growth

Mar 23 2023

How To Write A Good Pull Request

Overview

Pull Requests are the backbone of open source software development. They allow contributions by anyone, from anywhere. PRs are also a vital form of communication, even within a localized development team working on proprietary software.

What makes a good Pull Request?

Let’s break it down into 4 Rules Of Thumb:

Provide Context
Make It As Small As Possible, But Not Any Smaller
Take Screenshots
Ask For Assistance

Provide Context

Providing context is an important first step in guiding the reviewer. Use this as an opportunity to explain why you are making this change. This can be as simple as referring to the bug/defect/issue number, and as detailed as necessary to describe your change.

In this example, there is a provided link to an original issue on the npm.community site and linked directly to the source of pnpm that was referenced in the original issue.

In this more complicated example, one wants to make sure I was consistent with how other PRs were made to this repository. One of the suggestions is the old “when in Rome” rule. Some repositories even provide a template, which can be helpful, but this one didn’t. So, one should make each item discussed in the issue into a bullet item, checking-off the ones that were completed and noting anything that you’re not sure about.

Make It As Small As Possible, But Not Any Smaller

Everyone agrees that smaller PRs are easier to review. Sometimes it’s just not possible to make a very small change, so here’s some practical advice: don’t do more than necessary. If you need to stray from the core of the change you are making, separate it.

For example – imagine you are adding a path through the code to handle a new requirement. Along the way you realize that some of the variables and functions could use better names, but changing those means that you now need to update a bunch of files in another area of the code. STOP! Don’t make that change! Or at least, don’t bunch it together with your other changes. Instead, make the rename change in its own commit, and probably in its own Pull Request too. In the PR you can explain why you are making the change and how it simplifies the real change you want to make easier.

This same strategy should be applied to most whitespace and re-factorings you want to do during the course of implementing a new feature or resolving a defect. Be considerate of the reviewer’s time. There is nothing more frustrating than hunting through all the changes looking for the actual change and bumping into whitespace and “re-namings” spread across many files.

Take Screenshots

So you’re working on a story that affects the UI? Maybe you are fixing alignment in IE11, or adding a new interstitial modal when the user clicks a button. The code will get reviewed as it always does, but many people struggle with visualizing layout changes or CSS tweaks. Include a screen capture of the before and after. It’s usually pretty easy to get a before shot – just use the QA or production environment. Then for the after shot, use your local server. Both GitHub and Atlassian BitBucket allow you to paste images, so you can literally SHIFT-CTRL-CMD-4 (OSX) to copy a section of the screen to your clipboard, then CMD-V to paste it into the input box of your PR description.

Another incredibly helpful option is to use an application like GIPHY Capture to record an animated GIF that can be added to your PR. These are great for when you want to show an animation or a sequence of steps.

Let’s face it, it’s a pain for the reviewers to fire up their Windows vm to try out your change that resolves an Edge problem. Make their life easier by including an animated GIF that shows exactly what changed right in the Pull Request!

Ask For Assistance

Become a big fan of the quote “it is better to beg for forgiveness rather than ask for permission.” In so many instances, not just in software, this rule helps save time. But making too big a change in your PR may be received poorly, especially when you are not a regular contributing member.

Be cautious and curious in order to lead a better engagement and ultimately, a better solution.

Here is a comment made on a PR to a tslint project. You can see how the person’s comment/feedback is acknowledged and further asks a clarifying question because of the impact it would have on so many files. This lets the reviewers know that you have respect and consideration for the size changes coming into their code base, and also that you want to be collaborative in finding the best solution.

Closing Thoughts

What other things do you like to do in your PRs? What kinds of things would you like to see more of in PRs that you are reviewing? What would you like to see less of?

Apr 01 2019

Our Greatest Investment Opportunity

InRhythm’s success is built on the excellence of every employee, and the outstanding work they do every day continues to drive us to greater heights. While we look to hire the very best consultants at the outset, every employee is on their own career journey, and one of the cornerstones of our company culture is investing in the careers and lives of our people to help them be happier, healthier, and more proficient in their fields. Investing in this development has, for me, provided an enormous return in the form of profitability, productivity, and the overall wellness of our employees.

Personal Zen

InRhythmers already enjoy a company reimbursement for the music streaming service of their choice; music is a core part of the day for many of us, and it just made sense to keep everyone happy with their favorite personal playlists, unburdened by ads. Not everyone listens to music when they work, however, so this year we’re expanding the program to include audiobook services like Audible and wellness and meditation apps like Headspace, so each of our employees can define their own idea of work zen with our enthusiastic support.

Empowering our employees to find their focus and de-stress increases confidence and performance. Meditation, in particular, offers a number of benefits, including increased immune function and lowered anxiety, that pay huge dividends in and out of the office. We can’t always predict the future in this fast-moving industry, and no consultancy is immune from stressful days, but by giving InRhythmers the tools they need to stay grounded and happy, they can tackle the biggest problems and opportunities ahead of us.

A Better Future

We hire engineers and designers at all skill levels to work on some of the biggest industry-shaping projects, but each and every one of our consultants is ambitious and dedicated to growing their expertise. Our culture of learning and growth is designed to take every InRhythmer to the next level, whatever that might look like for them. InRhythmU, our suite of internal and client-facing training and development workshops, speaker series, and resources is a comprehensive platform for our people to learn from (and teach!) each other, sharing their mastery of everything from cutting-edge programming languages to soft skills like leadership, personal branding, and public speaking.

We also provide a coaching program that pairs our senior-level consultants with several mentees, each with their own specific goals for the year. Our coaches work individually with their mentees and consult with other coaches on guiding every InRhythmer toward goals they’ve self-identified. The result? Our people are working on everything from personal financial literacy to Chrome extension development, with our coaches and the entire culture of InRhythm as the wind at their back.

When you hire for the very best, you’ll find yourself surrounded by people who are naturally ambitious and hungry to learn. In practice, however, I see a huge deficit in the education provided by a lot of companies in our industry; while it’s fine for your employees to seek learning elsewhere, it’s also a huge missed opportunity to engage with your people and personally invest in their success. By providing these resources on-site at InRhythm headquarters and empowering our people to not only come to us to learn but also to teach each other, a richer culture is born.

P.S. We also encourage our speakers to open up their learning and growth events, where appropriate, to the general public. Whether you’re a current InRhythmer, looking to join the team, or just interested in the field, I encourage you to join our InRhythmU Meetup group to get the latest updates and RSVP info for upcoming events:

Design Sprints with Joe Cahill
April 24th | 5 pm | RSVP

Compassionate Coding with Brian Olore
May 16th | 5 pm | RSVP

GraphQL with Denny Temple
June 20th | 5 pm | RSVP

Advanced Design Patterns with Will Bratches
July 18th | 5 pm | RSVP

React Native with James Woods
August 15th | 5 pm | RSVP

We’ve got a lot of different events, owing to the wide-ranging interests of our consultants, so if there’s something that interests you, I look forward to seeing you at an InRhythmU event soon.

Thanks and Keep Growing,
Gunjan

Feb 15 2019

How to Be a Better Engineer ?: InRhythm’s Learning and Growth Newsletter

February 11th: How to Be a Better Engineer

InRhythm’s mission, in the work we do and the people we hire, is acutely focused on learning and growth. Through the development of InRhythmU, our internal professional growth initiative, we’re developing programs to ensure that our engineers reach the level of technical ability required by our clients. Being a great engineer involves more than keeping up with tech trends or mastering a framework, however.

We want to create bar-raisers who take our client relationships to the next level. The real goal is to train engineers who can approach engineering problems strategically and make good choices in a world of infinite options. As we develop this system of skill building and growth, a few key questions emerge. How do junior engineers learn to become senior engineers? How much technical ability should a UI designer aim for? Should every member of the team understand user experience design? Database design? What does “full-stack engineer” really mean? And what’s our role in building the next generation of software?

This month we dive into these issues, led by senior InRhythm engineer Brian Olore, whose article “Becoming a Senior Engineer” clearly lays out some tips, tricks, and time-tested strategies that will help you raise that bar.

Tell us what you think separates good engineers from great ones—or shout out any great engineers you know (we’re hiring!)—@GetInRhythm or here on the InRhythmU blog.

Thanks and Keep Growing,

Gunjan Doshi
CEO, InRhythm

Becoming a Senior Engineer
(4 min. read)
“Looking to take your engineering career to the next level? These five tips will set you on the path to greater things and make you a standout in the field. As we all know, it’s not easy to be exceptional in this already-competitive field, but the reward for real leadership is high, and if you’re truly passionate about your craft, these tips—including mentorship and open source contributions—will be something to get excited about.”

What We’re Reading Around the Web

The Great Divide
(14 min. read)
CSS-Tricks
“In this provocative article, Chris Coyer lays out why he thinks there’s a rift growing in the development community. The fault line? JavaScript. On one side are those who believe a ‘front-end engineer’ must be skilled with the language, while the other side feels ‘cosmically far away from the articles and conversations around accessibility, semantic markup, CSS possibilities, UX considerations, and UI polish, among others.’ Coyer quips: ‘Two front-end developers are sitting at a bar. They have nothing to talk about.’ False dichotomy? Industry impasse? You decide.”

Designing for the Web Ought to Mean Making HTML and CSS
(4 min. read)
Signal V. Noise
“Et tu, JavaScript? ‘The industry is making it too hard to work directly with the web’ says Ruby On Rails creator, best-selling author, and racecar driver(!) David Heinemeier Hansson. Never one to shy away from controversy, DHH (as he is known) calls out the industry’for polluting our thinking with over-engineered frameworks and toolkits while ignoring the raw value of “native” web technologies like HTML and CSS (and JavaScript) and the opinions of designers who work with them: ‘The towering demands inherent in certain ways of working with JavaScript are rightfully scaring some designers off from implementing their ideas at all. That’s a travesty.’ Is the soft bigotry of low expectations degrading the quality of our teams? Is knowledge of JavaScript non-negotiable for ‘front-end engineers’?”

HTML, CSS and Our Vanishing Industry Entry Points
(6 min. read)
Rachel Andrew
“It ain’t easy bein’ green. The leadership team at InRhythm spends a great deal of time improving the way we attract, train, and retain talent. Many of our hires are relatively new to this industry; Rachel Andrew has been thinking about what those new entries into this field face, worried that we’re excluding many people unnecessarily, especially those without formal training. What about those who learn ‘on the job,’ view source and copy, or futz around with a GitHub repo and learn on their own? Aren’t ambitious people to be valued? Didn’t the web grow so rapidly and profitably specifically because barriers to entry didn’t exist? ‘If we make it so that you have to understand programming to even start, then we take something open and enabling, and place it back in the hands of those who are already privileged.’ There may be implications here for society, and freedom; Andrew’s larger point is worth considering.”

What Happened to the Internet?
(11 min. read)
thinkgrowth.org
“Here’s to the crazy ones, the misfits, the rebels, the troublemakers. We’ve been told that technology companies value those who ‘Think Different.’ Is that still true on the Internet? Jared Sumner reminds us of a time when the web was ‘weird and fun,’ and we liked it! Is coding now a privilege, instead of a right? Wasn’t this technology supposed to be a great equalizer, rather than an opportunity to be monopolized by tech giants? Following this line of thinking and going deeper, Meghan Keaney Anderson asks us whether ‘what was once the closest thing we could imagine to a meritocracy more closely resembles an oligarchy ruled by a few powerful gatekeepers.’ Food for thought.”

Apr 17 2018

A new point of Vue: Part 2

Anthony is back with part 2 of his workshop series on Vue.JS. If you couldn’t make it, take a look!

Apr 17 2018

On the subject of Learning and Growth

Here at InRhythm, we’re passionate about Learning and Growth. Normally I don’t unnecessarily capitalize words, but that’s the subject of this post and I think it’s important to emphasize those words and what they mean. We define Learning and Growth as the process of becoming a better, more advanced person, capable of handling new and familiar situations more efficiently and effectively. So why are learning and growth so important to us? Because our people want it!

What’s the problem?

Across all industries, but especially in the consulting industry, employee retention is a big issue. Consulting has one of the highest turnover rates of all industries. Historically, a lot of consulting companies have employed a more dog-eat-dog mentality. “We’re in an industry that’s all about the bottom line, so why shouldn’t we treat our employees the same way?” – these companies employ a strategy along the lines of “grow or go,” treating employees like they must either climb the corporate ladder or get out because there’s no room for those who do not aspire to be the CEO. The problem here is that not everybody wants to be a CEO and that is okay.

Employee retention is almost exclusively a function of employee satisfaction. In all cases of turnover (voluntary or involuntary termination), it is due to poor employee satisfaction. Terminations are largely based on performance and there is an established correlation between employee satisfaction, productivity, and retention. Keeping employees happy and productive requires a large investment by employers, but those that have made the commitment find that the return on their investment far exceeds what they invested. Which brings us again to what satisfies employees? How do employers keep them happy?

Broken attempts to fix it…

A lot of people are aware of the correlation between employee satisfaction and employee retention. There are a multitude of issues that could lead to dissatisfaction such as poor management or no trust between coworkers, but I want to focus on learning and growth. I’ve seen many different employers try to make their employees happier but their efforts are usually a little misguided. They try things like snazzing up the office with new decor, mandatory team-building exercises, holiday parties, or just throwing money at the problem and offering people bonuses or incentives. The last one is actually the most problematic. Studies show that once people reach a “comfortable” income level (adjusted for your location) they’re much less concerned about exact dollar amounts and more about their lifestyle. A raise will simply not keep people around as much as getting their own office and/or fixing whatever cultural problem they’re suffering from.

How we address it

We try to give people exactly what they want. Across the board, most people look for jobs to be growth opportunities. They want their position to be something they learn-into and then later something that provides them more contextual and higher-level growth. Very few people, especially in this industry, want to just do what they already know how to do. They want to do something slightly different to keep their brain and their career growing.

“Our people are the most important part of our company. It’s not the budgets, it’s not the office and the toys, it’s not messaging or branding… It’s the people that we work with.”

We try to provide growth in several ways. First, we only take on projects working on modern, interesting tech; our people don’t want to work on legacy apps maintaining code written years ago, they want new stuff where they can stretch their creative muscles. Only taking on modern projects means potentially turning down lucrative projects, but we also have the peace-of-mind that the whole team isn’t going to quit in 2 weeks. We also host a TON of learning events. So far this year we’ve worked on meetups exploring best practices in VueJS, CSS, and UX Design. We get good attendance at these meetups and I think it’s because our people really yearn to learn. We’re also very into finding learning resources for our people. Personally, I make sure to share as much interesting stuff on Slack as I can so that the team can benefit from the same interesting bits that I benefit from. We have a huge bookshelf at the office with books on all sorts of topics: Philosophy, Management, Coding, Interviewing, Business Development…

One of the reasons I joined a consultancy and InRhythm, in particular, is because of the opportunity for learning and growth and I wasn’t disappointed. Since I started here, I’ve been able to work on multiple client sites, learning about different cultures and processes. I’ve been able to work on different JavaScript frameworks that I might not have worked on otherwise. I’ve played different roles in the company and best of all: I’ve been able to spend time with a diverse group of interesting people. This kind of positive experience is easy to reproduce, all you have to do is listen to your people. If they say they want learning and growth, give it to them! If they say they want better snacks or more wall art or the budget to go to a conference, give it to them! Those happy, learning, growing employees will produce more than any others you’ve had before and they’ll stay with the company for a nice long time.

Additional Resources:

https://americanstaffing.net/posts/2014/10/01/climb-continues