This week Jamison and Dave answer these questions: How do I deal with co-workers who constantly cite the decisions of engineers who don’t work here anymore? My employment makes it sound like the company owns my past work and side-projects. Is this true? Is this normal?
This week Jamison and Dave answer these questions: How do you dress for interviews? Full on informal beach bum? Smart casual? Formal suit tie? I’m a new developer and have been asked to interview incoming developers. How do I learn how to interview? This is the NoRedInk interview process. This is the blog post Jamison likes on getting data out of the technical portion of the interview. This is a slightly pessimistic look at pitfalls in the standard interview process. Google wrote a great article...
This week Jamison and Dave answer these questions: My peers give up and say “have it your way” whenever we have technical discussions. How do I get them to be more vocal about their opinions? I like the idea of measuring things, but metrics seem easy to game. How do I effectively measure team and personal productivity? Jamison cites this tweet and this blog post about examining your own productivity....
This week Jamison and Dave answer these questions: Could you (Jamison and Dave) share some salary information publicly? It would help to know how much others make. My boss uses an offensive word in technical discussions. How do I ask him to stop?
This week Jamison and Dave answer these questions: One of my co-workers is a know-it-all, which is pretty annoying. How do I work with them? A former employer still has my photo on their team website eight years after I left. How do I get them to take it down?
This week Jamison and Dave answer these questions: I work with a very shy and anxious remote developer. How do I work effectively with them? Our manager is outsourcing the core architecture of our next products to an offshore team. How do I tell him I think this is a bad idea?
This week Jamison and Dave answer these questions: I think I’ve saved enough money to get out of the rat race. If something goes wrong and I need to get a job again, how do I explain a long gap in my resume? I like writing code but I’m interested in moving to a more business-focused role. How can I test this without burning bridges? Do I need to take a pay cut?
This week Jamison and Dave answer these questions: How do I smooth things over after a blow-up between team members? A team mate admits he writes bad code on purpose for job security. What do I do?
This week Jamison and Dave answer these questions: A developer on a team I lead doesn’t seem interested in growing. How do I help them engage more? I gave two weeks notice, but was told part of the way through to not come in any more. I still had work left and this made me feel bad. Is this common? Did I do anything wrong? Jamison talks about the Khan Academy engineering culture. He kinda misquoted it though. They don’t explicitly say they lay people off who don’t progress....
This week Jamison and Dave answer these questions: How do I keep up with new tech as a team lead? I manage a team. A manager from a different team wants me to run everything I do in my team by him. What do I do? Jamison mentions this by Charity Majors on the pendulum between technical and people leadership. Jamison also mentions this HBR article on employee happiness....
This week Jamison and Dave answer these questions: It seems like my teams always miss their story point commitments. Is this normal? How do you change it? How do you actually measure developer productivity? The article comparing research on productivity in static and dynamic type systems is here . It is a great read. Jamison also mentions Goodhart’s Law. Read more about it here ....
This week Jamison and Dave answer these questions: We’ve re-written the project I’m on 10 times without launching. What should I do? I worked hard to hit a deadline, only to find out the deadline was moved. How do I avoid this in the future? We talked a bit about the value of deadlines way back in episode nine if you want to hear some positive things about deadlines.
This week Jamison and Dave answer these questions: My boss wants me to speak at conferences, but I’m very new to software. What should I do? How do I get more than a 2% raise? That is the company average. We talked about conferences a bit more way back in episode 6 . We also talked more about playing the salary game in episode 23 , which is a technique for sharing salary information with your co-workers....
This week Jamison and Dave answer these questions: My organization requires me to set goals for myself. What advice do you have for writing good technical and non-technical goals? My managers openly joke about firing people all the time. What should I do?
This week Jamison and Dave answer these questions: What are some good ways for people who aren’t good at self-promotion to promote themselves? I’m moving to Europe in a year. How much notice should I give my company that I’m leaving? Way back in episode 26 we talked a little bit about self-promotion as well.
Jamison and Dave will be at the UtahJS Conference on September 18th. See conf.utahjs.com for more info and to buy tickets. Come say hi! This week Jamison and Dave answer these questions: Do I need to take a pay cut when switching languages? I was promoted at work but didn’t get a raise or a title change. What do I do?
Jamison and Dave will be at the UtahJS Conference on September 18th. See conf.utahjs.com for more info and to buy tickets. Come say hi! This week Jamison and Dave answer these questions: A developer on my team has been rewriting my code under the guise of “code cleanup” without saying anything to me. Is this normal? What should I do? How do you deal with co-workers who over-explain unimportant issues?
Jamison and Dave answer these questions: My CEO is micromanaging the developers. What do I do? I’m about to take a job as the only developer at a company. How do I handle working without technical coworkers?
Jamison and Dave answer these questions: I’m sometimes an informal lead on project teams. How do I help the team get stuff done as a peer? How do I deal with burnout after an extended period of crunch time? Jamison mentions the blog post by Jamis Buck called To Smile Again where he talks about his experiences with burnout.
Jamison and Dave answer these questions: I’m a new team lead with a team member who is very appraisal-driven. How do I deal with them? Have you ever experienced meeting-creep? What do you do about it? Jamison mentions the 37 signals blog post on the downsides of group chat .
Jamison and Dave answer these questions: My supervisor is a know-it-all who needs to be the smartest person in the room. How do I deal with it? I want to move to another city and work remotely. How do I convince my boss to let me?
Jamison and Dave answer these questions: It’s been a year and I still haven’t touched the codebase. What should I do? All my hobbies revolve around computers. How do I develop other interests? Jamison mentioned Dan Luu’s article on how bad teams are always hiring. Here it is. Rich Hickey’s Hammock-Driven Development talk was also mentioned....
Jamison and Dave answer these questions: Should I get a Masters in Computer Science? How do I ask good questions?
Jamison and Dave talk about these questions: My cousin is a manager at my employer. How do I avoid nepotism? I’d like to become a developer. What are the minimum requirements for a junior developer? When will I be “good enough” to get a job as a junior dev?
Jamison and Dave talk about these questions: I have a great, comfortable job that doesn’t push me very hard. How do I deal with worrying about being left in the dust? How do I deal with imposter syndrome?
Jamison and Dave talk about these questions: How direct should I be in a peer review of a coworker who I really dislike? How do I convince developers to go on call?
Jamison and Dave were out this week, so here is a DEEP CUT from the archives. This originally aired as episode 41. How do I deal with someone who says their job (management) is so much harder than my job (engineering)? How do I deal with a two-boss situation where I am one of the bosses?
Jamison and Dave answer these two questions: I’m in too many meetings. How do I guard my own productivity? How do I make sure I’m not sidelined when my company acquires another company?
We answer these two questions: What should developers know about product management? I have TOO MANY notifications interrupting me all the time. What do I do?
We answer these two questions: What is the best seating arrangements for software developers? How do I disarm my CTO who is emotionally attached to his code?
