As one of the earliest engineers at Magnet Forensics, Nick Cosentino helped shape much of the engineering culture and software for the 8 years he worked there.
2020 has been an interesting year for everyone, without a doubt. For me, 2020 involved a career change that wasn't something I was expecting at the start of the year. I had been comfortable with my past employer, Magnet Forensics, for just shy of 8 years and had the opportunity to work on many high-impact projects as part of a mission to help with saving children and assisting law enforcement. But at the end of August, I started my first day in my next adventure with Microsoft. I wanted to write a couple of posts about getting up and running at Microsoft so I figured I'd start with some high level points. This post will be focused on what it was like to join a tech giant after helping scale a startup to hundreds of people internationally. Meeting the Team…
C# Dev Connect 1: Intro to Threading In my last post, I mentioned we'd be hosting a C# Dev Connect meetup at our Magnet Forensics HQ in Waterloo. I figured I'd post to talk about how the event went so that if you couldn't make it, you'll have an idea for next time (and if you did make it, maybe you can comment on how you thought the event went). Our first Dev Connect was lead by a colleague of mine, Chris Sippel, who wanted to give a talk on threading basics in C#. Threading can quickly become a really complex topic, so Chris wanted to keep it high level and talk about the different approaches you can use to start threading in your C# applications. https://twitter.com/Chris_Sippel/status/557655585492328450 Dev Connect: Before the Talk Before Chris gave his talk on threading, we…
C# Dev Connect Meetup! About a year ago I had thrown around the idea of creating a C#-specific group that would meet at a regular interval with some of my colleagues. I saw that there was interest, but between all of the things we had going on in our personal lives and work lives, we just hadn't been able to co-ordinate something. I'm excited to announce that with some more solid planning over the last couple of months, C# Dev Connect will be able to host their first meetup! The company I work for, Magnet Forensics, has graciously offered our new office to host the event which will help tremendously. We'll have a group of people from Magnet Forensics their to help out, but the only thing "Magnet" about the event is really just that it's hosted at the office. What's…
Hack The North... What The Hack Is That? Hack The North is Canada's largest international hackathon. It's big. It's bad. It's awesome. Okay, but what does that even mean? The idea is that 1000 people get together from all over the world in an event where they're given 36 hours to create amazing technology hacks. There's a lack of sleep but no lack of amazing ideas and hacked together proof of concepts that show incredible innovation. Sponsors are present to hand out prizes for best usage of their product or API to competitors as well as mentor them and provide help with problem solving. This year, Hack The North was hosted at The University of Waterloo. Bro, Do You Even Hack?! This was my first time ever at a hackathon. I've participated in the Ontario Engineering Competition (OEC) which is much…
Continuing With Continuous Improvement I wrote about continuous improvement before and how I've been trying to tie that into my leadership role through changes to my one on one process. To recap, at our organization we try to roll continuous improvement into most things that we do. We're well aware that we're not going to get things perfect the first time, so as long as we have a process in place to learn, reflect, and adapt, then we can make changes to better our situation. It's something that's ongoing and it doesn't really have an end. So long as your organization is growing and changing over time, or the environment in which your organization is changing over time, having continuous improvement baked into your culture is key to success. Previously, I mentioned that at Magnet Forensics I hold regular one…
Continuous Improvement - Baby Steps! Our development team at Magnet Forensics focuses a lot on continuous improvement. It's one of the things baked into a retrospective often performed in agile software shops. It's all about acknowledging that no system or process is going to be perfect and that as your landscape changes, a lot of other things will too. The concept of continuous improvement isn't limited to just the software we make or the processes we put in place for doing so. You can apply it to anything that's repeated over time where you can measure positive and negative changes. I figured it was time to apply it to my leadership practices. The One on One I lead a team of software developers at Magnet, but I'm not the boss of any of them. They're all equally my peers and…
Techno Security... What's it all about? Techno Security is a conference that was hosted by NUIX this year in Myrtle Beach. As that first link suggests, this conference has been bringing IT security professionals together for 16 years now. Techno Security doesn't aim to be the biggest conference of it's kind--just the best. At the Myrtle Beach Marriott Resort this year, Techno Security capitalized on a lot of the hotels real estate. There was a large banquet hall style room that was opened up for a great host of exhibitors. There were so many exhibitors that there was even overflow into the hallways surrounding the main exhibit area. On the other sides of those hallways there were rooms and smaller halls for training sessions. Even the halls in the basement of the hotel were packed with IT security and forensic-related sessions. First Conference…
No More Silence. I've been pretty quiet over the past month and a bit, but that doesn't mean that nothing is going on behind the scenes. I've been busy (maybe a little bit too busy?) and I haven't really put in the time to create or share any content online. When I over commit, something has to give, unfortunately. Okay, so what's been happening? New Hires! We've brought on some amazing talent to help at work, and that's always incredibly exciting. We had Chris Sippel return to us after finishing up his final portion of school. Chris is a bit quirky (and that's really why we love him) and started with us in the early days. Pumped to have you back, buddy! We brought on board Jason Gregory and Matthew Beamer who bring a host of skills that are truly…
Snow Tubing First off... If you haven't ever gone snow tubing, get off your computer and get to your nearest snow tubing park. Now that you're back from that, we're all on the same page. Friday was another one of Magnet Forensics' staff events and we were fortunate enough to go tubing at Chicopee Tube Park. I hadn't been snow tubing before--only water tubing--and I haven't even been on a ski hill or anything for years. To be honest, snow tubing to me seemed like a bit of a glorified crazy-carpet experience which would be fun, but get boring after a couple of runs. I'll be the first to admit I was dead wrong. Snow tubing was probably the most awesome way for the entire Magnet family to cut loose this quarter. Most people either love or hate the snow,…
Background At Magnet Forensics, I lead an awesome team of people with the mission of creating forensics software to help investigators around the world solve crimes. We're stacked with incredible people--and not only on the team I'm on, but company-wide. We do a great job of recognizing our achievements as an organization and as a team, but also on an individual level. If someone has gone above and beyond, we don't keep that a secret. I've been trying to make more of a conscious effort to recognize the people I work with, especially in ways that are unique to my own style. I think recognizing people in person is important, but you also need to consider your setting. Sometimes recognition in a public forum isn't actually appreciated or isn't nearly as effective as appreciating in a one-on-one setting. I find…
