OAuth client authentication, leadership, and social media woes

Client credentials beyond passwords, more leadership reading, and more updates.

OAuth client authentication beyond client secrets

My newest article on OAuth is a reference for the different methods of client authentication. This has already proven helpful in answering questions and on consultancy calls and is my contribution towards removing passwords from OAuth flows.

Leadership

I really enjoyed writing about leadership the other month, so I’ve done it again, this time for the book “The Making of a Manager”.

It’s a long one this time, but I’ve started sharing a lot more of my own leadership experiences and failings this time around. It’s been nice to include some of my personality in non-technical articles, and as you’ll see, I'm something of a ranter once you get me going. People usually find it funny, at least. Here’s a snippet:

THE "SWOOP AND POOP"

I love this term, as it perfectly sums up a couple of managers I’ve had in the past, who would infuriate developers with constant requirements changes or suddenly undermine a tech lead with unnecessary, opinionated changes that they’ve become fixated on, demanding they get actioned immediately, often calling out their disappointment with the whole team. This required a lot of upwards management to handle (I personally got very good at creating bait for them to focus on so that the real work could continue elsewhere), and it just made for demoralized engineers and stressed-out middle managers (ask my wife and hairline). Not fun.

Read more →

Social media woes

For obvious reasons, I’ve created a Mastodon account in an initial step away from the bird site. I’m not sure how things are going to work out there. I want to think I’ll be a bit more active, but let’s face it, I’ll probably just share links to new articles.

Feedback

Now that I’m not working in the space full-time, I’m slowly working through my existing backlog of identity articles, with new ideas/requests coming via the community. So if you have any article ideas or feedback, let me know by replying to this newsletter or reaching out on social media 🙂.

I’m not sure what articles will make their way out next month, but at the very least, you’ll have my annual year in review!