About Loose Marbles...What's with the name?

Loose Marbles is a blog about my experiences as a software engineering manager. Throughout my career, even when I'm not looking for a new opportunity, I'm always thinking about the experiences I'm having on the job, and specifically how I would talk about them when asked in my next job interview. In part, this is because I'm not very good at thinking on my feet, so I prefer to anticipate questions and have an answer in my pocket. But also, I just feel that constant introspection is a good learning experience. We should always be thinking about the takeaways from our experiences as they happen, and recording them in "permanent storage". A perpetual post-mortem, if you will.

So the first question I expect to be asked in any future interview is "What does management mean to you?"

I'll answer with an analogy: "Its like somebody dumps a bag of marbles on a flat table, and your job is to make sure none of them rolls off the edge."