Jamie Romanowski talks with Dave Rael about life as a leader rather than a developer, renewing excitement and skills with a side project, hiring and firing, and the importance of priorities
Jamie is a long term software professional, father, and geek who loves solving problems and having fun doing it. Jamie is currently the Director of Strategic Technology for a clinical trial company in the Philly suburbs. He is passionate about solving the right problems, continuous learning, and doing what is best for the business. Jamie enjoys talking about his family, good science fiction, and all Philly sports teams.
Chapters:
- - Dave introduces the show and Jamie Romanowski
- - Moving from hands-on-keyboard development to leadership and management
- - The clinical trial domain
- - Jamie's definition of value
- - Communication failures as manifestation of situational comedy
- - Eroded coding skills as a manager and using a side project to restore them
- - Hiring and building teams
- - How Jamie got started in software
- - Jamie's story of failure - Losing a whole team, needing to forgo the long term to keep moving in the short term
- - Jamie's success story - building and leading awesome teams to serve an excellent organization
- - The difficulty of hiring and how Jamie approaches it
- - Jamie's thought on "having made it"
- - How Jamie stays current with what he needs to know
- - Jamie's book recommendations
- - The things that have Jamie most excited
- - Jamie's sources of pain and sufffering
- - The things about which Jamie likes to geek out
- - Jamie's prediction for the future of software
- - Jamie's top 3 tips for delivering more value
- - Keeping up with Jamie
Resources:
- Jamie on Twitter
- Gary Stonerock on Developer On Fire
- Atari 2600
- Atari 2600
- Atari 800XL
- Atari 800XL
- Udi Dahan on being too busy with yesterday's burning fires
- Udi Dahan on Developer On Fire
- Starbucks Benefits
- Walter Isaacson
- Philip McKernan
- Scott Hanselman on Developer On Fire
- Pinal Dave on Developer On Fire
Jamie's book recommendation:
Jamie's top 3 tips for delivering more value:
- If you are considering moving to leadership, make sure it's what you want
- Hire people that are smarter than you and let them do what they do while you ask questions without force
- Listen, collaborate, and reflect
- Don't get too caught up in things to take time for yourself