I'm Brian Duff, a Scot 馃彺鬆仹鬆仮鬆伋鬆仯鬆伌鬆伩 living and working in the California Bay Area. I've worked, written, and presented about technology since the 90s.
My journey with computers started in the 80s while playing Manic Miner and hacking BASIC on the Sinclair ZX Spectrum.
I'm currently a Distinguished Engineer at LinkedIn. Previously, I was a Principal Engineer at Google. Before Google, I worked on Engineering Effectiveness at Twitter, and then before that, led Mobile Developer Experience at Facebook. Prior to that, I worked at Google leading projects and teams on a large number of things for many years, including Nearby, Cloud SQL, Bazel, and Google+. My first job out of university was at Oracle, where I built IDE frameworks for a living.
Nothing here yet.
Nov 15, 2023 路 2 min read 路 I've changed companies again! I seem to be doing this a lot lately, but there are (as always) good reasons for it. This time around, the nice folks at LinkedIn reached out about a Distinguished Engineer role they had in the developer productivity spa...
Join discussionJul 8, 2023 路 3 min read 路 I've been back at Google for a year already - it's hard to believe the time has passed so quickly. It will soon also be the 15th anniversary since the day I first joined Google in 2008. A lot has changed. It's a bit of an eerie experience at times - ...
Join discussionMay 24, 2022 路 2 min read 路 When you first join a new org or company, draw a map. Months into some roles, I've made faulty assumptions due to my understanding of organizational relationships. I'd wonder why a function was inefficiently split across two orgs, only to find that i...
Join discussionMay 20, 2022 路 2 min read 路 It just doesn't feel right. Your instinct is telling you it's wrong. But you don't trust it. You're rational. You believe in the scientific method. Cause and effect. Engineers don't operate on instinct. We're data driven. We look for root causes. We ...
Join discussionJan 4, 2022 路 2 min read 路 You feel like you did OK, but the outcome isn't what you were anticipating. It often means you didn't do as well as you thought. There may be a slight, but correctable gap between your situational perception and reality. Sometimes external factors m...
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