I lately was asked to participate into workshopping in creation of "career paths and titles" in a software development organisation. I have seen a few. Some with a lot of work put to them. And all wrong. Is it them or me? Definitely me. That's because I don’t in general like titles, the way are assigned to people. I think it would be more reasonable to discuss the responsibilities a person has and things they do, periodically. And help everyone pick a title that describes this well. And adjust it whenever they want. Seniority is also a hard concept. Is it about years in field? Or years in life? Or about specific knowledge, or knowledge in general? Or about the successes and mistakes you have been part of? Or on how you treat yourself and other people? Or on how you compare to another random coworker? I don't know, and maybe I don't care. Why other people do, at least because of the money. And the way salary raise is usually tied up to a promotion. For that I hav
Attended a week ago the Frogs (friends of good software) online unconference https://frogsconf.nl/. Unconference type of events are these days pretty much the only type of conference I wish to participate. They almost automatically establish what many more traditional desperately try - discussions and interactivity. Frogs was no exception, and was also extremely well organized. It followed a typical unconference/openspace format, of creating the content and schedule of the conference in the beginning, and then people attending the ones they find most interesting. The conference organizers have background in testing/qa type of work, which is why there where a lot of testing minded people attending, but happily there were also a lot of people from different backgrounds. We were using Welo as the platform for the unconference and it worked well, allowing you to move virtually between rooms and hangaround places. Depending on the timeslot, there were 3-5 topics happening at the same time