Developer Tea

I'm tackling a massive challenge today: burnout. While the standard advice usually involves working less, I want to show you a practical dimension of burnout you have more control over, focusing on increasing your agency and autonomy to manage chronic workplace stress more effectively. Burnout is classified by the ICD-11 as a syndrome resulting from chronic workplace stress that has not been successfully managed.

This episode includes practical advice for understanding and addressing burnout by shifting focus from reducing work volume to increasing control and resources.

In this episode, I dive into the management mantra that "what is measured is managed" and explain why this simple assertion often leads to a complex trap. We discuss why the act of measuring team productivity is never neutral—it's an intervention that immediately changes behavior, often resulting in unintended consequences like gaming the metrics. We'll explore how to collaborate with your team to find measurements that truly drive desired behaviors.

I want to dive into the concept of Deliberate Practice, which sets the greatest apart in fields ranging from sports to writing to engineering. I’ll explain why it’s much more than just repetition or experience, and why applying it to your career can lead to rapid improvement. Most importantly, I will provide concrete ways you can apply deliberate practice to level up your engineering and leadership skills, especially in areas that are traditionally difficult to practice, such as communication and strategic decision-making.

This episode explores the concept of Locus of Control and why developing a more internal locus of control is beneficial for your career and life. You'll learn the difference between internal and external perspectives, why one is more useful than the other, and practical exercises to shift your mindset to believe you have more influence over the outcomes you care about.

In this episode we'll discuss why "Résumé Driven Development" is a powerful mental model for building a thriving career. Instead of seeing your résumé as just a job-hunting tool, you'll learn to use it as a guide for setting measurable, impactful goals that benefit you, your manager, and your company.

In this episode, we introduce a simple yet powerful mental model from the world of sports: forced vs. unforced errors. By understanding this concept, you can shift your focus from things outside your control to the simple, foundational behaviours that truly define a successful career.

In this episode, we introduce two fundamental thought experiments to help you uncover your true priorities and core values. By exploring scenarios of scarcity and abundance, you'll learn to align your daily actions with what truly matters, leading to a more satisfied career and life.

This episode explains what is arguably the best career advice you'll hear this week: the one skill that signifies seniority in software engineers is the ability to synthesise and optimise for multiple factors at once. Instead of focusing on a single factor, such as performance or maintainability, senior engineers identify and weigh the various trade-offs involved in any decision.

This episode focuses on the critical importance of having a backup plan, not just for technical redundancies but especially for situations involving human error, which are highly prevalent in one's career. The core argument hinges on understanding risk and reward curves, highlighting the disproportionate impact of failures compared to incremental successes.

Understanding Risk and Reward Curves:

Todays episode delves into understanding and leveraging second and third-order consequences – the ripple effects that occur after an initial action – and introduces forcing functions, which are an inverted way of thinking about these consequences, designed to drive desired outcomes by first determining "what must be true" for them to occur. The episode also connects these concepts to the importance of effective goal setting, explaining how well-defined goals provide clarity, focus, and a strategic framework for decision-making and career advancement.

This episode delves into the philosophical concept of hyperobjects – problems so vast and complex they lack clear boundaries and cannot be "solved" once and for all. It explores why attempting to permanently fix issues like technical debt, user experience, or performance management is often ineffective. Instead, it offers a new perspective: how to interact with and manage these intractable problems by focusing on specific outcomes and accepting their ongoing nature.

This episode delves into a powerful model for encouraging behaviour change, applicable to both managing others and self-improvement, by focusing on three critical factors: Trigger, Incentive, and Ability. It challenges common, ineffective management approaches and provides insights into fostering new habits and desired actions by making the 'right' thing the 'easy' thing.

This episode delves into the crucial role of well-positioned goals in a developer's career. It asserts that goals provide clarity, perspective, and purpose, particularly focusing on clarity as a primary benefit. The discussion challenges common struggles with goal setting, including the often-overlooked importance of relevance (the 'R' in SMART goals), suggesting that an irrelevant goal, no matter how specific or measurable, is ultimately ineffective. The core message highlights that the purpose of a goal is to serve as a clarifying and prioritising tool, enabling you to make decisions about what to do and focus your efforts, rather than simply...

Today we explore Cognitive Load Theory. This concept can profoundly influence how you structure your workday, manage teams, and approach learning in your career. The episode highlights that much of professional work, particularly in knowledge-based roles like software engineering, is fundamentally about learning. You will discover that there is an optimal amount of information processing for effective learning, and both overloading and underloading your cognitive capacity can be detrimental. A key insight is that cognitive load does not discriminate; all external factors, whether work-related or personal (e.g., tiredness, a messy desk), consume your finite cognitive capacity, leaving less "...

This episode focuses again on the fundamental principle that your systems are perfectly designed for the outcomes you are experiencing, regardless of whether those systems were intentionally or accidentally created.

Here are the key takeaways from the episode:

This episode discusses why perfection is a dangerous and fragile goal, explaining how striving for 100% leads to unsustainable outlier states. It highlights how setting perfection as a bar can cause commitments to break and plans to fail due to a lack of slack, and offers strategies like building redundancy and planning with slack to achieve goals more effectively without relying on perfection.

This episode introduces the potentially controversial principle that your system is perfectly designed for its current outcomes, urging listeners to embrace greater responsibility for systemic issues. It explores how to redefine system boundaries to holistically integrate all influencing factors, like talent and organisational processes, ensuring that interventions are effective and targeted.

This episode explores the fundamental mindset of building your vocabulary, extending beyond literal words to conceptual understanding and mental models, and how Large Language Models (LLMs) can be a powerful tool for expanding and refining this crucial skill for career growth, clarity, and navigating disruptions.

This episode delves into the use of substitute questions—simpler queries we use to answer more complex ones—and the crucial concept of cohesion between these substitutes and our true objectives. You'll learn how to leverage counterfactual thinking to scrutinize your assumptions and enhance the effectiveness of your decisions. Discover two powerful counterfactual techniques: asking "what else could be true?" to reveal alternative explanations, and employing thought experiments to, for example, precisely define your desires and career aspirations. The discussion offers practical applications, from refining hiring processes by identifying high-cohesion interview criteria to avoiding confirmation bias in debugging. By adop...

This episode explores why maintenance tasks, despite their fundamental importance, are often neglected or deprioritised in our daily lives and professional work. It delves into the psychological biases that make consistent maintenance challenging, such as hyperbolic discounting, where immediate gratification is valued over future gains, and the construal level theory, which highlights how psychological distance makes preventative work less impactful. The concept of the "maintenance paradox" is introduced, explaining that when maintenance is done well, its benefits go unnoticed, diminishing the sense of reward. The episode encourages listeners to adopt a maintenance mindset, making these tasks a standard habit...

This episode introduces a profound yet simple principle: knowing your baselines. This concept is crucial for effectively detecting and measuring change in your life and career.

This episode explores the complex landscape of receiving advice in your career, particularly during uncertain times. It offers insights on how to critically evaluate feedback and external information, prepare for potential negative outcomes outside of your control, and adapt your focus to thrive in a changing industry.

This episode addresses the fear surrounding industry changes, such as AI and potential outsourcing, and offers actionable advice for engineers, managers, and leaders to navigate these challenges. You'll learn why shifting your focus from just developing skills to embracing ownership and responsibility is crucial for long-term career resilience and agency.

This episode provides tactical ways to own your time, reduce meeting load and obligations, and regain agency, especially when feeling burnt out. You'll learn how to use a simple two-part model focusing on Pliability and Volatility to evaluate your tasks and meetings and make intentional choices about how you spend your time.

This episode explores the dichotomy between iterative planning and target state planning in software development, discussing the benefits and drawbacks of each approach and providing decision factors to help you choose the most appropriate method for your situation.

This episode delves into practical principles for navigating the unexpected in your life and career. Rather than attempting to predict specific events, the focus is on cultivating resilience and optionality by identifying vulnerabilities in your systems and adopting a proactive mindset to transform potential challenges into strategic advantages.

• Discover the three core principles of preparedness: first, build for change by investing in low-cost, high-upside options to prepare for many potential futures. Second, understand the weak points in your current systems (career, personal life, finances, etc.) to create mitigation strategies. Third, think like an engineer by identifying bottlenecks an...

This episode introduces a simple yet highly effective communication habit that can be adopted by anyone to significantly reduce the risk of misunderstandings and enhance connection. It explores how this practice, which requires thoughtful communication but no special skills, can benefit individuals at all career levels.

This episode introduces a valuable meta-tool for understanding the generic shapes of models, focusing specifically on the concept of logarithmic relationships and how they manifest as diminishing returns in various aspects of our lives and work. Understanding these patterns can help us make more informed decisions about where to invest our time and resources.

This episode introduces the concept of dimensional reframing as a tool to gain new perspectives on problems and facilitate decision-making by considering a new dimension.

• Learn how adding a new dimension to a problem can overcome limited perception and lead to new insights.
• Discover how applying the dimension of time to bug management can help prioritise and address a manageable number of bugs within a specific period.
• Explore how considering your energy levels can inform your approach to personal tasks, matching tasks to your available energy.
• Understand how frameworks like Getting Things Done (GTD) use the...

This episode explores the concept of Chesterton's fence, a principle that advises against removing or altering something without first understanding its original purpose.

• Understand the core message of Chesterton's fence: before getting rid of an existing system, process, or code, take the time to understand why it was put there in the first place.
• Learn about the common thought process that leads to wanting to remove things without understanding them ("Why on earth would anyone ever do it this way?").
• Discover the parable of Chesterton's fence: the more intelligent reformer questions the removal of a fence...

This episode discusses how to reframe areas of growth identified in performance reviews with your manager, turning potential weaknesses into strategic strengths. It emphasizes focusing on excelling in your existing strengths rather than spreading efforts thinly across all areas of improvement.

This episode provides a tactical question to elicit useful feedback by taking responsibility for seeking it out and framing the request in a way that encourages advice rather than judgment.

This episode introduces a simple quadrant tool to visualise different working modes that a team or individual task might be in, based on levels of autonomy and definition.

This episode introduces product lifecycle governance, offering practical techniques for engineering managers to tackle challenges like backlog prioritisation and leadership misunderstandings, helping turn potential problems into strategic advantages.

This episode explores philosophical frameworks—ontology, teleology, and dynamism—to inform decision-making in uncertain situations, providing practical advice for applying these concepts in your professional and personal life.

This episode includes practical techniques to prepare for the unexpected by identifying vulnerabilities and building resilience, using the "curse question" and the "assumption audit" to help you turn potential problems into strategic advantages.

• Uncover how to use a "curse question" to expose vulnerabilities you didn't know you had, by imagining realistic negative scenarios and what could go wrong.
• Learn how to move beyond resilience to antifragility, turning unexpected events into opportunities for growth and strategic advantage, by making them benefitial rather than harmful.
• Discover why your medium-confidence assumptions might be the most dangerous and how an "as...

In this episode, we discuss how invisible inertia can cause us to misinterpret our reality in work scenarios.
• Discover why common misconceptions about behaviour are so difficult to spot.
• Explore why your "unique" situation might be a common trap, a "uniqueness bias".
• Learn how exceptional states can become the norm and impact your life.
• Uncover how people's values shape company culture, and how to evaluate this.
• Why might expecting a culture to change in the direction you want be unrealistic?
• Learn why you should evaluate situations for what they are right now, instead of expecting...

Time-crunched and data-scarce? Learn how the RPD model can leverage expertise and intuition to speed up decision-making, and how the 'Rubicon' moment can make your team more action-oriented.
Stop endless planning and start doing: Learn how understanding action phases can help your team move faster from discussion to delivery.
• Is your team stuck in debate? Discover the "Rubicon" moment and how crossing it can boost productivity.
• Learn to recognise when deliberation is costing you more than it's worth, and how to commit to a plan, even with limited information.
• Is your team over-analysing? See how intuit...

Use "What" to get more specific. Align actions with intentions for better time management.
• Stop wasting time on autopilot. Discover the power of the Five Whats and start being intentional with your time.
• Tired of vague labels? Ask yourself, "What am I actually doing?" to gain clarity over your activities.
• Learn how to move beyond "focus time" and define the specific actions you're taking.
• See how your actions align with your goals (or don't!). Use this to refine your schedule and achieve your objectives.
• These concepts can flex to apply to every aspect of your life<...

In today's episode, we're focusing on taking your resolutions and making them matter. I will give you two challenges in this episode to improve the quality and potential of success for your resolutions.

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Devs, if you think website builders mean limited control—think again.
With Wix Studio’s developer-first ecosystem you can spend less time on tedious tasks and
more on the functionalities that matters most:
● Develop online in a VS Code-based IDE or locally via GitHub.
● Extend and replace a suite of powerful...

Today, we celebrate 10 years of Developer Tea. I wouldn't be doing this podcast without you listening. Especially if you have been listening for many years, thank you!

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How can you create better scientific wild a** guesses when the work is not well defined? We discuss a few strategies in this episode. We also talk a bit about what an estimate is in the first place, and how it differs from a commitment / deadline.

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Devs, if you think website builders mean limited control—think again.
With Wix Studio’s developer-first ecosystem you can spend less time on tedious tasks and
more on the functionalities that matters most:
● Develop online in a VS Code-b...

Are you operating in the world, or are you working on a problem? This shift in agency can make all the difference in your career.

🙏 Today's Episode is Brought To you by: Wix Studio

Devs, if you think website builders mean limited control—think again.
With Wix Studio’s developer-first ecosystem you can spend less time on tedious tasks and
more on the functionalities that matters most:
● Develop online in a VS Code-based IDE or locally via GitHub.
● Extend and replace a suite of powerful business solutions
● And ship faster with Wix Stud...

Can you use ChatGPT to become a better engineer? I'm not just talking about learning a language or fixing a bug with ChatGPT providing advice... I'm talking about career simulations. In this episode we discuss how the airline industry has fixed the problem of experience, and how we can learn from their insights to create low-stakes learning environments that boost our career and confidence through the roof.

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Devs, if you think website builders mean limited control—think again.
With Wix Studio’s developer-first ecosystem you can spe...

In today's episode we discuss the concept of adopting self-coaching personas, and discuss the third persona, "Shoulder Socrates."

🙏 Today's Episode is Brought To you by: Wix Studio

Devs, if you think website builders mean limited control—think again.
With Wix Studio’s developer-first ecosystem you can spend less time on tedious tasks and
more on the functionalities that matters most:
● Develop online in a VS Code-based IDE or locally via GitHub.
● Extend and replace a suite of powerful business solutions
● And ship faster with Wix Studio’s AI code assistant
All of tha...

In today's episode we discuss the concept of adopting self-coaching personas, and discuss the second persona, the over-optimizer.

🙏 Today's Episode is Brought To you by: Wix Studio

Devs, if you think website builders mean limited control—think again.
With Wix Studio’s developer-first ecosystem you can spend less time on tedious tasks and
more on the functionalities that matters most:
● Develop online in a VS Code-based IDE or locally via GitHub.
● Extend and replace a suite of powerful business solutions
● And ship faster with Wix Studio’s AI code assistant
All of tha...

In today's episode we discuss the concept of adopting self-coaching personas, and discuss a critical first persona to start with.

🙏 Today's Episode is Brought To you by: Wix Studio

Devs, if you think website builders mean limited control—think again.
With Wix Studio’s developer-first ecosystem you can spend less time on tedious tasks and
more on the functionalities that matters most:
● Develop online in a VS Code-based IDE or locally via GitHub.
● Extend and replace a suite of powerful business solutions
● And ship faster with Wix Studio’s AI code assistant<...

High-leverage work often comes in the simplest form of helping another person with their efforts.

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Learn to prioritize, and everything else falls into place. This is clarity through perspective and purpose.

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Your career growth will be directly correlated to your ability to solve critical unsolved problems in the gaps of your organization's problems. Focus on finding the problems that have a high chance of success for you specifically - the low hanging fruit.

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In this episode we discuss the delineation between culture and values. What you allow is just as important as what you value.

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Your developers know how to write code. What they’re missing is the context to know what code to write. Unblocked gives engineering teams the answers they need to get their jobs done – without having to wait on or interrupt their teammates. Get started for free at getunblocked.com.

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The blunt reality: Merit cycles are not how you build your earning power or career. They are a function of company culture and HR, and generally speaking are disconnected from your biggest opportunities for growth.

So, where should you focus? That's what we talk about in today's episode.

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Your developers know how to write code. What they’re missing is the context to know what code to write. Unblocked gives engineering teams the answers they need to get their jobs done – without having to wait on or i...

In today's episode we discuss focus, again. This time, through the lens of a few mental models that help us decide what is actually the right thing to focus on. You'll learn the real enemy of focus (note: it's not just distraction).

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Your developers know how to write code. What they’re missing is the context to know what code to write. Unblocked gives engineering teams the answers they need to get their jobs done – without having to wait on or interrupt their teammates. Get started for free at...

I'm joined today by Brian Pulliam. I've personally engaged Brian as a career coach. In this discussion we'll talk a bit about coaching, and about how you can set yourself up to become a much better candidate in your job search as an engineering leader.

Values Exercise Live:

Advanced...

I'm joined today by Brian Pulliam. I've personally engaged Brian as a career coach. In this discussion we'll talk a bit about coaching, and about how you can set yourself up to become a much better candidate in your job search as an engineering leader.

Introduction to Career Coaching:

In this episode we talk about the concept of "resetting your base" - moving in a direction you don't necessarily want to go in order to achieve better outcomes in the long run.

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Your developers know how to write code. What they’re missing is the context to know what code to write. Unblocked gives engineering teams the answers they need to get their jobs done – without having to wait on or interrupt their teammates. Get started for free at getunblocked.com.

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In today's episode we discuss how you might build your confidence without being disingenuous. This isn't a lesson in psychology or tricks - it's about building true confidence in what you do (and importantly, don't) know.

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Your developers know how to write code. What they’re missing is the context to know what code to write. Unblocked gives engineering teams the answers they need to get their jobs done – without having to wait on or interrupt their teammates. Get started for free at getunblocked.com.

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Duration: 00:16:54

In today's episode, we'll discuss an absolutely simple structure for prioritization and information flow in your daily work. The flow relies on a basic text editor - that's it!

🙏 Today's Episode is Brought To you by: Unblocked

Your developers know how to write code. What they’re missing is the context to know what code to write. Unblocked gives engineering teams the answers they need to get their jobs done – without having to wait on or interrupt their teammates. Get started for free at getunblocked.com.

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You have seen "bias to action" on job requirements, but what does this really mean? Is it something that can be learned? Make sure you know the difference between this skill and a more automatic cognitive bias.

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In this episode, we use the Start / Stop / Continue framework in a new way. As leaders, we should always know what outcome indicators a given discussion is based on. In this episode, we discuss the three core outcome indicators for managers to pay close attention to.

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In today's episode, we talk about inversion and inverted thinking. This is a mental model inspired by considering the "negative space" instead of the space occupied by the thing you are seeking. For example, if you are trying to avoid failure, you might intuitively seek a "successful strategy" instead of looking at the reasons it may fail directly. Inversion will help you avoid these traps.

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Duration: 00:06:40

In today's episode we discuss a preparation step for your next one-on-one. Don't just wing it - do your homework... and talk to yourself a little bit.

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In today's episode we'll discuss some counterintuitive advice for your interviews. This advice applies in interview settings, but also applies in 1-1 meetings as well.

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Unblocked provides helpful and accurate answers developers need to get jobs done. It tailors answers by augmenting your source code with existing team knowledge in GitHub, Slack, Confluence and more. Spend less time digging for context and more time building great software. Check it out at getunblocked.com.

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After today's episode, your resumé is going to get better! In this episode I will share the biggest mistake and the best advice I've ever received about building a great resumé. This will take some work from you, but I hope you walk away from this episode feeling like you have the right mindset to improve your resumé drastically, and land more interviews, ultimately leading to better job opportunities for the Developer Tea audience!

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Is your code getting dragged down by endless JOINs and long query times...

In today's episode, we talk about the counterintuitive process of prioritizing based on critical path. This is not a novel concept that I've invented, but rather a revisiting of the classic discussion started by Eli Goldratt in his book "The Goal", and later in his book "Critical Path", based on the theory of constraints.

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If you're building a B2B product and looking for an auth provider that can support you now and as you grow, give PropelAuth a try. All of their features are available to tes...

The most common mistake for any manager is to fail to clarify. This often happens because we mistake our average communications for having perfect clarity, when in fact we most often don't communicate at high levels of clarity. This isn't because we are bad at communication, but rather because our social communications carry less consequence when they aren't precise.

Clarity is not simply being honest. We'll discuss the importance of clarity in this episode, and your first steps towards achieving clarity above the norm.

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Unblocked pro...

What does your culture have to do with your values? In this episode we open up the discussion about a model of thinking for culture and values to understand how they link, and more importantly, when they don't.

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Unblocked provides helpful and accurate answers developers need to get jobs done. It tailors answers by augmenting your source code with existing team knowledge in GitHub, Slack, Confluence and more. Spend less time digging for context and more time building great software. Check it out at getunblocked.com.

...

Duration: 00:21:06

Your feedback loops should be short enough that the cost of making a mistake is low enough that the value of the learning in the feedback loop exceeds the magnitude of the cost of a mistake. In other words: shorten your feedback loops to the point that you're no longer afraid to make a mistake.

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Unblocked provides helpful and accurate answers developers need to get jobs done. It tailors answers by augmenting your source code with existing team knowledge in GitHub, Slack, Confluence and more. Spend less tim...

In this episode we discuss the importance of being your own advocate, and why this is likely the most rational position to hold. The takeaway: At any point, the person advocating the most for you is almost definitely YOU.

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In this episode we discuss a practical application of information theory. Information theory is similar to the classic theory of communication, but distinct in important ways; these two theories together are a useful combo for creating a strategy for clarification.

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Unblocked provides helpful and accurate answers developers need to get jobs done. It tailors answers by augmenting your source code with existing team knowledge in GitHub, Slack, Confluence and more. Spend less time digging for context and more time building great software. Check it out at getunblocked.com...

In today's episode we talk about working principles again. Specifically, we're looking at a problem with measurement fixation, as well as the natural curve of degradation that most communication follows.

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If you’re an engineer and you would rather spend your time writing code than responding to comments in your issue tracker, send your team Jam.dev. Go to jam.dev to get started, it’s free.

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In this episode we are revisiting some of my own personal core principles of working. I'm sharing these with you for you to do whatever you want with them, so please share however you can!

The principles we discuss today are around the relationship between clarity and focus, and about how most negotiations aren't about feasibility but instead about strategy.

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Is your code getting dragged down by endless JOINs and long query times? Try simplifying the complexity with graphs!

With Neo4j, you...

In today's episode we talk about principles of productivity. Most of the advice you receive will fit in the two categories we discuss in this episode. Once you connect with these ideas, you'll be able to use them for your own gain.

🙏 Today's Episode is Brought To you by: Jam.dev

If you’re an engineer and you would rather spend your time writing code than responding to comments in your issue tracker, send your team Jam.dev. Go to jam.dev to get started, it’s free.

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In today's episode we discuss the concept of "cost of delay", and explore the fact that cost of delay does not necessarily follow a linear path. When cost of delay has a cliff, or an exponential curve, how do you weigh one opportunity versus another?

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If you would rather spend your time coding instead of digging for answers or dealing with questions from colleagues, give Unblocked a try. Unblocked provides helpful and accurate answers to questions about your codebase. Get started at getunblocked.com.

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Duration: 00:24:36

"What actions can I take to get better from here?"

This seems like a simple concept, but in practice we often are more interested in protecting our ego. In this episode we try to practice this self-accountability through an exercise.

🙏 Today's Episode is Brought To you by: Jam.dev

If you’re an engineer and you would rather spend your time writing code than responding to comments in your issue tracker, send your team Jam.dev. Go to jam.dev to get started, it’s free.

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In this episode we continue our discussion about the most overused statistical measurement. We'll talk about a few more counterintuitive properties of the average, and how you might be underserving your colleagues as a result of thinking in averages.

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Is your code getting dragged down by endless JOINs and long query times? Try simplifying the complexity with graphs!

With Neo4j, you can code in your favorite programming language and against any
driver. See what graphs can do for you at Neo4j.com...

On average, you're probably overusing this specific type of statistic. In today's episode, we discuss the king of all misleading numbers: averages!

There's so much to talk about with averages that we're splitting this into two parts. Disclaimer: I am not a mathematician. But we will talk about some of the interesting properties of averages and why they are so addictive to use for humans, but more practically what counterintuitive ways we might be using them incorrectly.

If you're using your sprint velocity to forecast work, this episode is for you!

🙏 Today's Episode is...

Duration: 00:18:10

Today we explore the idea of treating your time as a product. Start with a wishlist: what do you wish was true about your week? What are your "if-only" statements?

Next, put on your product owner hat. How would you improve the situation, if you knew the "consumer"'s requests?

This exercise should provide unique insight and a new lens to view your time and agency through.

🙏 Today's Episode is Brought To you by: Unblocked

If you would rather spend your time coding instead of digging for answers or dealing with que...

The Von Restorff effect says we remember things that stand out. This is probably mostly intuitive - "that stood out to me" is a common colloquialism. But what isn't intuitive is the implied downside of uniformity, which is often the product of process.

In other words, if your process creates perfect uniformity, elevating any one thing, say, in priority, is going to be exceedingly difficult.

Additionally, if your "escalation" process is overused, it will once again violate the point of the escalation in the first place. "If everything is urgent, nothing is urgent."

🙏 Tod...

Duration: 00:13:16

In today's episode, we do a journaling exercise to provide a new lens on developing your own career roadmap.

We're going to practice the power of hindsight, finding our wiser selves, and ultimately looking forward and backward...at the same time. It sounds a little odd, but it's all based in solid cognitive science. If you have a notoriously hard time figuring out your career path, I'd invite you to participate!

🙏 Today's Episode is Brought To you by: Neo4j

Is your code getting dragged down by endless JOINs and long query times? Try...

As you grow your career, you will continuously lean on delegation to scale your efforts and focus on the most important things.

True delegation requires ownership, and ownership can be thought of in two critical parts: agency and responsibility.

In today's episode, we discuss the fool's errand of delegating only one or the other of these parts.

🙏 Today's Episode is Brought To you by: Jam.dev

If you’re an engineer and you would rather spend your time writing code than responding to comments in your issue tracker, send your team Jam.d...

Little's Law explains, in a given queuing system, what the relationships of throughput within that system are. We can garner insights both for our work, and for our own lives, by recognizing how these relationships work and what we can do to utilize them. In this episode, we talk about when it is useful to use Little's law to your advantage.

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Finding leverage is difficult to do, but a lot of the reason for this is that we allow ourselves to fall into well-traveled cognitive pathways. If we reject the solution domain-set that comes to mind immediately, we may be able to consider options for solutions we had never considered. This larger solution set may also include a high-leverage option we had previously ignored.

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Duration: 00:12:22

In today's episode, we discuss turtles, resolutions, and why your beliefs and what you see as fact is probably worth questioning anyway.

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If you want to be a part of a supportive community of engineers (non-engineers welcome!) working to improve their lives and careers, join us on the Developer Tea Discord community by visiting https://developertea.com/discord today!

🧡 L...

Duration: 00:09:52

Today Marks 9 Years of Developer Tea.

Thank you all for your support, and your friendship. I wish you all well on your journey, and may you find clarity, perspective, and purpose. (Don't worry, we aren't going anywhere!)

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If you want to be a part of a supportive community of engineers (non-engineers welcome!) working to improve their lives and career...

What characterizes good plans from bad ones? And how can you make your plans better on average? In this episode we discuss how to better organize your intentions and processes to yield better plans.

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Today's episode is sponsored by Miro! Miro provides the creative freedom, collaboration, and integration you need to get your team moving in the same direction. I use it nearly every day, it's become an indispensable part of my tool kit as an engineering manager, and I think you'll love it. Plus, you get your first three boards totally free! Go to...

The "lollapalooza" effect (coined by Charlie Munger) occurs when multiple other effects have a compounded outcome that tends to create an extreme situation.

In this episode, we discuss lollapalooza effects and how you might fall victim to them, and more importantly, how you can use them to your advantage.

🎙 Sponsor

Today's episode is sponsored by Miro! Miro provides the creative freedom, collaboration, and integration you need to get your team moving in the same direction. I use it nearly every day, it's become an indispensable part of my tool kit as an engineering man...

When you are newly joining a team, you have a huge opportunity to do something that no one on the team has: to find your "weathervane." The pressure pushing against you to adopt the beliefs of the team you are joining. What you do with it is one huge way a team can improve, or otherwise, stay the same.

🎙 Sponsor

Today's episode is sponsored by Miro! Miro provides the creative freedom, collaboration, and integration you need to get your team moving in the same direction. I use it nearly every day, it's become an indispensable par...

Most people believe good things will happen by default.
Not to be the bearer of bad news, but there's a downside to this endless optimism. You cannot will good things to happen, and when you don't prepare for adverse events, you won't be ready when they inevitably occur.

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Your team's process for managing a backlog is probably growing stale because you are running on habit rather than procedure.
Break out of procedure and remind yourself why you have a process to begin with: orient yourself to the outcomes!

🎙 Sponsor

Today's episode is sponsored by Miro! Miro provides the creative freedom, collaboration, and integration you need to get your team moving in the same direction. I use it nearly every day, it's become an indispensable part of my tool kit as an engineering manager, and I think you'll love it. Plus, you get you...

What is it about our present situation that changes our perspective? In today's episode we talk about the availability bias and why our present reality looms so large in our decisionmaking.

🎙 Sponsor

Today's episode is sponsored by Miro! Miro provides the creative freedom, collaboration, and integration you need to get your team moving in the same direction. I use it nearly every day, it's become an indispensable part of my tool kit as an engineering manager, and I think you'll love it. Plus, you get your first three boards totally free! Go to miro.com/pod...

What do you expect of yourself? Are you spending your time in ways that align with those expectations?

In this episode, I provide you a simple framework as a starting lens for getting a better idea of how you are spending your time in relation to who cares the most about those investments. You'll walk away with a new lens on how to evaluate your most precious resource: time.

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Almost every conversation you have will start with a question.
Have you stopped to listen closely? Questions are extremely meaningful and deeply human. Paying close attention to questions is a skill that will put you head and shoulders above the average engineer or manager.

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If you want to be a part of a supportive community of engineers (non-engineers welcome!) workin...

How often does reality match your expectations exactly? Sure, you may guess in the ball park, but usually there are errors in our expectations.

In today's episode, I talk about a simple shift in thinking that will help improve your expectations for your work.

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In this episode we continue a little mini-series called "Backlog psychology."

How do you get better at anything? (Hopefully you said "practice" almost instinctively.) What does good practice look like?

Your team has an opportunity to practice every meeting and every day. But if your days look different from one to the next, how will you ever have the opportunity to actually do that practice?

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In this episode we continue the mini-series "Backlog psychology."

Would you rather have $5 now or $50 next week? The answer to this question, though it seems logically obvious which is better, does not always produce the same response. The required incentive to convince someone to wait tends to follow an exponential curve upward.

This is not just true with money, but for any benefit and incentive: monetary, social, emotional, physical, etc.

What does this mean for our backlogs? What about our daily habits?

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If you enjoyed this epi...

In this episode we kick off a little mini-series called "Backlog psychology."

You've heard you should "limit your work in progress" - why? What makes more work in progress more difficult to handle?

Cognitive load isn't just about multi-tasking in the moment - it's also about limiting your open tasks.

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Your retros may feel like deadends where complaints go to die. If you're running retros and treating it only as an avenue for emotional support rather than continuous improvement, today's episode is for you.

Retros are for improving iteratively over time. That can only happen if your outcomes are aligned to that iterative mindset. Two simple adjustments can help drive that improvement.

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Duration: 00:09:27

Count the cost of learning. When you choose a path towards a goal, it's absolutely critical to optimize for the cost of learning. Often, with software, it is easier to learn by a series of smaller steps, even if they start out as random, rather than take on the major risk of a large step possibly going the wrong direction. This isn't always true; sometimes, the cost of learning is *greater* with small steps. Determining which is true in your situation can make or break your plans.

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Decisions are made in many ways, but one important type of decisionmaking tool is the "rule." This is something you follow without any cognitive processing.

But, we eventually develop rules as a part of habit-building. These are "implicit" rules - they aren't necessarily something you have set as a rule, but they are followed as if they were.

These are worth interrogating, and perhaps replacing with more explicit rules.

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