Career

Satisfaction

• Manage your priorities and energy. | Irrational Exuberance • Discusses the right and wrong ways to balance your interests with your company’s goals so you stay motivated and energized in your role

Goals

• Some possible career goals • Julia Evans 📖
• IC vs EM track:
  • Supper Club × Sarah Drasner on Engineering Management • Syntax 🎙️
  • Engineering Leadership with Meri Williams • Console Dev Tools 🎙️
  • Resilient Management with Lara Hogan • ShopTalk 🎙️
• Invest in yourself, not in your job. • Mike Crittendem 📖

Leveraging 1:1s

• 1:1 topic ideas • Julia Evans 📖
• Conducting Effective and Regular One-on-Ones • Leah Candelaria-Tyler 📖
• 101 Questions to Ask in One on Ones Building Customer Driven SaaS Products • Jason Evanish 📖
• Things your manager might not know • Julia Evans 📖

Senior Engineering

• What’s a senior engineer’s job? • Julia Evans 📖
• Hiring (and managing) cracked engineers • Charles Cook 📖

Staff Engineering

• The Staff Engineer’s Path: A Guide for Individual Contributors Navigating Growth and Change • Tanya Reilly 📕
• How to Set the Technical Direction for Your Team • James Hood 📖
• Making Things Happen: Mastering Project Management • Scott Berkun 📕
• Getting to Commitment: Tackling broad technical problems in large organizations • Mattie Toia 📺
• A survey of engineering strategies • Will Larson 📖
• Progress is a lake, not a line • Kevin Sookocheff 📖

Tech leading

• “Ask if you have questions” isn’t enough • Julia Evans 📖
• How to answer questions in a helpful way • Julia Evans 📖
• How do you make an awesome team? • Julia Evans 📖

Feature leading

Goals

1. Identify + reduce any ambiguity in the project requirements
2. Make tasks available to teammates that align with what they want to learn and build

Tasks

1. Meet with stakeholders + ask clarifying questions
2. Gather supporting materials

• Mocks?
• Code?

3. Build quick, throwaway POC prototypes to test hypotheses

Links

• Directly Responsible Individuals (DRI) • GitLab Handbook 📖

Documenting Team Knowledge

Why is it so hard to document team knowledge?

• Documentation is hard because there are barriers to just blurting out the knowledge in the first place
  • Where should it go?
  • Does it appply to everyone? Who does it apply to?
  • Am I allowed to update the doc I think it belongs in?
  • Do I need to get permission? Discuss as a group?
• All of these things lead to NEVER WRITING THE IDEA down when these thoughts and steps come first
• Solution?
  • Personal scratchpads for team members
• Just write the idea down immediately
• Consider the rest later, or don’t
• This relates to the Zettelkasten idea of focusing on just writing short notes in the flow of learning rather than starting with a daunting writing project concept and trying to force your way through it in linear order
• The latter requires too much willpower and is likely the wrong plan anyway
• The muscle memory is to just write down all interesting ideas in a precise and brief note, THEN connect them to related ideas, then move on

Onboarding docs

• All onboarding instructions should be written down
• Document it or you will forget it
• Train by creating docs, not by talking.
• Verbal instructions are easily forgotten and can’t be reviewed and inevitably lead to repeated questions
• “When someone new joins the team, I try to avoid verbal training. I believe processes should be documented. So I link to the relevant doc. If one doesn’t exist, we create it together. Outdated? We fix it. This fosters solid docs, exposes holes, and avoids ‘tribal knowledge’…” • Cory House 🐦

Success

• You need to realize this.. • People don’t care how hard you work; they care about the results you deliver. Delivering while not working hard is fine; working hard but not delivering is not • ThePrimeagen 📺
• Is Critical Thinking the Most Important Skill for Software Engineers? • The Pragmatic Engineer 📖
• Your Small Imprecise Ask Is a Big Waste of Their Time • Always clarify how much time you/they should spend on a task and how much it should/shouldn’t be prioritized • Stay SaaSy 📖
• Timebox your requests • Mike Crittenden 📖
• Why Working Smarter Beats Working Harder • You’ll help your company more by giving yourself the rest and space you need to produce impactful ideas than by grinding overtime on your current tasks • Ali Abdaal 📺
• Ask for Advice, Not Permission • Asking people for permission puts them in an uncomfortable position • Andrew Bosworth 📖

Performance Reviews

• The magic question to ask before writing your self review • Mike Crittenden 📖

Freelancing

• Complete Guide To Freelance Web Development • Ryan Postell 📖

Inbox

• A job is just a phase in someone’s life – Mike Crittenden

• 7 books that changed me the most as a software engineer

• Perceived as valuable at job • In writing, identify a problem and propose a solution • The Primeagen 📺

• Playing defense: How to control the narrative if your work is being questioned • Build your credibility by giving thoughtful explanations when someone demonstrates they misunderstand or don’t know what your team is doing and why you’re doing it • Wes Kao 📖

• Tips for improving your CV - Dmitry Kudryavtsev • Dmitry Kudryavtsev 📖

• The Secret to Finding Your Ideal Workplace | Marion Campan | TED • Prioritize culture fit over everything else; observe and ask the recommended questions during the recruitment process • TED 📺

• Lessons learned in 35 years of making software – Jim Grey • Ship long before it’s ready and build strong relationships that will help save your job by working as publicly and helpfully as you can • Jim Grey 📖