Computerjargon.com Archives

I purchased the Computerjargon.com domain name back in 1998, shortly after I started my first job as a “web programmer”. I was working for a now-defunct company called Moore Data Management Systems in Minneapolis. The internet boom was just starting to take off and I was trying to ride it’s wave.

I had been developing web pages and perl scripts since 1993. I remember updating HTML to be compliant with Netscape 1.0 in high school. I worked as a contractor converting Word docs to HTML while I was in college. Moore Data was my first professional job. My job was to create HTML templates which rendered real estate data from their custom SQL server. Computerjargon.com was going to be my sanctuary from the monotony of the corporate world.

Computerjargon.com was many things over the next decade but I mostly settled on using it as my personal blog. As friends joined the internet community I used Computerjargon.com to be my personal internet hub, linking off to their respective corners of the web. I shared personal stories of growing up and becoming parents on Computerjargon.com. I used my blog to say whatever I needed to sway

With the rise of Facebook and Twitter my personal blog became passé. I used Facebook to share any personal stories and had no need for Computerjargon.com. I used Twitter to talk about technology. Eventually I retired Computerjargon.com and redirected it to Jason.Motylinski.com.

I’ve long given up Facebook and Twitter, realizing that shouting into an echo chamber doesn’t bring a lot of satisfaction. I’ve decided to restart blogging but this time for myself.

I’ve kept a lot of data and documents over the years, but the content from 1998 - 2010s of Computerjargon.com seemed to have slipped by me. I was upset that so much of my life had been lost.

I decided to try the Wayback Machine in hopes that it had caught some of Computerjargon.com’s history. To my surprise the Wayback Machine had lots of my former blog content. It had captured the first page I published in 1999 all the way thru the site going stale in 2010.

I wrote a quick script to download my content from Wayback Machine to preserve it and published the Computerjargon.com Archives online for posterity’s sake. The archive contains snapshots from 1999 thru 2010. Much of the content is very cringe-worthy but I like to peruse it from time to time. The archives contain so many forgotten memories.

Book Review: Shape Up

I recently read Shape Up based on the recommendation of peers at work looking to iterate on their product development life cycle. Like many companies we follow scrum loosely. Scrum works well once an initiative moves into delivery but we struggle with the upfront discovery, definition, and design phases. Historically we have done annual planning, spending countless months to create outcomes, debate initiatives, and adjust the organizational structure only to realize 2 months in to the new year we need to pivot. Shape Up is a process which allows teams to quickly discover, define, develop and pivot.

37Signals has made the book freely available online. Below are some of thoughts on some of it’s topics.

Time as a Constraint

The biggest change Shape Up proposes is using time as a constraint. Shape Up introduces the concept of a “Cycle”, which is a time box of 6 weeks. Shape Up correctly calls out a major pain point of scrum - a 2 week sprint just too short to accomplish meaningful when developing a product.

Shaping the Pitch

The cycle is meant to be heads down delivery which means much of the discovery and definition of the problem needs to be completed before hand. Shape Up spends much of the time outlining a process referred to as “The Pitch”. It is a method for product teams to form a hypothesis, present a proposal, and for the organization to bet on it for the next 6 weeks. The solution to the pitch must fit within a cycle otherwise the problem is too big.

The process of fitting a pitch into the timespan is consider the “shaping” process. In the shaping process the team is refining scope, throwing out any unnecessary work, and refining the approach so that the goal can be achieved within the cycle. Compromises will be made which is all part of the process.

Multiple pitches will be made by multiple teams for the upcoming cycle. The Pitch process gives the teams a chance to prioritize which pitches to bet on for the next cycle. There’s a variety of factors which may make a pitch approved or rejected. The important change is the conversation and alignment which happen or the various pitches. When a cycle starts everyone should know which objectives they are targeting and why those objectives were picked.

Cool down

Teams often struggle to balance new development with support and tech debt. Shape Up acknowledges that support and tech debt needs to be worked on by creating a 2-week period between cycles in which engineering teams can focus on paying down some of the tech debt while the pitch process is wrapping up.

Overall Impression

I liked that Shape Up can easily plug into an existing scrum process. The book covers delivery but I can’t say it shared anything revolutionary within the phase. The pitch process nicely drops right in front of teams using scrum for delivery. I can see how a pitch could easily map to epics and flow right into a standard scrum process. I also think focusing on output at the end of a cycle removes a lot of the stress teams feel to demonstrate meaningful process every 2-weeks. Teams can think bigger and solve larger issues with the increased bandwidth.

We are just wrapping up our first pitch process and are about to go into delivery with our first cycle. We hope Shape Up will help us break down our large, long-term goals into achievable milestones that provide incremental functionality along the way.

Paralysis

I get stuck in starting on the most basic tasks. This blog is a prime example. I have so many lists in so many different tools of topics that have been rattling around in my head for years. When my daughter gets stuck in her own analysis paralysis I tell her to just start, take a first step, just do.

I’m going to take my own advice. Here’s a nonsensical, non-prioritized, non-complete, brain dump of topics that will blog about at some point:

• How to start a new job
• Waiting / validating opinions
• Imposter syndrome
• feedback
• how to start anything
• setting and measuring expectations
• how to build consensus
• It’s ok to not be a tech firm
• How much time does it take to be a manager?
• Zettelkasten
• Korn Ferry
• Personal and professional reading list
• BAPO
• Projects
  • Rawk it
  • Home Assistant
  • Raffl.online
  • joels.photography
  • computerjargon.com
  • Architecture of jason.motylinski.com
• Books reviews
  • Shape up
  • Three Body Problem
  • The Creative Act
  • The Alliance

Hello

Hello there. Let’s get a few basics out of the way:

Name: Jason Motylinski
Profession: Software Engineering
Years of experience: 25
Current Role: VP, Engineering
Previous Roles: Way too many to list. Started as an engineer, moved into leadership and people management about 12 years ago.
Technologies: I’ve been all around the tech stack: backend, frontend, and APIs. I’ve been in the cloud and on-prem. I have built solutions from scratch and I have contributed to mature platforms. My current passion lies in data and AI-powered solutions.
Personal: Partner, 2 kids, 3 dogs. Currently reside just outside of New York City in the New Jersey suburbs.

So why am I deciding to blog now? Somewhere along the way my experience has become helpful to others. I want to share my passion for technology, leadership, and business outside of the day-to-day, where I can take a step back from execution and focus on the principles of engineering and leadership.

You are the lucky one that stumbled across my corner of the internet. I hope you find my ramblings at the least entertaining and at the most helpful.