As developers, we deal with management all the time but aren’t normally interested in becoming managers ourselves. In fact, we take a perverse pride in being difficult to manage and being more interested in being right than doing what is politically expedient.
Unsurprisingly, this leads to difficulties when business crises arise, like reorganizations, layoffs, or simply new opportunities that we would like to pursue. It’s hard to get what you want when we’re viewed as part of the problem rather than the solution.
This talk is about understanding the world of your manager and how you can take simple steps to build a relationship that you can rely on when you need it.
Ken Kousen is a technical trainer, software developer, and conference speaker specializing in Java and open source topics, including Android, Spring, Hibernate/JPA, Groovy, Grails, and Gradle. He is the author of the O’Reilly book “Gradle Recipes for Android” and the Manning book “Making Java Groovy”. He also has recorded several video courses for O’Reilly, including two on Android, three on Groovy, two on Gradle, and one on the Spring Framework.
In 2013 was awarded a JavaOne Rockstar award. His academic background include BS degrees in Mechanical Engineering and Mathematics from M.I.T., an MA and Ph.D. in Aerospace Engineering from Princeton, and an MS in Computer Science from R.P.I. He is currently President of Kousen IT, Inc., based in Connecticut.
