Over the years, I have been part of the hiring process of some 40 to 50 software developers, as with most engineers, the majority of my interviews were very technical, diving into code, processes, and architecture, one thing I learned slowly was how to probe for team and company fit. Of course, with a quick google search, you will find many lists of questions on core values. Take the question below taken from one of those lists as example: “What would you do if you had to work with a person you didn’t get along with?” Isn’t that make you cringe a little? The kind of question a candidate will ..read more

For the last three years, I have been implementing Scrum methodologies in the companies I have been joining. A couple of years ago I joined a company that was trying to rewrite its e-commerce website for a year and a half. Applying Scrum and shuffling the team to have the assets we needed to build the platform, we rebuilt it in 4 months. It’s anecdotal of course, but I think Scrum can work marvelously with the right technology and mindset. And for me, it’s not really about Agile. I don’t care that much about Agile; I care about building the best products, the most efficient way possible. Scrum ..read more

(This article is a follow up on Jason Fried Is group chat making you sweat? I suggest you read it before reading this one) It’s funny to think that 7-8 years ago companies were banning MSN messenger because they were afraid employees were losing too much time chatting. Today companies have full-blown messaging apps integrated into their processes with gifs and videos; they even pay for it. What would you call an all-day meeting with unknown participants and no agenda? — Jason Fried (@jasonfried) February 18, 2016 When I first read this article from Jason Fried asking Is group chat making you ..read more

If your team is trying Agile for the first time, then there is a big chance you guys are using Scrum. Scrum is an easy proposition at first glance, push out product increments at a consistent pace with stakeholders feedback, who would say no to that? Obviously, there is a lot more than what you see at the surface, effectively doing it is hard, implementing Scrum in a company that has been doing waterfall for ages can be highly disruptive, it tends to create naturally side effects that can be hard to overcome, that is especially true for web software. Continuous deployment? The way a sprint is ..read more

The way a company hires developers can say a lot about their culture. Is there a very strict HR followed process, tests and the type of those tests, culture-fit interviews, etc. While the point of all this is to test the candidate, it can give great insights to the other side of the table. In this competitive market, you can be sure that candidates are taking notes while being interviewed. The concept of false positives Tests are the gate to the company, however testing talent is hard. While you may keep some bad apples from joining your company you may loose some amazing people in the process ..read more

Jira influence over Agile project management tools is undeniable. It’s old, big, has lots of add-ons and a mountain of configurations that your big tech department management will love. However one thing Jira never seems to get it right is the UI. The web interface tends to be slow and convoluted, it’s not great either at giving stakeholders an easy overview of their projects. I don't hate many things. But Jira… it's like a cancer that sucks the soul out of companies. Even w Greenhopper. #uxfail — Henrik Kniberg (@henrikkniberg) October 10, 2012 Now one thing I always prone in agile developm ..read more

“An input that does not supply a value (or sets it to null) is an uncontrolled component. In a controlled input, the value of the rendered element will always reflect the value prop.” The input onChange event is something I always been careful with. You do not want to execute too much code while a user is completing a form, it’s already an unpleasant experience in the first place without having sluggish inputs. That is why I am having a bit of an issue being told that I should handle all inputs state at all time. The goal of controlled inputs is predictability and reliability™. While react se ..read more

The Javascript language is transforming, with ES6 & new frameworks following different philosophies, if you are currently doing some ES5 with Backbone; it’s time you give it a look before the whole ecosystem changes without you. To put this piece in perspective, I started ten years ago as an HTML/CSS/Javascript integrator with IE6, lived the birth of jQuery, and then backbone. I got into those techs as soon as I discovered them. I never cared much for angular, I found it weird at first and not solving anything I needed to be solved. I’m fast with my backbone stack, really fast, and I like ..read more

Coding emails is one of the most depressing tasks in front-end development. From coding to sending we tend to want to push those tasks as far from us as we possibly can, but emails are a very important part of any system, and it is imperative that we take the time to do it right. A deeper look at email rendering engines Prior to 2007, coding emails wasn’t actually so bad. You could even use divs and floats. Yes, you heard me. You could absolutely use anything IE6 had to offer at that point in time. Then, something catastrophic happened. Microsoft decided to replace the IE engine from Outlook w ..read more

Update: Google changed Incoming back to Shared with me. Without even probably realizing it Google Drive have become an integral part of my day to day toolset, everyone in my company use it to share documents across teams & departments. For a tool to be useful It is important that our workflow is as painless as possible, forgetting to share a document to someone or having a coworker unable to find a document can impacts the company productivity. This get me to last week when one of my coworker asked me where was all the documents shared by the company on the drive, I was a bit baffled. Per ..read more