Dave and Jamison answer these questions: A teammate is a great developer but English isn’t their first language. Sometimes this results in bad grammar or spelling mistakes in code comments, variables, and method names. Often I correct it in code review, but I sometimes feel like I’m nit-picking, although I really do want it changed to be correct. It slows down code reviews. And of course, I don’t wish to appear racist or discriminatory. Any ideas for solving this? This is my first job out of col...
Mar 24, 2018•37 min
Dave and Jamison answer these questions: A fellow developer submitted a pull request for me to review. The logic was totally fine, but the spacing drove me nuts. We use a linter to enforce some coding style but because this wasn’t a rule in the linter, I wasn’t sure if it was fair game to call him out on it. Was I being petty? I knew if this got into our code I would end up fixing it later myself. I told him I would approve the PR but thought that spacing should be more readable and consistent w...
Mar 17, 2018•30 min
Dave and Jamison answer these questions: Do you have any recommendations for maintaining physical health in a software developer role? For example, strategies to maintain good posture, reduce eye strain, etc. Is the practice of asking interviewing developers to regurgitate 20 year old algorithms on a whiteboard a recent trend or is this something new? Can you make sense of this madness? This is a pretty good summary of some of the health effects of sitting. Here is the tweet Jamison talked about...
Mar 09, 2018•33 min
Dave and Jamison answer these questions: I’ve been pushed in to doing management tasks I really don’t enjoy. What do I do? How do I handle a co-worker who I really struggle to get along with?
Mar 02, 2018•35 min
This week Jamison and Dave answer these questions: We have a great intern, who is smart and has good ideas but is also very quiet. She’s got a great deal of potential, and I want to tell her that being more vocal and assertive can help her greatly, both in her career and in life. How can I give her this feedback, without it sounding like a criticism of her personality, or her introverted tendencies?” Recently a team member was let go. I am the team lead so I played a role in their termination. W...
Feb 22, 2018•30 min
This week Jamison and Dave answer these questions: I know that teaching others is important when working on a team so that the team can grow and get better. But what happens when one member of the team, despite being the friendliest person in the world, is missing so many required skills for his job that it becomes impossible for me to do anything besides teach him? I recently heard the concept of “known unknowns” and “unknown unknowns”. It’s the unknown unknowns that get me. Sometimes I ask a q...
Feb 17, 2018•28 min
This week Jamison and Dave answer these questions: When should asking a developer pal for help go from something that is free because you’re pals to something you should compensate them for in some way? I’ve never worked with recruiters before. I’ve always found jobs from friends and other connections. Is working with recruiters worth it? What should I watch out for? I finally found the creepy Jack and the Beanstalk video! It is still horrifying....
Feb 08, 2018•31 min
This week Jamison and Dave answer these questions: As a “less than ideal” engineer was leaving our team, he asked if he could use me as a job reference. How should I tell them no? What are your thoughts on having full sleeve tattoos (ie, tattoos that cover the entire arm) within engineering?
Feb 03, 2018•35 min
This week Jamison and Dave answer these questions: My job doesn’t seem to leave room to negotiate salary or raises for our year-end review. Is this normal? How do I negotiate in this process? Can working part-time, when it’s possible to work full time, to invest in personal development look bad to a future employer? This tweet storm by Sarah Mei is good and relevant. This is the video about making your own font and anagraphs that Jamison mentioned at the end. It is SO GOOD. This is a funny and e...
Jan 27, 2018•29 min
This week Jamison and Dave answer these questions: A previous job involved a coworker who, over time, became very difficult to get along with. I did my best to talk it through with him, but he would only ever say I needed to “fix my attitude”. I tried to deflect and avoid conflict, but he’d continually impose himself on the situation. (Assign himself to review my code, come into my cube and demand my help, etc.) I had good relationships with the rest of the team, and they all agreed that he was ...
Jan 19, 2018•40 min
This week Jamison and Dave answer these questions: How often do candidates get hired who don’t match the requirements listed in a job posting? Is it a waste for me to apply to all jobs I come across even though I only have about 1/3 of what they want? I’ve been moved to a newly formed team. I suspect the team consists of people nobody really wants to work with. What are my options in a situation like this?
Jan 11, 2018•28 min
This week Jamison and Dave answer these questions: Upper management has a negative impression of me because of an early manager. How do I manage and improve my reputation with mid and upper level management, who I interact with very rarely? I have a job offer I feel unqualified for. Should I decline this offer I honestly don’t deserve, or face a massive amount of impostor syndrome and risk not delivering?
Jan 05, 2018•29 min
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?
Dec 28, 2017•31 min
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...
Dec 22, 2017•38 min
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....
Dec 14, 2017•47 min
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?
Dec 07, 2017•34 min
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?
Nov 30, 2017•25 min
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?
Nov 23, 2017•27 min
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?
Nov 16, 2017•26 min
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?
Nov 09, 2017•36 min
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....
Nov 02, 2017•25 min
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....
Oct 29, 2017•32 min
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 ....
Oct 19, 2017•38 min
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....
Oct 13, 2017•27 min
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....
Oct 04, 2017•35 min
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?
Sep 25, 2017•31 min
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.
Sep 19, 2017•34 min
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?
Sep 11, 2017•37 min
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?
Aug 31, 2017•39 min
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?
Aug 17, 2017•29 min
