Cody Django

Community-led Growth

I recently was interviewed by Zapnito, a platform for growing communities. This was the questionnaire, central to the direction of the interview. Can you give a brief intro to who you are and what you do? I'm Cody Django Redmond, a software engineering professional

marketing

Mobile game marketing in 2023, for Engineers

This is a primer, designed with developers in mind who might not otherwise be too familiar with marketing in mobile games, and specifically the changes that have taken place over the last few years. A Quick HistoryThe mobile gaming industry has been forced to

lifestyle

Running in 2023

Yep, a little late for this considering it's already March. What can I say, things have been moving a little slower with the baby. I'm going to run a half marathon this year. I've never run any sort of marathon. I was running quite

music

2022 Music

In no particular order, my favorite albums of the year.

family

Moved to the island

Audrey and I have extracted ourselves from Vancouver. We've moved to Qualicum Beach on Vancouver Island. Over the last few years we've been researching potential areas but with our daughter

family

Audrey grew a baby

I'm happy to announce that Audrey and I welcomed a beautiful baby girl into the world last week. It's our first. We're ecstatic, and exhausted! I'll be less available for

values

Proposed team values

I've been involved in quite a bit of hiring as our company continues to grow. I'm always looking through engineering CV's. If someone looks interesting, I'll spend a few minutes

developer experience

Let developers tell you where the bottlenecks are

The DX surveys are similar to what you might expect if you've read Accelerate – they focus on proven drivers for velocity, and provide insights into which changes will be most impactful across engineering departments.

programming

Code Smells

“Look, that's why there's rules, understand? So that you think before you break 'em." – Terry Pratchett, Thief of Time A Code Smell is a hint that something might be off

health

Starting a meditation practice

Back in February my friend Natiea introduced me to the Waking Up app, and with it, Sam Harris. I had previously been introduced to Sam Harris in the same breath as a certain Jordan Peterson, who, at the time, I wanted nothing more to

leadership

Is Zeigarnik affecting your team?

Yesterday I had a call with an old acquaintance, and while chatting about various team behaviours, he described a situation that reminded me of a topic I've been wanting to write on. It's called the Zeigarnik effect. In a nutshell, it's that we are

leadership

Torch leadership coaching

This week I had my last session with my coach. A couple of months back A Thinking Ape announced that they would be doing another round with an executive coaching platform, Torch. They'd run through it twice before, but as A Thinking Ape keeps

learnings

Getting to yes

It's easy enough to come up with a rational argument and hope that others will see the light, but sometimes it feels more like the only way to find alignment is with witchcraft under a full moon. And if you're on a timeline, well,

software development

Onboarding for legacy service rewrite

We have a new engineer joining our team next week, and they're fairly new to software testing. The existing codebase that she works in isn't exactly a beacon of shining perfection, so I don't presume she's ramped up on maintainable testing strategies. I'm gathering

engineering

A Thinking Ape Engineering FAQ

What kind of problems do you solve at ATA?Well, everyone knows we build mobile games. But sometimes folks are surprised to learn that our games are built against a shared backend composed of dozens of microservices. It's not just games that we build.

behaviour

My morning sidekick

I recently started Habit Nest's "Morning Sidekick Journal", to help me build a better morning routine. I'm generally happy with the routine I've been using for the past year, but I'd like to add meditation, reading, and exercise, and I'd like for this to

mindfulness

Practicing executive function

Two months back, my friend Natiea suggested that I check out a meditation app created by Sam Harris. I had tried apps for meditation before. She asserted that this one was unlike the rest, and gave me a promo code so I could try

teams

Achieving team cohesion

I often work with my reports on an individual basis, but it's also possible to work with your team as a whole. I was wondering what methods you use to facilitate team cohesion/a sense of team identity or ownership?Some quick ideas based

communication

A pitfall of lateral thinking

Most people prefer Vulcan logic. It's easier when things are black and white. Logical thinking is based on reasoning from known first principles. All conclusions derived from the same axioms will be the same. This isn't exactly exciting, and doesn't leave much for interpretation

innovation

Ethereum

Because of all the excitement lately in the Blockchain space, I've been getting queried more frequently about Ethereum and how it differs from Bitcoin. Here's how I've been answering. Why

A new bible for engineering management?

Maybe not, but I'm convinced that Team Topologies will eventually end up next to Domain-Driven Design, Accelerate, and even The Mythical Man Month. Team Topologies is a practical, step-by-step, adaptive

health

Supplements I'm comfortable recommending to almost anybody

This has been coming up frequently in conversations lately, so it's about time I write a little post on it. For the past decade or so I've been monitoring my

writing

On writing well

I've long been obsessed with the relationship that writers have with writing. This first came to bare reading Henry Miller, finding it curious that his memoirs were chock-full of stories

music

Weeklybeats wrap-up

In 2020, I took on the weeklybeats.com challenge of producing a piece of music every week for entire year. Ambitious, especially for me, whose primary focus is growing as

product

Engineering community

The first thing you'd see when walking into the ATA office, (back when this was a thing) is "WE BUILD COMMUNITIES". Our community managers and engineers work directly with our