The point of fizz-buzz was to serve as a simple filter at the front end of the interview process. It should be simple, but a surprising number of job candidates were unable to do it.
I've always been afraid of pairing. I don't know how well others would appreciate my periods of daydreaming followed by periods of hyper-fixated focus.
When your team owns an application you have no background knowledge in, and it uses a technology that you haven't touched since you attended a training 18 months ago; I would assume that your on-call response for any non-trivial issue would still be to page someone for help.
I find it ironic that the article itself was edited after the initial posting, per the disclaimer at the bottom. If Netflix added such a disclaimer in the credits of the episode, would that make it more acceptable to the author?
I would recommend looking at the company's culture. I've seen similar situations where the services team were treated as second-class citizens. What opportunities for advancement are recognition are there? Are they comparable to the product side? Is there any movement between the two sides?
To quote Charles Dickens -- "Annual income twenty pounds, annual expenditure nineteen nineteen and six , result happiness. Annual income twenty pounds, annual expenditure twenty pounds ought and six, result misery"
To practice being in a relationship. To gain a better understanding of what you want in a relationship. It is one thing to have a bad significant other as a teenager, it is totally different to have a bad spouse.
Many years ago I interviewed at a military contractor. Every time we walked through a work area someone went ahead and announced I was coming through to ensure nobody had something that would require a clearance to see.
In my experience, pair and mob programming are just yet another scenario where neuro-atypical people are punished for approaching their work differently.
I use a cycling poncho, fenders, and chain guard. I only ride about 3 miles, but even in the worst weather I only get wet from about mid-shin down, and even then only enough to be bothersome in the worst weather.
I'll just throw for the opposing side and point out that "Gov. Pete Wilson, took $1.6 billion from CalPERS accounts in 1991 to help close a state budget gap". A random internet calculator tells me that investing in the S&P 500 with reinvested dividents since July, 1991 has had a 844% return. I wonder impact $1.3 trillion would have on the CalPERS shortfall (edit: this would only be $13 billion).
There is a lot of middle ground between the valley and rural Indiana. Depending on how you drove to get there, the northern route would take you through Salt Lake City, just north of Denver, Omaha, Des Moines, and just south of Chicago. A southern route would take you north of Phoenix, Albuquerque, Oklahoma City, just east of St. Louis, and possibly through Indianapolis. I would bet every one of those cities would have multiple opportunities for medium-highly paid workforce members while also providing affordable housing.
One question/concern I have always had -- Do you have multiple feature flags in place at once? How do you avoid the combinatoric increase in possible configurations? If you have feature A and B, what happens if A is turned on first? If B is turned on first? What if they are both turned on at the same time?
Daily exercise
To-do list for EVERYTHING. If it isn't on the list I don't get it done.
Time-boxing and frequent breaks. Work a single task for 30 minutes. Then switch to something else or take a 5 minute break.
As opposed to the nurse who lost a patient, the social worker who has to remove a child from their home, a teacher that gets to see all of problems kids bring from homes, many aspects of being a police officer, etc?
I'm pretty skeptical of charts like this. On the y axis, the scales aren't relative. The gain on the black line before the drop is about 187% (200 - 375). The gain on the red line is 132% (12400 - 16400). On the x axis, there isn't even a label for red so it impossible to tell how the different time periods compare.
I think that either I misread this article or some of the other posters have. The author isn't talking about shipping a product, the author is talking about delivering code to production.
A to-do list for everything. If it isn't on a list then it isn't getting done.
In addition to timers, I try to have to things I'm working on. That way I can switch back and forth.
Work in bursts and then take a break for 5 minutes.
Try to get some daily physical activity. I find that exercise is one of the few times I can reliably get my brain to shut off.
I personally think caffeine helps me, but try to identify if any food makes it better or worse.