My Manager REFUSES To Give Feedback! - Engineering Manager AMA

alrighty we are going live here let's wait for the streams to be streaming I think it's just Instagram left and now we got Instagram going too cool surprisingly no issues this time we've had a little bit of bad luck the past couple streams with everything being broken right at the beginning um I guess still TBD if the chat is working so uh folks if you're joining into the chat come say hi let me know it's working I do appreciate it it's a fear of mine to do the stream and then to realize that the chat's not working so makes it pretty awkward when people are asking questions and you're like oh no one's here talking and then I look at the actual stream itself and the chats there and I'm like I see them now um I use restream so that I can go across uh this is streaming to YouTube Facebook LinkedIn twitch kick Instagram Twitter then I have to do Tik Tok separately I got substack hi folks on substack unfortunately substack is still not like a I don't know like a first class streaming platform which is kind of unfortunate um but someday they'll get there I'm sure it's pretty new there so I do appreciate folks on substack joining in unfortunately if you're on substack you don't see my um my screen being shared so I apologize but if you're joining on substack and you want to see when I do screen sharing then hop on YouTube or something else uh hey Justin Bentley good to see you I appreciate you being here um cyber Warrior 894 has a question to kick things off I'm a first year CS student should I be scared of AI replacing all tech jobs um at some point in the very far future yes uh I don't think for now um I've made a whole bunch of videos on on this topic about AI replacing uh jobs um because you're on YouTube from my main Channel Dev leader if you want to check out my other channel called code commute you can find a bunch of uh recent videos I'm just going to put it in the chat um code commute is my other YouTube channel and like I said you'll see other videos are actually my main Channel Dev leader if you look through my recent videos I might as well just pull it up um it's a live stream we can do this uh share one sec this is a video from my main Channel Dev leader sorry that didn't copy properly if you want to check this one out this is a edited down version of some of the topics from code commute um again if you're on a different platform where you can't see the chat coming in uh the question was I'm a first year CS student should I be scared of AI replacing all tech jobs this is a very common fear um unfortunately you have a lot of things in the media perpetuating this um which is very crappy um I don't think that that's going to be a reality Landon on Tik Tok is asking do you watch hockey I do not um which is kind of wild as a Canadian I don't watch hockey and I'm going to share a secret I can't even skate so don't tell the other Canadians though um I do drink maple syrup by the barrel every morning um I I got no other Canadian jokes I eat poutine every day I don't know um but no I don't watch hockey um yeah folks uh do you know what the OHL is the Ontario Hockey League I think yep nice yeah OHL um sorry again the the oh sagona Spirit very cool um yeah if you the Tik Tok chat doesn't get shared to the rest of the chat so there's chats everywhere so this is Landon from Tik Tok saying he plays for sagona Spirit cool stuff that's awesome man congrats I can't skate so I'm just out here doing software developer things um so for folks that are new to these live streams I do them every Monday at 7 p.m. Pacific the primary goal for me is to make sure that if you have questions and stuff that you want to ask related to uh software development career progression that kind of stuff please ask the in the chat that's the whole point of this um I make tons of YouTube videos I can keep making tons of YouTube videos but live streams are an opportunity where I can actually chat with you and go back and forth and answer questions and stuff um the other really cool thing is that uh when the stream starts ramping up there's lots of smart people that join the stream too and um you can engage in conversations that way because you'll have other people jumping in and offering their opinion uh lots of people that join almost every week which is really cool to see people coming back it's not just an accident they stopped in um unless it continues to be an accident I guess and then they just keep dropping in but um yeah I appreciate yall being here the to topic for today because I try to have a topic for every one of these streams is my manager refuses to give feedback um Landon says a Vancouver connects called me last month and they said they are going to pick me in the 2025 NHL draft that's super cool dude um that is exciting so if you are interested in knowing what my live streams are going to be about there's a cat at my door meowing very loud it's unrelated but um It's My Weekly Newsletter is generally what I will uh make it on if I just quickly share my screen you'll see that I have it pulled up here sorry if you're on I see David just joined on substack welcome um if you're on substack you already know where my newsletter is if you're on other platforms it might not be as obvious especially if you're on Instagram because it's a vertical feed but um My Weekly News letter which I linked in the chat if you get chat um is where my my weekly topic for the live stream is going to be but like I said as I'm going through this topic and and talking about in this particular case about feedback from your manager if you want to derail and ask questions in the chat please do um I will try my best to finish whatever thought I have from the topic of conversation and pivot over to your questions so uh I do appreciate you if you're patient and I'm in the middle of something I think last week I had I had someone that got very upset with me because I didn't answer their question immediately but um we still spent time answering it so anyway let's get back so you can see my lovely face here okay so this is a topic that came from code commute last week and I wrote about it my newsletter because I think it's really important to talk through feedback um it is one of the most critical things you can have for growth in your career and that's because well a few different reasons but um it's also something that we don't often what's a good way to say this I think it actually takes many people like effort to actually go ask for feedback and on top of that it takes effort for some people to be able to digest and leverage feedback uh it's it can be something that's awkward it can be uncomfortable uh it's something that we can do poorly so you know saying to someone great job is like that's nice but like sometimes it's just not very useful so useful feedback is another thing but feedback is like just something that I think all of us can do better and we could can and should take advantage of more especially when it comes to career growth now the topic for this conversation is specifically around feedback from your manager and this entire convers ation like the topic itself stemmed from the fact that originated from Reddit as all interesting things do right um someone on Reddit was saying they basically made the statement like their manager refuses to give them feedback and when I was talking about this on code commute originally I thought it was a an interesting way to frame that because they started by saying their manager refuses to give them feedback which I think is like I think that's a pretty I don't know pretty strong phrase to use like to refuse to give feedback um and it made me think like a couple of things and so I wrote about it in the newsletter but like the first one is like are you actually asking for feedback are they are they providing feedback and it's not valuable then you're seeing that as a refusal to do it so uh we'll get into that in a little bit more depth um hello on Kick good to see you LinkedIn user why isn't the LinkedIn usernames coming through I can see you on LinkedIn marad good to see your first message didn't come through I just [Music] see parts of it interesting good thing I can switch over to LinkedIn so Morad on LinkedIn says as a junior developer which one is more priority building projects and which type DSA or system design um these are all important uh for different reasons so let me take a moment to try and articulate this so again the question from around is as a junior developer which one is a more of a priority building projects and then I guess the sort of sub question there is which types of projects uh data structures and algorithms and uh system design Andor system design so I would say they all serve different purposes I would say the number one that I would recommend you spend the most time and effort on is building projects and that's because you're actually practicing building software I did a survey on I think I knew what the answer was going to be but I did started a survey on LinkedIn on Twitter on Reddit on basically every platform that supports polls um and asked people the most effective way that they learn and by a landslide building stuff Hands-On so as a junior when you're trying to get better right this is something that you're new at which is totally fine and expected but you have to get started somewhere you have to start building things you have to practice I would spend most of your time on this I don't mean like most of your waking hours I mean most of your your efforts in terms of trying to get better and improve on building projects um mad's follow-up question to that part specifically was which type um I think the way that I would frame this up is you have to think about the goal of building projects so projects can be beneficial for resumés I think sometimes people I mean there's a couple things right you want if you're trying to put a project onto a resume if that is the goal you want it to be something that's going to stand out okay and the reason that you do that is because if your experience especially as a junior is very limited and the you know the skill sets that you have are going to be very comparable to the other Junior people that also don't have you know hands-on experience the thing that's going to make you stand out amongst them aside from like volunteer effort and things like that like the types of things that you've spent time building could make you stand out and this is why when people say like oh building another calculator app is useless or a a to-do app is useless it's not that those things are useless it's that they don't stand out on a resume they don't seem unique because lots of other people have them now does that mean that you should not build a calculator app or you should not build a to-do app no I think that if you want to and you can and should you can lever projects to Showcase what you're learning so if you wanted to build a to-do app and you wanted to say this let me learn react it let me interface with post um it let me go figure out how to do deployments like and you want to list out the Technologies and stuff that you were building and iterating on great because that might be experience that someone else doesn't have and that could stand out so welcome Harry you missed the last two weeks shame shame on you but thanks for being here um yeah so I think that when we talk about projects you have to think about what the goal is okay so um if you take that into consideration just think about why you're building something and I think for the most part A lot of the value just comes from the learning experience of building things the next part was on DSA or system design uh so data structures and algorithms or system design if you're very junior system design will um AR arguably be less important it's not because there's no value in it you're going to be Building Systems in your career but the sort of exposure to this kind of thing or the expectation that you have a lot of system design skills as a junior probably lower expectation I'm not hiring Juniors onto my teams to go architect systems this is generally something that we have people with more experience doing now being able to do it and have an understanding of it is very valuable but if I were to recommend how people should spend their time building projects for sure and then especially when it comes to interviewing data structures and algorithms especially and that's because a lot of programming interview questions are built around data structures and algorithms not all of them a lot of them and in particular like Elite code style questions unfortunately I been hearing more and more people saying that this is kind of changing in the industry which is good news I hope it continues that way because I don't think that lead code style questions are very valuable in terms of uh predicting someone's performance as a software developer okay so that's my my take Morad I hope that's helpful let me know if you have any follow-up questions or if I didn't get that as clearly as you would like but that's my perspective on it um ZX do wz Dows uh says hi do you know anything about penetration testing uh not as significant amount um as in like not professionally I understand Concepts from it at a high level understand the purpose but not enough to sort of speak to I don't know like from I don't have industry experience like as a penetration test or that kind of thing uh so if you have questions that are high level I might be able to answer for you but otherwise if it's very specific and nuanced maybe not um yeah I think that's it for questions I'm going to go back um go back to the newsletter topic by the way thank you for asking the questions if there's more just keep dumping them in the chat it's the whole point um okay so the way that I started approaching this in the newsletter regarding feedback from your manager um is I said that you want to make sure that it's kind of like a prerequisite you want to make sure that you are set up to have clear and effective communication with your manager this is something that I talk about like probably enough that makes people sick hearing it from me but I think it's critical uh if you don't know sort of my background I am an engineering manager I've been doing this for almost 13 years now uh currently at Microsoft for just under five years and before that was at a startup That Grew From around seven people to around 250 by the time I left so I have seen some um but I've been an engineering manager for a while and I think that one of the most important things in terms of career development is making sure that you have clear open and effective communication with your manager because your manager is ultimately going to be the person that helps put you up for promotion okay and if you're interested in career advancement and aside from just you know um you might be very proactive and you're good at finding opportunities and projects and stuff to work on this is all great but in terms of the actual advancement and levels and things like that making sure that you're aligned with your manager is going to be one of the best things that you can do in that regard if you're not you're going to be likely set up for disappointment because you might think that you're doing the things that you should focus on and then when it comes time for performance and rewards and things like that it's like why aren't I getting promoted and your manager might say because you're not doing X Y and Z and you you'll say but I was doing a b and c and you're like you're totally on different pages right so clear and effective communication with your manager is critical um going back to the chat do you think companies have enough awareness about it I mean well I find jobs as a pentester absolutely uh security is just going to be more and more and more important um especially with the scale of things um especially with just like the continued drive for everything being digital security is like like one of the most important things right um You have companies that if we take a step back like a business needs to be able to generate Revenue right so you need to be able to uh basically provide value to customers so that they pay for things if you don't have that you don't have a business right so you have that but once you have that in place if there isn't trust between you and the customers which is a lot of the time built on privacy and security if you don't have that the business erodes right you're not going to if you didn't have a a if you're trying to use a bank right and there wasn't security you're probably not putting money in that bank if you're going to be paying money to a service provider and they're going to be storing your data for whatever it is and that's private data you don't want to have your information leaked right like there's all these all these things are like predicated on the fact that you have privacy and security at a level that gives people trust in your service and so if we take like a like I work at Microsoft right now right uh and I know different people have different opinions on Microsoft people will say like oh I hate Bill Gates and I'm like Bill Gates doesn't even work there man um but like there's obviously like a stigma around Microsoft from some people um you'll have people that have bad experiences with the software they don't like it they think it's too much whatever it's clunky buggy there's there's going to be opinions about this kind of stuff from everyone but from working at Microsoft um I can say that security is like the most important thing in terms of a Charter that we have at least in the space that I'm in we will drop absolutely everything when it comes to security it's the Pinnacle of importance because without it we don't have a platform it needs to be secure so to and by the way I don't know how to pronounce your username zerox Dows I think it's a zerox out the front like a then Dows after that but yeah I think to your question I think that there is do enough do enough companies have awareness I don't know maybe they don't but I think that it will continue to uh gain traction I don't think that that's going to be something that decreases and that's I guess my perspective I don't have data to to back that up with Trends so just a heads up there there's someone else from LinkedIn oh man mad's message finally came in and it says hi but that hi message is from from ages ago so bizarre thanks for nothing Ram um okay I think I'm going to go back to the newsletter topic so where we left off was effective communication and why that's important but what I wrote down was like when you're set up to have effective communication you can work towards that alignment of expectations you can reduce surprises right surprises when it comes to Performance time not a thing you want it's pretty rare that you're going to be sitting there at performance and rewards time when it's you know time for promotion and have a a super exciting positive surprise right usually it's disappointment because you were expecting the promotion and it didn't happen unfortunately so if you are working on having alignment with your manager clear communication this is going to set you up to avoid that um you can reduce the uncertainty in your priorities again having clear understanding what you should be working on and then also a better understanding of strengths and weaknesses for yourself okay and this is going to be where the feedback part comes in right feedback is this opportunity that we can get different perspective again coming from your manager is going to be very valuable because when you're aligning on expectations they will be trying to call out the areas that you should be focused on ideally right and then that way you can make sure you're getting that feedback acting on it and then working towards the progression Luke Skinner says and I see I say that in just as the second message so I'm mentally preparing to read this first comment or question as a software engineer and academic research with full Microsoft Azure stack and wall in the mystery of m security I can clear with that conclusion um also been in orgs in the past with suffer breaches and that wasn't fun uh shut the inter company down for many days days twice yeah secure like this is why I kind of prefaced everything I was saying with like everyone's going to have their own take on Microsoft if I wasn't working at Microsoft and I was working at Google you have people saying oh Google sucks for these reasons if I was at Amazon Amazon sucks for the there's always going to be the surface area of these companies is outrageously big okay so um I can't sit here and say like you know any of these companies have never had a problem or something like that what I can say is that and you don't have to believe me on this right I'm just sharing with you my experience like security is the top most important part of our Charter and I could be working on literally anything and if my manager or my skip level came to me and said anything about security I know exactly what that means it means you're not doing anything else except addressing this now or yesterday right it's like it's the topmost priority so just how it is so when you don't have an open clear Communication channel with your manager to be able to get feedback you you'll often find yourself uncertain about what's expected of you to get to the next level um we talked about like this idea that you might not be aligned and then when you go to have performance reviews like uh oh big surprise um and then like I kind of wrote down like having blind spots in your skill sets and what you should focus on right so this can be a thing where especially if your heads down working a certain way for a while um we talk about soft skills being important for software Engineers right if you're not getting feedback on this kind of stuff you may find yourself in a situation where like maybe your soft skills do need a lot of work and if you're not getting feedback on that you might not be aware that this is something you need to address right you might be operating a particular way not getting feedback staying that certain way for a while and then maybe after a year two years or something someone finally gives you feedback and they're like man like you really got to work on this like your communication's not clear or people find it difficult to work with you and you don't want to wait for things to get to that point you want to understand that these are areas for you to improve upon along the way okay so you have a clear open Communication channel with your manager that was the prerequisite now comes the feedback part right so um I think that you need that to at least enable feedback but it doesn't guarantee that you get it okay so I wrote so what should you be doing if there isn't actually a solid feedback loop is it possible that your manager is just outright refusing to give you feedback so like I said earlier in the Stream this came from a Reddit post and I was doing a video response to it and the first I don't know I try to take like different perspectives on this stuff when I'm talking through it okay and um often times when I'm doing my Vlog entry I'm sharing like sort of stream of Consciousness the first thing that comes to mind and um then I try to look at it from different angles as well and then that way I can I can try to like I can learn from it too if that makes sense because I think it's important that I try to look at things from different angles and one thing that came to mind mind was like is it possible that this person's saying like my manager is refusing to give me feedback but really what's happening is not that the manager is refusing it's just like the manager is not giving them feedback and this person's not asking for it okay so that was the first thing that came to mind my LinkedIn messages are not coming through properly this one says hi from LinkedIn user and I don't know who it is who are you LinkedIn user I will find you Faraz welcome I had to refresh on LinkedIn so step one are you even asking for feedback right a theme when I talk about career progression and I talk about you know the ways to operate in your career is that you shouldn't sit back and be passive about things it's the same thing when when it comes to uh going after promotions and stuff like that um going after opportunities waiting for opportunities to fall in your lap not not a good strategy and I would say the same thing for feedback if you're just sitting there waiting for feedback there's a different approach you can take which is if you're expecting it and you want it and it's going to help you grow ask for it right this is something that I try to make sure that I'm doing with my employees I try to make sure that getting feedback but I can't sit here and say that I'm perfect at it I'm certainly not I've been doing this for almost 13 years and I can tell you with confidence that I am not perfect at this now when I have an employee that comes to me and says hey could you give me some feedback on this I appreciate it right and it's for a couple of reasons one is that it's an opportunity where I can help clarify something with them so thank you for bringing that to my attention and number two it reminds me that at least for this individual in this context they actually are looking for more feedback right the Cadence that I'm providing it at or the type of feedback that I have been providing is not sufficient and I don't beat myself up over that I'm not like oh I must be the worst manager it's just a reminder that this person is seeking more and what's my role as a manager it's to enable my employees to do their best work possible and grow grow in their career so this is an opportunity for me to be doing a better job with them so I would always say like I definitely want people to come ask me if they're looking for more feedback okay so how does this work how does this look my recommendation and this is based on my own experience would be I'll kind of explain how I've seen this work and how I try to maneuver it so if we use the example of someone on my team um if you're reporting to me and you came to me and said like we're doing a one-on-one right we're chatting through stuff and then you say and any you know like hey Nick could I could I get some feedback from you on how I'm doing usually what will happen is I will say hey look I can give you some general feedback sort of in the context of this conversation like some something that you could walk away with right now but usually what I will say is that unfortunately it is probably going to feel kind of generic and not very actionable and then I stop there and then we go different ways no it's going to feel kind of generic and not actionable because for me I need some time to process this I don't like generally I don't walk around throughout my entire day having everything loaded up in my head about you know any any feedback I could go drop on an employee at a given time I'm doing a lot of other stuff too but my employees are my priority so if someone said I would like some feedback I would try to give them something high level and then tell them hey we should schedule more time for tomorrow or you know sometime very soon we'll schedule a more dedicated session and let me bring to you some more actionable feedback let's talk about alignment right let's do that instead of me just saying you're doing a good job and then you're like that really sucks for feedback what am I going to do with that right like it's not not a bad thing to hear that you're doing well but it's also like it's not really actionable you're like okay so does that mean does that mean I'm getting promoted does that mean I'm I'm doing enough is it like like is it just enough to stay where I'm like what do I do with that so I I try to make sure that I give them something so that I'm not like hey no like I won't won't talk to you come back to me in one day uh you have you know 24 business hours before I respond to you no nothing like that it's more like I just need some time to process to collect my thoughts so that I can give you something meaningful so generally my recommendation is that if you're going to ask your manager for feedback try not to spring it upon them some managers might be great at that I'm personally not just for like what it's worth I'm personally not some managers might be very capable of diving into stuff in more detail it's just not how I am so understand your manager their communication style if you don't know then I would opt for giving them a a little bit of opportunity for that and then the second part that I would add into there is try to be specific when you're asking for feedback and this is kind of a weird one okay so um this is the next section of my newsletter article but I wanted to walk through a couple of examples of this because I think sometimes again going back to what this Reddit user wrote this my manager refusing to give me feedback and it makes me c ious are they asking for feedback getting something and it just feels like it's kind of half asked right being able to say hey you're doing a good job just doesn't feel like it's very actionable and to someone hearing that they might say like it just feels like my manager is trying to avoid actually giving me feedback right refuse might be too strong of a word but they're just kind of like avoiding giving me feedback and I could see that being a very common case outright refusal of feedback feels kind of weird I don't think I've ever seen a manager go nope no feedback for you not happening but it's probably more like it's just not very helpful so if we consider a situation where someone says could you give me feedback on how I'm doing this is a very general request for feedback and I want to acknowledge it asking for some feedback I you know know I would um I would still say like hey good job to someone for actually stepping up and asking for feedback because it's not an easy thing for a lot of people to do so I want to acknowledge that I'm not trying to minimize someone trying to step up as for feedback and being like oh you suck at asking for feedback no I just think that we can do better right so first of all good job for asking for feedback but the challenge with this kind of feedback is because it's so General the sort of the response that you'll get is often very general and if you if you're watching this live stream and you've come from code commute right so if you come from my other YouTube channel that's called code commute one of the things that I often say is because that entire channels Vlog style I try to make sure that I'm answering people's questions right you can leave them in the comments or you can send them in and I try to to make video responses but generally what I say is that if you ask me a very general question super high level very generic I I probably have to give you back a very generic General answer one I don't have the context and two in order for me to make it meaningful I kind of have to approach it from a bunch of different angles and make different assumptions and then the end result of that you might be like well kind of feels like you just used like you know like spread peanut butter to try and cover enough surface area to give an answer and it's like that's that's exactly what's happening it's too generic and you might say well given that you had a response that was covering all of these different angles I don't really know what to go do but I think it's the same thing with feedback when you ask for something very generic unfortunately the side effect of that is that you get very generic answers not always because sometimes you might ask for feedback and someone's like oh I was ready to give you some feedback and then they give you something specific but I would say if you're asking for feedback from your manager so again you've established clear effective communication with them you are asking for feedback and then you're like but I keep getting this like really generic kind of useless pad on the back good job keep it up I would say we can change this or we can try nothing I say is obviously like bulletproof and going to be you know 100% success but I think something you can try changing is asking for specific feedback so I wrote down a couple of examples in my newsletter if you're in the chat and you want to share examples that you have of this because it's a good time to reflect and you might be like hey I actually tried something like this out and it worked really well if you want to share please do I mean it's a literally a live stream so I'm happy to you know to kind of read out people's comments and stuff doesn't matter what platform you're on I'll try my best but I said um one example for specific feedback is saying like hey Nick I sent out the draft for my design review could you give me some feedback on how I presented the analysis and compared the options right so we're not just saying hey how am I doing it's like here's a thing I just did so being timely about it's very valuable if you're like do you remember that thing I did four months ago like probably not going to get super solid feedback so being timely it's specific because it was about some design review so I know that context but even more specific is it's not just hey how was my design revieww it's like I'm asking specifically about how I presented my analysis comparing options right so in this context what's helpful for me as a manager is I could go reflect on that specifically and say hey this was a really good thing you did in your analysis like I like that you called out um you know these gaps that people might not be thinking about you did a good comparison and contrast between them it wasn't just like boom boom boom here's all the pros of these things you actually called out the cons like that's a really good thing and by the way next time I think that uh the way that you presented some of the data um you had it in this particular format but it really meant that people had to go read through these like these tables and that part was kind of confusing but if you could have plotted that data it would have helped us really understand because we spent so much time in that design review like really talking about some of those details and honestly a picture probably just just would have made that much easier so it went from being like your design or you're doing good and you did a good design review to like here's how I can try to give you very specific feedback on those things obviously these are contrived examples hope you get the idea um next one I wrote was um so this these are examples of someone coming to me and asking for feedback I've just finished the update for sending out the stake uh out to the stakeholders of the project could you give me some suggestions on how I can improve my communication again something timely right I just finished the update for being able to send that out to the stakeholders and then suggestions around how that communication looked so for me this is actually something that's pretty relevant because the projects that I've been working on if I'm working cross team or I'm working especially with um sort of different levels in terms of um whether that's Engineers whether that's uh their managers their their group engineering managers my CVP right being able to communicate things effectively is a really big focus of what I'm doing right now personally so for something like this it's like hey I just had this communication like could you give me some some feedback on this and help me tailor how I can do this more effectively for next time right someone could give give more pointed feedback on this again it's not a guarantee that you're going to get specific feedback I don't think I can guarantee any that gives you that but um but I think the idea is that like it at least opens the door for it um 8921 1111 on Instagram says hey there sorry I'm new to seeing you live are you a nextjs St I'm not I am a net developer through and through um so I have used nextjs um the SAS company that I am doing on the side for brand ghost which is my social media scheduling platform leverages nextjs um it's not something that I am personally very familiar with other team members are mostly doing that so if you're looking at my content and you're like why is there no JavaScript stuff here it's because I don't like using JavaScript personally but uh so I've worked with nextjs but not my not my Top Choice so offer a lot of General programming knowledge and stuff like that but uh programming examples you'll see are generally going to be in C and I got this user on Tik Tok I have to find a way to boot out of here free Tik Tock coins o what is what's a Tik Tock coin what does that even mean I don't I probably don't Tik Tok enough to know what a Tik Tock coin is but okay one more one more example um so employee comes to me and says I'm working on these two projects that I understand to be high impact could you give me some feedback on your visibility into these and if you think I should be adjusting my priorities to be more successful so this is an example of uh someone who is trying to make progress across maybe competing priorities uh first part is that they're asking for my visibility into them right do I understand how they're progressing on them right do I understand the details of that do I have enough perspective on that so that could be one thing in terms of trying to close some gaps so again any feedback that I can offer there I might say yeah like you know we talk you know at least once a week in one-on ones and sync meetings and stuff where I have enough visibility into those so yep I think you're doing great on that right or maybe not maybe I could say like hey on that one project actually you know i' I haven't really seen much coming through on that I keep hearing you say that you're you know moving on to the next part but I don't really understand like where that is so I could give some feedback like that and then at least let them know specifically that's my visibility on that right um and then the next part if you think I should be adjusting my priorities to be more successful right so in my opinion I tried to frame this one up like if we're talking about getting feedback and getting alignment in terms of progression this is is an example of saying hey look we might have talked about me working on these types of projects do you think that I have the right prioritization here right maybe I understood that I should be working on both of these but you actually see one of these as being more important more urgent whatever whatever the the gauge happens to be and there's an opportunity for course correcting I can give feedback and say hey you should approach this differently so these are three different examples of trying to ask for something more specific than just am I doing good um and I sorry I see your question on Instagram let me finish up this one thought and I'll go back to answering um I think that I wanted to see if I wrote it down um but I think the oh yeah here it is so I think that I want you to think about what you're trying to ask for feedback about because when you say like am I you know can you give me some feedback and let me know if I'm doing good like what what is your goal in asking that right like I think for most people something that General is is kind of like to me it feels like hey I'm not really sure if I have alignment or understood expectations about what I should be focused on for progression and the reason I feel that way is because it's so generic when asking that for that kind of feedback that you're kind of like saying I don't even know where to start so I'm just trying to open up the whole thing and say you know what are your expectations here but I think you need to think about what your goal is with it so a couple thoughts I wrote down is like what do you want feedback on is it a particular project you're working on is it a skill that you're trying to improve is it the expectation for what you should be focused on for growth areas like what what are you actually trying to get feedback on so Center it around that and then I said what's the goal of that feedback right trying to get clarity trying to understand something better is it alignment on on your focus is it just a checkpoint is it to demon like when I say checkpoint is that to demonstrate like hey look I've been making progress on this it's visibility right there could be many different things but I think you need to understand like what you're trying to get out of that feedback I have one more thought on this I'm going to come back to in just a moment um this person says I have a nextjs web app that's 90% complete and need an expert to finish the app no sorry cannot do that um nope not for me not for my team I apologize not in our wheelhouse and far too many other things to do I appreciate you asking though but that's not not my wheelhouse um on the last thought that I had for this on the on the specific feedback did I just forget it might be gone for forever that's okay someday I will remember let's move on um okay so I think that when you're trying to do this right so you're trying to make sure that you're asking for feedback and then asking for specific feedback those are the two primary things that I'm trying to encourage in this live stream by the way if it wasn't obvious um man this LinkedIn chat is not it's just not doing it I have to keep refreshing LinkedIn itself to see what people are sending [Laughter] oh it's an emoji there it is um it doesn't come through on my side clearly sometimes and then I have to like actually watch the video to see it come through so that's awkward um yeah the the two primary things here are like asking for feedback not waiting right as much as as much as we want to make sure that we have an awesome manager I love to think that I'm doing an awesome job managing people try my best but I will still have employees ask me for feedback which means that's an opportunity for me to do better in terms of staying on top of that and giving them feedback so it's just part of it right so even though I'm trying there's still opportunities and then the specific feedback right because you might say okay I'm going to do it I'm going to ask for that feedback and then you're like ah why does it suck why am I getting such crappy feedback and I don't mean like you know critical feedback I mean like the feedback is useless good job keep it up what does it mean um I think that this is maybe I don't know if it's a hot take we'll see we'll see how people react um I think that if you're really focused on your growth as a software developer I think that if you've been asking for feedback and you're in a situation where you're not getting that feedback right so genuinely your manager is like refusing to give you feedback or uh they're giving you that feedback but even though you're being specific with the ask around it and it's not really valuable I think that you need to ask yourself like if that's going to be something that's inhibiting you from making progress and growing in your career maybe that's not a place for you to stay that's what I mean it might be a hot take not sure I think at this point in my career at least um sort of like what I would say is at a place like Microsoft and I'm assuming most big tech companies I've only worked at Microsoft for big Tech I would say that if I were working under a manager and I tried to get feedback from them and they weren't able to from where I'm at in my career the level that I'm at I would feel like okay if I've tried everything I can do here and you cannot give me feedback then I am not going to have good alignment with you in terms of expectations this is not going to be a place that I should stay this would be detrimental to my career I would say my perspective on this might be different if I go back to um if I went back to where I was working at in a startup we were moving very fast right I wasn't even asking for feedback I didn't have time to think about asking for feedback so it's not something that I really cared about and there was enough stuff that I could be doing and focused on and whatever else that it seemed to be like not top of mind so your perspective on this might change depending on where you're at in your career how you feel like you're growing or not um but for me personally where I'm at in my career if I couldn't get feedback that was meaningful for my manager I would feel like maybe they're not maybe it's not a good working relationship that I have with my manager and like that's not going to be successful so something to think about um Tam man says it's not a hot take but with how freaking bad the market is we are forced to deal with any BS thrown our way um maybe maybe for how long I don't know I mean if you're working if you are working somewhere and you get stuck with a bad manager like there is literally no one Mak making you do that right so you might say well I don't have another job I have to do this so yeah like start applying while you're working right like I know it's not I'm not saying it's guaranteeing you to get another job but you you you can be continuing to try and look for other opportunities right don't make it a death like a death sentence if you are in a situ like this and you can still be learning and growing and challenging yourself that might not be the end of the world especially if you are more Junior there's still lots of things you can be doing and practicing and all of that I think that there are different stages in your career where if you're not getting that support it will basically be holding you back and I think these are questions you need to be able to ask yourself at different points in your career so again if you're getting exposure to different things where you're like hell yeah like this is cool I'm learning about this this is beneficial I'm getting good challenges I don't know like I've had periods like that in my career where I'm not like if someone wasn't actively giving me feedback I'm like I I can literally feel I can feel that I'm having impact and I'm learning things and I'm and I'm growing as a software engineer I can feel that happening and I don't need someone else to tell me about what to go go focus on at least for that stage in my career would it have been valuable absolutely feedback I think is always helpful but it wouldn't have been like career gating and it wasn't because I had periods where I wasn't getting clear feedback like that at this point in my career yeah absolutely because I would be like okay like I'm just I'm just working on stuff I I'm guess I'm hoping I'm doing it right bills I have been applying for a while no challenges for about no challenges for about a year no changes sorry uh bills yeah you have bills to pay I've been applying for a while no challenges I don't know if I totally follow but I think you're trying to say that you have bills to pay and that's why you have to stay which makes sense but like there's there's there's ways to make money right I'm not saying it's easy right I I anytime we talk about this kind of stuff I don't want people to go oh you're just saying it's easy I'm not I'm just saying that like think about it this way if you're working in a shitty spot and you're and you don't like it there like is that your career strategy like I hope not that's all that's all I'm saying so we always want to make sure that we're ref reflecting on this kind of stuff and then trying to be proactive in terms of the next step forward that might mean that it's just a matter of having clarifying conversations with your manager to say hey look I'm not getting the feedback I need I am trying to grow and improve and I need more clear feedback I need feedback in a different way I need more actionable feedback I need feedback on these specific things and if you're not getting that even after having ation like that this is where I'm saying you have a choice you stay there and if you're having good challenges to work on and you're growing and learning it might be totally fine and I say that as someone who's been through periods like that where I'm like I don't I'm not getting specific feedback on how to grow in my career but it's happening naturally because of the things that I'm focused on but things change over time not everything is static and I would absolutely say at this point I can working in a big tech company for me if I don't have clear feedback from my manager on what to focus on it means that I am not giving my manager the sort of the evidence that they need to be able to put me up for promotion and it's that simple I might be coincidentally doing those things but but I don't want to leave anything to coincidence at this point in my career so I need to make sure that I have that clear Communication channel and a posit and a not a posit not just a positive feedback loop a feedback loop in general okay we got about six minutes left in the live stream because I tried to do it for about an hour um if there's more questions coming in the chat happy to answer those I don't see anything pending rate at this moment I got to go back to Instagram to see nothing on Instagram um but at this point generally I flip through a bunch of stuff that I have to offer so I'll do that and of course if you have questions I'll just shut up and go over to your question but boom we'll go back over to substack again sorry substack folks I realize you can't see the screen that I'm sharing but I'm starting on substack so um you already are where I'm going to be showing people so this is the newsletter that I have it's Dev leader weekly this is almost always what the live stream content is going to be on you don't have to subscribe to the newsletter I totally understand that some people are like I just don't want more email I get enough email stop sending me email totally cool if you enjoy the live stream and you like this kind of thing if you just want to see what the topic is I put it out on Saturdays so that gives you Saturday Sunday and Monday to check it out out see like hey this would be a cool live stream to join I'll check it out um so please check that out if you're interested but no pressure to subscribe um we'll jump over to courses so I do have courses available on dome train if you're interested I know the question that came in on Instagram was about you know sort of the stack that I use but no like I'm a net developer uh as a hobby now I guess because I don't program at work but if you're not interested in CP and.net I do have other career related courses so um career management for software Engineers getting promoted as a software engineer behavioral interviews soft skills um so Ryan Murphy and I have put together these ones uh as a team on dome train so that's what's linked in the chat there if you're interested again if you're on substack Sor you can't see just H do train.com my name's Nick centino you can search for me on there and there's C and career related courses um a bunch of people are probably checking this live stream out from my YouTube channel my main one is called Dev leader so I will link that into the chat as well um Dev leader is my channel that focuses primarily on uh C and net programming tutorials but then I also mix in topics like this one but they're edited down okay so if you're interest interested in hearing about career stuff or you're interested about software engineering in general sometimes I'll do edited down videos of these types of topics uh and the other thing that I have been doing is resume reviews so um if I scroll down a little bit you'll see all these funny pictures of my face beside a resume uh my editor's been having fun with the thumbnails had some positive feedback on them I guess um but yeah these resume review videos if you are interested having your resum reviewed just check out one of the resum review videos I say how to submit your resume in the beginning of it and this is something it's kind of funny but like uh I don't charge for the resume review and because I have to pay to have the video edited it literally costs me money to review your resumés which is kind of a funny thing um but I'm happy to do it I I've had positive feedback on it so far so if you're interested in that kind of do reach out um I will try my best to get it scheduled couple weeks late on some of them just from other priorities and stuff um so I apologize but trying my best to get to them Dam says C and AI teamed up to crush my ambition you were like on the sidelines throwing them energy drinks to keep it going uh I was throwing them energy drinks to keep them going to crush your ambition or I was helping you I don't know which one um I hope I wasn't crushing your ambition so hope that's not the case the other YouTube channel I have is called code commute I will Justin bre to Tech is the best thumbnail which one is that where is that one you don't like The Decorator pattern one look at that that's definitely not me by the way it's my face but um yeah these have been fun I don't even know he must I don't know where he gets the head shots from I must make those faces in the video and the editor just like yeah yeah bro you were basically kicking me in the nuts why why do you keep coming back then man I told you you're going to get tough love if you join my live streams right I'm not going to tell you everything's easy I'm going to I'm going to tell you the reality it's going to be hard and the reason that you keep coming back is I know you're going to be successful at it cuz you're persistent top third one over oh this one yeah you should have seen the other ones that came in I love the pain bro that's why I'm still going excellent and that's why you're going to keep coming back you're going to be persistent and you'll do it and I'll be waiting for you right here when you come in here and you say I believe in you yeah I'm actually kind of nervous curious where he's getting these faces like where did I make this face I don't know hello tasnim welcome from LinkedIn we're just wrapping up here so I'm sorry if you're joining pretty late I'm going to go back to this code commute page though um code commute is the Vlog that I do um most of the time it's me driving around in the car um it's a pretty fun uh channel for me uh I definitely like people will when I talk about getting burnt out and stuff people are like oh just slow down on the videos but these are so much fun make um so like I think I showed these ones before but some of them I have a 360 cam going so if we jump into this one for example it's really fun because you can like look around right I don't know if you can tell but like I'm dragging and dropping with my mouse you can see as I'm driving this is me driving to work you do have to kind of deal with my face floating around there but um I think they're pretty fun um yeah talk about questions that people submit so the idea with the channel is that people write in the comments or they send in messages and then I make dedicated video responses to the thing they're they're interested in and if I don't have any pending questions I just go to Reddit and I pick something interesting to talk about from usually from the subreddit experience devs so if you're ever interested in sharing some of my content back to Reddit I would appreciate that it helps me get some exposure because because otherwise the couple of dollars that come in from uh from all of the YouTube ad Revenue they basically just almost cover my cost of driving to work in the fast lane so uh almost breaking even on that which is great um otherwise the last thing I have to show off is brand ghost sorry flashbang warning that's super bright brand ghost is the SAS that I am building on the side I use it for posting all of my social media content this is something that when I started taking content creation seriously I said I have to systemize the content that I'm building I just put a link to that in the chat and this is especially if you're on substack if you're on substack and you are someone who is a Creator or trying to be a Creator uh what my goal is with brand ghost is to make sure that especially for new creators you have the tools to get you going to build the momentum so that you can take content creation more seriously and because of that a a lot of the things we offer in brand ghost are free in terms of getting started and being able to cross post and schedule so unlike buffer or some other competitor platforms they limit either the number of uh platforms you can connect or basically kind of like your hands are tied for making use of it you can connect as many accounts as you want with us and cross post schedule and um yeah beyond that the paid for and people will say well then how how are you going to survive if it's all free it's because it's not all free if you're trying to do more advanced things like how I leverage it uh it's recovering content so I can create educational content and have it repost later and that way if I'm feeling overwhelmed I want to go on vacation my entire social media presence in terms of posting content is automated so I get to focus purely on new content creation and that's how I'm able to scale up everything I do on social media so if you see what I'm posting on LinkedIn and other platforms people say hey like how do you post so much it's literally because I just focus on creating so that's what brand ghost does for me and that's why I'm investing all of my time and energy outside of content creation into creating brand ghost so like I said if you're interested in getting started with content creation check it out you can send me a message I'm happy to walk you through and explain things thanks so much Jonathan um the question is should people only attend meetups when their portfolio is strong and ready to apply where's a find a go when still learning oh man uh definitely um like I would say go to meetups if you have the time to commit to it please go um it's a networking opportunity right I would say if time permits go Network I think that for some people like let's use myself as an example I'm very introverted a lot of people don't know that about me and they don't believe it because they're like you're blabbing away on this camera how can you be introverted I'm introverted um if you put me into a setting that was like you know if you put me in a situation was like you should be going to meetups to network I would talk myself out of it I'm sure of it and it's because I'm introverted and it's very draining for me to be around people especially people that I don't know so I would say if you have the time and the capacity to be able to go to and attend meetups try to do that because you might find in the beginning you're like hey this is is awkward I don't know what to do like how should I approach this at least go start showing up right it becomes less awkward less uncomfortable when you start doing it more so then start going and then try getting comfortable introducing yourself to people right what's the goal of that just to be familiar right if you're if there's people presenting it meetups or there's topics and stuff go ask questions be curious right don't I would say don't go into it being like okay my goal when I go here is I have to go give my resume to every person I see CU now you've created pressure on yourself and you're like you're you're going into it trying to expect something from people go there with the the goal of just trying to meet with and engage with people and once you're more and more comfortable with that you'll you'll find that you can start having some more meaningful conversations you might Network for more specific Industries um you know when you're talking about portfolios and being ready to apply like there is so much you could be doing before you're even ready for that to get an idea like you might have conversations with people that are giving you ideas on things that could be helpful helpful for portfolios you might meet with people and there's some volunteer opportunities where um and I've talked with a few people that have done this where they are able to volunteer on weekends for not for or some other organizations right and they do some of that and now when it comes time for writing the resume they have this extra experience they can write down not only the projects that they worked on but they can say like I did this volunteer work or I worked I literally got to work in a team building this stuff so my recommendation like I said is if you have the capacity for it please go um go make the time for it I think it's great this is something I've said too if you're if anyone is watching in their oncology University right anything like that boot camps whatever if you're in an environment where there's an opportunity kind of baked into it for networking take advantage of it I feel like I didn't do that in school I've talked about this before where I'm like I don't know why I probably thought that I was like for some reason like like better than other people or something dumb um like literally I'm a I'm going to be 36 real soon so I'm like a 36-year-old computer nerd streaming on a Monday night talking about software engineering like how much more nerdy does it get right and I was probably thinking oh like I'm I can't network with my classmates or they're all nerds or like come on really really so I would say like try to I don't like saying take advantage like you're using people but I mean like take advantage of that opportunity to be networking it's there for you right so hopefully that helps Jonathan I do appreciate the the tip thank you so much um but folks I think I'm going to wrap it up there and just a friendly reminder do these streams every Monday at 7 p.m. Pacific so if you enjoyed this um be happy to see you next week come with your questions you can message me ahead of time I'll make code commute videos for you and thanks I appreciate you being here take care