no dogma podcast

Summary Michael O Church and I discuss whether software engineers have become the manual laborers of the 21st century, open allocation, agile development and how companies could be better. Details Michael’s background; being an engineer vs a manager; poor perception of engineers, value of engineers, makers vs takers, engineers as a commodity; not everyone with an MBA is a bad person; engineers are the manual laborers of the 21st century, craziness of interview processes; continuing low status after staring a job, getting credit for work done; open allocation solves many problems, better work, better rewards, happier engineers, language choices, learning new code is harder than learning a new language; agile in an open allocation company, agile as micromanagement, scrum masters, lords and knights, sprints; what Michael’s company would be, constrained open allocation, small, profit sharing; how companies can improve, become engineer driven, engineers should engage more with business, understand convexity; understanding company politics; hard to challenge bad ideas, open allocation helps; arrogance is rewarded; engineers are not always the best at communication or accepting criticism, engineers should learn to fight for themselves; reading broadly, book recommendations, Breaking Bad executions and map reduce.

Summary Jason Haley talks about the good, bad and ugly of life as a software consultant. Details Background, why go independent, working and hustling; getting the first customer; liability and setting up a company, being self employed vs an entrepreneur , get a lawyer and an accountant, networking, business bank account, branding, contractor vs consultant, confidence in presenting yourself; getting paid, income as a consultant, long dry spells, have multiple clients, saying no to a client, fitting with a client; judging what you can deliver, best clients understand software; being a generalist vs a specialist, finding a niche; picking a rate, factoring in costs, charge what you deserve, keep a rainy day fund, watch expenses; support network, billable hour trap, taking advice; managing the client relationship; pick a good company name, importance of referrals, don’t negotiate a rate, don’t keep a bad client; review if consulting is for you after a while.

Summary Robert Hurlbut and I discuss various aspects of software security. Details Background, why security isn’t thought about enough, out of the box security with MVC, XSS, CSRF, model binding and parameter tampering; https everything or just on parts of a site; Microsoft improving security, open source issues, inclusion of open source in hardware security devices; unmanaged code in web apps; typical weaknesses in software, password security; software review process, threat models, code reviews, fuzz testing; healthcare security, medical devices, attack vectors, Barnaby Jack, how to build secure devices; finding good security professionals, conferences and tradeshows; books; dont roll your own security; Robert’s presentation at Boston Code Camp.

Summary Dennis Mortensen and I discuss x.ai, an AI personal assistant for scheduling meetings. Details Dennis and I discuss his background, traditional analytics products, predictive analytics; x.ai, it “schedules meetings”, how it works, invisible software, people don’t have control panels or sliders, tuning Amy multiple calendars; humanizing Amy, pain does not have a syntax, democratizing having a personal assistant; scheduling nirvana, Amy work with Emily, elastic calendar; human speed; psychology of Amy, Amy is not an “it” and does not have features, Amy has skills and receives education; invisible interface; accepting Amy and stigma around AI PAs; is Amy dehumanizing, or is a control panel dehumanizing; why now for Amy, 1019 meetings and 672 reschedules in one year, not Turing ready; no app, maybe location awareness; audience of 87 million US knowledge workers, spreading word; when it will be available, thousands of users, tens of thousands meetings a day; backend, improving understanding, context; Amy’s truth, cultural differences, irony; architecture, no scaling problem, AWS, Scala, mongo; data and privacy; future of x.ai, flights, hotels, other languages, voice integration.

Summary Linus Olsson of the Hemlis project discusses what Hemlis is, why they are building it and how it works. Details Linus I and discuss his background, what is Hemlis, why build it; open source; need for security and privacy, does encryption make you a target, good encryption vs bad encryption; why trust Hemlis, legal requests for data, would he go to jail to protect users; how it works, public key encryption, easier than PGP, type of encryption, back door on phone, base band hacking; open source vulnerabilities; servers, just for relaying, graphs, peer-to-peer not viable; scaling; release date, usability; how to promote your software; pricing, premium features, enterprise solution.

Summary Piero Toffanin is a software engineer and user experience designer who left his job this year to travel around North America, coding as he goes. Details Why give up the day job, inspired by Live on the Margin, preparation to travel, selling stuff and buying necessities, camper van vs hostels/hotels; practicalities of working on the road, charging laptops, getting internet, working offline; finding work, referrals; where Piero has travelled; splitting the day between work and adventure; compromises in the wandering life, meeting other travellers; remote working; how long will he keep going; challenges on the road; books choices and how to perform a tracheotomy.

Summary Christopher Marston is the founder and CEO of Exemplar Companies, Inc, we discuss the legal aspects of going out as a consultant and getting a startup running. Details Christopher and I discuss what Exemplar Law does, fixed pricing; going out as a consultant, protecting against personal liability, LLC’s, SCorp, CCorp; startups, vesting, roles and responsibilities; equity in startups, dilution, removing a member of the team; protecting intellectual property while promoting yourself; patents vs trade secret; raising capital, business plans and other paperwork; growth of venture capital firms in Boston; shutting down a startup, common reasons for failure, under-capitalization, founder disputes, lawsuits; closing down a business.

Summary Part two of my two part conversation with Sean Blanchfield of Page Fair. Details Sean and I discuss how adblockers work, easylist block list, how Page Fair works, cooperation with easy list, using Page Fair on a site; backend technology, python, Redis, twisted, Linux, Amazon Web Services, server load and traffic patterns; serving ads, bids, speed, Page Fair auction, no tracking of users, panopticlick and fingerprinting, tracking across devices and locations, data management platforms; noscript and Page Fair; Youtube and ads; not always showing an ad; ad block walls; book choices, The Innovator’s Dilemma, The Elements of Style, Getting Things Done: The Art of Stress-Free Productivity, Thinking, Fast and Slow; social networking and playing on expectations, trust in relationships, meeting customers.

Summary Part one of my two part conversation with Sean Blanchfield of Page Fair. Details Sean and I discuss his past at Demonware, multiplayer networking layer; Scalefront startup incubator, cycling through startup ideas; Page Fair beginnings; innovation life cycle, finding the good idea, determining the size of the market, Sean and I are old!; Destructoid and going viral during a bachelor party(!), popularity of adblockers, popularity by site type, by age; YouTube preroll ads and the spread of blocking, Google ads white listed; non intrusive ads, Page Fair ads can be turned off, click through rates, discrete ads; better ads from Page Fair, competition; The Innovator’s Dilemma, disruptive technology, big companies can’t change, culture in companies; ad blocking on mobile, FireFox on Android supports adblock, adblock browsers are on the way, Adblock Plus app removed from App Store, Disconnect tracker and ad blocking for mobile and desktop; supporting free content through ads, publishers reaction to ad blockers. Part two goes into the technical workings of Page Fair.

Summary Discussion with Alex Robbio and Silvana Gaia of Belatrix Software about outsourcing software development. Details Who they are, what they do, and what the company does, why they focus on software product development and qa; outsourcing vs offshoring, nearshoring; choosing an outsourcing partner, location, type of project, technology, collaboration; skills of devs in outsourced team; contract termination; size of team; scrum in an outsourced project, personal contact with client; cultural differences; team turnover, project governance, customer control over devs on project, better to be a big customer of an outsourcer; advantages of having multiple teams on a project; costs and benefits of visits; managing projects, planning; handling client complaints, catch early, provide training, improve communications, retrospective; customer buy in; customers who just want a job done; setting customer expectations, culture; customers moving away from far away outsourcing; global shortage of IT talent, training; breaking rocks vs building cathedrals.