Developer Tea

This episode marks the 11th anniversary of the show, and I want to celebrate by continuing our Career Growth Accelerator series. Today, we’re moving beyond the "autopilot" mode that many engineers find themselves in and learning how to define goals that are uniquely yours so you can find the specific challenges that will actually move the needle. 🎧 Episode Notes: Going from Autopilot to Purpose Many of us operate on instinct, chasing goals like "get a promotion" or "make more money" without understanding the "why" behind them. This episode is designed to help you interrogate those automatic responses and find a path that is optimized for what you uniquely value. Break the Autopilot Loop:The "Never Again" Pressure Test:Move from Post-Rationalisation to Purpose:Create Instructive Goals:Find Your True Challenge:The "Asterisk" of Solvability:reasonably solve📮 Ask a Question If you enjoyed this episode and would like me to discuss a question that you have on the show, drop it over at: developertea.com/contact 📮 Join the Discord Join our supportive community of engineers working to improve their lives and careers at https://developertea.com/discord. 🧡 Leave a Review If you're enjoying the show, head over to iTunes and leave a review! It helps other developers discover the show.

This episode kicks off the Career Growth Accelerator series, focused on the specific hurdles faced by mid-to-senior level engineers, managers, and leaders who are looking to move to the next level. Before diving into specific strategies, I’m addressing the fundamental prerequisite for real growth: getting out of your own way. We often block our own progress because our ego conflates our self-worth with our career position, making it impossible to see the real problems or lessons we need to learn. In this episode, I share a vital mental exercise to help you disconnect your identity from your job title and begin diagnosing your career challenges honestly. dangerous ways to control your careerdisconnecting your self-worth from your career aspirationsdistancing thought experimentdiagnostic aspect📮 Ask a Question If you enjoyed this episode and would like me to discuss a question that you have on the show, drop it over at: developertea.com. 📮 Join the Discord If you want to be a part of a supportive community of engineers (non-engineers welcome!) working to improve their lives and careers, join us on the Developer Tea Discord community by visiting https://developertea.com/discord today! 🧡 Leave a Review If you're enjoying the show and want to support the content head over to iTunes and leave a review! It helps other developers discover the show and keep us focused on what matters to you.

Are you a mid-to-senior level engineer or leader who has hit a career roadblock or found yourself stagnated? I'm launching the new Career Growth Accelerator series, focused on the difficult, non-obvious hurdles that prevent you from moving to the next level. In this foundational Episode Zero, I cover the critical prerequisite for growth: Getting Out of Your Own Way. Our ego often protects our self-worth by blaming external factors for failures, making honest diagnosis impossible,. • Learn why protecting your ego is the most dangerous way to control your career. • Discover the fundamental shift: disconnecting your self-worth from your career aspirations to gain clarity. • I introduce a distancing thought experiment to help you diagnose the real problems blocking your path. • Start focusing on the diagnostic aspect—What happened and why?—to build real momentum. Subscribe now so you don't miss out on this series!

When you hit a career roadblock, the methods that worked for you before often stop working. Today, I’m diving into why that happens, and why the first and most critical step in progressing past stagnation isn't doubling down on skills, but clearly defining the problem standing in your way. Problem Definition As A Path for Career Growth My goal on the show is to help driven developers like you find clarity, perspective, and purpose in their careers. This episode is for everyone trying to grow, especially if you have hit some kind of roadblock. Most career progression, especially early on, happens somewhat automatically through natural experience, domain expertise, and skill accumulation,. However, as you progress, you will hit missing rungs or roadblocks—things preventing you from progressing in promotions, positions, or specific projects. When blocked, most people rely on the same things they did before, such as gaining experience, reading blogs, or building side projects, using a "scattershot approach" to try and guess what their managers want,. Unfortunately, relying on activity that previously got you ahead will not necessarily work later in your career,. As you climb the career ladder, the number of positions available decreases (the pyramid shape), meaning that even being highly qualified may not lead to the next role if it simply doesn't exist,. If you haven't defined the problem, you have no way of knowing whether the actions you are taking will help you progress where you want to go. Instead of continuing the never-ending cycle of self-improvement, you need to step outside your own context and try to see the problem from an external viewpoint, like a consultant. Recognizing the core problem—like a lack of available roles—allows you to shift your focus away from only improving your skill set and toward solving that specific organizational problem, perhaps by expanding the necessary scope for the role to open up,. Redefining the problem may mean shifting your goal from getting a promotion to convincing someone to let you perform the activities associated with that higher role, which is a different process entirely. In almost every circumstance where you are blocked, there is a problem that you need to work on defining better; this is the first step towards moving past the roadblock,. 📮 Ask a Question If you enjoyed this episode and would like me to discuss a question that you have on the show, drop it over at: developertea.com. 📮 Join the Discord If you want to be a part of a supportive community of engineers (non-engineers welcome!) working to improve their lives and careers, join us on the Developer Tea Discord community by visiting https://developertea.com/discord today! I'm also in the community, and you can message me directly there. 🧡 Leave a Review If you're enjoying the show and want to support the content head over to iTunes and leave a review! It helps other developers discover the show and keeps us focused on what matters to you.

We often look for ways to reduce the load on our brains, seeking shortcuts and optimizations to get ahead. Sometimes this works, reinforcing the belief that we can hack our way around every problem. However, this episode addresses the truth that many fundamental aspects of your career require something difficult, messy, slow, or inefficient, demanding deep thought and repeated failure. This episode details the difficult truths about facing the most essential challenges in your career: Understand the Hard Path:Identify Your Primary Obstacles:The Path to Mastery:building things over and overThe Pain of Decision:decidecut off your optionalitySustaining Commitment:core underlying reasonThe Reward:🙏 Today's Episode is Brought To you by: Wix Studio Devs, if you think website builders mean limited control—think again. With Wix Studio’s developer-first ecosystem you can spend less time on tedious tasks and more on the functionalities that matters most: ● Develop online in a VS Code-based IDE or locally via GitHub. ● Extend and replace a suite of powerful business solutions. ● And ship faster with Wix Studio’s AI code assistant. All of that, wrapped up in auto-maintained infrastructure for total peace of mind. Work in a developer-first ecosystem. Go to wixstudio.com. 📮 Ask a Question If you enjoyed this episode and would like me to discuss a question that you have on the show, drop it over at: developertea.com. 📮 Join the Discord If you want to be a part of a supportive community of engineers (non-engineers welcome!) working to improve their lives and careers, join us on the Developer Tea Discord community by visiting https://developertea.com/discord today! There are other engineers there going through similar things in their careers, and I am also in there, where you can message me directly. 🧡 Leave a Review If you're enjoying the show and want to support the content head over to iTunes and leave a review! It helps other developers discover the show and keep us focused on what matters to you.

If you're looking to accelerate your career growth, this episode gives you what may feel like hard truths about the path forward. So many engineers fall into traps of overthinking, chasing minor optimizations (like 5% or 10% productivity boosts), or playing the games of politics and networking. While these sideline activities aren't necessarily useless, I want to help you focus on the "big engines" and "primary considerations"—the things that will make the monumental difference in your career building strategy. • I explain why arguments based on nuance—such as trying to convince your manager that your work is valuable despite low throughput, or doing "glue work"—are often based on flawed strategies that cause your career to suffer and not grow easily. • I use an allegory (discussing the primary path of treatment for low testosterone) to illustrate that many engineers are trying to fix a fundamental, mainline career problem with a sideline, nuanced solution, instead of focusing on the gold standard primary path. • I debunk the skill collection fallacy: the misconception that broadening your skill set (learning more languages, frameworks, or techniques) provides the same level of career benefit as it did early on. • Discover the fundamental path to growth: I advise you to set down new languages and skill sets and instead become a craftsman of a limited set of tools, fully understanding the domain, business problems, and how value flows through the organization. • Learn why the most important factor that substitutes for very few other things is engaging in the deliberate practice of solving a sheer volume of problems encountered and solved over and over. • I detail how to avoid the comfort zone: while solving problems is vital, you must ensure those problems progress with you by increasing complexity, scope, responsibility, or sheer volume of work, otherwise, your potential for growth will become limited and you will stall out. • I caution that a lack of challenge (feeling no discomfort ever) can lead to boredom, disengagement, and eventual burnout, because your brain adapts, reducing the flow state you experience. I suggest finding ways to introduce discomfort that pushes you. • Understand that the primary course of treatment for a failing or stalled career is simple: become incredibly good at your core set of responsibilities, making things like networking, resume writing, and managing relationships easier as a result. 📮 Ask a Question If you enjoyed this episode and would like me to discuss a question that you have on the show, drop it over at: developertea.com. 📮 Join the If you want to be a part of a supportive community of engineers (non-engineers welcome!) working to improve their lives and careers, join us on the Developer Tea Discord community by visiting https://developertea.com/discord today! 🧡 Leave a Review If you're enjoying the show and want to support the content head over to iTunes and leave a review! It helps other developers discover the show and keep us focused on what matters to you.

If you're an engineer looking to move into a senior role, you have likely heard that you need to demonstrate "ownership". Unfortunately, this crucial term is often poorly defined and leads to a major misconception: that ownership means being assigned a full project or a Tech Lead role. I want to dispel that myth and explain why ownership is actually a necessary behavior and mindset shift, applicable in almost every action you take, regardless of whether you’re leading a project. "What now?""What next?"figuring out what happens nextchoosing to opt in📮 Ask a Question If you enjoyed this episode and would like me to discuss a question that you have on the show, drop it over at: developertea.com. 📮 Join the Discord If you want to be a part of a supportive community of engineers (non-engineers welcome!) working to improve their lives and careers, join us on the Developer Tea Discord community by visiting https://developertea.com/discord today! 🧡 Leave a Review If you're enjoying the show and want to support the content head over to iTunes and leave a review! It helps other developers discover the show and keep us focused on what matters to you.

Hey everyone, welcome to today's episode of Developer Tea. This is the second part of my interview with Bryan McCann, the CTO at you.com. If you haven't listened to Part One, I'd encourage you to go back, as it provides crucial context for our continued discussion. In this episode, we dive into how you can think about relating to and integrating the massive changes that AI is bringing to your job, whether you are a software engineer, manager, director, or product professional. Bryan and I discuss his interests beyond research, including art and organizational design. managers of AI toolsbuilding better versions of AI itselfintuitions about what should be builtconceptual biasesmagicneural networks learnemulating AI’s learning mechanismslearninghighest possible impact📮 Ask a Question If you enjoyed this episode and would like me to discuss a question that you have on the show, drop it over at: developertea.com.. 📮 Join the Discord If you want to be a part of a supportive community of engineers (non-engineers welcome!) working to improve their lives and careers, join us on the Developer Tea Discord community by visiting https://developertea.com/discord today!. 🧡 Leave a Review If you're enjoying the show and want to support the content head over to iTunes and leave a review! It helps other developers discover the show and keep us focused on what matters to you.

Hey everyone and welcome to today's episode of Developer Tea. It's been quite a while since I've had a guest on the show. Today, I'm joined by Bryan McCann, CTO at you.com. We dive into a wide-ranging discussion, exploring the philosophical origins of his career—from studying meaning and language to working in very early AI research. This discussion is less advice-heavy and more focused on kind of theory and discussion. I hope this is insightful for you and helpful as you crystallize your own philosophies on these subjects. innately human thingframework of meaning or connectionsearch for meaning📮 Ask a Question If you enjoyed this episode and would like me to discuss a question that you have on the show, drop it over at: developertea.com.. 📮 Join the Discord If you want to be a part of a supportive community of engineers (non-engineers welcome!) working to improve their lives and careers, join us on the Developer Tea Discord community by visiting https://developertea.com/discord today!. 🧡 Leave a Review If you're enjoying the show and want to support the content head over to iTunes and leave a review! It helps other developers discover the show and keep us focused on what matters to you.

I'm tackling a massive challenge today: burnout. While the standard advice usually involves working less, I want to show you a practical dimension of burnout you have more control over, focusing on increasing your agency and autonomy to manage chronic workplace stress more effectively. Burnout is classified by the ICD-11 as a syndrome resulting from chronic workplace stress that has not been successfully managed. This episode includes practical advice for understanding and addressing burnout by shifting focus from reducing work volume to increasing control and resources. feelings of energy depletion or exhaustionincreased mental distance/negativityreduced professional efficacynotIn order to control stress, provide control📮 Ask a Question If you enjoyed this episode and would like me to discuss a question that you have on the show, drop it over at: developertea.com. 📮 Join the Discord If you want to be a part of a supportive community of engineers (non-engineers welcome!) working to improve their lives and careers, join us on the Developer Tea Discord community by visiting https://developertea.com/discord today! 🧡 Leave a Review If you're enjoying the show and want to support the content head over to iTunes and leave a review! It helps other developers discover the show and keep us focused on what matters to you.

In this episode, I dive into the management mantra that "what is measured is managed" and explain why this simple assertion often leads to a complex trap. We discuss why the act of measuring team productivity is never neutral—it's an intervention that immediately changes behavior, often resulting in unintended consequences like gaming the metrics. We'll explore how to collaborate with your team to find measurements that truly drive desired behaviors. measuring something triggers managementfeed it📮 Ask a Question If you enjoyed this episode and would like me to discuss a question that you have on the show, drop it over at: developertea.com. 📮 Join the Discord If you want to be a part of a supportive community of engineers (non-engineers welcome!) working to improve their lives and careers, join us on the Developer Tea Discord community by visiting https://developertea.com/discord today! 🧡 Leave a Review If you're enjoying the show and want to support the content head over to iTunes and leave a review! It helps other developers discover the show and keep us focused on what matters to you.

I want to dive into the concept of Deliberate Practice, which sets the greatest apart in fields ranging from sports to writing to engineering. I’ll explain why it’s much more than just repetition or experience, and why applying it to your career can lead to rapid improvement. Most importantly, I will provide concrete ways you can apply deliberate practice to level up your engineering and leadership skills, especially in areas that are traditionally difficult to practice, such as communication and strategic decision-making. Differentiate Practice from Deliberate Practicevery narrow set of activitiesintentional goal of improvementIdentify Opportunities for Rapid ImprovementApply DP to Leadership SkillsLeverage Existing Work for PracticeGenerate Novel Value Through PracticeUse Backwards Training for StrategySimulate Difficult Conversations📮 Ask a Question If you enjoyed this episode and would like me to discuss a question that you have on the show, drop it over at: developertea.com. 📮 Join the Discord If you want to be a part of a supportive community of engineers (non-engineers welcome!) working to improve their lives and careers, join us on the Developer Tea Discord community by visiting https://developertea.com/discord today! 🧡 Leave a Review If you're enjoying the show and want to support the content head over to iTunes and leave a review! It helps other developers discover the show and keep us focused on what matters to you.

This episode explores the concept of Locus of Control and why developing a more internal locus of control is beneficial for your career and life. You'll learn the difference between internal and external perspectives, why one is more useful than the other, and practical exercises to shift your mindset to believe you have more influence over the outcomes you care about. Understand Locus of ControlAdopt a More Useful MindsetRecognise Your InfluenceShift Your Perspective with Practical ExercisesLeverage Your Strengths📮 Ask a Question If you enjoyed this episode and would like me to discuss a question that you have on the show, drop it over at: developertea.com. 📮 Join the Discord If you want to be a part of a supportive community of engineers (non-engineers welcome!) working to improve their lives and careers, join us on the Developer Tea Discord community by visiting https://developertea.com/discord today! 🧡 Leave a Review If you're enjoying the show and want to support the content head over to iTunes and leave a review! It helps other developers discover the show and keep us focused on what matters to you.

In this episode we'll discuss why "Résumé Driven Development" is a powerful mental model for building a thriving career. Instead of seeing your résumé as just a job-hunting tool, you'll learn to use it as a guide for setting measurable, impactful goals that benefit you, your manager, and your company. Focus on Impact, Not Just Tasks:The best way to improve your career is to focus on achieving measurable goals that demonstrate real valueHave the Goals Conversation:If your manager can only provide project deadlines, take the initiative to propose your own impact-oriented goalsConnect Goals to Business Value:Take Control of Your Career:your career success is ultimately dependent on your own actions📮 Ask a Question If you enjoyed this episode and would like me to discuss a question that you have on the show, drop it over at: developertea.com. 📮 Join the Discord If you want to be a part of a supportive community of engineers (non-engineers welcome!) working to improve their lives and careers, join us on the Developer Tea Discord community by visiting https://developertea.com/discord today! 🧡 Leave a Review If you're enjoying the show and want to support the content head over to iTunes and leave a review! It helps other developers discover the show and keep us focused on what matters to you.

In this episode, we introduce a simple yet powerful mental model from the world of sports: forced vs. unforced errors. By understanding this concept, you can shift your focus from things outside your control to the simple, foundational behaviours that truly define a successful career. Understand the Difference:Focus on What You Control:Identify Your Unforced Errors:Conduct a Self-Audit:🙏 Today's Episode is Brought To you by: Wix Studio Devs, if you think website builders mean limited control—think again. With Wix Studio’s developer-first ecosystem you can spend less time on tedious tasks and more on the functionalities that matters most: wixstudio.com📮 Ask a Question If you enjoyed this episode and would like me to discuss a question that you have on the show, drop it over at: developertea.com. 📮 Join the Discord If you want to be a part of a supportive community of engineers (non-engineers welcome!) working to improve their lives and careers, join us on the Developer Tea Discord community by visiting https://developertea.com/discord today! 🧡 Leave a Review If you're enjoying the show and want to support the content head over to iTunes and leave a review! It helps other developers discover the show and keep us focused on what matters to you.

In this episode, we introduce two fundamental thought experiments to help you uncover your true priorities and core values. By exploring scenarios of scarcity and abundance, you'll learn to align your daily actions with what truly matters, leading to a more satisfied career and life. Uncover Your Priorities:Discover Your Values:Go Deeper:Unify for Satisfaction:📮 Ask a Question If you enjoyed this episode and would like me to discuss a question that you have on the show, drop it over at: developertea.com. 📮 Join the Discord If you want to be a part of a supportive community of engineers (non-engineers welcome!) working to improve their lives and careers, join us on the Developer Tea Discord community by visiting https://developertea.com/discord today! 🧡 Leave a Review If you're enjoying the show and want to support the content head over to iTunes and leave a review! It helps other developers discover the show and keep us focused on what matters to you.

This episode explains what is arguably the best career advice you'll hear this week: the one skill that signifies seniority in software engineers is the ability to synthesise and optimise for multiple factors at once. Instead of focusing on a single factor, such as performance or maintainability, senior engineers identify and weigh the various trade-offs involved in any decision. Discover the key skill that distinguishes a senior engineer:Learn why single-factor thinking can hold you back:Understand how to demonstrate seniority in interviews and at work:Explore how to find better solutions by thinking in trade-offs:Start practising this skill today:📮 Ask a Question If you enjoyed this episode and would like me to discuss a question that you have on the show, drop it over at: developertea.com. 📮 Join the Discord If you want to be a part of a supportive community of engineers (non-engineers welcome!) working to improve their lives and careers, join us on the Developer Tea Discord community by visiting https://developertea.com/discord today! 🧡 Leave a Review If you're enjoying the show and want to support the content head over to iTunes and leave a review! It helps other developers discover the show and keep us focused on what matters to you.

This episode focuses on the critical importance of having a backup plan, not just for technical redundancies but especially for situations involving human error, which are highly prevalent in one's career. The core argument hinges on understanding risk and reward curves, highlighting the disproportionate impact of failures compared to incremental successes. Understanding Risk and Reward Curves: Successes are often incrementalFailures, especially uncaught ones, have a much longer negative tailsignificantly outweighscatastrophic curvesThe Criticality of Backup Plans: avoid these catastrophic negative curvestheoretically possible catastrophic eventsBenefits of Preparedness: "flywheel effect"proactive in your careerActionable Advice: Focus on what could go wrongIdentify vulnerabilitiesImplement a basic backup plan📮 Ask a Question If you enjoyed this episode and would like me to discuss a question that you have on the show, drop it over at: developertea.com. 📮 Join the Discord If you want to be a part of a supportive community of engineers (non-engineers welcome!) working to improve their lives and careers, join us on the Developer Tea Discord community by visiting https://developertea.com/discord today! 🧡 Leave a Review If you're enjoying the show and want to support the content head over to iTunes and leave a review! It helps other developers discover the show and keep us focused on what matters to you.

Todays episode delves into understanding and leveraging second and third-order consequences – the ripple effects that occur after an initial action – and introduces forcing functions, which are an inverted way of thinking about these consequences, designed to drive desired outcomes by first determining "what must be true" for them to occur. The episode also connects these concepts to the importance of effective goal setting, explaining how well-defined goals provide clarity, focus, and a strategic framework for decision-making and career advancement. Grasp Second and Third-Order Consequences:downstream effects of initial actionsUtilise Forcing Functions for Desired Outcomes:inverted approach to consequencesmust be trueImplement Effective Forcing Functions:prioritised backlogPresentations, demos, or all-hands meetingsSprint planningQuality metrics or Service Level Agreements (SLAs),choice of technology or tech stackWorkplace restrictionsSuccessful hiring and recruitingHarness Goals for Clarity and Focus:a well-positioned goal is paramount for finding clarity, perspective, and purposeSet Relevant and Directionally Correct Goals:relevancedirectionally correctLeverage Manager Feedback for Goal Setting:Proactively engage your managerSet Sustainable and Challenging Goals:challenging but sustainable goalsBe Mindful of Your Choices:choose your forcing functionsdownstream effects (second and third-order consequences)imply📮 Ask a Question If you enjoyed this episode and would like me to discuss a question that you have on the show, drop it over at: developertea.com. 📮 Join the Discord If you want to be a part of a supportive community of engineers (non-engineers welcome!) working to improve their lives and careers, join us on the Developer Tea Discord community by visiting https://developertea.com/discord today! 🧡 Leave a Review If you're enjoying the show and want to support the content head over to iTunes and leave a review! It helps other developers discover the show and keep us focused on what matters to you.

This episode delves into the philosophical concept of hyperobjects – problems so vast and complex they lack clear boundaries and cannot be "solved" once and for all. It explores why attempting to permanently fix issues like technical debt, user experience, or performance management is often ineffective. Instead, it offers a new perspective: how to interact with and manage these intractable problems by focusing on specific outcomes and accepting their ongoing nature. Understand hyperobjects"one-time fix" approach is an anti-patternshift your mindset from "solving" to "interacting"focusing on specific, achievable outcomeslanguage and conceptualisation📮 Ask a Question If you enjoyed this episode and would like me to discuss a question that you have on the show, drop it over at: developertea.com.. 📮 Join the Discord If you want to be a part of a supportive community of engineers (non-engineers welcome!) working to improve their lives and careers, join us on the Developer Tea Discord community by visiting https://developertea.com/discord today! It's totally free, and always will be, for people who listen to this show. 🧡 Leave a Review If you're enjoying the show and want to support the content head over to iTunes and leave a review! It helps other developers discover the show and keep us focused on what matters to you.