Otto's log - The Tumblelog of Levent Ali

A tumblelog on much and nothing in the life of Levent Ali...

What does he do?

He's a Ruby developer, currently employed by JGP. He's working on and migrating from the old to the new, what is potentially one of the largest applications to date built in Rails.

He enjoys taking photos and co-owns Dented Records.

He's more of a jazz coder than a rockstar.

"Levent is a great web developer - always learning, always keen to get stuck into a meaty problem. Fully TDD and CI compliant, Levent always focuses on quality output. That said you can't hire him he works for me!!"
- Eben Halford, CTO, Jobs Go Public

I'm always open to stimulating conversation though.

Aug
6th

Wed

The Fear of Free

What’s with the fear of free? It’s funny on the one hand as receiver you’re always sceptical, “What’s the catch?” but it’s amazing the impact when you’re on the other side of the coin.

Our company are thinking of giving something away free on the web. Imagine! Something free on the web! What will they think of next? Anyway, now the account managers, sales staff and other stake-holders are so fearful of perceived risks associated with this, they are totally committed to the development process.

We’ve spent years trying to educate them on Agile principles and trying to get their buy in to our process, even though it’s always been of absolute benefit to them. Now that they are scared that giving something away might come back to bite them, it’s incredible the quality of user stories that are coming out of them.

Welcome to the new millennium guys…