November 2019
Beginner
294 pages
7h 40m
English
Content preview from 97 Things Every Engineering Manager Should Know
Become an O’Reilly member and get unlimited access to this title plus top books and audiobooks from O’Reilly and nearly 200 top publishers, thousands of courses curated by job role, 150+ live events each month,
O’Reilly covers everything we've got, with content to help us build a world-class technology community, upgrade the capabilities and competencies of our teams, and improve overall team performance as well as their engagement.I wanted to learn C and C++, but it didn't click for me until I picked up an O'Reilly book. When I went on the O’Reilly platform, I was astonished to find all the books there, plus live events and sandboxes so you could play around with the technology.I’ve been on the O’Reilly platform for more than eight years. I use a couple of learning platforms, but I'm on O'Reilly more than anybody else. When you're there, you start learning. I'm never disappointed.I'm always learning. So when I got on to O'Reilly, I was like a kid in a candy store. There are playlists. There are answers. There's on-demand training. It's worth its weight in gold, in terms of what it allows me to do.
Chapter 20. Don’t Elevate the Means Beyond the End
Seth Dobbs
Our industry is rife with trendy technologies such as microservices, serverless, and blockchain, and trendy processes such as Agile and Lean in all of their various forms. Years ago, the trends were EJBs and UML, and before that, shifting to object orientation and having a structured Waterfall were important.
In their time, none of these were bad in and of themselves, but each wave creates the potential for missing the point behind each of these waves and leads to organizations serving the means. This behavior manifests in comments such as “that’s a bad requirement because it doesn’t fit our architecture” and “that’s not Agile!” In fact, we as an industry can become dogmatic around the means as if that is our purpose rather than them merely being tools.
For example, I’ve encountered several organizations with the directive to “implement microservices.” The problem is, “not having microservices” isn’t a problem, per se, nor is microservices a solution in and of itself. It is a tool or a means for solving a problem. This becomes more ironic in organizations that are dogmatic about Agile given that the Agile Manifesto is itself a set of principles that among other things eschews dogmatic process.
Not to pick on microservices specifically; this is an architectural approach that provides a ton of value for certain problem ...
Become an O’Reilly member and get unlimited access to this title plus top books and audiobooks from O’Reilly and nearly 200 top publishers, thousands of courses curated by job role, 150+ live events each month,
and much more.
Read now
Unlock full access
More than 5,000 organizations count on O’Reilly
O’Reilly covers everything we've got, with content to help us build a world-class technology community, upgrade the capabilities and competencies of our teams, and improve overall team performance as well as their engagement.Julian F.
I wanted to learn C and C++, but it didn't click for me until I picked up an O'Reilly book. When I went on the O’Reilly platform, I was astonished to find all the books there, plus live events and sandboxes so you could play around with the technology.Addison B.
I’ve been on the O’Reilly platform for more than eight years. I use a couple of learning platforms, but I'm on O'Reilly more than anybody else. When you're there, you start learning. I'm never disappointed.Amir M.
I'm always learning. So when I got on to O'Reilly, I was like a kid in a candy store. There are playlists. There are answers. There's on-demand training. It's worth its weight in gold, in terms of what it allows me to do.