Effective Engineer Onboarding

Effective Engineer Onboarding: Removing Speed Bumps for a Growing Team

Jake Everhart Articles, Consulting, Soft Skills Leave a Comment

I imagine that most engineers have endured at least one painful onboarding experience. Every person I’ve asked has given me a unique example, from relying on piles of outdated notes to being stuck in some sort of task-less limbo and forgotten by the rest of the team. What should be your first impression of a new team can turn into a nightmare if that process isn’t handled properly.

In this post, I will describe some common themes from these bad experiences, as well as how a team can identify them proactively and work towards a better experience for their next new engineer.

Increasing Emotional Intelligence As Remote Developers

John Hoestje Articles, Consulting, Soft Skills 1 Comment

As software developers in 100% remote work environments, we now have additional challenges stemming from the loss of face-to-face communication. In many situations, this can lead to harmful trends in coworker interactions—less job satisfaction, co-worker interactions, and overall team success. One way to combat this negative side effect of remote work is to increase Emotional Intelligence as an individual software developer.

In this blog, we discuss how interactions between software developers are affected by Emotional Intelligence (EQ). In addition to the basic components of EQ, we discuss suggestions for improving Emotional Intelligence in common interactions experienced by software developers. 

Avoiding Burnout as a Developer

Josh Green Articles, Community, Soft Skills Leave a Comment

The IT industry is fast-paced and exciting, and yet, burnout is commonplace amongst developers. There are endless opportunities to learn new technologies, develop your skills, and hone your software development craft. IT work is also very accessible, meaning all you typically need is a computer and possibly an internet connection to start working.

Although they are positives in the big picture, these combined factors lead me to today’s topic: developer burnout. Developer burnout is a physical or mental collapse caused by excessive amounts of work or stress, and I’m sure all of us have experienced it in one way or another over the course of our careers. Burnout manifests itself in different ways for many different people. In this post, I’m going to go over some causes of burnout and how you can avoid it.

Documentation: Enough Already! Not.

Mike McCoy Articles, Consulting, Programming, Soft Skills Leave a Comment

Documentation. I know we all hate having to create it. I don’t like writing it and feel like I always leave something out. However, our assumptions of what other developers should think we are trying to accomplish by our masterpieces of software are usually filled with potholes (sometimes big ones). The truth of the matter is that no matter how stellar your code or software is – if you’re the only one who understands how it works, it doesn’t do any good.

These are not paintings or sculptures that would live the rest of their days in a museum, untouched by human hands and just collecting dust as they run. In reality, documentation will be added to and changed as the information they describe evolves.

In this blog, we discuss two suggested strategies for the creation of useful and concise software documentation.

Knowledge Transfer in Consulting Projects

Strategy: Knowledge Transfer In Consulting Projects

Josh Green Agile, Articles, Consulting, Project Management, Soft Skills Leave a Comment

Imparting Knowledge And Preparing For The End Of A Contract

In this blog, I share an example of a consulting engagement that required significant knowledge transfer to new hires. We detail an approach for teaching Spring Batch to developers with no previous experience in Java or the Spring Framework.

The goal is to provide a real-world example of closing a contract, imparting knowledge with the client and their employees, and the potential issues faced in the process.