Asking technical questions is a key element of writing software. And today this is very often done by writing in some form of public forum. It can be an internal email group at your company, a public community such as stack overflow or GitHub, or even a private email to a colleague. Whatever the medium is, how you write the question can make a big difference in how quickly you … [Read more...] about Asking technical questions
Improving skills
Protecting your time 1: Coding
This is the first of a three part series on protecting your time as an engineer (see Part 2: Focus). Even though our primary job is to create software, we often spend an inordinate amount of time on other activities. Whether its meetings, interruptions, chasing bugs in old code or just plain procrastinating, there's a lot of time we could spend being more productive and … [Read more...] about Protecting your time 1: Coding
Can you go to graduate school while working as a software engineer?
As a professional software engineer, the question of going back to school can often cross your mind. And this brings up some related questions: Is it worth it? Should I do it now or later? Can I juggle work and school? I've personally done this twice. I joined Microsoft straight out of college, and a couple of years later I started the UW CSE Professional Master's program. … [Read more...] about Can you go to graduate school while working as a software engineer?