Perspective and insights into different aspects of leadership and management, especially as it pertains to building teams around software engineering.
Happy Holidays The holiday season is upon us, so I'd like to start by extending my best wishes for you to have a safe and happy holiday. I've personally been pretty busy the past few weeks wrapping year-end stuff up at work, so I'm looking forward to a few days of being able to catch my breath a bit. If you have some time off from work, I'm hoping you'll get a chance to do the same over the holidays. I can't sit idle for too long though. I don't like not feeling productive, so once I've caught up a bit on some well deserved rest, I'll be right back at it! The holidays and end of the year are a great time to reflect on everything that's happened in the last 12 months. Did you have goals that set you…
Charity Water We have a lot of pretty awesome people at Magnet Forensics, and every day I'm reminded just how awesome. A colleague of mine, Danielle Braun, had what I thought was an incredible idea for her birthday. For Danielle's birthday, she's not asking for more new clothes, for her parents to get her a car, for help with paying off tuition, or for some new fancy tech gadgets. But she's not asking for nothing. Danielle is asking for your support with Charity: Water this year. Charity: Water is a non-profit organization with the goal of bringing clean water to people in developing nations that don't have access to it. Reading their mission page probably opens your eyes a fair bit about the lack of access to drinking water in other countries. They're not about some complex and elaborate plan…
Movember Wrap-up At the start of December, it's time for a lot of us to shave off our glorious Movember badges from our upper lips. This year, MoMagnets did an absolutely amazing job raising money for Movember. At the time of writing, we're sitting at just under $2400! An incredible effort by Magnet Forensics and all of those that helped with their generous contributions. My 'stache didn't quite get to where I wanted to this year. It was close, but it was another connector-less Movember for me. I was almost able to get some twisting done for some not-so-legitimate connectors. Oh well... Here's what I ended up rocking for most of the month: My final Movember creation: The Anti-Connector. Matt Chang definitely took the lead for raising the most of all the MoMagnets members at over $700! Mica Sadler is…
Performance Reviews It's almost the end of the year, and performance reviews for many companies are just around the corner. This will be the first time for me sitting on the other side of a performance review. I'm excited, and to be honest, a little nervous about how it will all play out. I know our HR manager has done an excellent job putting together our initial take on performance reviews, but it's still going to be up to me to ensure that all aspects of a performance review are communicated properly to my team. It's definitely going to be an interesting time of year! I've started doing a little bit of reading on performance reviews. From what I can tell, the general consensus is that most performance review systems are flawed and nobody knows the perfect way to do…
Deloitte Companies to Watch Another impressive accolade for Magnet Forensics! Deloitte has placed Magnet on their top 10 companies to watch list! To qualify for the list, the companies need to be operating for less than five years, be based out of Canada, and put a large portion of their revenue to generating intellectual property. Our CEO, Adam Belsher, had this to say about the award: “We are honoured to be named one of Deloitte’s Companies-to-Watch. This award recognizes the hard work and dedication of our team. We’re thankful for the success we’ve achieved, and we’re incredibly proud to be contributing to the important work done by our customers who use our solutions to fight crime, enhance public safety, protect companies from fraud and theft, and ensure workplace safety and respect for their employees.” Magnet Forensics Press & Events The event…
Articles It’s official: Video games make your brain bigger: I don't have much time for video games anymore, but this is still totally awesome news. It's in. It's official. Video games can actually make you smarter. How great is that? If you're like me and you find you don't have much time for games any more, it might be worth picking up a hobby game. It's a great way to relax provided you don't get too addicted to it and apparently it can make you smarter. Perfect combo! The myth of the brainstorming session: The best ideas don’t always come from meetings: I thought this article was pretty interesting because we do a lot of brain storming at our office. Sometimes I like to think the sessions go smoothly or that they're productive. When I contrast them with particular cases…
Matt "Chang-a-rang" Chang If you saw this post, then the face above is no new face to you. You're familiar with that beautiful 'stache already. Okay, so I'm being a little misleading... Matt Chang doesn't walk around with that glorious caterpillar on his face all year round. We're working on that though. You're likely wondering why I'm putting incredible pictures of Matt Chang on the web and why I'm even writing this. Previously I mentioned that I want to start recognizing the people I work with when I feel that they're going above and beyond. I did this with Cam Sapp not too long ago, and I plan to keep doing it for all of the great people I work with. There are a million ways to recognize someone, whether it be in team meetings, personally, or by doing what I'm…
Quality And Agility Last week, at Magnet Forensics we were fortunate enough to have a very talented quality expert come in and talk to us. Paul Carvalho was able to bring a great deal of information, perspective, and activities to our development team that truly proved to be an eye opener. We were all extremely excited to get to sit down and hear what Paul had to say. There's lots to read about Paul over at his STAQS site, but I'll re-iterate some of it here. Paul has held many roles when it comes to software development. He's been a developer, a manager, a tech support person, and part of quality assurance. He certainly has a full perspective on software development. Coming from a science background, he does a great job of explaining why things are a certain way or why…
Happy HalloweenHappy Halloween, everyone! I hope those of you who were out and about with your own little ghouls and ghosts had a safe Halloween this year.Halloween costumes were pretty creative again this year at Magnet Forensics. I tried going with my own Horse Lime attempt, but it's difficult when not many people know what the Horse Lime actually is. Regardless, my awesome mother put together the lime portion of my costume, and I was extremely grateful for that (and yes, I'm in my mid 20's. No judging). I think it turned out pretty damn good.This year, Saige won our Halloween costume contest. As Old Gregg, it was hard for that to not be a sure-fire win. Complete with Bailey's in hand, I think the only thing that could have made it better was a set of watercolours to go…
Articles The Real Reason People Won’t Change: Admittedly, when I read this article on my phone the full posting wasn't available to me. I was only able to read the first page of the article, but the concept was enough to get me interested. "Competing commitments". Heard of it? I hadn't but it seems to explain a lot. Competing commitments are, as you might have expected, commitments to things that are in conflict. The article has a ton of examples, but the concept of competing commitments offers insight as to why some people seem stubborn in their ways, despite everything else being lined up for success. A simple example might be someone who is a die-hard advocate of the project they are working on and really wants it to succeed. However, they're actually inhibiting the success of the project because…
