Archive for January, 2016

The Best You Can Be

Thursday, January 28th, 2016

I write a short daily series for O'Reilly Media, Four Short Links, which I've done for years.  I recently posted a link to someone's "10 Golden Rules for Becoming a Better Programmer" and said "what are your 10 rules for being better in your field? If you haven’t built a list, then you aren’t ...

Lesson: Presume Good Intentions

Monday, January 18th, 2016

Teamwork shares a lot of good practices with parenting.  This lesson was no exception ....  I realised fairly early on in my time as a parent that I had a tendency to fail, bigtime, by blasting my kids for something they hadn't done.  The pattern became evident: I see something, ...

Lesson: Track What You Learn

Saturday, January 9th, 2016

When I was recruiting the fabulous Chris McDowall for a job, he asked me "why do YOU work here?"  I replied that I was learning lots.  He then said the most important thing anyone has said to me this decade: "what are you learning?" I goldfished for a few seconds and ...

Kiwi Startups in Silicon Valley

Monday, January 4th, 2016

I was asked for comment by Bill Bennet from the NZ Herald, for a piece on Kiwi startups moving to Silicon Valley.  He built a nice little article, in which "Torkington says" features heavily.  My policy is that if I email journalists, I'll blog my side of the conversation for transparency's sake. I ...