Software engineering, as a profession, is terrible at refactoring. A hot-take I know, but I think I can convince you. After writing about [skill acquisition and up-skilling](https://barryosull.com/blog/growing-other-developers-as-a-staff-engineer/) I wanted to reflect on refactoring, a skill that is core to software development, many dev assume they have, but few can actually demonstrate. # My journey with refactoring First a little about myself. For the last 7 years I chose to specialise in legacy web apps (which baffled so many people), and rather than pitching rewrites that typically fail, I opted to focus on improving these sys...
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I was recently asked how I, as a staff engineer, work with and upskill other developers on my team. It was a great question, and I thought I'd write down a longer form version of the answer I gave. A core part of staff engineer's role is to grow the team. A staff engineer who doesn't up-level other engineers is a bottleneck. Staffs look to accelerate their team and their growth, so training and upskilling is incredibly important. It is also not really talked about, with most staffs picking up the skills haphazardly. Is there a better way to do it? Well, if you want to help someone improve, the first step is to figure out their lev...
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Here are my notes from [DDD EU 2022](https://2022.dddeurope.com/schedule/). It was a great conference this year with a focus on models, growth, managing complexity and dealing with legacy. Will definitely review these notes in the near future and see how I can apply them to my work day to day. ## Opening Keynote Speakers: - Andrew Harmel-Law - Diana Montalion - Mike Rozinsky - Gayathri Thiyagarajan **The advice process:** 1. When working on something, get advice from two groups: 1. Those affected by the decision 2. Experts in the area 2. Then it's up to you to decide The goal is to free up decision bottlenecks from making deci...
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Show me your reward mechanisms and I'll show you your problems. I've been thinking a lot about reward mechanisms, how they incentivise us and how they can be gamed. They exist to ensure we're going in the right direction, defining a win scenario as tightly as possible, and if they're poorly chosen they can lead to a company collapsing slowly over time. Like any tool they are both a blessing and curse. ## Reward Mechanisms So what is a reward mechanism? A reward mechanism is a process that encourages certain behaviours by offering a reward at the end. Exhibit the behaviour, get the reward. Typical examples are bonuses at work for r...
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