I always wanted to reach the top page of HackerNews with this blog. It’s one of my favourite sites, full of amazing articles, a variety of viewpoints, and intelligent commentary (most of the time anyway). So, to my delight and friend’s surprise/horror, my last blog post reached number 2 on HackerNews, and stayed on the front page for a whole day. The article (here) and HN link (here) explains why no-one really understands Technical Debt, and is co-authored with the wonderful Paidi O’Reilly and Stephen McCarthy at UCC. We had 20,000 reads, hundreds of comments across multiple platforms, and Grady Booch introduced me to Philip Kruchten on Twitter. Let me rephrase, the guy who gave OO programming its name introduced me to the guy who invented 4+1 Architectural views. I felt like I was joining an exclusive blogging club. Heady times indeed.
To capitalise on this success, I posted nothing for nine months. Life became busy (I had Covid among other things), work became busy, so the usual 5% of the time I spend on writing, running and listening to music became 0.5% for a while. One reason work was so busy, Workhuman is becoming more successful almost every month. We officially became a tech unicorn (a private company valued at over 1 billion dollars) last year. This means that we are recruiting, building new teams and delivering product at record rates, so less time for my typed brain debris. If you are interested in joining us, have a look here. We have on-site, hybrid and fully remote roles. We also always seem to have loads of cake. Just saying.
That said, a paper that Paidi, Stephen and I wrote last spring and summer got published at the HICSS conference in January 2022. I will emerge from hibernation on Monday the 4th of April to talk about our paper, at a Cork University Business School conference.
The paper is here, and discusses the link between Technical Debt, social unrest and the environment. I would love to hear any feedback or suggestions for future research. You can register for the conference here. It’s free and features an outstanding lineup (and me):
- Alan D Duncan – Gartner Distinguished Vice President
- Gar Mac Críosta – Chairperson, Public Health Advisory Committee at Linux Foundation Public Health
- Ken Russell – Principal – Ericsson Global Digital Transformation Office
- Ruairi O’Callaghan – Director – Global Command Center at Pfizer
- Sharon Jones – Director, Kee Jones Ltd
Mark Greville 