One on Ones: What The HECK Do You Talk About? - Engineering Manager AMA

All right, I think we're about to be live here. Hopefully, maybe today there will be zero technical hiccups. That would be awesome. But, uh, based on how the last two went, who knows? Okay, I see people joining in the chat. Thank you for being here. Um, yeah, I think as I always say, um, we'll be going over the recent newsletter I put out as the basis, but it is an AMA. So, please feel free to ask questions in the chat if you're watching the recording of this. Leave comments, whatever you'd like, that's fine. And then try to remember to join next week's. So, I do these every Monday at 7 PM Pacific unless I'm sick or on vacation or have a good excuse or something. But, uh I'm I think I don't have the stats in front of me, but I think I was pretty shocked when I was doing some some content exporting from YouTube and I didn't realize how many of these live streams I've actually done. Like, I've been pretty consistent with with them, which is pretty crazy. Um, it's one of those things that I kind of set up to do and almost like forgot that it's literally just like my my Monday ritual. Um, which is cool. Um, and thanks for mentioning it there, speaking out in the chat. So, Tayman, good to see you. AI has not quite taken over yet. Maybe by the end of the week, though, based on how everyone's talking about it. Um, Twitch squad reporting in, good to see. Infected FPS. Uh, yes. uh Roma um resume is reviewed. Uh editor sent it over today while I was at work. So that'll get posted up probably Wednesday. Um what I might do actually is um unlist them. So I will put them up on YouTube because I was delayed on on the resumes because I didn't do YouTube videos on on my main channel for like two weeks. Um and this is the third week. So I recorded them last night. I'll put them up. I'll have them unlisted. Um, and then I'll try to respond over email and I'll send you over the link to the unlisted one. They'll go live. Uh, one will go live on Wednesday and probably the other one on Friday. Uh, maybe Thursday. But I got to I have to get some like C technical stuff actually put out on my main channel. The um the resume review ones, I think that they're arguably I hope like some of the most helpful content I put out for on my main channel. But uh I feel like in terms of viewership, they're like some of the worst uh watched videos. So uh kind of kind of sucks. It's a little painful that way, but anyway, we'll get them out. Um Devin says, "Every content creator's dream, right? To create enough content that they can train an AI to do it for them." So funny you mentioned that. Um almost. So, I I want to share this because it's kind of interesting, but um so for folks that don't know, Devin probably knows because I talk a lot talk a lot about it on my code commute YouTube channel, but building a a platform called Brand Ghost. Am I like sitting like super short? Is my camera weird? I just realize it kind of looks like I'm sitting like this in my chair, but trying not to do that. Um, I'm building this platform called Brand Ghost, which helps me uh put out all my content on social media. Uh, so if you see like anything I'm posting, it's guaranteed through Brand Ghost. And um, one of the things that we're doing or getting to the point now that we can crossost everywhere and uh, sort of like have perpetual content schedules. It's like great. Now the next thing to tackle cuz we model aside from user requests we model a lot of the sort of the challenges to go tackle based on on me like these are as a real content creator where do I have challenges and um you know writer's block and stuff is the next thing right but what's wild is I have like just on my code commute YouTube channel like over 200 videos of me talking just like this right driving in the car talking about stuff, just blabbing away about software engineering and career stuff. It's literally 200 plus videos of just my thoughts and I have all the transcripts for them. So, um I've been playing around with trying to leverage AI to like um I I still don't feel like I can't use AI to just like blindly create content and not read it because it the the language even though it's doing better when it's like all based on my own content, it's still sounds closer to me, it's still like it tosses in some stuff where I'm like, dude, no one would say that. Like that's not that's not okay. Um, but I've been I've been playing around with it to to get a lot more of like the basis for posts and stuff. And uh I I think I don't know what the sweet spot is, but somewhere around 200ish videos um for with transcripts on 200 videos, it can do a pretty decent job. So, um, for Brand Ghost, one of the things that we're going to be doing coming up is, uh, sort of like a I call it, you're all developers here, right? So, you know what an IDE is. Um, but I feel like, uh, it's almost like a content creator IDE. And if you can pull in content from different sources, um, then you can, you know, run AI across it to help get through your writer's block and stuff like that. Tam man, we are not hiring. Um we do not make money to hire people. Um so unfortunately no. Um we do have paying customers but certainly certainly not enough to to pay anyone. So um maybe maybe someday we will be making money off it and be able to hire people. That's you know that's the dream, right? But anyway, I just wanted to respond to Devon's comment there cuz uh truly um the the code commute videos let me speak my mind about a lot of things in a very natural way. It's literally just me kind of stream of consciousing stream of consciousness speaking. That was weird to say um about different topics. So in terms of like how it's able to extract the tone and stuff, I think it does a decent job. But anyway, um today's sort of main topic is going to be about one-on ones with your manager. And so that's what the newsletter that I put out is based on. So obviously if you know the drill if you're if you've been to a couple of these, um that's the newsletter link if you are interested in kind of reading through it. There you go. You do not have to subscribe to read it. Um, these do get paywalled after a month. Which reminds me, I have to go back and payw wall some. So, there's probably a few that are not paywalled right now, but um, you don't have to subscribe. You don't need to get an email sent to your inbox. If you're like, "That sounds stupid." Um, you can just read them like blog posts if you want. You can follow along as we go through this, but it is an AMA, right? So, please use the chat. That's what it's there for. Uh I would much rather answer questions and have side conversations than um than focus like purely on the newsletter, right? So um with that said though, I will kick it off with the topic for today. But please at any point jump into the chat, share what you got, ask questions, just subscribe people. It's cheap. It's it's it's so cheap that it's actually zero. You can totally get the paid one if you want. Um, which would be awesome. But, uh, yeah, it's, uh, it's totally free. So, that's cool. Okay. One-on ones. Do them. The end. Uh, no, but one-on- ones, I think, are a really important conversation to have because, um, the the more people I talk to, the more I realize like one-on- ones don't actually just happen normally or naturally. And if they do, then people seem to not um I don't know how to say this. It's they don't know how to like use the time effectively. And I don't mean that in a way that's like because they're not smart, they don't know how to use the time. I I mean like they kind of question like I I don't really know what I should be doing with this time. It seems like I've been given an opportunity to use time to do something, but like what do I do with it? Like what's what's the best use of this time? And um everyone's got different opinions on this, so you'll hear mine. And of course, uh you know, if you're using the chat, share yours, too, right? Um with, you know, almost all of my content, I try to make sure that I'm sharing different perspectives, right? Not just approaching it from one angle. Uh there's a couple things I got strong opinions about, but uh in general, I try to approach things from different angles so that we can look at things different ways and understand them better. Um, so other people might have lived experiences that are more relatable to you and if they're sharing stuff in the chat about how they approach one-on- ons, things that work well, things that don't, like that could be helpful for you. So, just a reminder folks, like you can help other people too just by sharing in the chat. So, please feel free to do that. Okay. So to kick things off, um first thing is I mean even before I get into the newsletter content, if you don't have one-on ones with your manager, I would suggest bringing this up. Try to get something regular scheduled. It doesn't have to be every week. Um if you're starting with zero, right? You don't even have one ones, try to get something that you guys can commit to. I think I've seen weekly work very well. Um, I've had situations where we've evolved them for some people into bi-weekly, right? They're like, I just I feel like I don't have things to update on every week or to talk about every week, and it feels almost forced if it's weekly. So, I prefer to do it bi-weekly. That works well for me. My current team, I do one-on- ones with everyone every week, which if you think about it as a manager, that takes up a lot of time. Um, and I do that not because like someone's making me do one-on- ones once a week. I do that because I think that it's a good use of time. It uses a lot of time, but it's a good use of time. And so, definitely if you're not doing them now, try to have a conversation to get that started. That's like goal number one for you before, you know, any of the other content we're getting into here. Um, try to do that. So, for folks that aren't doing one-on- ones yet, um, if you're kind of concerned about how you bring this up with your manager, like, okay, this, you know, this bald-bearded guy on the internet saying, "I should be doing one-on- ons and sounds like a good idea, I guess, but what do I do?" Um, literally just bring it up with your manager in whatever way feels natural for you, right? So, if that's over message or I don't know, if you're eating lunch or something, you're, hey, by the way, like maybe we could do this. I don't know what your working relationship is like with your manager. When I'm at the office, we like to go into the calf together and it's pretty cool to sit down with everyone. Um, you know, finding a natural time to bring it up because you don't have a one-on-one. Um, and saying something along the lines of like, hey, would I think it would be helpful for me to be able to have, you know, a little bit more dedicated time. Doesn't have to be long. 30 minutes could you could if you're concerned about the time commitment, right? 30 minutes every two weeks to start just to to have a little bit of schedule time. And then the why part I think is really valuable, right? And you might have different reasons why. And I think you know everyone who's watching this right now might have different reasons why they find them valuable. Um could be visibility, right? Making sure that your manager understands the work you're doing. It could be because you're looking for alignment on career expectations. Hey Hamza, good to see you. first time, but hopefully not the last time. Remember, I do these every Monday, so hope to see you next week, too. Try to make a good impression today. Um, and then that way you'll come back. But, um, yeah, I think, you know, coming up with your reason why and being able to share that with your manager, right? It's your manager ideally is trying to help you grow and succeed in your career, right? So, if they want to help enable you do your best work possible. If they're doing one-on- ones with you, then there's more of an opportunity to close the gap on some things that you might have questions about or you need guidance on or whatever it happens to be. So, get that set up to start and then of course, you know, if you need to adjust schedule and cadence and stuff like that, then then do it, right? Like I said, I've had times where we've done weekly, we moved to bi-weekly, we've gone back to weekly, all sorts of things. Um, I do one-on- ones with mentees once a month, right? So cadence for that looks a lot different because we're talking about sort of long-term career things only, right? Like it's a touch point. So we'll do a once a month kind of thing. And that way between our conversations, it feels like there's um I don't know like the the the daytoday stuff or even the week to week stuff matters less because the time scale of things we're talking about is greater. So you just got to find what works for you. But start somewhere. I'll just pause for a sec to go through um through chat. So, infected FPS says, "I do one-on- ones with my manager monthly with an open door policy for more frequently. I find it works well." Yeah. And so, I like this a lot. Um you know, I I have I I certainly have an open door policy. The um I don't want to say the only way, but I think one of the ways that I can see this going wrong is like you might have a manager who's like like truly like I have an open door policy. please come talk to me about anything and then people on the team are like for some reason they almost don't trust it like ah well I don't want to bother them and it's kind of weird right because it's like it's an open door policy like come talk to me anytime about anything and then people are still like well no like yeah I don't want to be a burden it's like yeah and then so there's no it sounds weird to say there's no forcing function but depending on your trust level with the uh man like between the manager and the individual ual contributor, you might have this weird state where like you have not built up the trust trust and comfort level yet. So by having an open door policy, people don't want to like lean into it even though like the options there. So uh personally though, I like the idea. Um, and I do tell people like, "Hey, if we do a one-on-one," and it's every week, if you leave that one-on-one and something else comes into your mind or the next day you wake up and you're like, "Oh, oh crap, I should have talked to Nick about that." Please do not wait a full week to talk to me about it. Like, just message me, whatever. You know, we can get on a call if we need to. But that's like, you know, that's the open door part, right? Come talk to me anytime. So, thanks for sharing. Infected FPS. TM says, "I was chatting with another engineering manager and he thought that any compsai program that doesn't use C or C++ is no good. My program was C# based. Is this a common thought among engineering managers?" Um, I don't want to say that's a common thought among engineering managers because I think that's too um too, how do I say this? It's like too specific of a call out on too broad of a group of people if that makes sense. Right? To give you an idea of what I mean by that, if I were to sample the engineering managers I know and ask them that question, I think they would say that's kind of a bull crap statement. Why? Because I work with a lot of engineering managers that write in C or they have teams that build in C. Um, if they talk about you're talking about compsite program, I'm assuming this means like in terms of education like again I went to the University of Wateroo in in Canada and that's you know I'm going to sit here and tell you that's the best engineering school in Canada because that's where I went. Um, but it's regarded as one of the best engineering schools in Canada. I'm saying one of the best because I'm sure maybe someone from U of who is obviously at a worse school would would try to tell you otherwise. But um I know that like my first year programming courses were in C or programming course the one we had was in C#. Does that mean it's a bad program? No. I think like I said it's like argued to be one of the best engineering schools to go to in Canada. So um did we learn other languages? Yes. Like there was stuff. It's actually weird. We had other classes that use different languages. Like we had one that was in Java. Uh I think we had one that had C and C++ but no one taught us the languages. They were just like hand in your assignments in these languages. So I don't think that like anyone in my opinion anyone who's telling you that the language dictates the quality is like I I don't know like just missing something or they're I don't know. I'm trying I'm I don't have good words today. My words are failing me. But uh yeah, I feel like they're they're kind of missing part of the picture that's maybe not as important. But um Ryan, good to see you. Um yeah, so we'll be talking about one-on- ones, just go through the questions, but thanks for being here. Um infected FPS bug her enough bug her often enough for random questions here and there. So I make use of that policy. Good. Um Young Bird, I mean as long as uh OS and data structures are done in C, C++, I think it's fine. I don't think C++ C++ is necessary for more highle topics. Yeah. Like I think it would feel super weird to say go write like even just the concepts like go do real time operating system concepts with C or with Java like it would feel kind of weird and it's not that you couldn't conceptually go build those things but um if you were to build it in C or C++ you could go take that like real-time operating system and go put it onto uh a device. You could probably I think there's ways that you could do that with C. Uh someone was telling me about some embedded stuff with C, but I haven't done it. Um so is it doable? Like sure. Um I know the the first internship I had the my employer actually used his real-time operating system that he built in university and extended it and was like putting that onto devices. So and that was in C, right? So, I I don't know. I think it's doable. I just think a lot of the concepts that they're trying to teach you at that level probably would benefit from a lower level language like C or C++. But again, like you could you could argue that you could illustrate those concepts with other languages too. I'm sure. Deon says, "Gatekeeping CS is a slippery slope. Imagine teaching CS concept without building transistors by hand." Yeah. Um you didn't refine this silicon yourself. Yeah. who's not going out there getting handfuls of sand and melting it down. I mean, the the audacity of some people, right? Like, my goodness. Um, in fact, FPS says it's a bad take on their part. I've got engineers from better schools than me who could not code their way out of a paper bag, and I've also met boot camp grads who can code circles around me. Yeah, it's um that's a really good point, right? It's like I mean Tam was kind of the focus of this was around the language but you know there's so many other factors um and you know often it can come down just to an individual you know an individual in some environment being able to learn more effectively one way or the other two. So um yeah a lot of different angles but you know I think the short answer is I just don't think that's a I don't think it's a good take personally but good question. So thank you for asking that. I mean, I feel weird. It's like I'm not trying to pile on you for asking the question. I'm just kind of disagreeing with the the take, but not the question. So, I do appreciate it. Okay, one-on- ones. One-on- ones. Where are we going with this? So, um I was talking about getting them scheduled at least, right? The other thing was that uh or the first point in the newsletter is really about not waiting for your manager to to drive the whole thing. Now, I've had managers where they basically will drive the entire conversation, which I feel is a little backwards, right? You sit down with them and they use if it's a 30 minute oneonone, they take 30 minutes and they tell you everything that's on their mind and you're like, "Okay." And then the 30 minutes is up and they're like, "Okay, thanks for the chat." and you're like, "But what about and then it's done, right?" Um, I've had that happen before. It's not a great experience, especially if that's just how they all go. Um, so I would say trying to get ahead of that, right? Um, you know, if I reflect on situations where that's happened to me, I probably should be a little bit more forthcoming and say, "By the way, like we didn't get a chance to talk about X, but how do you even know what to talk about, right? like what is X in this example. So, a couple notes I wrote down in the newsletter. Keep a lightweight running document of topics from the week. If you have weekly one-on- ones, if stuff's coming up and it's not urgent, like we were talking about open door policy, if you don't need to go talk to your manager right away and you're like, "Hey, this would be a good kind of conversation to kind of go over or um we'll kind of talk about I hope we get to this. We'll talk about like status updates and one-on ones." I don't think that needs to be the focal point. Some people will say never do it, but I don't like always and never. I think those are not good terms to use. You might have like a highlight from the week and you're like, "Hey, it's I'm not I don't have to go message my manager right now on it, but might be good to talk about when we meet just to kind of bring some visibility." So, keep a list of stuff that you want to go over. Um, and then yeah, the next part's basically a direct uh addition to this. So, blockers, wins, concerns, or questions. Um I will talk about questions in the in the next bullet point. Um and then the other thing that I wanted to mention here because I think this is important and some people don't either think about this or don't realize but like as an engineering manager I would love to be able to be plugged into every single thing that's going on in the team, right? have full visibility, knowing as soon as people are stuck so I can go help them, know as soon as they've, you know, been able to have a measurable success where, you know, I can reach out to them and say, "Good work, awesome stuff." Um, or if they're blocked on waiting for teams, like all these things, right? I don't have full 100% perfect visibility into every little detail. And I would love to be able to help that way, but it's just not realistic, right? uh even if I only had one direct report, there's going to be stuff that I just don't see. So don't assume your manager sees everything. So that means if you're waiting for them to help you because you're stuck on something, raise awareness. If you want to share that you've been able to be successful with something because you think that visibility is helpful for career progression, don't just assume they see it, right? Make sure that you're thinking about these things so that you can bring those to conversations with your manager. Ideally, a good manager has good visibility, right? It's not zero, but it's also not 100%. So, try to make sure that you're bringing this kind of stuff up in conversations or else you might feel like you might feel like things are getting missed because they are getting missed by your manager. We are human unfortunately or or fortunately. I'm not sure. Maybe we'll see how good the AI gets and then I can make a comment on that. Um my favorite NHL team that I root for. So this might be news to some people. I am Canadian and that must mean because uh as a Canadian that hockey is literally in my bloodstream. Um two things. Number one, I cannot skate. Don't tell anyone. So, I can't skate and I also do not like sports. So, I might be potentially the only Canadian in history that can't skate and that doesn't like sports. So, when it comes to to NHL teams, I actually don't have a team that I root for. Um I just it's not for me for some reason. Just never never got into sports to play them and I don't really like watching them. It's like it doesn't do anything for me. um you know, hot take. It feels like a waste of time to me. Just I don't just I don't get it. But I know other people love it. They enjoy it. It's just not a thing for me. Um yeah, uh Dominic, uh on the the art toss with C, I should probably one sec. When I say real time operating system too, like what do we mean by real time? Um, but C embedded net nano framework. One sec there. I saw something on this. I'm just trying to pull it up. I'm not sharing my screen because I don't know what I'm about to hit on the internet yet. Uh, there was something for this micro framework. I saw nano framework. I think there's some things that um compare .NET Nano Framework with .NET. Yeah, there is. Okay, so this one's actually from Microsoft. So I feel like I can put this up on my screen and I'm not like on Reddit and I might click a link and uh be in for a bad time. Um you never know. So what is .NET Nano Framework? And I'm reading this out by the way. I actually don't really know what I'm about to read. It's kind of like I thought I saw a headline on on something about this before and that's why I kind of jumped in. I said I think you can actually do it but I don't know. Okay. So, .NET Nano Framework is a free and open source platform that enables writing of managed code applications for constrained embedded devices such as microcontroller unit MCU uh whatever. Uh it's suitable for many types of projects including IoT sensors, wearables, academic proof of concept, robotic hobbyist makers. Cool solution. Oh, wow. So, literally, oh, when there's IoT as well. So, man, there's I might have to go make some YouTube videos. I have to go learn about it first. Um, sample solution and documentation for comparing nano framework and .NET IoT platforms. Uh the sample application includes a scenario on both platforms. Every 3 seconds application reads temperature value from a sensor, turns the LED on after reading the value. So yeah, I mean like this is cool for Raspberry Pi M5 stack. Um works on powerful boards. Oh, so here's the comparison chart. I mean, this seems pretty awesome. So, I don't really do any embedded development anymore, but Oh, man. I'm not going to How are we supposed to read this? I got to keep zooming in. Sorry for everyone that's on Substack. You can't see anything I'm doing. And sorry for anyone on Instagram. You're like, "What the hell's going on?" Uh, I barely know what's going on. So, um, oh, and Devin saying, "From an embedded standpoint, I use the Meadowboards from Wilderness Labs. They run regularnet executables right on ESP32 chips. Okay, awesome. Um, but yeah, I didn't even know like the IoT and nano frameworks existed. Like I said, I thought I heard of something for this stuff, but uh, awesome. So, the next time that someone's like, "No, you can't do that with Yeah, you can obviously." Um, funny story, and I know Devin knows this because I shared it on Twitter and he was reacting to it and commenting back, but um, I had I had an a salty person on I think it was on a code commute video. Um, yeah, I was talking about uh there's a couple of really popular.net open-source projects that went commercial recently. Uh, they had to they did it on April 2nd. they needed to wait until after April Fool's Day because they're like, "We're actually doing this and they didn't want to have people think it was a joke." So, I made a video talking about it cuz people were asking about it, just my perspective on it. And someone was commenting on the video saying uh something along the lines, I'm not even going to get the the right quote, but something along the lines of like, "Oh, like you know, you're just a .NET developer." like it's not even talking about like crossplatform and how it you're just locked into like only making things for Windows and who would ever want that. So I shared back and I was like dude it's literally been open source since like 2014 and you can run stuff on Linux and they were like no and they were all upset. So I should go back there and comment and say by the way you can do embedded programming too. Go figure. Um anyway that's cool. So, um, what else we got in the chat here? Oh, Tamman, do you plan on going to Canada to move there? That's cool. Um, that's where I'm from. I thought um well I don't I don't know exactly where you're from but um I thought and I don't know this because I've never had to do it but I thought that Canada compared to other places and I say other places I mean the US uh I thought Canada was more straightforward or more I want to say lenient or lax without being able to qualify those because I don't know but I thought I heard that Um, cool. Okay. So, next part on the uh one-on- ones uh get unstuck technically or interpersonally. So, I said one of the things I wanted to come back to was this idea of questions, right? So, um I have had and this has happened across different levels of developers, but I would say I've had a couple of like um I don't know like more junior or like interns that people that will use some of their one-on-one time where they do have questions they want to talk about and they're very sometimes it's like, you know, very open-ended career things and sometimes it's like, "Hey, can you talk to me more about what this part of our codebase or platform does or like what this part of our organization does. And I just I wanted to share this with folks because like I'm giving you some insights into some things that come up in one ons that I have. And one thing that you'll probably hopefully take away from this entire chat is like there is no right or wrong thing to talk about in a one-on-one, right? This is ideally time for you to be talking about things that are important to you. Okay. So, I'm sharing you sharing with you some things that come up. They're I can talk about these things because they're made generic. You're not going to know who said what, but um definitely had people that are more junior or interns want to talk about these really open-ended things. They might not even be relevant to their very specific work that they're doing, but they're just being curious. And I think they've found that maybe there isn't a good opportunity to ask these things or they don't know where the right forum is. So I've absolutely encouraged them. You know, they'll ask a question in the one-on-one. We'll talk about some architecture stuff or they'll they'll say like, "Hey, like, you know, I'm I'm still an intern or I just started here, but like can you tell me about like, you know, how did you get here? Like what did did you go to school? Like what did your career look like?" and they're not they're not like I don't know like challenging me or like questioning me. It's more like I just want to learn about what these things look like, right? They just want to expand their their perspective. So, um I think for some of these individuals, it's worked really well for them just to either learn about career progression or learn about different parts of our systems that we have going on. uh maybe learn about some history for why things are the way they are in our organization, codebase, whatever. But the point is that they seem to find that in a one-on-one conversation, this was like a natural fit. And then they walk away learning something. And to me, that's a good use of time. I don't think there's anything wrong with that. We'll we'll also I think we'll talk about this. Um we might not actually. I know I talked about this in a code commute video, but every like your 101 ones will likely be different from week to week or month to month, whatever it is based on the cadence. If you're doing them every week, like having a career conversation every single week is probably going to feel weird. or if you're trying to get feedback on your career progression every week, it's going to feel weird because from week to week, sometimes there's not like a measurable difference and then you'll feel like, you know, why can't I get the feedback I need? And it's like because there just isn't enough like time for this kind of stuff to be measured or to have like meaningful feedback. So, being able to mix in different things can be helpful. Um, the other thing I wanted to mention, and again, this is more I think helpful visibility because you might be thinking about stuff like this but you're not sure but like interpersonal stuff whether that's by the way I have a sneeze that's coming on and I don't know when but I know it's coming so heads up at any given moment I may have to run away and sneeze. Um people don't uh people don't often think about how much time is spent on like interpersonal challenges. So that could be um that could be challenges with other teammates, other teams. That could be and I don't expect this of anyone by the way. Um, but I do try to make sure that I am building up good working relationships with my employees so that they trust and respect me so that when they do have challenges that might be outside of work, right? Someone might say, just as an example, right, like um, hey, like I've been having difficulties at home because I have a sick family member or difficulties with my pet or I actually have some medical stuff going on and I need, you know, it's distracting. I need some time. I don't expect that people need to go into details like that with me. Right? I'm choosing my words carefully here. I don't expect that they do that. But um I do think that when people are able to trust me and have conversations with me and they know that I am trying to help that if they feel that that context is helpful, then they will bring it up. So for example, someone might feel like they're not doing their best work. they've been in a bit of a slump and they're like, "I know what's going on. Like, I've been distracted because I'm just making this up, right? Like, I've been sick or I've been uh I've been sick and I haven't been able to sleep properly or whatever it is." And being able to bring that up in a one-on-one and saying, "Hey, look, like I'm feeling like I'm having some challenges and here's what it looks like and here's why, right? I'm happy to have those conversations with people. Doesn't mean I have a solution. I can't just say like snap my fingers and hey look you're not sick and you're going to have a perfect night's sleep. But I've had conversations with people where they're super burnt out, right? Super burnt out and they're like honestly like I just feel like I can't really get good work done. Like great take the day off tomorrow or like you know like we're it's still early or it's halfway through the day. Like take the take the afternoon off. See you. We'll w like you know we'll talk through this. We'll wrap it up. Take the rest of the day off. Go. Right. Like if I know or I have some insights into things that are going on that I can try to help. Now it goes both ways. Like as I'm working with people and they're building trust and respect with me, I'm doing the same thing the other direction. If I had someone that came to me every day and they were trying to abuse that kind of thing, I would, you know, the trust would probably erode pretty quickly. But I've never I've never had that happen in my career, right? So, I I think that I am and I'm sharing this because I I feel like it's a good use of time if you have some interpersonal challenges that are going on. If you have a good amount of trust and respect with your manager, you can use this time to help with that, especially so you might not feel comfortable sharing personal stuff with your manager. Totally fine. That's why I said it's not an expectation. But if you're having challenges with other people at work now, it might be an interpersonal thing with you and someone else at work. But the important part here is that it's interfering with your work. This might be something that you need to bring awareness to. You might need some assistance. It might be something that you're trying to actively work on, but you want to bring some visibility to it. Could be anything. Um, these types of conversations happen more often than probably people realize. And I can say this because I am an engineering manager. I've been doing it for almost 13 years. This stuff happens a lot where people have difficulty with other people. I've had I've had mentees that come to me. So I do early in career mentorship um at Microsoft and really awesome experience. I love doing it. And I've had people come to me where the interpersonal conflict they have is actually with their manager and they're early in career, right? So it's it's interesting because one of the things and this is kind of like common coaching that I'll do is like when people have challenges with other people, one of the things that will come up is like so hey like you know what's happened when you've talked to this person about it? What do you think the what do you think the common response is? Oh, I know I haven't I haven't done that, right? Like it's very common that people will have interpersonal challenges but not actually have conversations with the person about the challenge. So, a lot of coaching I do around this particular type of thing is is helping people come to that realization that like, hey, it might be a scary conversation to have. Like, no one likes uncomfortable conversations, right? Like I said, I've been an engineering manager for almost 13 years now. I don't like having difficult conversations. I don't enjoy that. I don't look forward to it. But the more that you have them, the more that you're like it's it's gonna be okay. And it's I don't know like a band-aid analogy, right? Like once you start peel the band-aid off fast, it's fine. You get going, it's fine. But I would say for I don't have stats on it. Overwhelming majority of times that I've coached people around having interpersonal conflicts and talking about it with someone, right? Like if you're having difficulty with someone else, we can chat through how to structure a conversation around that, how to bring it up with them. I have found almost every single time their working relationship improves dramatically. A lot of the time there's misunderstanding, mis miscommunication. People appreciate that someone was like, "Hey, thank you so much for bringing this up and addressing it with me." um either they didn't know that they were having a negative impact or they also felt the friction and they were like hey like you know you took the step here like thank you. I think it's I don't even know like I want to say it's happened before but I couldn't even tell you about the time because I I can't recall it where someone has had that conversation and it wasn't positive. Maybe neutral but I don't think there's ever been a negative situation from that. Not saying it can't happen, but statistically just haven't seen it. So, you can use oneonone time to get unstuck on technical things um or if you have interpersonal conflicts that you want to talk through. Uh Roma says, "How would you approach situation where you're getting paid less than another engineer that has been working longer in the company, but you are confident that you are more capable than them?" First thing, I don't recommend comparing yourself to others because this in general becomes a really slippery slope. Um, I'm not what I'm not going to do is sit here and say that I have zero context, right? Literally, I'm reading a comment. So, I don't have any context to be able to back up this claim or not. So, that's not the intention of how I'm responding here. um when you say that you are confident that you're more capable than them, there are other things that you might not be seeing, right? Whether that's perspective in general, whether that's just experience, it could be any number of things. Um I don't think the comparison path is a good one to do. Um and instead, what I would recommend doing is reframing comparison um to be focused just on you, right? So what I mean by that is like trying to pull someone else and I not obviously not directly but trying to pull in someone else's like frame of reference into what you're doing I just think is like not a helpful conversation but instead focus on like for me as a developer if I'm at this level and I want to get to the next level or I think I deserve more don't don't structure it as well I do more than them or I'm better than them. So, so I deserve more because I'm better than them. You don't know what their arrangement was. And yes, should it be equal? Probably, right? I'm not I'm not debating this, but don't try not to point at other people to make a case for you because you should be able like your capabilities and experience should be able to speak for yourself. So, I would focus on the value that you're delivering. make that the focal point and then bring that up. So, that's a really um general answer, but the meta point there is like try not to do the comparison. The only time I recommend, I shouldn't say only, there's probably more than just this, but I think a good example of doing comparison is when it's motivating for you. I see so on my team or on a different team or whatever, and I think they're kickass. I love that they go do this, they do that, they do these things. Well, I love that they coach other people. I think they're really thoughtful in their designs or they're they're really thorough in their code reviews. Like, I really admire these things. That's a good comparison because you're like, "Hell yeah, I want to be like that." I think the unhealthy comparison is saying, "I don't think they're good or why them, not me." It's just not helpful. Doesn't really get you far. I feel like it's really difficult to make a selling point out of that. And that's why I'm saying if you're very confident in your abilities, stop focusing on the other people. Focus on you. What makes you so good? And then make a case for that. Uh Burger 3307. Yes, I am selling courses. Yes, I am arguably one of the worst salespeople in history, but I'm working on it. So, with that said, because you brought it up and you're not a plant in the audience, I wish I was I wish I was that thoughtful. Uh, I do have courses for sale. It's probably a good point to bring them up. What? There's a sale, too. Hell yeah. I thought this sale was like last week or something and I thought it was done. It's not. So, there's courses if you're interested in courses that I have available. Sorry, folks on Substack. Um, it's at dome train if you're interested, but and same with folks on Instagram. You can't really see, so I apologize, but I do have courses. Um the two that I'm I'm proud of all of them, but I have these two getting started in a deep dive on C. If you want to learn about C, um Nick Chapsis, who runs this platform, was actually giving them away at the beginning of the year. There were over 30,000 students that got these, which I think is super cool. And I wish that all 30,000 of them would have subscribed to my YouTube channel, but they didn't. Um, I don't even think that I mention YouTube on these courses, which I should probably talk to Nick Chaps about because if I had 30,000 students and half of them subscribed, if a third of them subscribed, I would have doubled my my subscriber base. That would have been super cool, but instead we just gave them away. Um, so I have Courses, uh, but there's also some career courses as well. So I paired up with Ryan Murphy, who's an engineering manager at Yelp. We have career management, getting promoted, behavioral interviews, and soft skills as well. So, bunch of different courses. So, if you're like, I don't like C, even though it's arguably the best language that's ever been made. Um, if you don't like C, then there might be something else for you. So, you can check that out. But, thank you, Burger 3307, for reminding me to pitch my courses. Um, and Ryan Wakefield says, "Hey, Nick. Sorry for the the scroll moment. Did you know that there's a bug with your article pictures on your site them being too wide on mobile? What? It impacts sideways scrolling on codelocks? No, I didn't know that. Um, is it just mobile? Let's check it out. The cool thing is because I'm not using Oh, nice. Yeah, thanks Devin. I appreciate that. Um, let's let's pull up a post and check it out. article pictures on your site. Ryan, do you have uh just so I'm not floundering around here? Um because it's live and I'm guaranteed to be kind of all over the place. Um do you happen to know uh what page you're looking at when this happens? Like is it on the homepage? because I wonder if I can cuz you're saying code blocks so it can't be the homepage maybe. Oh, I'm being stupid. You're talking about like older articles. Um, so one sec, let me go. I haven't written an actual article in a long time since April of last year aside from my newsletter. Okay, so code blocks. If I F12 this, I'll share my screen in just a moment. So here's what I see. But I don't know. Maybe this is a bad one. Is it the like the code blocks? Article pictures up at the top. These guys. Maybe that's what it is. Oh, I see. Okay. Okay. I think I get it. So, sorry for scrolling up and down real fast because these article pictures are too fat and they're uh spilling over the edge. If someone were to read this and even you can see that this embed here um is spilling over um it causes the code blocks to have a scroll bar. I think is the issue. Um you know what? I might vibe code this because it's probably some front-end rendering stuff. This entire blog is done in Blazer. Um, but when it comes to like the front-end formatting and stuff, no, I'm I am a backend developer and I will vibe code the crap out of this. I'll just say, "Hey, make it better." And see what it does. And legitimately, um, and there is sideways scroll. I can't, for some reason, I can't even scroll on I see the scroll bar, but like I can't it won't use the scroll bar just in in Chrome here. Oh, it's scrolling here on the window, but it's not grabbing the scroll bar. Anyway, I can look at this. Thank you for bringing it up. Um, I will definitely use dev zero. Is that what it's called? vzero.dev. Sorry, I always get it wrong. I'll use V vz.dev. it'll fix it for me. Um, interestingly enough, like all the stuff that's on the blog, like if I take this, like basically everything I just asked Vzero to to go do better for me and I just describe it and it's uh it's definitely vibe coded in the front. But yeah, it's cool because it's an entire um Blazer blog engine thanks to Stephen Gizel who's awesome. So, thanks Ryan. I appreciate that. Um, okay. I think back to one ones. I think one of the most important things that you can talk about is about career growth. I think where some people kind of get this messed up a little bit is like they go, "Okay, I should do this." But then they try to talk about it every single week and get feedback. I already kind of mentioned this, right? But when you start doing something like this, the challenge is that it starts to make it feel less meaningful because you're like, "Hey, let's have a career conversation about how I'm progressing." And then the next week it's the same thing and it's like it's the same update as last week. when there's not enough time in between to talk about this, it doesn't feel like there's any progress. Now, that doesn't mean that you shouldn't do it at all then because I think most people just don't do this or they're waiting for their manager. I need to play both sides where, you know, I want people to bring it up. I want to know who's interested in like focusing more on career development, who needs more feedback, how I have to adjust my style for different individuals, but also I know that there's people who, and this comes up in the next section, but they only do status updates, right? Every 101 is just a status update. I got this change into code review. I got this change uh flighted out. I'm writing tests for this one. This one's in design. There's nothing wrong, in my opinion, with doing status updates. But when they are the sole focus of the co of the code review, my god. Um, when they're the sole focus of the 101 and we never talk about career development or alignment in terms of progression, that's where I'm like, okay, I got to I got to step in and I, you know, we can finish up the 101 focused on what you're interested in and I will say, hey, for the next one, we should probably spend some time talking about this stuff. Kind of interject with it. So definitely make sure that you're talking about career growth. Um that could be a bunch of different things, right? Getting feedback. One thing I mentioned, second thing is getting alignment. I said second thing and then counted an extra two fingers because uh counting is very difficult. Um hopefully no one saw that though, right? Second thing, two fingers. Um second thing is about alignment. So understanding like I'm at this level and I'm trying to get towards the next level. What's actually the expectation of that? What should I be doing? What are the biggest areas of for opportunity? Um do I have areas that uh are maybe falling behind compared to some others that I should focus on? Um sometimes like there's a difference between sort of operating effectively at your level and then doing what's expected of the next level. And this is tricky. Um it becomes more and more apparent I would say as you become more and more senior. Um but you often need to be demonstrating that you can be performing at the next level to be able to get promoted. Right. It's it's a more rare circumstance where someone says, "You know what? I think this person might be capable of it. So, I'm going to take a chance on them, give them the promotion, and kind of hope that they're going to live up to it." It's a It's not that it doesn't happen. It's pretty rare. Usually, people want to have confidence. I say people as in managers want to have confidence that someone is demonstrating that they're operating at that next level. and they go okay I feel good time for promotion because managers have to make a case for it when people are more junior it's a lot more straightforward to say I as the manager know that this you know this entry level developer they are demonstrating that they're operating at the next level I feel good about that it's pretty rare that people are going to really challenge that and be like are you sure like did we like it can happen but it's more rare when people become more senior and I'll use even myself as an example right at my level so I am a principal engineering manager at Microsoft it's uh in Microsoft levels it's level 65 which sounds like a nice high number but uh you know entry level starts at 59 so we skipped 59 levels um I actually don't know what all the levels before 59 mean but or if there are any I don't know it's a mystery to me but at 65 um it's not sufficient for my manager it's necessary but not sufficient for my manager to say I would like to promote Nick. It's necessary but not sufficient for my skip level to say I want to promote Nick. And then it's necessary and sufficient with everything else for uh people that report up to the CVP to sign off on that. So again because of the seniority the decision-making process to be able to promote people this is at Microsoft um it could look different in other places but I suspect it follows maybe not the exact pattern but a similar one there's more scrutiny okay so making sure that you understand the expectations is critical and then when you talk about growth and having that alignment with your manager the way that I like to think about this And other folks might have different lived experiences here. So, I'm just sharing how I approach things. Like I said, your manager might be in a different camp here, but I try to approach things like career progression in terms of like I'm on your team and I'm trying to support you for getting your promotion. I am not trying to act as a gatekeeper like trying to, you know, dangle in front of you like, "Oh, here's this opportunity. Just go finish this project and maybe I'll promote you." Like, no. Uh, I'm on your side. But what that means is that for me to put you up for promotion, I need to have a solid case for doing that. I know what people are going to be looking for because we have talent guides that explain what's expected at each level. I know when other people are going through their reports that they're trying to promote, what conversations happen. So, I need to make sure that I am prepared with solid evidence on your behalf to go represent you and say, "This person is ready for promotion. I feel confident. Here's all of my supporting evidence for it, and therefore, I'd like to make a case for it." So, I'm on your side. I want to align with you. and then we can look for the things that we want you to go focus on so I have sufficient evidence to put you up. Um Namesh says the general challenge with performing the next level of confidence for promotion is management generating the notion of you working one up level along with your level else you are not working as expected. I I'm not disagreeing with this. I just don't I don't know if I'm going to have to read it again because I'm not sure I understood it. So that's my bad. The general challenge with performing the next level of confidence for promotion is management generating the notion of you working one level up along with your level else you are not working oh I see. Um I think and sorry I'm going to say this not that I'm trying to correct you. So that's not my intention. I'm just going to say this in a way that I I I want to make sure that I'm understanding properly. So, um I think uh in your message the the meta point here is that um it's almost like the we're talking about, hey, the expectation is you're performing at the next level, but then managers are basically saying, yeah, but if you're not performing at the next level, you're not even doing your level properly. Right? Like it's almost like the bar is set so high that if you're not going after that next level, you're underperforming. I think I think is what's being said here and sorry uh Animesh if I understood that incorrectly but I think that's the point and I would say that I think that that would feel real crappy right um yeah if if like the expectation is that you are at that level now to be fair how if if this is what's being said I've seen this kind of thing happen um for like mid-level engineers mostly when I've seen this kind of thing come up and I see it happen so mid to senior and I see this happen less with um say like like principal engineers and I I sus and I don't have like science or data to back this up. feel like it's probably because, you know, at senior or principal for some people that's where they they might be like kind of tapping out in terms of career progression and there's nothing wrong with that, right? There's there's a term for it. I I've talked about this on code commute and I can never remember, but I'm at a computer now. Uh terminus level Okay. I think I think the phrase is called a terminus level or terminal level. I just searched it on the internet, so I'm just going to read it out loud. Um, in the context of employment, a terminus level or terminal level level generally refers to the highest level an employee can reach within a specific job, family, or career path, often representing a position of significant experience and responsibility. It's not the definition I was expecting to see. Um, so I might have um I might have the wrong term term terminus. Haha. Um, I might have the wrong phrase to use. My understanding and I thought I had it right is that there's a a phrase for a level that you can reach where basically like HR is like comfortable with people being at this level. So for example, senior and principal level at Microsoft. I think no one's ever come out and said this to me, but I think would be determined like if someone's at level 64, level 65, terminal levels, correct? Thank you. Infected FPS words. Um I think at those levels someone's like, "Hey, look, if someone's like they're doing great work at this level, but they're not showcasing the next level." Like, that's okay. But I I think and again no one's ever come out and told me this directly. I think at the more junior levels like under say like senior in principal I'm just making this up for Microsoft that people have the expectation like hey look we're not going to have people that are kind of like stuck at junior or stuck at mid level for their entire career. Like we need to be seeing people get to that point that that terminal level so that they're you know we've invested into them. they're doing awesome work and we're comfortable with them at that level. Um, I'm I'm saying this out loud without actually knowing what that if that is a thing at Microsoft and if what the levels are, but uh to Animesh's point, I think that um I've seen this kind of based on his comment, I've seen this kind of thing happen. Sorry if there's background noise. There's like a a plane that's flying super low outside my room. I'm trying to watch my uh my mic uh level to see if it's picking it up. It sounds like the plane is like inside this office, which is nuts. It's so loud. Like I can't think it's so loud. My point is that I I've seen this kind of thing happen that Anamesh is describing. Um where more junior people like are not uh I don't want to say they're not like not pulling their weight is like the absolute wrong phrase. They're not like sort of going after the next level and then then therefore they're not operating as expected. But I've seen this happen less with more senior people. So I just wanted to acknowledge it because I think it's an interesting point. Um Devin says, "I feel like we sometimes conflate someone showing the qualities and capability of the next level and outright doing the work of that level." Yeah. Um this is true and I think that this is another reason why it's really beneficial to have those conversations for level setting expectations. That doesn't mean that it it gets rid of this problem that Devon's describing. I think that would be like a false statement if I'm just like, "Oh, just, you know, have the alignment conversations and therefore this problem goes away." But I I think that that's where you could help try to build some clarity around that, right? So some managers may say like in order for them to have confidence like you literally are doing work that's at the next level and they're like okay you can do that and you've demonstrated that you can sustain everything else you're doing already at your level now we can feel confident about putting you forward but I think yeah have the conversations about level setting expectation to try and reduce the friction and discomfort around like or the uncertainty even around like what's expected. So, thanks folks for the comments on that. The next one I have is ask questions that might not suit a standup. So, I actually listed these in the opposite order. So, I talked earlier about um folks that were asking questions like, "Hey, tell me about your career. Tell me about like our architecture and stuff like that." That's what this point was about. So, I completely screwed up. Um the earlier point was actually about um blockages on stuff. So just to circle back to that one, if you're I would say number one, if you're blocked on something, please don't wait for a one-on-one to address it. But sometimes it's not obvious. It depends on the kind of work you're doing and how long the projects are and who's involved and all that. Um, but you might be in a situation where you're like, I don't know, um, you are you're talking to your manager about something and maybe part of it's like partially a status update and you're starting to realize like, hey, like, you know what, like I could actually use some assistance with this. It might not be a very concrete thing that just happened, but might be something that's kind of compounding and kind of realizing that you could use some assistance whether that's uh you know blocked on partner teams, you might have people on the team that you know you're blocked on them, but bringing that kind of stuff up with your manager can be super helpful to get unblocked. Um, how do you, this is from Roma. How do you avoid making an entry-level engineer not feel micromanaged if they seem to know the steps of execution for certain tasks? So, this is a really interesting question because uh I I don't know. Um, I like to think of myself as someone who's the exact opposite of a micromanager. Uh, almost to a fault the other direction. I really believe in autonomy and kind of setting a clear direction for people and saying like you know, the expectations like you're smart, you know, happy to help if you have questions, but I don't want to go micromanage you, right? I think it sucks to be micromanaged. I don't want to do it. Pardon my language, but like I got other to do, and I would much rather that you have ownership and clear direction and you're going to go do it. Now, what I've noticed, and I think this is why Roma's question is very interesting, is I've actually noticed that uh interns and junior developers often do much better with being closer to being micromanaged. And I don't mean that like I, you know, I have a better like I have better control over the situation or something. I mean literally that without having clear intervals for deliveries and stuff like that or like clear milestones and timelines that without the structure they start to go like I don't know like and then you could give them two weeks to do something and they're like yeah it took me the full two weeks and you're like but you just had to like you know change like a word in a log line like why did that take you two weeks and they're like I don't know. And then the next time you're like, "Okay, like do it do the same thing by tomorrow." And they're like, "Okay." And then they do it by tomorrow and you're like, "Why is there a discrepancy?" And the reality is that they just don't know how to effectively like manage their time, not because they're dumb or something like that. They're not used to actually working on a team. Like they just haven't done it before. And if you're like me and you were a student, you procrastinated on everything you did. just like someone gave you a time frame and you're like, I'm going to literally play video games for the next 3 weeks before this project's due and then I'm going to panic at the last minute and go, why does this always happen? It's because we procrastinate. Um, and I think that sometimes that if people haven't built up the experience and the skill of trying to manage their time, set milestones for themselves so they can make sure they're progressing over a time frame, this stuff is hard. So I've actually found almost the opposite of what Roma's hinting at here that actually being closer to micromanaging uh you know new or junior developers is has been helpful for them like they are thankful for the extra structure. Now how would I avoid micromanaging anyone? It's uh I think it comes down to expectations right? So, if I've set clear guidelines, by the way, it's probably going to be hit and miss for the first little bit with working with someone. If I set clear guidelines and I back away and stuff is getting done sort of on schedule with good quality and stuff, great. But if I do that and step away and then someone's like totally missing the mark on timelines, which can happen if there's, you know, external factors and stuff. But if someone's like just kind of missing the mark and the quality is not there, then I have to kind of, you know, pendulum swing a little bit the other way and say, "Okay, like maybe next time we'll talk more about this and set better milestones or have more touch points or whatever it happens to be." Um, but I kind of have to feel it out with the person. I But like I said, I try to make sure that I'm airing on the side of giving them benefit of the doubt that they can do this kind of stuff. I don't know if that answers the question though. I have really long- winded ways to explain things. So, you might have noticed that by now. Um, but yeah, I think you know getting alignment and clarity and you could even go the opposite direction from the beginning, right? Say with someone who's more junior from my experience, it has led me to believe they do better when being micromanaged. So, what I might do in the beginning is do a little bit more micromanaging with them, right? set up more frequent touch points, set up some explicit milestones. If they've proven that they can do that and it works well, maybe the next time I back off a little bit, back off a little bit more and then they've kind of demonstrated like, "Yeah, I can crush this. It's not a big deal." But I think it's uh just some back and forth in the beginning. So hopefully that helps. Sorry if that's too wordy. Um, I think the last thing that I have in the newsletter article is just about like, you know, building trust. And there's not like I don't know, I have some actionable advice written here, but I I want to say it's not like it's not like a specific set of things that I feel like I could tell someone to go do that um, you know, it's universal advice that everyone can just apply like cut and paste. Um, I think that one-on-one time can be really beneficial for for building up trust, right? Um, I think that when we're talking about work relationships, like my opinion is like trust is one of the most important things, right? I need to work with my team to earn their trust. I need to earn their respect. It I can't just command it. Doesn't work that way. I can't say, "Hey, look, I've been a successful manager before. Therefore, just trust me." No. But how do I build trust with them? Well, I have to go, you know, be accountable for the things that I say that I'm going to do. I have to demonstrate to them repeatedly that if I say I'm going to help them with something or follow up with something that I do it. It takes time and it takes effort. But you can do the same thing the other way working with your manager where you can build trust. you can hold yourself accountable. Hey, I'm going to go do this. Um, I'm trying to think there's a really funny way that people phrase things and it's I don't know just part of like how we speak sometimes. We're like when you're talking to someone and someone says, "Hey, like can you get something done?" You're talking about some deliverable and the way that you frame things is like, "Yeah, I can try to do that." Right? It's true. you will try to go get it done, but instead framing things like yes, I will get that done. Now, you need to be accountable for it, right? If it doesn't get done and there's a good reason for it and you can back it up, like that's a different story. But, you know, taking this time to go build trust, I think, is really valuable. And the other sort of note that I had in here is like um feedback, right? This might be uncomfortable for some people and I would sort of caution you about this uh next point that I'm going to make. If you if you don't have a good working relationship with your manager, this probably is going to be a weird one to lean into. So maybe work on the working relationship first, but I think feedback is really important. So, for example, if I have employees that I'm doing one-on- ones with, if they're able to share feedback with me about how I can do a better job with them, like, hell yeah, I want that, right? I want to know how I can do my job more effectively when working with them. If they're like, "Hey, um, I'm just making this stuff up, right? Like, hey, um, I would, you know, I would appreciate more feedback or more regular feedback or different type of feedback. tell me right hey I'm working on this project I would appreciate more uh more support more visibility um because I'm nervous or because I think this is really important for my you know my career progression I just want to make sure you have the right visibility whatever like whatever it is right I would want to know that feedback so that I can do a better job and I think that when people can come forward and be honest about the feedback what they need and their expectations. For me, that helps build trust because I know that they're being open and honest with me and then I can do my job better. So, that's a that's a really good thing for me. Um, sometimes that might mean that I get feedback that's difficult for me, right? Or I'm like, "Oh man, that sucks to hear. Like, I thought I was doing a good job with that, but turns out there's some room for improvement." Sure. No, I don't think anyone like immediately is like super stoked about that. It's like, ah, that kind of sucks. But, but now, you know, and now it's on you to do a better job, right? Like, you have something you can do better at so you can turn it into something positive. Uh, Ryan says, "What's your opinion on figuring out how a person prefers to be managed? Some prefer being micromanaged, some prefer being hands off, and and others other ways." Yeah. So, kind of what I was hinting at with Roma, but um I I do think that it's you have to it's definitely individual. Um one of the most important lessons that I learned from my my sort of HR director uh at a startup before Microsoft, like early in my career, uh talked about this on code commute. um when I became a manager. So when I became a manager, I was actually an individual contributor at the same time. It was a bit of a weird situation and I was pretty fresh out of university. So when it was like, hey, do you want to lead the teams? I'm like, I literally don't know what that means, but sure, sign me up. Um, so not having any management experience, one of the things that my my HR director told me was like, you need to remember situational leadership like a fundamental thing. And she said, I need you to remember that like people on your team are different from each other. They're going to be different than other people you you'll manage and they're different from you. So, for example, just going to pick out something random like me, Nick. Like, maybe Nick appreciates being praised publicly for his good work. Maybe that's what Nick likes, but you might have people on your team that absolutely hate it. Hate it. You might have someone else that loves it. You might have other people that are motivated by money more than their uh autonomy at work versus their challenges that they can face at work versus their career progression versus work life balance, right? Everyone is going to be different. So you need to treat every individual as an individual and and invest the time into them as individuals. So Ryan, to your question, I think a lot of this for me comes down to one-on ones and just trying to poke and prod and ask questions about how I can best support people. If I'm doing this and I find that it's not working well, so for example, someone's telling me feedback about what's effective for them or they're not giving me any feedback and I'm trying things like we'll have to get some alignment, right? I can't just like I can't just be totally hands off and say, "Well, this isn't working." We have to come to something that we're aligned on and try things out. So, for example, maybe maybe there's a situation where an individual is not progressing in their work at sort of an expected pace. And so, we're talking about it and it's like, okay, like we've been doing X and like we're we're talking about this. We've been talking about it for a couple weeks now and this pattern doesn't really seem to be working. We need to try something else. So, can we agree to try something else? And then we'll try it. And if that makes an improvement, great. Do we make another slight adjustment? Do we try incorporating something else? But, um, it has to be very situational. So, um, I don't know if that's too generic of an answer, but that's I think that's my answer on this one. Uh, Devin says, "These days, I'm pretty quick to say I I don't know if I can do something. Uh, I'll still time box the answer to whether or not it's possible. The first deliverable is a timeline." Yes, for the second rule 100%. Right. Um I think that's it's good framing to be able to So the danger with what I was saying earlier is like you you can't just like you don't want to say yes to everything. So I don't I don't mean to say that I I don't mean for that to be the intention of what I was saying. My intention was like if you're like I know that I'm going to get that thing done instead of saying I'll try like you commit to it. Now, if you cannot commit to it because you don't know what's involved, I think as Devon was saying, I I love this, right? It's like commit to a timeline, right? I will I'll time box it to, you know, situational, right? So, by the end of the day, by tomorrow, by the end of the week, whatever it is, I will commit to a time box here and then I will come back and give you a more straightup answer. So, thank you that for that, Devon and Jason. Thank you so much. I do appreciate that a lot. Uh it means a lot. So, um yeah, I don't I don't know what else to say except thank you. Um I'm awkward, but thanks for that. Uh you know, it's uh yeah, I like I guess I don't have anything else to say. So, and you're very welcome. Um you know, I certainly I don't do it for don't do it for the tips. uh I would have stopped a long time ago. Um the ad revenue on YouTube videos is also not not good but uh it makes me feel good to be able to share. Um and honestly when you know it's a little thing but um when people just say like it made a difference I'm actually getting like emotional. I'm trying not to when people say that it makes a difference it's like you know that's the that's the reminder that it's all worth it. I know, like I was joking earlier. I know what Devon sees when I'm talking smack about people that are being on in comments and stuff like that cuz uh when people are being rude, I post it on Twitter. So, don't be rude or else you're going to be blasted on Twitter. Um and that's the kind of stuff where like, you know, I don't I don't actually take it personally, but it's like it's like, man, like why am I doing this? like, you know, I post stuff online trying to be helpful and then you have people that are like, who's this idiot making videos or making posts and you're like, I don't know, man. I don't know who this idiot is. I guess I guess I'll stop. Um, but it only ever takes like one person to say thanks or that it made a difference and then it's like, okay, I'll keep doing it, you know? So, I appreciate that a lot. Um, folks, I think that's mostly it though. Um, we kind of got through the the newsletter. True. Nick blasted me once. What? In fact, what did I blast you on? You've been here for forever. I already I forgot. But you must remember. Share. Share with the audience. I hope I wasn't being mean. I'm not mean, am I? I thought I blasted Tay Man because Tay Man comes on and he I says, Did you? I I don't remember. I'm just glad. Infect. Okay, so I must say like Ryan's here a lot. Devin is everywhere. I post on every social media platform. Devon's everywhere. Infected FPS is here very regularly. Tay man comes in. Um I'm trying to scroll back up. There's some people that aren't here today that are here pretty regularly. Um anyway, means a lot. I appreciate you guys all being here. Um, but let's uh let's go back over to sales pitches and stuff. Um, so this is my newsletter. This is where I was sharing stuff from. So, like I said, if you don't want to subscribe, please don't. I don't want you to get uh emails that you're not going to open. But if you're just interested in seeing what the live stream is going to be about, it is at weekly.devleer.ca. folks on Substack, you're already where the newsletter is. Shocking, I know. Um, but yeah, so check that out if you want to see what the next live stream will be about. I post them on Saturday mornings. Uh, so you have Saturday, Sunday, and Monday to see if you're interested in the topic, but otherwise, I will do the live streams on Mondays at 700 p.m. Pacific, unless I'm sick or on vacation or something. So, we got that. We got the choruses. I shared choruses earlier. I'll post them in the chat again. Um, again, it's not just C courses, but there's also some stuff on uh career management and other more soft skill type things, interviewing, that sort of stuff. Uh, was very happy to pair up with Ryan Murphy on those ones. Like I said earlier, he's an engineering manager at Yelp, so check that out. Um, otherwise some of you folks are watching from my main YouTube channel. And if you're watching the recorded version of this, then odds are you're watching it on YouTube. Um, so you already know what this is all about. But I do have a resume review series where I am taking in résumés so people can submit them. And um, basically if you go to my YouTube channel and I haven't linked it yet, so let me do that. Feel like I'm losing my voice, too. You can check out my main YouTube channel. If you look at any one of these ré videos, in the first minute, I explain how to submit a resume. It's for a free resume review. Um, for now, unless these videos blow up and I get too many of them and then I need to put them behind a membership or something like that, but not the case right now. So, check them out. Otherwise, my main YouTube channel has the resume videos. They have programming videos. Um, the newer ones have these really good thumbnails from the editor. Uh, much better than these thumbnails. Although, these videos have all done way better than all the rest. I don't know. Can't explain it. Can't can't win at YouTube. Um, otherwise, there is podcast episodes as well. So on these podcast episodes, I interview other software developers and try to focus on their career development. So at least in the beginning, right? So how did you get to where you are? What was your career story? Because every one of these people has a very different story. So for example, uh code wrinkles, uh awesome net developer. He's posting less and less now. I think he's kind of a got a bit of a shift in focus. Um but you know, awesome guy. He actually started in development quite, you know, air quotes quite late compared to many other people. Career switcher. Um, when we were doing this video here, I can't remember. His name's cut off. Um, I can't remember his name. That's embarrassing. What is it? Amr. Yes. Or air. That's right. Um he was saying that he was actually focused completely not in anything related to software development and actually had done a couple of career switches. Um and in the end he's still not a software developer but he took different things from his uh his career and married them together and then actually created a tech startup. So really cool to interview. But um those podcasts are um you know lots of insight from other people. Uh go Guppy, welcome. It's just about to wrap up though, so I'm so sorry. Um and Justin, yes, I glad you find the um sign of the bald guy awesome. Um thanks Justin. I'm glad you appreciate the resume review series. Um, and we'll go over to code Kimmy, which is the last, well, second last thing I'll blast you guys. Um, that Go Guppy person looks like Amai, but I can't see. But I might just be making that up. Go Guppy. H. Well, welcome Go Guppy. I do appreciate you being here. Um, I just I can't see the profile picture, but it looks like Amai, so maybe it is. But Code Commute is my other YouTube channel. Um, I vlog on this channel. Um, I was mentioning earlier like got over 200 videos up on there now, which is super cool. You can see that I tried out a couple of thumbnails because I said on this channel I wasn't going to do any, but I started to hit a bit of a wall with um, uh, no visibility on videos. So, uh, anyway, these ones are mostly done from the car. You'll see a couple of them are from this uh this office, but they're all a vlog style. So, very much like how I'm talking to the camera now. Um except I'm not looking at a live stream chat because that would be super dangerous to do while I'm driving. So, I don't. But I talk about uh general software engineering stuff, people that submit questions. Uh and then otherwise I will go to Reddit. If I don't have any uh pending questions, I go to Reddit to look for interesting topics. Um, and if I had one request from folks, if you're interested in Code Commute and you enjoy the videos on Code Commute, if you share them on Reddit or dev.TO or on any social media you have, um, please uh would be super awesome. That just helps with the visibility. I was saying that the um the ad revenue from this channel still doesn't cover the cost of me driving in the fast lane to go to work every month. So, we got we got some room. So, I would appreciate anyone sharing videos from this channel. Um go Guppy. Sad that you're missing the tail end of this, but I do it every Monday at 700 p.m. Pacific. So, um you can check out next week's as well. And otherwise, um, if you like the style of this, honestly, Code Commute is very similar, but like I said, there's no chat. Um, but yeah, that's this channel. I always like showing off one of the 360 videos because I think it's super cool. Um, I feel like I learned about this not long ago, but see how my stupid face is here, but notice how I'm dragging with my mouse. That's my other car. Check it out. Someday soon back on the road. But you can literally drag it around. Um, people sometimes tell me that they watch these videos in their office chairs and spin around in circles. But yeah, you can see like I'm driving to work and you can look around as I'm driving. Uh, go Guppy. Yes, I am at Microsoft. Um, I am a principal engineering manager on the routing plane team for Substrate. So, um, I have team members that are responsible for routing trillions of requests per day for Microsoft, which is pretty cool. Um, yeah, I I think that these 360 videos are so cool. I have to figure this out, though. Like, what's with this scene? It's literally a 360 degree camera. There's not supposed to be a seam. Um, but anyway, it's cool. So, if you don't get motion sickness, feel free to try that out. Um, otherwise, let me get back out of that. Otherwise, uh, Brand Ghost, sorry, should have said flashbang warning. Brand ghost is what I was talking about earlier. Um, yes, go Guppy. I do have a Discord. My Discord is paid for though. I'm really bad at selling stuff, so I never mention it. Um, side stack, is that what it's called? One sec. Yes. Um, so one sec. So I'm gonna put a link to this. Um, so yeah, sorry. My my Discord is paid for. Um, if you sign up for my newsletter using the side stack, you should be able to get a Discord invite. Should um, it should work, but it is paid for. So, I figured if people are signing up for the newsletter, they can get the Discord membership included with that. Um, the reason I do that, by the way, it's like it's not I think it's like five bucks a month or something. But, um, historically, what was happening was I would have people message me um people would message me and say like, "Hey, like, can you answer this stuff for me?" And they would ask these questions and I would spend a lot of time answering questions for them and then they wouldn't respond or anything. like I don't even know if they got the message and I'm like why am I doing this? So, uh, two things I started doing was vlogging about it. So, I said great, if you have a question, I'll make a video out of it. It's the same reason I do the resume reviews. Like, if I'm going to spend the time, it's becoming content. And the second part is if I pay wall some of the stuff, at least I can have people that are serious about the questions they're asking. Um, at some point, like I need to acknowledge that my time is valuable as well. So, um I just feel like guilty. That's why I said I'm a really bad salesperson, but I'm working on it. We're trying to get better. So, um Brand Ghost is the platform that I'm building for social media. So, um the way that this works is if you're a content creator or you would like to try uh Brand Ghost allows you to cross-ost content across platforms. So, this list is continuously growing. Um, but it's free to use, which is super cool. So, um, if you're just getting started or you want to try out content creation, you can try out Brand Ghost totally for free. And then there's more advanced features that cost money. So, if I scroll down, you can see actually you can see like that's my Instagram, right? It works. It's cool. Um, but we have paid for features. So, for example, um, we have these things called topic streams. I'm just going to share some of the technical details because it's all software developers on here, right? Um, topic streams are recurring schedules. And so what we do is the content that you're posting, you can add it to a topic stream and it will recycle your content over time, which is super handy as a creator. And the experience that I love sharing because I thought it was so cool was last October, I think last October, um I went on a vacation to Hawaii with my wife, which is awesome. Highly recommend Hawaii. And during that time, I'm not going to be on social media making posts. Just not happening because I'm on vacation. So during that week, Brand Ghost posted across my social media accounts 150 times completely on its own. I should clarify, it's content that I've written. It's not just random content. Content that I've written all automatically scheduled out for me. And it I forgot that I didn't add more memes to post. I post memes on Friday, Saturday, Sunday. I forgot to go add more before I left. So, it recycled a meme. That meme that got posted had over two million impressions. It's the most viewed piece of content I've ever posted on the internet. It was recycled and posted automatically through Brand Ghost, which I thought was really cool. Um, so anyway, um, it's built in ASP.NET Core. So, for those of you that are software developers that are interested in the nerdy stuff, ASP.NET Net Core hosted in Azure, MySQL database. It's got a Nex.js front end. It's cool stuff. Um, but yeah, try it out if you're interested in content creation or getting started. And if you have questions, if you're like, hey, I would like to try posting content. I'd like to try building in public or maybe you have a business on the side and you're like, I don't like posting stuff for this. This is tedious. Send me a message. I'm happy to try answering questions because brand ghost is literally what powers all of my content creation. So pseudo please. Hi. I'm so sorry that this is the very end of the live stream though. So what you can do is join next week 700 p.m. Pacific because I'll be streaming again and I hope to see you there. So thanks everyone for joining. Uh, if you have questions that you want answered on Code Commute before the next live stream, just send them to me on social media. Pick a platform, send me a message, and I will make a video and vlog about it. So, thanks so much. I'll see you folks next time. Take care.