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Our Tech Blog Series will be a compilation of topics that are both meaningful and relevant to the Tech Industry (and beyond)! Our first blog covers the topic of Imposter Syndrome, a feeling that many of us experience at some point in our lives. Fellow IQ’er, Sam Cheng, discussed this psychological phenomenon at our annual […]
Tabs or Spaces, Composition or Inheritance, and yes — vi or Emacs; at IQ, strong opinions are in no way rare. When you build a team that values collaboration and communication you often stumble upon touchy subjects that beg to be discussed. Sometimes these discussions can grow lively. Sometimes these lively discussions can be bothersome […]
The value of experimentation There are two well-known failures that led to a life-changing breakthrough and a ridiculously simple product that has been ridiculously successful. Failures aren’t always failures. ‘I know 99 ways to not make a lightbulb.’ How many sticky notes would you guess have been used? That data isn’t readily available. But since […]
The QA Function ‘Inspector 12, ‘Say what you do and do what you say.’ Binders and binders of documents. ‘Process, process, process.’ These are concepts that will resonate, sometimes (most times?) negatively with anyone who has ever plowed through the process of achieving an ISO9001 certification. These outward signs of a commitment to quality look […]
The importance of your product roadmap The product roadmap is one of the most important assets possessed in a technology company. The phrase product roadmap generally conjures up visions of GANTT charts, detailed spreadsheets, pyramids and the like. Dates and deliverables are certainly derived from a product roadmap, and serve to direct the allocation and […]
What is firmware? Remember the back-in-the-day anxiety associated with getting a new printer, bringing it home, plugging it in and crossing your fingers? Yeah, I don’t like to think about it either. Generally, the reason that ‘stupid printer’ sat idly, no matter how many times you pressed the Print command, was because it couldn’t talk […]
One of the most common questions that a hiring manager processes when she hires a software engineering consultant is, ‘Should they work from my office or remotely?’ As with most business decisions, the answer is, ‘It depends.’ What we’ve found in our 22 years of experience is that three potential working arrangements can be characterized […]
“Our plan is to invent some sort of doohickey that everyone wants to buy.” -Pointy-Haired Boss, Dilbert Thousands of lines of code…dozens of people…customer deadlines…budget constraints. What could possibly go wrong? The short answer is – a lot can go wrong with a lengthy, complex software development project. Development methodologies and tools have evolved to […]
The competition for top-tier software development talent has never been tighter, and it’s forecasted to get even more challenging. ‘Lone-wolf’ web developers and designers abound, but true full-stack software engineers and consulting firms that possess this expertise are in scarce supply. The impact of this shortage is compounded as schedules collapse and budgets shrink, all […]
A bit of news spotted by one of our software engineers, John P. Novell has developed a new add-in for Visual Studio that would allow developers to write .NET apps for Linux. This doesn’t appear to be a full-blown solution for leveraging the powerful .NET framwork on non-Windows operating systems, but it’s another step in […]