Developer Tea

You may hate hearing the word "process." You aren't alone if you do. But, what feels like a slog today is really in place for when the most critical things happen in your career. Have a process, even if it feels useless on a standard day.

The psychological phenomenon of hedonic adaptation can seem like the enemy of your happiness, but once you understand how it works, you can use it to create lasting habit change and focus on what matters most.

Today we look at a mental model from the field of psychophysics called Weber's Law. This concept is a great analogy for a lot of problems we face as engineers and people leaders, and can help us understand just how deeply humans depend on context to understand the world.

A senior developer understands that they have to be very selective about how they apply knowledge. Know matter how vast your knowledge may be, you are limited in how you can practically use it in a given circumstance.

Your intuition says that control is the ladder you climb to improve your career. But most great leaders tend to do one thing: the opposite of increasing control.

In today's episode we explore the duality between confronting difficult realities while maintaining optimism. Specifically, we discuss a critical question: what does it mean to be optimistic?

The traits that define a senior engineer are not catalogued perfectly in one spot. But, nevertheless, we'll try to cover some of the most important traits and habits of a senior engineer.In today's episode, we'll add more detail to the commonly recommended skill of "work breakdown." Sometimes this extremely valuable skill is the opposite of what you really need to practice.Feel free to incorporate these into your skill matrices, reviews, or job descriptions - I'd love to hear about it if you do!

The traits that define a senior engineer are not catalogued perfectly in one spot. But, nevertheless, we'll try to cover some of the most important traits and habits of a senior engineer. In this episode, we'll discuss the fact that difficulty does not equate to value, and hazard a guess as to why we can easily confuse this, especially as we begin to grow from junior to senior roles. Feel free to incorporate these into your skill matrices, reviews, or job descriptions - I'd love to hear about it if you do!

The traits that define a senior engineer are not catalogued perfectly in one spot. But, nevertheless, we'll try to cover some of the most important traits and habits of a senior engineer.In this episode, we'll discuss the importance of systematically communicating value to various audiences.Feel free to incorporate these into your skill matrices, reviews, or job descriptions - I'd love to hear about it if you do!

The traits that define a senior engineer are not catalogued perfectly in one spot. But, nevertheless, we'll try to cover some of the most important traits and habits of a senior engineer.Feel free to incorporate these into your skill matrices, reviews, or job descriptions - I'd love to hear about it if you do!

We play the short game so we get the chance to play the long game.Early in our careers, we imagine the best way to play is always focus on the long game. But in reality, we need both.Be aware of leaning too far the opposite direction, and accidentally abandoning the long game entirely.##

We can become accustomed to the rate at which we experience change, and imagine that that rate will continue to increase linearly.Eventually, change will level off. We accumulate fewer skills later in our careers, our network of connections might seem to top out, or our salary bumps slow down.If we know that change tends to follow a logarithmic shape, we can prepare and plan better for the changing rate of change.

At the beginning of any work session, practice, performance, or any other activity you want to achieve flow during, you can give yourself the best shot at getting into flow by controlling a few simple variables. We talk about two of them in today's episode: Session Feedback and Session Goal.##

Protecting your flow state may help you have more "peak experiences" - whether in your career or in your personal life. This is your opportunity to make the biggest strides and highest achievements.In this episode we start a conversation about what it takes to protect your flow state.

Sometimes I hear advice that is worth its weight in gold. In today's episode I share one piece of advice that is almost universally applicable across life and career efforts.

If your identity is complex, your purpose is by extension complex. In this episode, we talk about purpose as an expression, rather than a regulator, of your identity. ##

You don't need to overthink purpose. Focus on clarity, and finding your underlying motivation. That clarity can be short-lived; purpose is a dynamic and powerful force, but only if you hold it lightly.

What you are afraid of in your career may be the thing that propels you. It's all about framing, and removing the negative and positive language. Instead, think about how you can best position yourself and that behavior to be valuable instead of a detractor.

If you aren't doing something, you either can't or won't. In today's episode, we explore this very simple starting point for behavior change and habit development, and explore the boundaries of the model.

You aren't going to put your foot in your mouth, or reveal some devastating level of ineptitude. Asking questions, especially as a beginner, is much more likely to gain you favor than disdain.