Engineering Career Presentation to UW Computer Science Undergrads

In January I had the honor to present a quick overview of my career to the UW Computer Science undergraduates. It was great to see the upcoming UW engineers, you could just sense that there is a lot of talent and curiosity in the room. I hope that they took note of a thing or two from my way and build on that.

Here is a copy of the slides for your pleasure:

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Quality of Code is Quality of Life

About 20 years ago when I started working in technology companies I remember “the best” engineers had similar patterns:
-They worked crazy hours
-They knew the systems no one else knew
-They could react and deliver something faster than anyone else
You could always hear other employees say: “Bob is really smart, no one knows how to get anything done in system X besides him!”

This reinforced optimization around being the only person who knew how to do something in some part of the code. That in turn reinforced job security and bargaining for those engineers, but also chained them to a particular system. We had big code bases of C++ or Java code where some “Bob” hacked up features as soon as he possibly could. “Bob” would have occasional nuclear disasters where he’d sleep in the office or through the weekend and then everyone would thank him for how he “saved the day.” “Bob” sacrificed his quality of life to get praise when he hacked stuff up quickly and then the second time when n…

SDET / QA Engineer Interview Checklist

After interviewing and hiring hundreds of engineers over the past 12+ years I have come up with a few checklists. I wanted to share one of those with you so you could conduct comprehensive interviews of QA Engineers for your team.

I use this checklist when I review incoming resumes and during the interview. It keeps me from missing areas that ensure a good team and technology fit. I hope you make good use of them. If you think there are good questions or topics that I have missed - get in touch with me!

SDE/T or QA Engineer interview checklist from Mike Borozdin
If you like this checklist you might want to check out these posts:
Emotional Intelligence in Software Teams and Good-bye manual tester, hello crowdsourcing!

Why you should take the software job in San Francisco (or not).

Silicon Valley is an iconic place for technology. Many people say this is the place for the “best and the brightest.”. Apple, Google, Facebook, Salesforce, Twitter and other top companies draw a lot of talent form all over the world and the largest chunk of VC capital goes to companies in the Bay Area, so it seems like moving here is a no brainer!

The real situation is actually not that simple, I believe there are three scenarios where it makes sense, but in many cases living in the Bay yields disappointing results. The cost of living, housing situation, homeless catastrophe make places like San Francisco a lot less appealing to a lot of people. So in what situations does it make sense to move to SF?

Startup founder raising millions There are many places to be a startup founder, but if you are looking to raise capital the largest pool of VC money is in the Bay Area. There is an established network, events and conferences which give founders an opportunity to pitch more people th…

Software + Management // by Mike Borozdin

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