Greg Leib on Software

Recruitics has a culture that celebrates exceptional results.  The expression "get shit done" or more commonly "GSD" has become something of a mantra around our office.  We have GSD stickers and t-shirts. We even have a #gsd message channel where we call out peers who go above and beyond.  When I first heard the phrase, my reaction was not positive. To me it seemed to encourage indiscriminate action and low-quality work. But as I have learned since then, there is a lot of nuance behind the concept - and it goes to the core of what makes Recruitics a unique workplace. In this post, I want to use GSD as a lens to explain a little about our engineering culture. Of course, within Recruitics d ifferent disciplines and teams manifest GSD in different ways: A salesperson who calls a prospect on a Saturday afternoon with a carefully-crafted value proposition.  An account manager who obtains an industry certification that helps her better serve clients. An executiv...

This weekend one of my choral ensembles had a lesson in dissonance. The two bass parts hold a (dissonant) whole tone interval, which eventually resolves down to a (harmonious) minor third. We were having trouble getting the intonation right, so our choir director had us go very slowly and hold the dissonant interval so our ears would be accustomed to the sound. Just like music, over time software systems cycle between dissonance and harmony. One significant way dissonance occurs is during migration. In a migration, multiple valid domain models partly overlap. The dissonance is created because they embody slightly different assumptions, structure and capability - yet they share elements in common. When the old model falls away, dissonance resolves to harmony, and the cycle renews. Most software teams minimize the duration of their migrations, perhaps regarding them as unpleasant or untidy. In my current work setting, my team cannot risk an abrupt migration because there are too many m...

This morning my newsfeed came up with an interesting read from Gizmodo, an article interpreting cybersecurity as a war against haunted objects. The idea of securing the "internet of things" as an exorcism is rich, nuanced and perhaps even poetic. I'd encourage you to read it, as it is unusual to consider technology through a spiritual lens. While reading the article, I was reminded of another lens through which I view software development, the cargo cult . These spiritual movements originate during and shortly after World War II, in Melanesia. In their initial contact with western technology, the first people of that region saw spiritual significance and, through imitation, sought to gain the material wealth and social place possessed by occupiers. Their rituals sometimes involved building (non-functioning) radios, airports and vehicles from wood. They believed such tokens would enable their ancestors to send cargo (material goods) to them from the afterlife. I think on...