Tell and suggest culture are different ways in which people communicate their thoughts and ideas, but when left unchecked, these differences can cause the suggesters on your team to feel steamrolled — especially when combined with other workplace power dynamics.
Read MoreThe question of whether or not any given job change is going to turn out well is one without any easy answers. With so many different factors involved, both at individual and organizational levels, it can be difficult to recognize patterns even for yourself.
Read MoreIf your new workplace is just a mismatch, but there’s nothing truly wrong with it — such as being a big organization when you prefer small ones, or using Ruby when you prefer PHP, or doing Agile when you hate meetings — then it’s probably not worth trying to change things. And if you find yourself in a place that’s cartoon-villain-level bad, where the product is a puppy-kicking machine and managers drink fresh unicorn tears during meetings, then you should probably just run for the nearest exit. But what if you find yourself at a place that’s a bit dysfunctional, but you think it has the potential for improvement?
Read MoreOne of the hard parts about changing jobs is all the unknowns. Even the most thorough interview process can’t uncover every aspect of what your new day-to-day work environment will be like. If you’re a couple months into a new role, you might find yourself wondering if you made the right decision. How can you tell whether or not you made a mistake?
Read MoreSometimes, I argue with computers and all the times, those computers contain yaks and sometimes, I document my yakshaves for posterity. This is a tutorial that will cover how to use Circle, Docker, and Nomad to run what is basically a cron job.
Read MorePeople make mistakes, whether with pronouns or programs. Code reviews don’t exempt you from putting in the effort to write the best code you can in the first place. The fact that other people can correct you if you misgender someone doesn’t exempt you from actually trying to get it right the first time. And unlike a compiler or a test suite, people have feelings. Here’s how to think about the impact of asking other people to correct you if you mess up someone’s pronouns.
Read MoreWhen it feels like the only way to keep making progress at work is to change jobs every couple years, of course it’s going to be hard to think long-term. With so many different things that the IC track after “senior” can look like, you’ll want to ask yourself some deliberate questions about where you want your career to go.
Read MoreWhen you enter your mid-career, the nature of the work you do begins to change. The scope of your work will increase. This might take the form of an organizational focus, looking at how engineering work gets done, or a deeply technical focus, but either way, the more senior you become the more you’ll be expected to understand the broader impacts of your work throughout the organization.
Read MoreInterpersonal dynamics are different in your mid-career. There are still lots of ways in which you are still going to be learning and growing as an engineer. But you are also in a leadership role — people will often look to you for examples of how to behave — so it’s critical to make sure the impact you’re having is a positive one.
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