Witczax

Many engineers wonder what it takes to turn into Staff engineers. It's a huge topic and I'll take a look at only one of those aspects - the ability to identify cross-team technical work.

I've finished reading "Modern Software Engineering" by Dave Farley. In the first part of the book, Dave explains his definition of engineering and it resonated with me. What is it?

IT job market is much tougher than it used to be in 2022. If you're looking for a new job right now, this little guide may be useful.

For many, Advent is a special time saved for reflection and preparation. For some, it's a time of waking up at dawn and solving algorithmic puzzles.

Volume 29 of the famous Thoughtworks technology radar was released this quarter. Let's take a look together at the latest insights.

In October this year I attended an IT conference branded as having a different approach than everyone else. I confirm that this is the case.

After being in GAT for over 2.5 years and working closely with CTO, I've observed and learned a lot. Here are some of the top lessons about leadership I took out from the experience.

We are in the second half of 2023 and our approach towards remote work has shifted since the start of the pandemic from love to doubt. For a long time in IT, it was considered to be a benefit, what has changed since then?

Since the beginning of the IT industry, we couldn't find a decisive answer on how to properly measure software engineering productivity. In the last five years, there have been many discoveries on this topic - in this article, I'll try to unravel and connect the dots between the three most extensive frameworks that could bring us closer to solving the productivity puzzle.

Every company wants to have the best engineers they can afford. Obtaining them is hard, but keeping - even harder! In some cases, it may seem that promoting a strong engineer to a leadership position may be the biggest form of recognition and a reason for them to stay in the organization. I think it often leads to big mistakes, and here's why.

I just finished my half-year workation experience in Athens, Greece! I have a couple of takeaways that could be useful for other IT professionals considering doing a similar journey.

Entire software engineering community debates on the influence of current AI revelations on our industry. Most people tend to agree that AI will land an impact on how software is going to be built in the upcoming years - a good idea would be to prepare yourself and your colleagues for a change that will happen, or at least be aware of what may happen.

In the final part of the series about learning, I'll focus on discussing topics of knowledge retention - from Ebbinghaus Forgetting curve, through plastic platypus learning up to PKM systems, commonplace books and Zettelkalsten.

This is the second post in my series about my different levels of awareness around the topic of learning. This time I'll be describing areas like 'Just in Time' versus 'Just in Case' learning as well as the topic of 'Deliberate practice'.

It's difficult these days to keep up with constantly changing technology. The common problem is proper motivation or discipline, but lack of direction or weak retention may be equally disturbing. This post is a first of a series about my approach to constant learning.

Life would be so much easier, if we could just get user manuals to understand other people. We would just read a rough summary before the first encounter, highly increasing chances for great first impression. If we would spend more time with this person, we could look into the details in the manual, get the nitty gritty details. What stops us from doing that?

Almost every bigger company is looking for software engineers these days, and still, I claim that starting your first job in IT is not easy. The reason is, that everyone is looking for experienced individuals - not juniors or starters. Here's my advice on how to land this first job.

While working with people, you constantly battle through tough choices. Multiple times, each decision will have their solid arguments and supporters. The 'Washington Post test' may be an useful trick in your toolbelt to make that choice easier.

For over a year now I'm working in GAT as a full time engineering manager. During that time I've basically stopped contributing to the codebase. Recently, I've got opportunity to commit a couple of small updates here and there. And I've learned a lot thanks to that.

When I was preparing for one of my talks, I've encountered the concept called #NoEstimates. Here are my thoughts regarding this controversial idea!

Netguru is a big software house in Poland. When I browsed their website some time ago, I've found an interesting resource - a company guideline for project managers. Is it worth reading?

Around two years ago, we've made decision to use gem called React on Rails. Now is the time to move to fully separated architecture, and here are couple of my notes from that process.

A few years ago I've watched TED talk done by Jocko Willink. He easily injected the simple concept of extreme ownership into my mind - to the point, where I knew that one day I'm gonna read his book. I've just done it.

I received cool gift from my brother - almost legendary devops book called "The Phoenix Project". Here are my opinions and lessons learned!