Developer Tea

This episode explores philosophical frameworks—ontology, teleology, and dynamism—to inform decision-making in uncertain situations, providing practical advice for applying these concepts in your professional and personal life. Understand how ontology, teleology, and dynamism can help you navigate conversations about future actions for teams, companies, families, or yourself. Ontology focuses on a thing's intrinsic characteristics, teleology on its purpose or outcome, and dynamism on the changing environment. Learn how these philosophical frameworks address the uncertainty of the future and provide tools for making intentional decisions. The episode connects these concepts to practical advice, especially for engineering managers, demonstrating their relevance to your career. Explore how ontology identifies a thing's characteristics in isolation, while teleology considers its purpose or outcome. Discover how dynamism identifies changes in the environment and intent, providing a contextual understanding. Con

This episode includes practical techniques to prepare for the unexpected by identifying vulnerabilities and building resilience, using the "curse question" and the "assumption audit" to help you turn potential problems into strategic advantages.• Uncover how to use a "curse question" to expose vulnerabilities you didn't know you had, by imagining realistic negative scenarios and what could go wrong.• Learn how to move beyond resilience to antifragility, turning unexpected events into opportunities for growth and strategic advantage, by making them benefitial rather than harmful.• Discover why your medium-confidence assumptions might be the most dangerous and how an "assumption audit" can help you rate them and their potential impact if they are wrong, to help you better understand your weaknesses.• Explore why preparing for a range of possibilities, including black swan events, is more effective than trying to predict specific outcomes, and how to spot opportunities in the unexpected.• Learn why focusing on a

In this episode, we discuss how invisible inertia can cause us to misinterpret our reality in work scenarios.• Discover why common misconceptions about behaviour are so difficult to spot.• Explore why your "unique" situation might be a common trap, a "uniqueness bias".• Learn how exceptional states can become the norm and impact your life.• Uncover how people's values shape company culture, and how to evaluate this.• Why might expecting a culture to change in the direction you want be unrealistic?• Learn why you should evaluate situations for what they are right now, instead of expecting future change.

Time-crunched and data-scarce? Learn how the RPD model can leverage expertise and intuition to speed up decision-making, and how the 'Rubicon' moment can make your team more action-oriented.Stop endless planning and start doing: Learn how understanding action phases can help your team move faster from discussion to delivery.• Is your team stuck in debate? Discover the "Rubicon" moment and how crossing it can boost productivity.• Learn to recognise when deliberation is costing you more than it's worth, and how to commit to a plan, even with limited information.• Is your team over-analysing? See how intuition and expertise can drive faster, "good-enough" decisions using the Recognition-Primed Decision (RPD) model.• Learn to make quick decisions in high-pressure situations using experience, even without perfect data.• Trust your team's expertise to move from talk to action sooner and more effectively.• Want to improve your team's speed and decision-making? Tune in to find out how to get moving!

Use "What" to get more specific. Align actions with intentions for better time management.• Stop wasting time on autopilot. Discover the power of the Five Whats and start being intentional with your time.• Tired of vague labels? Ask yourself, "What am I actually doing?" to gain clarity over your activities.• Learn how to move beyond "focus time" and define the specific actions you're taking.• See how your actions align with your goals (or don't!). Use this to refine your schedule and achieve your objectives.• These concepts can flex to apply to every aspect of your life

In today's episode, we're focusing on taking your resolutions and making them matter. I will give you two challenges in this episode to improve the quality and potential of success for your resolutions.

Today, we celebrate 10 years of Developer Tea. I wouldn't be doing this podcast without you listening. Especially if you have been listening for many years, thank you!

How can you create better scientific wild a** guesses when the work is not well defined? We discuss a few strategies in this episode. We also talk a bit about what an estimate is in the first place, and how it differs from a commitment / deadline.

Are you operating in the world, or are you working on a problem? This shift in agency can make all the difference in your career.

Can you use ChatGPT to become a better engineer? I'm not just talking about learning a language or fixing a bug with ChatGPT providing advice... I'm talking about career simulations. In this episode we discuss how the airline industry has fixed the problem of experience, and how we can learn from their insights to create low-stakes learning environments that boost our career and confidence through the roof.

In today's episode we discuss the concept of adopting self-coaching personas, and discuss the third persona, "Shoulder Socrates."

In today's episode we discuss the concept of adopting self-coaching personas, and discuss the second persona, the over-optimizer.

In today's episode we discuss the concept of adopting self-coaching personas, and discuss a critical first persona to start with.

High-leverage work often comes in the simplest form of helping another person with their efforts.

Learn to prioritize, and everything else falls into place. This is clarity through perspective and purpose.

Your career growth will be directly correlated to your ability to solve critical unsolved problems in the gaps of your organization's problems. Focus on finding the problems that have a high chance of success for you specifically - the low hanging fruit.

In this episode we discuss the delineation between culture and values. What you allow is just as important as what you value.

The blunt reality: Merit cycles are not how you build your earning power or career. They are a function of company culture and HR, and generally speaking are disconnected from your biggest opportunities for growth.So, where should you focus? That's what we talk about in today's episode.

In today's episode we discuss focus, again. This time, through the lens of a few mental models that help us decide what is actually the right thing to focus on. You'll learn the real enemy of focus (note: it's not just distraction).

I'm joined today by Brian Pulliam. I've personally engaged Brian as a career coach. In this discussion we'll talk a bit about coaching, and about how you can set yourself up to become a much better candidate in your job search as an engineering leader.Values Exercise Live:Jonathan and Brian perform a live exercise, transforming company core values into interview questions.Discussing the importance of aligning your experiences with the values that a company holds."I'm going to do this live right now with you, actually. I think it'll be a cool exercise..."Advanced Interview Techniques:How to handle unexpected questions by paraphrasing.Preparing for common interview questions derived from company values."You should convert every single one of those core values into a question that starts with tell me about a time when you demonstrated X."Finding a Way to Succeed:The importance of creative problem solving in leadership.Examples of finding efficient solutions to technical problems without writing code."With zero l