Seth Purcell

Thoughts on dev management, design, leadership, and entrepreneurship. Personal motto: wishful thinking kills.

[Seth Purcell @sethpurc]

Huh, I didn't think GSuite was an ad-supported product, yet here I am, seeing an ad for Google Cloud in my email like this is free webmail from the '90s. Nothing screams confidence in your cloud platform like having to hijack your enterprise product to shill for it. #GCP #FAIL

[Seth Purcell @sethpurc]

Just when I thought life couldn't possibly get any better. Looking forward to the forthcoming AWS record label, cookbook, and lifestyle magazine "At Work With Werner".

[Seth Purcell @sethpurc]

PSA to anyone developing a system to send 6- or 7-digit 2FA codes via SMS: hyphens exist. In a more civilized age, they were used to chunk long strings of digits like phone numbers and SSNs to make it easier for humans to dial/copy them. And yes, you can fit it in. #uxdesign

[Seth Purcell @sethpurc]

It appears that a downside of being a hugely successful monopoly is that you lose the clear-sightedness and doggedness that are often required to win in business. #GoogleStadia has discovered that there are other gaming platforms out there, which gamers and devs prefer. Who knew?

[Seth Purcell @sethpurc]

In engineering we're utterly spoiled by the availability of data around the problems we're trying to solve. Other functions such as design, marketing, and sales aren't so lucky! They face problems without clear data or answers every day of the week and deserve less derision IMO.

[Seth Purcell @sethpurc]

One of my favorite pieces of advice to give youngish engineers who like to "solve problems" is to not look down on other functions such as design, marketing, and sales without understanding how they're crucial to actually solving the (customer's) problem.

[Seth Purcell @sethpurc]

This entails the customer knowing about the product (marketing), knowing how it will help them (marketing), deciding to use it instead of the competition (marketing & sales), implementing it (sales/customer success), and being successful with it and sticking with it (design).

[Seth Purcell @sethpurc]

s/camera/metric

https://t.co/AqHLa3TUW3

[Seth Purcell @sethpurc]

Exciting to see Texas and Florida collaborate to show us what can be accomplished just by abandoning human decency. Nothing reflects the "American can-do spirit" like deceiving desperate people into getting on a plane and making them someone else's problem for PR. #innovation

[Seth Purcell @sethpurc]

I think "empathy" has a branding problem: when many devs hear the word in a professional context – especially from someone wearing a scarf in the office – they start rolling their eyes. But of course empathy just means knowing the "deep why" behind user reqs and buying decisions.

[Seth Purcell @sethpurc]

Got this pitch in a cold email. To paraphrase Triumph the insult-comic dog: AI performance reviews sounds like a great feature – if I want my whole team to resign!

[Seth Purcell @sethpurc]

Today's edition of cringeworthy and inexplicable captioning mistakes, courtesy of @business

[Seth Purcell @sethpurc]

8/ Software development productivity cannot be rigorously *defined* let alone measured. Anyone who says differently is selling something, probably "agile coaching" or a book. Few non-technical managers seem ready to accept this fact.

[Seth Purcell @sethpurc]

6/ Culture is a dominant force for good or ill wherever you have groups of humans, and software dev is no exception. Culture is what you do, not what you say you do, and it flows from the top whether you're aware of it or not; your team learns from your actions what's ok.

[Seth Purcell @sethpurc]

7/ Many developers loathe management because they've only seen it done poorly by people who aren't doing it for the love of the job, aren't trying their hardest, and may in fact hate it. But non-dev managers often struggle to lead developers effectively.

[Seth Purcell @sethpurc]

5/ Too much management is usually worse than too little because it burns precious time and increases attrition disproportionately among your best people. Great people will ask good questions and self-organize in the face of too little management, and quit in the face of too much.

[Seth Purcell @sethpurc]

4/ Software dev is usually a team sport where we succeed or fail as a team. There will always be stars, but you desperately want them helping the team and the company succeed, not narrowly serving their own interests. This is why PEs are often left to find their own problems.

[Seth Purcell @sethpurc]

3/ Despite superficial similarities, software development is not a manufacturing process and software developers are not factory workers. Nor is software development akin to sales. Software development is a technical/intellectual/creative craft, and sometimes it's engineering.

[Seth Purcell @sethpurc]

2/ Most developers want to do good work, and do what's right for their company, and succeed as a team, intrinsically, until this desire is burned out of them by clueless management. External pressures or rewards are not required, and often appear to be counterproductive.

[Seth Purcell @sethpurc]

For twenty years I've been a developer and dev manager, I've built and led dev and product teams, and I've tangled with CXOs of all flavors. Here's what I've found to be true about software dev, whether we like it or not: 🧵

[Seth Purcell @sethpurc]

1/ All the productivity in the world is of no value if you're building the wrong thing. And building the wrong thing is what happens by default.