A Blog

Written by Scott Williams who lives and works in sunny Phoenix, AZ. Twitter is also a place.

My Recruiting “Trick” - The Good, The Bad, and The Middle

Trust is a recurring theme in my management style and I try to start building it before I’ve hired people. Trust is formed when one side of…

What Are You Struggling With?

Here’s another interview question you’ll face: “What is something that you’ve struggled with and what have you done to fix it?” I view this…

Deciding When a Fix is Worthwhile

Beth had asked for my opinion on a feature she was finalizing. The project was a biggie — year long, 20+ engineers, many different tech…

Failure and Ultimately Fixing It

I’ve been debating writing this because it requires me to open up in a way that isn’t all that comfortable for me. Specifically, I want to…

Whining vs Venting

It was time for my one-on-one with Ron and I could tell it would be a doozy. He slumped into a chair and before I could even start with a…

Building Trust on Teams

Let’s talk about trust. Team members who trust each other feel psychologically safe. This means they’ll be emboldened to act as themselves…

I'm a Fast Learner

When I’m hiring, I hear this one a lot. A candidate is nervous about something that I just asked, let’s use GraphQL as an example, about…

Book Report: Dead Mountain

I have a weird fascination with high altitude/cold weather disasters and mysteries. I’ve watched every documentary on Netflix about Everest…

How I Read Resumés

I see a lot of resumés. We’re a growing company , and are hiring often , so the rate of resumés that cross my desk has only gone up. I…

Red/Blue Game

My kids and I like to play with Nerf guns. My younger daughter in particular likes to sneak up behind people and shoot them in the back…

Dreamers and Doers

Let me tell you about “Jake”. Jake was a colleague of mine and he loved to watch TED talks. If you had lunch with him, you were guaranteed…

Race Report — Phoenix Rock 'n Roll Half Marathon

I tend to function better when I have specific goals. As part of improving my overall health I started to take up running back in mid 201…

Google OAuth, Ember, Hapi

OAuth is, to borrow a phrase, a bag of hurt. Not just any bag, but the kind that is thrown over your head right before you’re thrown into a…

Maine and Back Again

“We’re going to Maine.” “Oh… do you have family or friends out there?” That’s usually how the conversation went when I informed people of…

Apps I Use and if they'd Work as a Subscription

Apps on my home screen that I use most often and my opinion if they’d be appropriate for the new subscription service Apple is rolling out…

One Year of Getting Healthy

I received my Apple Watch just over a year ago. I bought it because it felt like it was going to be the next big platform, and I didn’t want…

Introducing Gliphy

I’m very happy to introduce a new open source library that I’ve been building. It’s called Gliphy and it makes implementing Dynamic Type…

Combining if let and where in Swift

What I like about Swift is that it feels like a natural progression when learning more of the language’s features. Case in point: I’ve known…

Private Extensions in Swift

Here’s a quickie. In Swift, the default accessor for strcutures is , meaning that it is available to everything else within the module…

The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly with the Apple TV

A new Apple device! I’m required to have opinions. Here they are in a contrived fashion! The Good Great UI and aesthetics. It’s faster…