Afleveringen
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In this episode, Dave and Jamison answer these questions:
Iāve been a developer for about 1.5 years. I work for a large consultancy. we provide services to big clients. Iām working on a front-end codebase that has been through three consulting companies already.
Tired of just moving tickets and fixing bugs, I decided to refactor the front end of the entire application we support. Touching the codebase to add features gave me a pit in my stomach. No integration tests, no staging environment, huge functions with tons of parameters, etc.
The client provided technical guidelines that were pretty solid, but the code just didnāt follow them at all. In the time left on the contract, I refactored the codebase to fix the biggest problems to align with the clientās technical guidelines. I did all this without my manager/PO/PM asking me to.
But now, how do I communicate what Iāve done to the client and my manager? Can I get any recognition for it?
A listener named Mike asks,
Iāve been in my role for about 1.5 years in a dev team of 7. I really like the job, it has a good culture and Iām learning. Sometimes I channel my desire to learn into improving our projects with small, self directed changes on my own time. I these changes are useful but arenāt high enough priority to make it into planned sprint work. I donāt inundate the team with these requests, it happens maybe 1-2 times a month.
We make a point of working in small steps, usually submitting several PRs per day each. I really like this approach, and I also keep my occasional self-directed bits of work small in scale. However, Iāve noticed these PRs receive more scrutiny and more āwhataboutismā that our regular on-the-books PRs.
For example, for regular sprint tickets thereās an understanding that weāre making progressive improvements or building small pieces of features that exist within the constraints of our systems. We might flag broader improvements to consider, but thereās no expectation to re-boil the ocean every time we want to merge code.
When I submit a self initiated piece of work there can be a long back and forth of suggestions that can involve changing other dependent code, changing internal APIs which may have side- effects, and generally a level of defensiveness in the code that we never normally expect. I understand that by submitting off the books PRs I am requiring some work-time from reviewers, but there is more pushback than Iād expect. It feels like because I get the ball rolling on my own time the normal cost-benefit constraints go out the window, and the code purists come out to play.
Could I be annoying the team with these submissions? Have you experienced team members doing the same thing? Is there a way I can scratch my own itch by learning against our systems without creating this resistance?
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In this episode, Dave and Jamison answer these questions:
A listener named Scot asks,
A new architect was hired at my company 6 months ago. Iām an engineer one rung lower on the hierarchy and have been here for 3.5 years. He hasnāt done much to learn about any of us who have been here for a while, so he is constantly undermining my skills and suggestions and assuming heās smarter than me. On our most recent project we had a lot of issues due to his design, which departed from our best practices. Heās still acting like he knows best and is getting under my skin. Our company usually hires more collaborative people so Iāve not had to deal with this before. How can I stay calm, professional, and confident in my skills while working with this guy?
Who is my boss? No, really. I need answers.
Iām a Principal Developer with so many bosses, Iām starting to wonder if this is a multi-level marketing scheme. My team lead gives me work. His boss gives me work. Every project lead crashes into my inbox like the Kool-Aid Man screaming that their thing is the most urgent. My calendar is a cursed artifact, filled with 20+ hours of meetings a week, where I nod knowingly while my soul quietly exits my body.
My team lead is a Designer and has no idea what I actually do or the expectations of a Principal Developer, which is convenient, because neither do I.
When I asked his boss to help me prioritize, I was told, āItās all importantājust make sure mine is done first, and donāt tell the project leads.ā Our product owner wants to be anything but a product owner, and our scrum master is treated like the office secretary, not a blocker remover.
Top it off, Iām now being asked to weigh in on architecture decisions for our tech stack while not being invited to architecture meetings and being told to ājust figure it outā when I asked how to structure the documents and diagrams they want. So now Iām behind on doing dev work, pretending to be an architect, and the team Iām meant to be mentoring never see me unless theyāre in one of the same meetings Iām trapped in.
How do I set boundaries and prioritize without causing a nuclear meltdown? Or should I just consult a Magic 8-Ball and let fate decide? Because honestly, Iām one email away from faking my own disappearance and leaving an out-of-office message that says, āNo.ā
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Zijn er afleveringen die ontbreken?
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In this episode, Dave and Jamison answer these questions:
I struggle with behavioral interviews. Iāve gotten a little bit better as Iāve done more interviews, but itās still a major pain point for me.
I have some common behavioral question answers written out in a spreadsheet in SAR format, but I feel that not all of them are good examples for a mid-level developer. The main problem is that I canāt remember in detail all the things Iāve done at work in the past few years. For example, I can think of one time I had a small conflict with a coworker, but I canāt remember the details of what happened. I have a work diary of sorts, but unfortunately, I havenāt been regularly writing things down. Also, I usually just write down accomplishments and notable things that happened. Should I start writing down experiences that match up with these types of behavioral questions?? Do you have any advice on how I can jog my memory and reflect on all the things Iāve done during my career to craft good answers to behavioral questions?
I also freeze up when Iām asked a ātell me about a time whenā¦ā question that Iāve never experienced. Iāve heard advice like ācome up with a hypothetical scenario and explain what you would doā or ājust lie and make up a storyā. Iām the type of person who has a very hard time lying and making stuff up on the fly.
I am one year into being promoted to a team lead at my company. We are made up of 4 devs, 2 QA, and a product owner. One challenge for our team has been differing time zones. Our 2 QA engineers are east coast while the rest of the team is on the west coast. Currently one of them signs off at 5pm EST and the other at 4pm EST. This means that if thereās any communication that needs to happen between dev and QA it has to happen in the morning since by 1pm PST they are headed out the door. This also constrains the times that Iām able to schedule meetings that involve QA.
Iāve been thinking for awhile establishing a set of core hours from 9am-2pm PST but have been afraid of the pushback from our QA. I feel like making this adjustment is reasonable and other people Iāve asked have echoed that sentiment but my desire to people please and be looked at favorably is preventing me from making a change. In all honesty we can get by with the current set up, but I find myself getting bitter about not being able to schedule meetings in the afternoon and stories getting held up because QA is off the clock so early. What do?
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In this episode, Dave and Jamison answer these questions:
Hello, long time listener first time question asker. I work for a medium sized tech company and I recently moved teams. Right now my old team is attempting to refactor a bunch of code I wrote to use a library thatāll make life easier. I donāt blame them, I tried to do the same thing. It does not work. I asked the tech lead ādid you run into the same framework bug I did when I tried this refactorāā¦ ānopeā he said. So out of curiosity I pulled down the branch and guess what I saw, the same bug when I tried this refactor 3 months ago. Now I am in a weird position. Do I tell the tech lead again (he was the tech lead when I tried this same refactor) that this does not work or do I ignore it because I am no longer on that team? I donāt want to overstep my bounds but I also know its a lot of work to refactor all this code, so much work theyād need to stop delivering features and add this to their roadmap.
I have been interviewing for leadership roles and I keep getting asked āWhat is your Leadership Styleā? I am honestly not quite sure how to answer this as I donāt really understand what they are asking. I have searched the internet for a clean, 5th normal form database that lists the available styles to no avail with no definitive tables. It seems this is truly a soft skill. From your experience, what is the interviewer really asking in this case, how can I better identify common styles, and what can I do to grow my skills in this area?
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In this episode, Dave and Jamison answer these questions:
A listener named Steven says,
Long-time listener of the podcast hereāit always brings me so much joy!
Should I prioritize title over salary?
Iām currently based in Europe, working as a Senior Engineer at a big company that pays really well. The problem is, thereās almost no chance for promotion due to the economy and budget constraints. Plus, because of the organizational structure, Iām stuck solving small problems that donāt have a big impact. Itās frustratingābut again, the pay is great.
Recently, I got an offer for a Staff Engineer position at another company. The catch is, the pay isnāt as good (30%+ cut), and Iām not sure about their culture or structure yet. However, the title could potentially open more doors for me in the future.
Should I take the offer, accept the pay cut, and hope itās a step forward for my career?
Hello! Long time listener, first-time caller :-) Iām on the final stretch of classes to finish my BS in computer science at WGU, most of which Iāve done while working. Iām now 40, and I have had 3 previous occupations and employers: aircraft mechanic for 5 years at a small shop, figure skater with Disney on Ice for 6 years, and most recently a partner at an environmental remediation/heavy construction firm for 10 years where my primary responsibilities were field crew management and technical writing for ecology reports. I would love your advice on how I could use these experiences to stand out on a resume or in a job interview. How can I indicate that Iām a hard worker and that I know just enough to know that I know nothing and am ready to learn? Thank you for your time, keep up the good work!
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In this episode, Dave and Jamison answer these questions:
I am a mid level engineer overleveled as a senior engineer in a FAANG company. I got super lucky landing this high paying remote job, but dangā¦ I did underestimate the expectations for my senior level. I had no FAANG experience before, just working at startups, flat hierarchies, just doing the heavy lifting coding.
Now it is all about impact and multiplying impact across the team. I am told I should do less IC work and more leading of projects and owning initiatives.
Can you give me some general advice on what actions I can take to get from the mid-level to senior-level? I am not really sure, what taking ownership really means in practiceā¦ These just seem like empty phrases to me without a meaningā¦
I have had a bit of time, while running a 40 minute build, so I looked into open pull requests. One PR caught my eye and I started to read through it and left a comment with a suggestion for a small change. All in all sounds good probably, but the caveat to this is, that the PR was marked as Draft.
I was thinking that it would be useful for the author of the PR to already get some suggestions during development, but the response got me thinking. The author passive aggressively mentioned that the PR is in Draft and that there is more work to do.
Am I the jerk for commenting on a draft PR? Second question, what other things should I pay attention to in code reviews to not be a jerk?
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In this episode, Dave and Jamison answer these questions:
A listener named Matthias (mah-TEA-as) asks,
In episode 444 youāre talking about the problems when hiring in the age of AI. Iām a manager whoās trying to hire right now and frankly Iām at a loss. If feels like Iām wading through a sea of AI slop. What tips do you have to cut through the slop and reach actually good candidates?
Where I work the developers do not seem to āgetā source code control systems like git. Iām not a developer but have worked with developers at previous jobs and usually the developers instituted good source control practices themselves.
Our developers know they should push their code to the repo but only do it weekly/monthly, treating it as a ābackupā. Some back up their laptops using tools like Time Machine so think have taken care of safeguarding their source code that way.
How can I convince them that working in git, committing their code as they go, pushing regularly, branching/merging, tying code updates to tickets, etc will benefit them far more in the long run?
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In this episode, Dave and Jamison answer these questions:
A listener named Kevin asks,
Hey, found the show and really enjoy it! Been listening from the beginning and have noticed that one of the pieces of advice given is that you should not stay at your first job for too long, because itās more likely that youāve not found the best job for you. I think The Secretary Problem is the closest thing being cited.
I tend to agree with the math, but Iām still at my first software engineering job after 5 years and donāt really want to leave. There are obviously things I donāt particularly like or people I find challenging, but for the most part, I work on interesting projects with smart people, itās fully remote, the benefits are great, and my salary is comfortable. There have been times where I started to look for another job, only to have my current circumstances improve enough that I stopped the search.
What advice do you have for someone like me?
I donāt know if itās relevant, but Iāve managed to get married, buy a house, and just recently had our first baby. The pressure to provide and be conservative with my career is building.
Again, love the show and I hope youāll get to answering this before I catch up. I started from the beginning in late 2024, and in mid Jan 2025, Iām just past episode 50. Iāll let you do the math.
As a tech lead, I joined a project two years in the making which had only one engineer doing everything, including management. In the two years, only a POC has been completed and a āpre MVP-MVPā build is in progress. There is a hangup though, the funding for the project is supposed to come from another departments budget that doesnāt want it, and work was committed by the department I am in, and a third department intended to be completed by the end of the quarter.
I have been trying to finesse my teammate into cancelling the project or at least allow a resetting of expectations. My manager agrees with me. There seems to be a tug of war between AVPs and Directors. This has led my teammate to make some corporate aggressive comments. These are being directed in many directions, including department heads opposing the project.
In your professional space experience, how can I help my teammate with understanding that his tactics are potentially damaging to his reputation and the project?
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In this episode, Dave and Jamison answer these questions:
After a decade as a Senior front-end engineer in companies stuck in legacy ways of workingāpaying lip service to true agility while clinging to control-heavy, waterfall practicesāIām frustrated and exhausted by meetings and largely apathetic, outsourced teams who donāt match my enthusiasm for product-thinking or improving things. It seems allowed and normalised everywhere I go.
How can I escape this cycle of big tech, unfulfilled as an engineer, and find a team with a strong product engineering culture where I can do high-impact work with similarly empowered teams?Thank you, and sorry if this is a bit verbose! Thanks guys.Martin
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How do you judge your competency in a technical skill and when should you include it on your resume? Should you include a skills that you havenāt used in a while, skills youāve only used in personal projects, or skills that you feel you only have a basic understanding of?
Iām a frontend developer and Iāve seen some job descriptions include requirements (not nice-to-haves) like backend experience, Java, CI/CD, and UI/UX design using tools like Figma and Photoshop. I could make designs or write the backend code for a basic CRUD app, but it would take me some time, especially if Iām building things from scratch. Iāve seen some resumes where the writer lists a bunch of programming languages and technical skills, and I often wonder if they truly are competent in all of those skills.
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In this episode, Dave and Jamison answer these questions:
I think my teamās PM might hate me. Hate is exaggerating, but they often will give public praise to other members of my team on work theyāve done, and seem to be pretty friendly with others, but I have never gotten the same treatment. I have also not gotten negative feedback from them in the 3 years weāve worked together, so I donāt really have any information to go off of here.
I donāt need everyone to like me, but it feels weird to see someone act nice with everyone else and relatively cold with me. I get along pretty well with everyone else on the team, too. Would you do anything in this situation or just try to ignore it?
Iām a newly minted senior engineer and frequently pair with other more junior engineers to help them when they run into issues. Along with my company-provided senior engineer hat, my manager has asked me to try to take on more of a vested role in mentoring other engineers.
One engineer I regularly assist seems to have anxiety issues. When I start reviewing their code or ask them about their debugging steps, they almost always start the conversation by telling me theyāre nervous. I usually reassure them that weāre all teammates, we have a shared goal and thereās no judgement - only a desire to help them resolve whatever issue theyāre encountering. While this does help somewhat, they continue to show clear signs of anxiety. Iāve also noticed the same behavior during team code reviews.
Theyāve been here for over a year, and I feel bad that they still seem to be struggling. Iād like to offer some sort of suggestion or guidance. Whatās the best way to approach this? Would recommending therapy be out of line? Should I talk to my manager, or would it be better to leave it alone entirely?
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In this episode, Dave and Jamison answer these questions:
I would like your advice on how I can improve my communication skills. I realize that practicing is usually the best way, but I am interested in taking online courses or learning more on becoming a better communicator. However, I am currently taking courses in CS and would like to primarily focus on that. Iām wondering what your thought are, especially when it comes to investing time in either a community college or online extension course.
I have to make a confession. I am a job hopper, never staying longer at a job than a year. I am getting bored quickly, I always get the feeling of the grass is greener on the other side and I keep finding myself distracted from my current job always thinking of the next step, the next job, the next big thing.
This feeling is a double edged sword. On the one hand I know that I am aware that this repeated behaviour is not sustainable and healthy. On the other hand it helped me progress extremely in my career and climb the ladder quickly and now after five years of experience I landed at big tech in my dream job role. But I still get this old feeling of planning the next thing, finding myself distracted and losing interest and not being satisfied.
I want to stay at the job and keep earning the big bucks for my family. What can I do to get rid of the grass is greener syndrome?
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In this episode, Dave and Jamison answer these questions:
Iām currently in the interviewing pipeline for an engineering position at a fairly large healthcare company. In light of the recent events surrounding UnitedHealthcare, thereās been renewed criticism towards the insurance industry as whole. I was interested in this position and the work culture seems good, but now Iām having second thoughts. If I were to accept an offer from this company, could it somehow negatively affect my career or reputation? I feel like Iām worrying over nothing, but let me know your thoughts. Also, hypothetically speaking, what would you do if you received a job offer at a company that recently had negative press?
Hi! Iām an internal applications engineer, and after a couple of years of propping up a couple of different small and midsized companysā intranets with duct tape and cardboard, digging through old, unmaintained code that nonetheless runs the business, and trying to decipher the intentions and reasonings of the Developers Who Came Before, I have landed what is perhaps the dream position: the primary internal applications developer at my new company is retiring, and the business has hired me on such that we have a few months for said senior developer to catch me up and hand things off.
Iāve been brought through the basics; how to troubleshoot day-to-day misshaps, which clients need to be handled with care, and Iāve been shown the excel workbook that will make the finance department explode if itās edited incorrectly. What other non-technical questions should I ask my senior before he leaves?
Thanks and thanks also for an awesome show!
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In this episode, Dave and Jamison answer these questions:
Stefan
Help! Most of the time people ask questions about issues that already happened. I however, would like to prevent one.
I am a young Tech Lead and really love my responsibilities, team and especially my manager. With the help of your podcast I could even resolve my last issue regarding compensation. Of course I dutifully did my part and reallocated some of my payment increase to finance Jamisons yacht.
My very awesome manager āBobā is so great that he has to manage 4 teams. Naturally, because Bob and those 4 teams are doing great, Bob gets rewarded with even more work. In his āfree timeā Bob is a parent of two teenagers which is also not necessarily known for being a stress free environment.
Lately I noticed that Bob is more stressed than usual. Bob told me that he wakes up in the middle of the night because he remembers missed TODOs in the job. I also see this change in his body language and general demeanour.
Now that a very critical project is coming up, Bob, as the go to person for more work has to allocate a significant time of his day to support this project.
I fear that Bob is on a path to burnout and this new project might be the last drop. I would really hate to get a different manager. Statistics claim it will probably be worseā¦ Also I really wish for Bob to be well and health, too. ;)
How can I help Bob in his situation? How do I address those concerns with him without looking condescending? We have a good and open but not close relationship, that I would not like to ruin by overstepping my bounds.
Thank you very much. I love the podcast. You make me laugh and learn with every single episode. You rock!
I am a very young senior engineer at a big tech company and I think nobody really knows how young I actually am. I just turned 24 and usually in prior jobs other developers started hating me once they found out that I am this young and already in a senior role. Here at the current place, I have the feeling that all of the engineers in levels below me are already a lot older and have more years of experience under their belt. Also, I think they do not know about my age, because I never shared that in the recruiting process, nor later on. Usually people assume I am in my early 30ās and have a baby face, but when I tell them that I am a baby face because I am actually young, they become envious and things go south from there. Should I keep this a secret or am I playing too much into this?
PS: I am also already married and have kids, so that could make them assume that I am older.
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In this episode, Dave and Jamison answer these questions:
What advice would you give for working with an ineffective leader whose input is crucial to your work? Iām a senior developer for a mid-sized non-tech company with probably 60-80 devs, and in the past year Iāve been working more with a VP of software who seems to still be involved in code details, getting pulled in to production issues, in-person code reviews, etc.
Heās a nice guy, but he seems like heās being pulled in too many directions at once. When he schedules a meeting, thereās a 50% chance it happens on that day and time, and when we do have meetings, if we bring up questions and high level issues we need feedback on heās quick to ātake ownershipā and say heāll do X and Y. Inevitably, X and Y slip down the priority list because production issues and who knows what else, and weāre stuck waiting weeks on end for something that if heād just delegated the work to someone else, weād have long since moved on. But we still need his input to shape our work. How can we as lower-level developers (with a manager who isnāt involved in this project at all) help mitigate these delays?
Iāve recently accepted a new position after spending more than three years at my first job out of college. Currently, Iām a Senior Engineer at a large, corporate-like company (300+ people), but my new role will be at a much smaller startup (20-30 people).
Iām excited about the change but also a bit nervous, as I know startups can be fast-paced, and Iāll need to get up to speed quickly.
What advice do you have for setting myself up for success in this new roleāboth before I start and after I begin? I have a couple of weeks before my start date and want to use that time to prepare effectively.
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In this episode, Dave and Jamison answer these questions:
I am a first time caller and full time listener of your show.
I was released from prison a year ago and I coded for 18 years straight on all sorts of stacks as part of my job requirements in the pen. Imagine the irony when I discovered what codepen was.
A dev told me about an opening for full remote/full stack web dev at their company. Iāve used the tech stack before but I have a non-traditional background to say the least. Iām not worried about being qualified but I have never worked in a team and I have always been responsible for production.
I work for a large retailer in a non-coding role. Iām also doing some freelancing on upwork/fiverr, but the pay is low and the jobs are not fulfilling. I was self-employed before I was incarcerated and I know how to beat the pavement and get small time work, but this is an opportunity to work at a real software house. I donāt even care if itās a feature factory, I just have loved coding since I was 14.
What do I do? I am confident in my skills and ability to deliver under pressure (in a place that has pressures you canāt imagine). I have a cover letter, but a bad resume and no open source projects from this millennium. I do have a reference - a Captain I worked for said he was willing. However, the opportunity was unexpected and I have not prepared anything.
The dev who brought me the offer was a casual friend in IRC and he told me that my resume was mentioned in some meeting. I know you have suggested in previous shows that having someone get your foot in the door is the best way but I really think that feels gross to me.
Anyways, longtime listener of your show and first time caller. In fact, when I was in prison, a few years before I was released we finally got tablets with an incredibly limited amount of content. Your show was one of a few on coding but I really enjoy your take on the soft skills because even though I worked in a non-traditional environment, teamwork was always the focus and I listened to everything from square one (took me a long time to get there).
So thank you for your podcast you donāt know how many times I could sit in my cell listening to your show and disappear from my cage.
Sincerely,Names have been change to protect the guilty
Second time caller from NYC! I previously wrote in as an 18-year-old CS graduate (Episode 332).
Iāve focused intensely on work for the past 4 years, consistently working 60+ hours per week.
I always assumed that this approach to life would eventually bear fruit, but a couple months into turning 20, Iām realizing that I havenāt really done anything memorable besides work (which is a scary realization at 20).
While I like working hard and want to ensure the success of the company I work for, I also want to feel like I am living. How have you struck the balance between work and non-work in your lives, and how has that related to the culture of the company you were working for at the time? I should also mention the company I work for (early stage, well funded) does have a culture where itās expected to work everyday, and 60 hours is approximately the minimum expected.
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In this episode, Dave and Jamison answer these questions:
My company recently eliminated 1:1 meetings between managers and their direct reports. Previously, most people had these meetings every other week, and they were an opportunity to talk about career growth among other engineering things besides current work. Theyāre claiming the recurring meetings can be replaced with quick, more spontaneous calls when necessary. Although wiping meetings from the calendar does clear up more time to code, as a more junior team member, Iām concerned that this will negatively impact my career growth. It feels like career progression just got a little bit harder. Whatās the read here? Is this a red flag? Should I start looking elsewhere? How can I navigate this changing environment and still make sure that I am able to progress my career?
A listener named Matt says,
Iād really like to move to a single team-dedicated backlog, where we use kanban and have work in progress limits, rather that the heavy release planning fixed-scope current model. I feel we would be more effective as a team that way (Iām one of many team leads in the company). Currently we operate in an agile-ish fashion but ultimately inside a waterfall process, driven from outside the technology team. Although I believe it would be a good thing, Iāve not actually worked in that way. Is it all itās cracked up to be? Are there any issues of going to that model that Iām not seeing?
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In this episode, Dave and Jamison answer these questions:
Marcus Zackerberg asks,
I work at a megacorp whose recent focus has been on reliability. The company already has mature SLO coverage outage response standards, but my org has taken it to the extreme this year. For exampleā¦
There is now a dashboard of āservice healthā that is reviewed by engineering leadership. In it, services are marked āunhealthyā permanently upon a failing check (think HTTP /health). To return to a āhealthyā state, one must manually explain the failure with an entry in a spreadsheet, which must be reviewed and signed off.
Increasingly I feel this has the opposite effect, discouraging nuanced work to improve reliability and instead becoming ācheckbox driven developmentā, as well as impacting our ability to ship on our existing roadmap items. Additionally, our tech lead is fairly junior and frequently fails to communicate the orgās expectations to the team, leading to us being under the gun of the reliability dashboard often.
Any advice on how to make the best of this situation?
Hi Guys! Iām a senior engineer at a mid sized software company. The company has had a couple of high level departures recently, and during that process Iāve come into the knowledge that my name is one of a handful on a list of āengineers to keep happyā. I feel like this information should be of use to me, but Iām unsure on how I should leverage it.
On one hand itās nice to know Iām valued, but I think Iād rather be explicitly told that or better yet, receive dollars in lieu of praise. Iām also at the point in my career where Iām looking for staff roles, and the topic of promotion has come up several times with my manager. He supports me (and I believe him), but we agree that it would be difficult to make the case to the business.
What do I do with this new knowledge, and is there a way to benefit from it without accidentally triggering a preemptive search for my own replacement?
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In this episode, Dave and Jamison answer these questions:
First! I recently listened to episode 178 (huge backlog of episodes to work through!) and Dave made the assertion (in 2019!) that 47% of all companies would be remote by 2023: wildly close, what else do you see in the future?
Second: my work situation continues to confound and external insight would be helpful! My boss and I have a long working history going back to an entirely separate company. Iām a high-ownership/high-drive Principal level IC and feedback has been lackluster. Takeaway from last years performance review would be best summarized as āI agree with your self review. End message.ā Iāve been working to āmanage upā and mentor (reverse mentor?) him, but he always makes snap decisions and then refuses to reevaluate after presented with more info.Coupled with his myopic view of our teamās scope and general preference for speaking only (not much for action), Iām trying to figure out how to get where I want to be without burning an old and historically very useful bridge! I want to work on big technical problems, instead Iām de facto manager of a teamā¦ I managed before and did not enjoy being responsible for people. As a principal Iām responsible for their output somewhat, but if they underperform I work with their manager and them to prioritize, and do up front work to incentivize their investment in what weāre doingā¦ help!
What do I do when my teammate proposes a new architecture or framework in a new project? It might solve some existing problems but has a high chance to create technical debt and make the onboarding harder for new engineers.
How can I convince them to use the existing solution while still helping them feel comfortable sharing their opinion next time?
If I follow their suggestion but things donāt go well, how can I convince them to refactor the structure without them feeling like Iām blaming them?
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In this episode, Dave and Jamison answer these questions:
My boss has been forgetting a lot of stuff lately ā decisions from team discussions, action items from meetings, their own decisions that they then go against later, etc. Theyāre great overall, and this is definitely just a human thingā¦ weāre not perfect. But how can I help them remember or remain accountable without feeling like the snitch from āRecessā?
Listener Gill Bates,
Hey! I started working in a big tech company recently and I feel like I am on a different planet all of a sudden. Before, I did only work in startups and small companies. I have joined as a senior developer and have a weekly 1:1 meeting with my manager, but also a biweekly 1:1 meeting with the skip level manager. The latter is where I am having problems. I donāt really know what to talk about in this meeting and fear that this is seen as disengagement. The first time I had the meeting, the skip level manager mentioned that he was sure I would have tons of questions and in reality I had none at all. I feel like, in my senior role, I must come into this meeting with good questions, but all questions I have, I am discussing with my peers or manager directly. So nothing left really for my skip level manager. I am starting to prepare fake questions, where I already know the answer to, just to seem engaged. It feels like a game. So please Dave & Jamison, tell me how to play that 1:1 skip level manager game.
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In this episode, Dave and Jamison answer these questions:
Hey guys!
I recently moved onto a new team, and my teammate has an interesting way of resolving differences of opinions. He simply says āwe decidedā and then follows it up with his preferred approach. These are decisions that I know have not been made.
This engineer is mid-level, so it isnāt the āroyal weā of a tech lead.
How do I handle this? Something tells me that responding with ānuh uh!ā isnāt the right strat.
Iām a Principal Engineer at a large tech company whoās been with the same team for almost 8 years now! The team used to be part of a startup and weāve been fortunate enough to be acquired by Big Tech three years ago. As a result, weāve also more than doubled in team size. However, as weāve aggressively grown over the last few years, I feel like weāve inadvertently hired many āaverageā engineers. I find that some of our newer team members simply pick off the next ticket in the queue and do the bare minimum to progress the task. What happened to the boy scout rule? Where did the culture of ownership go? This also affects the genuinely great engineers on the team who start feeling like the others arenāt pulling their weight.
Any advice on how to level up the culture? Or do I need to adjust my expectations and simply accept that any team of a sufficient size will have folks from a range of abilities and attitudes?
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