Developer Tea - podcast cover

Developer Tea

Jonathan Cutrellwww.developertea.com
Developer Tea exists to help driven developers connect to their ultimate purpose and excel at their work so that they can positively impact the people they influence. With over 13 million downloads to date, Developer Tea is a short podcast hosted by Jonathan Cutrell (@jcutrell), co-founder of Spec and Director of Engineering at PBS. We hope you'll take the topics from this podcast and continue the conversation, either online or in person with your peers. Twitter: @developertea :: Email: [email protected]

Episodes

Friday Refill - Anchor Behaviors

When you feel a sense of chaos has overwhelmed your week, it can be tempting to want to check out for the weekend. But in today's episode we discuss a tool I've used to combat this sense of aimlessness.

Feb 26, 20217 minEp. 922

Quincy Larson, Founder of freeCodeCamp - Part Two

Quincy Larson might be responsible for at least one very important part of your career: the beginning. That's because Quincy is the founder of freeCodeCamp, a non-profit teaching millions of people to code. In this and the last episode we talk all about what it means to be a beginner. ✨ Sponsor: Square Square's Terminal API makes payments easy, whether in person, in-app, or both. Process payments on every platform imaginable. Get started today at https://developertea.com/square 📮 Ask a Question...

Feb 24, 202141 minEp. 921

Quincy Larson, Founder of freeCodeCamp - Part One

Quincy Larson might be responsible for at least one very important part of your career: the beginning. That's because Quincy is the founder of freeCodeCamp, a non-profit teaching millions of people to code. In this and the next episode we talk all about what it means to be a beginner. ✨ Sponsor: Square Square's Terminal API makes payments easy, whether in person, in-app, or both. Process payments on every platform imaginable. Get started today at https://developertea.com/square 📮 Ask a Question...

Feb 22, 202137 minEp. 920

Friday Refills - Rest is Not an Optional Luxury

Your obligations are usually the result of your systemic choices. You have no choice but to rest and recover. Choose to affirm your choices instead of living under the illusion that those choices were imposed on you.

Feb 19, 20217 minEp. 919

Post-Pandemic Work and Life as an Engineer - Skills for a Different Future

In today's discussion, we will look at what it will take to prepare for the changes we will see as we transition out of the worldwide pandemic, and into a post-pandemic world. ✨ Sponsor: LaunchDarkly LaunchDarkly is the leading feature flag management tool for the modern era of software engineering. If you are tired of nail-biting deployment all-nighters, check out https://launchdarkly.com to start your boring deployments today! 📮 Ask a Question If you enjoyed this episode and would like me to ...

Feb 17, 202130 minEp. 918

Post-Pandemic Life and Work as an Engineer: Back to Normal-ish

In today's episode we continue our discussion about what life will be like when the pandemic ends... whenever that will be. Will we go back to normal? How can we think about "normal" when so much has changed? ✨ Sponsor: LaunchDarkly LaunchDarkly is the leading feature flag management tool for the modern era of software engineering. If you are tired of nail-biting deployment all-nighters, check out https://launchdarkly.com to start your boring deployments today! 📮 Ask a Question If you enjoyed t...

Feb 15, 202124 minEp. 917

Self Distancing

Your own internal voice may need to back off a little bit. Distancing from our self-talk and imagining a distant future (or distant present) might be one important way to reduce negative self-talk and improve decision making. Mentioned in this episode: Chatter

Feb 12, 20216 minEp. 916

Design Lead at Basecamp, Jonas Downey - Part Two

Jonas Downey is the design lead at Basecamp. In this interview we discuss the ethics of designing and building constraints into your product that change human behavior. ✨ Sponsor: Redhat Get access to Redhat's exclusive developer resources. Head over to https://developers.redhat.com/about to join for free today! 📮 Ask a Question If you enjoyed this episode and would like me to discuss a question that you have on the show, drop it over at: developertea.com/contact. If you would like to join the ...

Feb 10, 202138 minEp. 915

Design Lead at Basecamp, Jonas Downey - Part One

Jonas Downey is the design lead at Basecamp. In this interview we discuss the ethics of designing and building constraints into your product that change human behavior. ✨ Sponsor: Square Build a custom point of sale that connects to Square Terminal, an all-in-one credit card device built by Square for contactless and card payments. Start building with Square Terminal API by visiting https://developertea.com/square today! 📮 Ask a Question If you enjoyed this episode and would like me to discuss ...

Feb 08, 202141 minEp. 914

Friday Refills - Don't Cram the Information Firehose... Filter and Focus!

We are not well adapted to focus and filter information. For the majority of human history, the information available was virtually all relevant. But now, we have an overload of information. Our first reaction is to believe we need to know it all to succeed... But we immediately run into a problem: there's vastly more than we can ever handle. So we resort to silly brain tricks to convince ourselves and others that we either know it all, or that most information isn't important. We can do better....

Feb 05, 20217 min

Post-Pandemic: Work and Life as an Engineer - Remote Everything?

In this episode, we continue series of episodes about how COVID has and will continue to affect our lives and jobs as software engineers. We'll talk about where we will work, and how COVID has changed the question all together. 📮 Ask a Question If you enjoyed this episode and would like me to discuss a question that you have on the show, drop it over at: developertea.com/contact. If you would like to join the new experimental DIscord group, reach out at developertea.com/contact, developertea@gm...

Feb 03, 202112 minEp. 913

Series kickoff - Post-Pandemic: Work and Life as an Engineer

In this episode, we kick off a series of episodes about how COVID has and will continue to affect our lives and jobs as software engineers. 📮 Ask a Question If you enjoyed this episode and would like me to discuss a question that you have on the show, drop it over at: developertea.com/contact. If you would like to join the new experimental DIscord group, reach out at developertea.com/contact, [email protected], or @developertea on Twitter. 🧡 Leave a Review If you're enjoying the show and ...

Feb 01, 202113 minEp. 912

Friday Refill: Consider an Alternate Story

Much of our lives are determined by our internal voices. These voices tell us a story that is hard to imagine differently. But it's an important skill to consider an alternate story.

Jan 29, 20218 min

Paying the Tax for Our Decisions

Every episode has its downside. In this episode we talk about a mental model called the "Strategy Tax", and how it applies beyond business strategy. Mentioned: Developer Tea Interview with Gabriel Weinberg (@yegg) - https://developertea.com/episodes/e140196f-6a26-4ff3-8f21-3848e53080ef ✨ Sponsor: ListenNotes.com With over 91 million episodes, Listen Notes is my new favorite way to find podcasts. Whether I'm researching an author or trying to find something in a niche topic, Listen Notes has the ...

Jan 27, 202117 minEp. 911

The Downside to Inaction

We underestimate the knowledge we have. (Interestingly, we also *over*-estimate the knowledge we have, just a different type of knowledge.) We also underestimate the knowledge we don't have. We overestimate the downside to failure, and we underestimate the downside to inaction. We are afraid of failure, but perhaps we should be more afraid of inaction. ✨ Sponsor: ListenNotes.com With over 91 million episodes, Listen Notes is my new favorite way to find podcasts. Whether I'm researching an author...

Jan 25, 202124 minEp. 910

Friday Refill - Ignore Motivation, Focus On Removing Obstacles

Our first Friday Refill! Ignore motivation. Remove obstacles. Motivation is not your fuel. You already have enough motivation. Don’t add more. Focus on removing the small distractions, things that will add resistance. Tilt the scales.

Jan 22, 20218 min

The Bucket Model

Discrete and continuous data are all around us. In today's episode, we talk about a specific model of thinking that combines discrete and continuous. We'll also talk a little bit about non-linear curves and how they fit into this model. ✨ Sponsor: ListenNotes.com With over 91 million episodes, Listen Notes is my new favorite way to find podcasts. Whether I'm researching an author or trying to find something in a niche topic, Listen Notes has the search engine to make it happen. Search for almost...

Jan 21, 202120 minEp. 909

The Shape of Work

In today's episode, we talk about how much of our behavior is shaped by the invisible assumptions we make about our constraints, abilities, and context. ✨ Sponsor: ListenNotes.com With over 91 million episodes, Listen Notes is my new favorite way to find podcasts. Whether I'm researching an author or trying to find something in a niche topic, Listen Notes has the search engine to make it happen. Search for almost anything, for free, right now! Head over to ListenNotes.com 📮 Ask a Question If yo...

Jan 18, 202127 minEp. 908

Why We Believe Ourselves (Even When We're Proven Wrong)

Why do we believe we are right, even when it's easy to see we're wrong? There are psychological reasons, and there are basic biological and even logical reasons why believing you are right is easier than questioning yourself. ✨ Sponsor: ListenNotes.com With over 91 million episodes, Listen Notes is my new favorite way to find podcasts. Whether I'm researching an author or trying to find something in a niche topic, Listen Notes has the search engine to make it happen. Search for almost anything, ...

Jan 13, 202118 minEp. 907

Designing Your Skill Portfolio

🌎Design your skills together, as a portfolio. Portfolios benefit from diversity and risk management. You can think about your skills in the same way. But skills are more than just a portfolio. They also require an integrated approach; one skill modifies another. Focus on stacking your skills to make your learning and growth much higher leverage. 🔔Today's Sponsor: Red Hat The Red Hat Developer program brings developers together to learn from each other and create more extraordinary things, fast...

Jan 11, 202121 minEp. 906

Optionality Sweet Spot

Today, we talk about options. The word "optionality" typically refers to the amount of flexible agency a person has in a given scenario; not necessarily a discrete number of options, but how much latitude there is in a given decision-making process. A few thoughts we consider: Are options always good? How often do we think about *all* of our options? Is there a way to trend towards having only good options? And, most importantly, how can we strike the right balance between time invested and opti...

Jan 06, 202121 minEp. 905

The Dangers of Measuring Side Effects

You want to measure what matters. But your measurements might change what matters. Understanding that anything that is measured might modify behaviors, it's important to then understand what should be targeted. How can we incentivize the right actions that produce the side effects we want, rather than incentivizing direct manipulation of those side effects?

Jan 04, 202121 minEp. 904

If Actions Speak Louder Than Words, What Are Yours Saying?

Your actions speak louder than words. You already know that. But have you asked yourself what your actions are saying about who you are? ✨ Sponsor: Linode Thank you to long time sponsor and friends of the show Linode for sponsoring today's episode! Simplify your cloud infrastructure with Linode’s Linux virtual machines and develop, deploy, and scale your modern applications faster and easier. Listeners of Developer Tea can now enjoy $100 in free credit! You can find all the details at linode.com...

Dec 31, 202026 minEp. 903

Imagining the End

It's hard to construct with deconstruction in mind. It's difficult to imagine designing for final shutdown. In this episode, we talk about the importance of transformation and change, and the ultimate reality of everything: it all ends, at some point. If we want to build better software and lead better lives, we should build with open eyes about the end. Today, we also celebrate the shutdown of Spec.fm, the podcast network Developer Tea has been a part of for over 5 years! ✨ Sponsor: Linode Than...

Dec 28, 202015 minEp. 902

Making Things Invisible

🌎 Things slowly fade to invisibility over time. Our conscious thinking is optimized to remove as much as possible. The more we can accomplish without hard thinking, the easier it is on our brains. As a side effect, much of the reality of our lives becomes invisible to us. 🙏 Today's Episode is Brought To you by: Retool Build internal tools, remarkably fast. Connect to anything w/ an API. Drag-and-drop React components. Write JS anywhere. Check them out over at https://retool.com/devtea 📮 Ask a...

Dec 23, 202021 minEp. 901

The Paradox of Transcendence

Becoming enlightened may not mean rising above everything. Instead, maybe it means zooming in. It's easy to believe that as we continue to get older, we care less and less about the details, and we care more about the "big picture." Interestingly, if you study individuals with high levels of excellence and experience, they tend to care deeply about the details and notice things others may not. This expansion of the current moment is the paradox of transcendence - only once we care deep...

Dec 21, 20209 minEp. 900

Misusing Exceptions in Code and in Life

🌎 Exceptions are Unusual Exceptions are, by definition, unusual. An exception is something we wouldn't expect - out of the norm. Yet, we often craft much of our behavior around an abundance of perceived exceptions. In this episode, we talk about how this is a problem in code and in life, and a way to look at things differently. 🙏 Today's Episode is Brought To you by: Retool Build internal tools, remarkably fast. Connect to anything w/ an API. Drag-and-drop React components. Write JS anywhere. ...

Dec 16, 202021 minEp. 899

Refactor Your Labeling Techniques

In today's episode, I hope to challenge you to reconsider how you label your world. 🌎 Fix your labels Labeling Theory A game-theory math-oriented perspective on heuristics Some more on heuristics and bias ✨ Sponsor: New Relic Thank you to New Relic for sponsoring today's episode! Make managing and analysis of complex digital architectures work for you. Check them out at NewRelic.com to become a full access user with 100GB per month totally free . 📮 Ask a Question If you enjoyed this episode an...

Dec 14, 202025 minEp. 898

Learning in Public w/ Shawn Swyx Wang (part 2)

Today, we're continuing the discussion of learning in public with guest, Shawn Swyx Wang . Swyx is best known for being the Reactjs subreddit mod, and recently released the book, "The Coding Career Handbook". In this part 2 with Swyx, we focus in on productivity, strategy and tactics of senior vs. junior engineers and what beginning engineers can do to level up in their career. 🌎 Swyx on the Web Swyx Twitter Swyx Personal Website Swyx on GitHub The Coding Career Handbook use code DEVTEA30 at ch...

Dec 09, 202034 minEp. 897

Learning in Public w/ Shawn Swyx Wang (part 1)

This week, we continue the discussion of learning in public with guest, Shawn Swyx Wang . Swyx is best known for being the Reactjs subreddit mod, and recently released the book, "The Coding Career Handbook". In this part 1 with Swyx, we discuss his background and how he got started in engineering. 🌎 Swyx on the Web Swyx Twitter Swyx Personal Website Swyx on GitHub The Coding Career Handbook use code DEVTEA30 at checkout to enjoy 30% off LearninPublic.org ✨ Sponsor: Linode Thank you to long time...

Dec 07, 202027 minEp. 896