Giuliana Taylor

… and started meeting weekly instead. (gotchia 😉) Some people enjoy small talk. Some of my closest friends are small-talkers. I have nothing against the small-talkers. I just am totally incapable and – if I’m being honest – a little socially inept since all this quarantining started. Meetings with my manager were always dangerously close […]

If you’ve read Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, or even if you’ve just seen a diagram like this one and it inspired you to figure out which activities put you in flow… boy, do I have a blog post for you ???? I have to admit I never read the book, […]

My slightly satirical, stream-of-consciousness take on scrummy pregnancy. First Trimester Scrum Master You were a developer before you became a scrum master, so you’ll get a kick out of calling your baby a monad, because – like – “generically automating away boilerplate code” and something about “a thing that creates side-effects.” I mean, come on […]

Context SEP started with developers, grew by hiring more developers, evolved by hiring designers. And since the developers “were here first,” there’s an easy and terrible potential for us to think of “incorporating designers into the development” rather than “incorporating developers into the designing.” My team chose a third way, which you all probably know […]

We recently named a conference room after the great Dr. Katherine Johnson, whom I believe embodies the ideal teammate, and SEPer. And I’d like to gush over her for a few paragraphs. Who is Dr. Johnson? For those of you who haven’t seen or read Hidden Figures, or haven’t obsessed about brilliant, (not so hidden […]

I just finished up a three week long, rapid prototyping project with a development team of four: 2 designers, 2 developers. Since SEP may have more prototyping opportunities, here’s what you can expect from this kind of engagement. First, what is a rapid prototyping project? A short, intensive, and focused effort designed to learn more […]

(me ????‍♀️, total introvert) I recently read Quiet, a book by Susan Cain. It’s a really approachable aggregation of a ton of research around introversion. I read Quiet searching for ways I can be a better teammate to my introverted colleagues, and it did not disappoint. It highlighted a few ways we, software engineers, have […]

The “Inside Man” is a 12-episode show produced by the training company, KnowBe4.  In a show where everyone is british except one shady, well-dressed, American villain, there is a hacker, hired to steal company secrets. The hacker ends up enjoying his very average job, and his very average co-workers. Hijinks ensue. Lessons are learned. I […]