engineering team this year and we’ve seen some great success so far. When building software, the “when will it be finished” question is always looming in the face of Product Owners. Attaching deadlines to Scrum is possible. It can, however, be complicated when it comes to committing to meet those...

Onboarding engineers is generally an afterthought for most engineering teams. When you start a project you’re not thinking about how new people are going to be introduced in the future. It’s one of those things I think everyone wants to spend time on but let’s face it, we are too busy coding. This post talks about some practical ways y...

After being acquired by Tithe.ly, a 100% remote company, my team from Elvanto in the last 12 months has gone from everyone in the office to almost all working remotely. I wanted to share our journey in this post. The idea of having remote employees is super scary for most employers. Questions start to roll around in our brains thinking...

Before working at Tithe.ly, I was a little old school at my company Elvanto where everyone worked in the office. Now that I’m at Tithe.ly, they’ve introduced me to the world of remote — and I absolutely love it! I’ll do a write up on switching from traditional office space to working remotely in another post. But for now, I wanted to t...

I’m no night owl. I’m not really a morning person either. I love my sleep. I always have. When I cannot sleep, which is rare, it’s frustrating. Tonight is one of those nights. The thing in my head Tonight I was laying in bed contemplating how people or companies who share information freely are successful. Not everyone is successful wh...