I. M. Wright’s “Hard Code”

Why do short clear SLAs improve your services, customer satisfaction, and life? How do you write and use an effective SLA?

How do guide PMs to positively impact your team, your business, and your customers? What if your peers and management chain all see the PM role differently?

What is the impact of AI on software engineers? How will it impact our children?

Should I be more ambitious? How do I align my career with what I value most?

How do you gain the confidence needed for a promotion as you undertake unfamiliar next-level work? How do you win over your manager and other decision-makers?

When a subject matter expert (SME) leaves your team, how do you avoid knowledge loss? What common mistakes to teams make?

How should you feel about the annual rewards you received? What should you expect?

How do you improve your chances of success? Why consider luck when evaluating people and situations?

Why are awareness posters, training, and trinkets mostly effective? How do you convert these campaigns into action?

How does responding immediately provide you with essential slack time? How can eschewing prioritization help you prioritize?

When a project has multiple leaders, how do you quickly make aligned decisions that stick? Who has final say without abusing that power?

How do you pay off technical debt before a catastrophic failure? How do you convince management to invest the time?

How do you expand and utilize your network to land a new role you love? Why is applying online so unlikely to succeed for an experienced engineer?

What skills should engineers develop? How should hiring manager prioritize candidates?

How do you estimate deliverables, prioritize assignments, design solutions, choose implementations, and verify requirements when there's no authoritative source to tell you the right thing to do and the right way to do it? What do you do when the experts disagree?

How do you engage with your manager and peers when you're no longer the boss? Should you be the boss again?

Is getting an advanced degree worth the time, effort, and cost? Does the university you choose matter?

As a middle manager, how do you create a plan in a week that pleases the management chain above you (and partners), the staff below you (including multiple teams), and your own desires for influence and impact? When are three plans better than one?

What is matrix management? Given its awful track record, why does it persist and how can you avoid it?

When your company switches to discretionary time off, how much vacation should you take? What if my manager or team judges me about using too much or too little vacation?

How do you drive cross-org initiatives successfully without leaving a trail of resentment? What is the hidden power of the initiative driver?

Why do many engineers hate office politics yet can't avoid it? How can you navigate and master office politics while maintaining your integrity and sanity?

What are the three key questions an interview answers? How do you best prepare, introduce yourself, solve design and code problems, answer behavioral questions, and reflect after an interview?

How can you overcome imposter syndrome and act with integrity and authenticity until you finally know what you're doing? What makes others listen to you and accept your leadership?

What are the pros and cons of pair programming? When is it valuable?

In what situations should you disclose your disability (or not)? How do ensure you receive accommodations and respectful treatment?

How do you respond to a crisis that involves executives and maybe mass media? What steps can you take to stay calm and engage the right people?

What five options do you have when your deliverable is late? How do you rebuild trust with stakeholders?

Why do coworkers disappoint you? How do you set clear expectations and hold people accountable?

Why should you bother taking an employee poll? How do you best use ratings and comments to keep what you like and improve what you don't?

What makes professional relationships different from personal ones? How do you collaborate effectively with people you don't like?

How do you write a professional growth and development plan? What if you don't have a long-term goal yet?

Why is it better to assign ownership instead of delegating tasks? How do you determine who should own what?

Why do you need to manage your management? How do you manage up with authenticity?

Are you a bold, methodical, or analytical engineer? Is one style better than the others?

Why do great teams with sufficient data still make bad decisions, miss incidents, and seem unresponsive? How should you slice your data to ensure a quality customer experience?

How do you run a great people discussion? What common mistakes to managers make in people discussions?

What way can teams get into trouble? How do you resolve issues and sustain high-performing teams?

Why do writing more code and working more hours fall short of delivering more value? What should engineers be doing?

Should managers be rewarded more than individual contributors? How do you create more impact, opportunity, and innovation for less expense?

What are the three purposes of a resume? How do you make your resume and interview more memorable and compelling?

Which software terms are so offensive that we should change them? How do you choose a good alternative to an offensive term?

What are the common mistakes when switching to DevOps? How can your team smoothly transition to DevOps?

What's improved and what's remained problematic at Microsoft? Where do we go from here?

What motivates knowledge workers? Which leadership style is most effective day to day?

How do you vacation at home when that's where you're working? What three guidelines provide a relaxing and memorable home vacation?

What three rules help you write great performance feedback? Which part of your feedback is the most important?

How do you make fair choices and impose fair restrictions? Why wouldn't you be transparent?

What subtle changes can you make to be productive working from home? How do you keep the peace with your housemates and kids?

What makes high performing teams twice as likely as low performers to exceed performance goals? Which wonderful, wasteful, and disgraceful practices do teams follow?

How can good communication save you grief? What does a communication plan look like for rollouts, reorgs, and outages?