Developers

Lead Developer Career Guide

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Exciting times! I’ve had a lot to share lately, and here’s another update. Shelley Benhoff‘s new book, “Lead Developer Career Guide“, has officially gone to print—huge congratulations to Shelley! 🎉

Published by Manning Publications Co., this book is a comprehensive resource for anyone aspiring to excel as a Lead Developer.

I’m incredibly honored to have written the foreword for this fantastic book!

In the Lead Developer Career Guide you’ll discover:

  • The key responsibilities of a lead developer
  • Techniques for writing effective technical documentation
  • Strategies for improving development processes
  • Best practices for communicating with non-technical clients
  • Methods for mentoring and inspiring a team
  • Approaches for delivering negative feedback constructively

The Lead Developer Career Guide is filled with interviews and real-world case studies from industry professionals and esteemed tech experts. You’ll learn how to become the public face for your development team, gathering feedback from your coworkers and communicating with clients and stakeholders. Plus, you’ll find proven techniques to reliably calculate project estimates, plan a project from scratch, and mentor junior developers and peers alike.

You can check it out here:

https://www.manning.com/books/lead-developer-career-guide?a_aid=shelley&a_bid=8e03047e

and here:

https://www.amazon.com/Developer-Career-Guide-Shelley-Benhoff/dp/1633438074

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Platform Engineering Discussion with Andrew Shafer

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I’m very excited to announce something that has been in the works for a little while now. I was fortunate to interview the legendary Andrew Shafer (@littleidea). We had a discussion about Platform Engineering. If you don’t know Andrew here is his BIO:

“Andrew Clay Shafer helped create the tools and practices that made DevOps a word. He is fascinated with the dynamics of high-performing individuals and organizations and has a reputation for improving outcomes at the intersection of Open Source, Cloud Computing and Software Delivery working on Puppet, OpenStack, Cloud Foundry and Kubernetes before founding Ergonautic to focus on improving the way people work.“

Basically, he started this whole DevOps thing, was key in the DevOps Days events, has founded some high-profile companies, and more. He is the perfect person to chat with about Platform Engineering because if anyone knows it he does!

I chatted with Andrew in an episode of Pluralsight’s Expert Access. Expert Access is a YouTube series where we (Pluralsight authors) bring in some of the best minds in tech to hear how tech leaders are solving business challenges and their takes on what’s next.

The title of the episode is: “Pluralsight Expert Access: Andrew Shafer on platform engineering as an evolution, not a replacement“. In this episode, I interview Andrew, as he gives his take on what Platform Engineering is, what organizations are chasing to enable developers, and what’s keeping organizations from long-term success when it comes to their DevOps practices. In the discussion we tackle these questions and more:

  • Is Platform Engineering a result of failed DevOps efforts in organizations? Is it just a Service Catalog with the twist of it being geared towards devs?
  • Platforms are not a new concept in the software world. In one of your tweets, there is an interesting line “Continuous Delivery without a platform is malpractice.“ Is this highlighting that organizations have been doing DevOps without platforms? Can you break down this line for us? It seems like there may be a story behind this?
  • Some people may equate Platform Engineering to having an Internal Developer Platform, is this the core of PE or are there other technologies that are also core to it?

Watch the episode for more insights on the importance of changing practices–not just words–for achieving sustainable progress and seeing Platform Engineering as a holistic approach to DevOps and delivery.

Watch the video here:

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New Platform Engineering Blog Post on Pluralsight

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I am excited to announce my second ever blog on Pluralsight.com. This blog is about Platform Engineering. In this post I break down what platform engineering is, the business problems it solves, and how to know if your organization is ready to roll it out yet.

In the blog post, we explore why there is so much hype around platform engineering, if Platform Engineering is a replacement for DevOps, how Internal Developer Platforms help resolve the infrastructure gaps, and more. Be sure to check it out!

👉 Read the blog post here:

https://www.pluralsight.com/resources/blog/it-ops/what-is-platform-engineering

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