Author: Phil Bennett
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Why I built Titlify: Job Title Hyper Inflation
I built a spoof job listing site, Titlify, as a protest about the industries’ problem with job title hyperinflation. Why did I do that? A few months ago, I built a spoof job listing site, Titlify. But why would I waste so much time on creating a spoof job…
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Agency Developer: The Path to Product Development Super Powers
Agency developers make incredible product developer, they’re used to delivering at least 10 products every year and have seen the whites of the clients eyes. Hi, my name is Philip, and I’m an agency developer. I have been clean for 364 days, 23 hours, and 35 minutes. For years I…
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Tools I Love: The Online Lightning Decision Jam
I love online Lightning Decision Jams as a way to make collective decision-making easier for remote teams. I work for a company that hires very talented people, however getting intelligent people to make collective decisions can be difficult. It’s even harder if you throw in the extra spice of a…
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“Developers don’t like development plans” and other bullshit I’ve heard.
If you think personal development plans are too much work. You are a negligent manager. And quite possibly an arsehole. I was recently amazed to hear another engineering manager say “I don’t know why we bother with these personal development plans; developers don’t like development plans.” My initial thought was…
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Bonus Post: Things I Use to Beat Dyslexia
I suffer from dyslexia. I thought it might be helpful to share a few things that help me in my day to day life. So as I mention in my post today about silent meetings, I suffer from dyslexia. I thought it might be helpful to share a few…
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A Dyslexic’s Fear of Silent Meetings
People have started talking about silent meetings, and as someone who has dyslexia, this is terrifying. I was recently catching up on some episodes of an amazing podcast called ‘Eat, Sleep, Work, Repeat’ that I had missed. I came across an episode where Bruce was talking to…
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Software is Easy, People are Hard: a Small Team Lead Manifesto.
Over the last couple of months of brain-farting, I’ve started to collect the things I’ve been posting into several categories. These categories have become a ‘manifesto’ for how I *want* to lead a small team. Leading a small team isn’t sexy. It’s just hard! The main reason…
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Arseholes are Arseholes, However Talented they are.
It’s not OK to let someone be an arsehole just because they are talented. Challenging their behaviour is essential. Something that I wish I had learnt early on in my career is that you don’t need to tolerate arseholes. It’s not that you don’t need to tolerate arseholes, you should…
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The Crying Game: It’s OK to Cry at Work!
People cry at work, probably more than you think. Crying at work is OK. If it makes you uncomfortable, then that’s your problem. For some reason, people tend to trust me with information they don’t generally share with others. I honestly have no idea why maybe I have a trustworthy…
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Stuck in the Middle (Management) With You.
Middle management isn’t sexy, but it’s essential. It’s not a dirty word. I’m a middle manager and I’m proud. When I started my career at the turn of the century, middle management was perceived to be a dirty word, a word that expressed incompetence and inefficiency. At the time they…
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Feedback: Be a little German, Be a little American.
Giving feedback is hard; giving good feedback is even harder. What can we learn from the alternating extremes of German and American feedback cultures? What people say and what they mean. People sayAmericansBritishGermanIt’s needs some work.You’re fired.Please put this in the bin.Fine.It’s acceptable.Please don’t make me call human resources.Needs some…
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Does the Tech Industry have a Drinking Problem?
Is the social acceptability of drinking within the tech industry causing us an exclusion problem? I have a complicated relationship with alcohol. My mother was an alcoholic who drank herself to death. I’ve used alcohol as stress relief and as a tool to combat my introverted social tendencies. In fact;…