My Favorite Ruby Rogues Episodes - Career and Organizational Management
Previous post was about episodes that discuss how to grow as an individual developer. This post is about episodes that discuss career management and organizational management.
This is the last post. I’ve mostly left out episodes about specific Ruby techniques and tools, and episodes about developer communities or social responsibilities as they are more specialized interest.
Career Management
044 RR Choosing the Right Career Path with Marty Haught
There are many kinds of software companies. Big vs small, product vs consultancy, interesting vs boring, stable vs unstable, and so on. The panelists discuss the importance of knowing which charateristics do you find important in order to be happier at work.
121 RR Consulting vs Product Work with Adam Keys
The panelists discuss how consulting and product work are different. They go over topics such as stability of cash flow, different relationship with the code and coworkers, job security, willingness to adopt changes, and so on.
The panelists discuss the importance of being realistic about the company and employee relationship, and recommend not to develop overly optimistic faith on an organization whose primary goal is making profits, not safeguarding employees.
136 RR Consulting vs Product Work Part 2 with Steven Proctor
More discussion about the difference between consulting and product work, such as accumulated knowledge over the history of the product versus fresh new perspective, or ability to make lasting changes.
187 Marketing Yourself as a Software Developer with John Sonmez
Writing blog posts, contributing to open source projects, answering stack overflow questions, showing up at meetups, speaking at conferences - these activities all contribute to building your personal brand. In other words, they are marketing activities. Keep doing it to increase your chance of getting a great job.
261 RR Networking Without Networking with Kerri Miller
The panelists discuss how to get to know people without doing that distasteful, empty exchange of business cards that’s commonly known as “networking”. They talk about meeting people at conferences, meetups, building relationship online, and so on.
270 RR #talkpay with Lauren Voswinkel
The panelists discuss how keeping the salary confidential is unfair and empowers bargaining power of companies at the expense of employees. #talkpay is a movement that urges people to share their salaries and break the information disparity.
274 RR Fearless Salary Negotiation with Josh Doody
The panelists discuss how salary negotiation works and techniques to improve your odds at maximizing your salary.
RR 296 The Future of Work in Web Development with Erik Dietrich
Erik Dietrich expects the programming industry to shift away from large enterprises and restructure into small companies formed by freelancers, which will get contracted by large corporations. He thinks it would look similar to how law firms work in legal fields.
Organizational Management
049 RR Agile Communication with Angela Harms
The panelists discuss how good communication and empathy for coworkers is essential for agile software development to work.
Resumes are useless. When panelists hire people, they ask these questions. Can the cadidate do the job? (And do I know what job he or she is going to do?) Is the candidate a good fit for the team? And recruiters are terrible.
What kind of environment makes developers productive? The panelists talk about various things, starting from monitors and standing desks through open office and strong light to choice of OS and background color of terminal window.
190 RR Apprenticeship with Joseph Mastey and Jill Lynch of Enova
A fascinating story about apprentice program in Enova: how they run it, what kind of experience both the apprentice and mentor had, and how it affects the entire development culture.
191 RR The Developer Happiness Team with Kerri Miller
What makes a developer happy? It’s different for each person. Developer Happiness Team looks into what makes developers in the company happy, develop action plans to accommodate them, and execute them. Happy developers don’t leave the company, increasing the retention rating and reducing cost of hiring and training new developers.
213 RR Team Dynamics, API Design, and System Resiliency with Daniel Jacobson of Netflix
An interesting in-depth look at thow Netflix is organized and how they work, and what kind of culture they pursue.
216 RR Code Review Culture with Derek Prior
Code review often becomes something that everybody hates. The panelists discuss the value of code review, how to make it efficient, and also how to make it a supportive process instead of a condemning process.
229 RR Adopting New Technology
New technology should have minimal entry cost and maximal payoff. This should apply not just to the proponent of the new technology, but also all the other people who will be affected by the new technology. The panelists also talk about proper process to bring in the new technology.
230 RR Hiring Diversely with Sarah Mei
It’s important to note that everyone has different culture. Each junior developer has different way of communication and thoughts, each senior developer has different way of commununication and thoughts. Same goes with managers, support staff, and so on. It’s critical to recognize this fact because it affects the hiring process and organizational dynamics.
233 RR Onboarding New Employees
The panelists discuss good and bad onboarding experiences they had, and onboarding in various contexts such as remote versus local, team versus project, and role of senior developers in onboarding process.
240 RR What Makes a Good Manager with Marcus Blankenship
You need to let go of the need to prove your coding skills - it has nothing to do with being acknowledged as a manager. In fact, when you become a manager, don’t get involved in production code because it’s not your responsibility now. Instead, focus on helping your team. Have a weekly meeting with each individual of the team you manage. Shorten the feedback loop.
249 RR The Normalization of Deviance with Dan Luu
The panelists discuss how terrible practices somehow become the standard practices and stay forever - deviant practices persist as normalcy. They discuss how to fight it and prevent it to some degree.
264 RR Code Hospitality with Nadia Odunayo
The discussion centers around the concept of hospitality. Onboarding a new developer is like welcoming a new person moving into the town. Pairing with another person is like acting as a host to the session. Maintain such level of empathy and care when you write code or communicate with colleagues.
New developers need psychological support more than new tutorials or books. Share them stories of how you learned, keep encouraging and recognizing their small successes, get better at explaining things in a way that listeners can understand - they are responsibilities of senior developers. Likewise, it’s the responsibility of newer developers to keep asking questions.
276 RR Hiring and Retention with Kenzi Connor
The panelists analyze how come software development has become a senior-obsessed field. Companies are not enthusiastic about hiring junior developers and training them, because many of them leave after a few years. That’s where the root of problem lies. It’s not hiring - it’s retention. The panelists discuss why developers leave and how to mitigate that.
277 RR GROWS Method with Andy Hunt
Andy Hunt, one of the original authors of the Agile Manifesto, introduces GROWS method. It’s a better developed and organized method for putting the Agile ideas into practice.