Accidentally in Code

Tag: career

  • 5 Signs It’s Time to Quit Your Job

    5 Signs It’s Time to Quit Your Job

    Credit: Comfreak / Pixabay

    By now, we’ve all heard of the great resignation. Over the past 18 months or so, many people have had more time to think about what they want from their jobs, and the kind of conditions they are willing to accept.

    Of course, the great resignation often glosses over the number of people who died (like “essential workers” who are still somehow not essential enough to merit a living wage) or who were too burnt out to keep going (like healthcare professionals). For knowledge workers, this conversation has often been about perceived entitlement, such as those who don’t want to return to the office.

    Regardless, your current job is just a moment in your overall career, and it’s worth thinking critically about whether it’s serving your longer term career goals. So, here are five reasons why you might want to think about quitting. 

    1. You’re not learning (and you want to be).

    It’s normal to move between periods of higher growth and periods of consolidation, and perhaps in the last year it’s been a relief to be operating well within your comfort zone. But if you’re poking your head up, and looking around, and your next growth opportunity is nowhere to be seen, it’s worth considering that your next growth opportunity could be elsewhere.

    The trap: Sometimes five years of experience is just… the same year of experience, five times over. This can really set back your career trajectory – making it harder to interview or get hired for roles you think you should be qualified for by now. Employers who interview in depth will suss out if you’ve been stagnating and be more likely to pass on you for a “more qualified” candidate. 

    Before you quit: Talk to your manager about what growth opportunities they see for you. Especially if you’ve struggled personally for whatever reason (including, for example, with living through a global pandemic) it’s worth laying that to rest between you and making it clear you’re ready to take on more. Many nice, understanding managers have let people drift a bit, not wanting to add pressure when the world was (and continues to be) on fire (some have done the opposite – a whole other story).

    2. You’re learning coping mechanisms rather than skills.

    Every organization has their quirks that people find their way to work around. Perhaps the reporting is a little overly arduous, or your manager’s manager a little political, or the culture a little too argumentative for your liking. Over time, we learn to cope with these things – we set aside extra time for the reports, make sure we take the time to sell the political person on our ideas, or learn how to argue.

    The trap: Sometimes organizations are (or become) sufficiently toxic that we’re investing more time in developing and refining the coping mechanisms than the actual skills. If your list of things to develop is really a list of things that you won’t have to do in a more functional environment, none of which will make you more employable elsewhere… it’s time to walk away. The coping mechanisms trap is particularly vicious because in a healthy environment, coping mechanisms will often be harmful. The more time you invest in refining them, the more time you’re going to have to spend untangling them in a healthy environment – if you ever make it to one.

    Before you quit: Talk to someone you trust, who will not just support you but also challenge you. It’s important that they have an external or at least dispassionate perspective – someone who is also deep in the same coping mechanisms will be more likely to justify them. An external coach, a previous manager, a close industry friend can all be good people to turn to. Ideally they can check you on what’s bothering you – are you overreacting? Would the grass really be greener elsewhere?

    3. You feel morally conflicted about hiring.

    I’m not suggesting we should all be a corporate shill, but if you’re hesitating mentioning that the company you work for is hiring, and offering a lukewarm view or even “I don’t recommend it” to friends who ask you… it’s worth asking yourself if they deserve better, maybe you do too?

    The trap: People tend to consider their next job much more deliberately than we consider staying in the one we have. It’s easy to tick along because things are “mostly fine”, but sometimes the questions that people ask when interviewing can remind us that we don’t have a great answer to those questions ourselves if we let ourselves think about it.

    Before you quit: Is it the company or is it you? Burnout can make us feel ambivalent about things that we would normally enjoy. Try taking a real break from work and seeing how you feel. 

    4. Your job is affecting your confidence.

    The best advice I got early in my career was “if it’s affecting your confidence, then it’s a problem.” It’s something I still think about, and assess situations against. Something might be annoying, and easy to shrug off, but things that erode your confidence should be paid attention to. As a rule, over time you should feel more capable, not less. This is particularly the case when you can look at your achievements, and the way you’re being treated and see a real mismatch.

    The trap: Once you stop feeling valued, and start doubting yourself, it becomes harder and harder to find something else. You’re not valued, you don’t feel successful where you are, so why would somewhere else value you, why would you be more successful elsewhere? The truth is that success is a product of personal and environmental factors. Maybe all you need is a different environment to help you thrive.

    Before you quit: Make the time to thoroughly and (as much as possible) dispassionately review the things that have been eroding your confidence. If it’s feedback, I highly recommend Thanks for the Feedback. If it’s other things, such as the way your coworkers communicate, consider if the signs are isolated things you could build some resilience to, or trauma from previous bad experiences. If you have a good relationship with your manager, you can try asking for what you need – for instance if you struggle to get the most of their coaching because you’re so worried you’re not meeting their expectations you can’t engage with it, try telling them that and seeing if they can offer some reassurance first.

    5. Your job is affecting you physically.

    Stress is physical. At the point where it’s noticeable in your heart rate and physical well-being, you have internalized it.

    The trap: the physical effects of stress can sneak up on us, and when you’re not feeling well the stress and overhead of looking for another job or risking your health insurance may be the last thing you want to deal with.

    Before you quit: You know your work environment, and you know yourself – so you know whether it’s worth trying setting boundaries and/or building healthy habits. If you draw a line at 7pm, will it be respected? If you carve out time for healthy habits will it be enough to make a difference? If it is, I find Gretchen Rubin’s book Better than Before (Amazon) and the Four Tendencies framework helpful for thinking about building (and maintaining) habits. 

    6. Bonus: You’re reading this.

    Sometimes it’s hard to admit the major change that we need because then we would have to do something about it. But, if you’re reading this, maybe it’s a sign that you should do some reflection on what you want out of your life and career – and how well your current role is serving that?

    #

    Forty hours a week – or let’s be real, more – is a lot of time to be unhappy. Being unhappy at work bleeds into other areas of our lives, impacting our physical and emotional well-being and personal relationships. I’m not advocating job hopping – there are always things that you can try to improve your situation – but as a hiring manager, I regularly see people who have stayed in one place too long at the expense of their own growth and overall career. Regularly thinking critically about what you’re getting from your environment – and what you’re not – is key to sustained, and sustainable growth. Even if you have a great manager, you’re still the DRI of your career – abdicating that responsibility does not set yourself up for long term success.

    And if you’re a manager, thinking about how to retain people on your team, consider that your best retention play might – ironically – be making it easier for them to find a job somewhere else. Making sure people feel valued, and are learning and growing in ways that provide value to them personally and their overall career trajectory makes it more likely they will choose to stay. It’s much harder to trap people in the current market – but that was never a good way to manage, anyway.

  • DRI Your Support System

    DRI Your Support System

    Credit:  sasint / Pixabay

    As the DRI of your career, you need to build your support system – this is so you get the support you need even as things change around you (or don’t go the way you want).

    Build your support system. I firmly believe that we should get different things from different people – from our managers, from our peers, from our friends, from a coach. Part of managing up is knowing what your manager is good at and what they are not, and making sure that regardless of that, our own needs are met. Often who is our manager is out of our control and that makes people feel powerless (especially when they expect too much from their job rather than their career). But, we have power over all our other sources of support and this can buffer us against re-orgs and our manager’s fallibilities. As a manager I’ve become increasingly clear with my directs what I can meaningfully help them with, and what they could better find elsewhere (and then I help them find that).

    There are many things that hold newer managers back. One is, expecting to give their directs everything they need.

    I remember the – male – manager who was offended that I felt the need for a network of other women at work, thinking that he should be my main port of call for navigating a sexist workplace. This was, of course, just one of the many ways in which that guy was a terrible manager.

    It’s understandable that managers want to feel useful, but it’s not a failure if the people you manage get some of their needs met elsewhere. Especially, you know, if those are needs that it isn’t realistic for the manager to meet. This mindset limits the responsibility of the manager to what they can know enough about – managing more junior people on a less challenging thing – and supports a small monoculture that doesn’t encourage people to step outside the bubble and fulfill their potential.

    Whether you have a great manager or a terrible one, they are your manager for just a moment in your career. Looking outside that relationship is key for your growth and for weathering change, whether that is a reorg, their departure, promotion or you moving on.

    Ideally, you have a broad support network. So let’s talk about key people, why they are important, and the impact they have.

    Manager

    Why this relationship is important

    Your manager is usually the person with the most impact on your day to day work. They are the person who will advocate for you (or not) during performance review season, and often best placed to give you feedback and help you grow.

    Determining your approach

    Your manager is a human being. With good days, bad days, other responsibilities, other things on their mind. Many individuals are resistant to “managing up” like that is a completely unreasonable thing to do. This is bullshit. Managing up is your part of making that relationship successful and productive. Is it all on you? Obviously not, your manager has more power. Can you meaningfully contribute? Yes. Can this help you be happier and more effective? Absolutely.

    When thinking about how to manage up, consider:

    • How does your manager like to communicate?
    • How do they tend to give feedback?
    • What are their strengths?
    • What do they avoid?
    Pitfalls

    The most obvious pitfall is having a bad manager, which is… not uncommon. The key thing to look for is when your manager makes you feel less capable – whether it’s through the way they allocate or review work, communicate with you, or operate more generally. That’s a strong sign that it’s time to find a way for them not to be your manager anymore.

    The less obvious pitfall is that your attempts at managing up seem insincere or self-serving. If you’re manager is adequate and reasonable, being considerate and consistent will go a long way.

    Top tip: Find out their communication preferences and see what you can easily accommodate.

    Key question: “How can I help you?”

    Skip Level Manager

    Why this relationship is important

    Your skip level manager will have more influence across the org, and is often a more helpful person for growth opportunities than your manager.

    Determining your approach

    If skip 1:1s are a normal occurrence, make sure you take advantage of them. If not, consider how you can ask for them, or take advantage of things like office hours. Make sure you prepare and use the time well.

    Pitfalls

    Your skip level is your manager’s manager, and as such does not have granular information and will (hopefully) avoid undermining your manager in their interactions with that manager’s directs. Avoid questions best asked to your manager, because they will most likely defer those questions to your manager. Focus on what they can best help you with (given their remit, skills, and experience).

    Top tip: Focus on the bigger picture. Ask them how the team fits in with organizational or company goals, what challenges or changes they see coming.

    Key question: “Do you have any advice for me?” – you’ll likely get more insight than asking for feedback.

    Peers

    Why these relationships are important

    Your peers are the people closest to doing the kind of work you’re doing – whether you’re an IC, manager, or Director – and it’s likely you face similar challenges. If you’re lucky, your manager forms a team and you get that peer support for free. As you get more senior, you may have to make more effort to seek it out, and work for it more.

    Determining your approach

    This is hugely contextual, but first figure out who your peers are. If you’re the only staff engineer on a team, for example, you might need to look to another team to find someone else in a similar role. Ideally start with some kind of commonality / shared work or goal and work from that.

    Pitfalls

    A common theme in toxic organizations is that people – especially at higher levels – are pitted against each other. No-one wins in a zero sum competition.

    Top tip: Demonstrate you are a supportive peer by sending them genuine compliments about their achievements or passing on great things you hear about them at work.

    Key question: “How can we help each other?”

    Mentors

    Why these relationships are important

    I am generally pretty skeptical about mentorship, largely viewing formal mentorship programs as a Ponzi scheme designed to distract under-indexed folk from genuine advancement. But a healthier attitude is to see mentorship as anyone you can learn from, who will take the time to help you.

    We all need help sometimes, whether it’s an overview of a complicated debugging tool, a thorough code review, or talking through a problem together.

    Determining your approach

    Ask questions, ask for help. There are so many people out there who truly love to help, once you give them the opportunity.

    Pitfalls

    The two main pitfalls I see people falling into are:

    1. They ask for the wrong help.
    2. They are not respectful of someone’s time.

    You will get your best mentoring from someone when you make it the best experience for them – ask them for help in a way and on a topic that they enjoy, and show that you’re a good use of their time (see: coachability).

    So if someone hates pair programming but loves code review, ask them for a thorough and incremental code review. If someone hates writing that’s probably not the best way to get their feedback on something, so ask them if you can schedule a call instead.

    People often look for the most experienced / senior person they can find to mentor them, but those people are often too far removed to be too helpful. A tenured VPE used to managing Directors is not the best person to mentor someone on management 101, and is unlikely to see it as a good use of their time. Someone 1-2 years ahead likely remembers more of the things you’re running into, and has more patience with them.

    Top tip: When thinking about finding someone to mentor you on a topic, take the time to think about who, what, and why. See if you can match someone’s super-powers to your needs.

    Key question: “Do you have any suggestions for resources that I could use to learn/improve?”

    Sponsors

    Why these relationships are important

    A sponsor helps connect you to opportunity, and advocates for you when you’re not there. Sponsorship can be a huge accelerator for your career.

    Determining your approach

    Sponsorship can be hard to come by, but if you’re lucky it’s something encouraged by your org in some way. As covered in How to DRI Your Professional Development, it doesn’t always look the way you expect it to, and often it involves some extra work to prove you deserve it.

    Pitfalls

    A sponsor doesn’t have to do that much to meaningfully contribute to your development. They don’t have to be a good manager, or mentor, or really support you in any way beyond helping you get that opportunity. The biggest pitfall is that people miss the opportunities available to them because it doesn’t look as tidy or straightforward as they would like it to be.

    Top tip: Remember that when someone sponsors you they lend you their reputation. Take that seriously.

    Key question: “Why do you think this would be a good opportunity for me?”

    Coach

    Why this relationship is important

    Coaching is one of the very few relationships any of us can have where it’s just about helping us be our best selves / live our best lives. No matter how supportive a manager, friends etc, they have a vested interest in our actions and decisions. A coach exists separately from everything else, and focuses on supporting the coachee’s agenda.

    Determining your approach

    A recommendation is a great way to start, and it’s worth connecting with a few people to see who you feel the best fit with. Be intentional about what you want to get out of it, and how to get the best out of the time.

    Pitfalls

    Most of the work of coaching happens outside of coaching. You have to be willing to really show up for it – there’s very little a coach can do if you don’t open yourself up, and don’t follow up. This is why finding someone you really connect with is key.

    Top tip: Think about how you can best set yourself up for success. For instance, if you put your coaching call in the middle of a bunch of stressful / tactical meetings, you’ll probably have a harder time switching to the bigger picture. If you need more structure and accountability, you need to make sure that you and your coach create it together.

    Key question: “What do I want to get out of this?”

    Professional Network

    Why these relationships are important

    Professional networks are a huge source of opportunity, learning, and checking the filter bubble of our current work environments.

    Determining your approach

    Many people hate the concept of “networking”, and really, I feel you. It’s possible that I became an international speaker in large part to avoid having to initiate conversation at events. But seriously, there’s a quote about exercise – “the best exercise is the exercise you enjoy”, and I think the same applies here. If you don’t enjoy attending random events, don’t do it. If you don’t enjoy writing blog posts, why bother. What do you enjoy that helps you connect with people? Invest in that.

    Pitfalls

    “Networking” only when you need something. Personally, I really, really hate the people who I only hear from when they want something. Finding ways to continuously invest a small amount, and have balanced interactions is so helpful.

    Top tip: Notice people’s achievements and congratulate them, or reach out whenever you find something particularly helpful. Even better, share your key takeaway. “I loved your blog post” is great. “I loved your blog post, the point about X was so helpful, as a result I made Y change with Z impact” is even better – and will make you more memorable.

    Key question: “Is there anything I can do to help?”

    Work BFFs

    Why these relationships are important

    I wrote about that in Qz. They make work more fun whilst looking out for you. What could be better?

    Determining your approach

    Finding and building your work BFF relationship takes time, just like any friendship. See who you really connect with, and try and spend more time with them. See what happens!

    Pitfalls

    Being cliquey.

    Top tip: Work BFFs often emerge from good peer relationships.

    Key question: “Do you want to get coffee?”

    Friends

    Why these relationships are important

    We are so much more than our careers, and we need the people who love and ground us regardless of what we do during the work day. It’s easy to feel like we have a lot in common with the people with whom we share professional context – but that can make it hard to switch off and have fun.

    Determining your approach

    Entire books have been written about this topic, here are three (all links Amazon):

    Pitfalls

    Not making time for people. Getting discouraged and not following up.

    Top tip: From MWF Seeking BFF: Ask someone to hang out 3 times before you give up on them.

    Key question: “What do you like to do for fun?”

  • Expecting More from Your Career (and Less from Your Job)

    Expecting More from Your Career (and Less from Your Job)

    Image by ejaugsburg from Pixabay

    The first point in the mentality of Being the DRI of your Career is expecting more from your career and less from your job. Your current work situation – good, bad, or fine – is just a moment in your career.

    Expect less from your job and more from your career. Your life is more than your career, and your career is more than your current job. Your current job should serve your life or career in some way, or it’s probably time to consider moving on. The goal is not to optimize for this moment – the current job – but your overall career. Sometimes jobs you don’t enjoy contribute meaningfully to your career trajectory. Sometimes jobs you enjoy are not developing your skills. Being clear about the distinction makes trade-offs explicit and decisions clearer.

    Three concepts within this:

    • Plan for Opportunity
    • The Work > The Title
    • Define the Moment

    Plan for Opportunity

    Some people have a five year plan. I have optionality.

    Personally I’ve never been able to connect with the idea of being able to plan your life. This is even more true in a relatively new, highly evolving industry. Who is to say the things I’ll be working on ten years from now are even viable today? If I plan, I am necessarily limiting myself to what I can see today, leaving out all the things that I am not aware of yet.

    The way I think about things is less “what do I want to do?” and more “what opportunities do I want to be available to me?”. The more options something opens up, the more excited I am about it. Decisions that cut off options should be taken carefully. For instance, investing in taking coaching training has deepened or increased options available to me. Really committing to the management track has got me to a place where it would be very hard (although not impossible) to go back to being an IC.

    Maybe you have a five year plan, and that’s great if it works for you. If you reframe it in terms of making those options available to you, would you be making different decisions?

    If you don’t have a five year plan, what options would you like to be available to you down the line? What could you do to make those options more available to you?

    The Work > The title

    A job title is a few words. The work is 40+ hours a week. It makes sense to prioritize accordingly.

    Job titles can be useful. Especially for people who get judged on past performance rather than potential, so – people historically marginalized in tech. I get much more interesting recruiter messages now I have a “proper” job title, versus when my job title was emoji. I also get a lot more sales emails, so I remain unclear on whether it’s a net win.

    But, job titles are not comparible, are often meaningless, and usually far less impactful on your actual life (and career) than the actual work you have to do. Over-prioritizing factors relative to their impact is a fast track to making decisions that don’t best serve your overall well-being.

    A job title is not a goal. Do you want to “be a staff engineer” or do you want technical leadership on complex, interesting projects. Do you want to “be a VPE” or do you want a job that combines organizational and technical leadership of a large organization? Using job titles can seem like a useful shorthand, but it’s easy to default to chasing status over what will actually make you happy. Be specific about what you want and why you want it. Think critically about the work you actually enjoy and how you add value.

    Also consider how some job titles can reduce your optionality. Once you take a manager title, it becomes harder to go back to being an IC. Once you have a VP title, it becomes harder to find another job – even if just because there are fewer of such roles available. Both of these things are fine if that’s what you want, but that’s a decision to make mindfully.

    Define the Moment

    This job is just a moment in your career.

    Because people tend to define their career through the lens of their current role, they attach too much importance to what is currently going on, and miss its place in the bigger picture. But whatever is going on right now is just a moment in the broader arc. Your career is not defined by this any more than a month long adventure is defined by one day within it. Yes, occasionally, in extreme circumstances. But very rarely.

    Deciding what this moment is, helps you decide what to do with it.

    … a moment of opportunity
    What potential does this create? What optionality does it facilitate?

    … a moment of challenge
    This is the power of the stretch assignment – meet the challenge, see what opens up as a result.

    … a moment of trauma
    The most dangerous moment – is this moment creating something you will carry with you and need to untangle later? Tread carefully.

    …a moment of calm
    Sometimes we need our jobs to just be fine. Not too stressful, not too challenging, to create space for other things in our lives.

    Looking at things as moments can help to give perspective and make things more endurable. Maybe your boss is abusive, but you choose to finish the project/organize your financials before you move onto something new – despite how miserable that sounds, there is huge power in choosing to endure something for your own reasons rather than being a victim of circumstance. Maybe you take on a challenge, push yourself, because you know it doesn’t need to be forever and this opportunity is worth it. Maybe your ambition did not die of COVID, maybe you just needed a moment of calm to survive living through a global pandemic.

    If something feels untenable, how do you step back from it and make it a moment? What needs to change? And what resources are available to you to make that change?

  • The Rent Versus Buy of Career Growth

    The Rent Versus Buy of Career Growth

    Credit: ejaugsburg / Pixabay

    The topic that got the most attention in my previous post about being the DRI of your career is the concept of rent versus buy when it comes to managing your career.

    Distinguish what your employer rents versus what they buy. I find this particularly relevant when it comes to things like “personal brand”. My employer buys my time, they rent my personal brand. To that end, I’m conscious that whilst it’s part of the value I bring, I don’t want it devalued because ultimately it’s my asset for the long term. This concept also applies to expertise. My expertise is rented, and so I maintain my understanding of what it’s worth, and what is current on the open market. If your job does not match the market in a way that will make it hard for you to find another one, I hope your employer is paying a lot of rent – because they are destroying the market value. At times that might be worthwhile, but often it is not, and people realize that too late.

    Here, I’ll expand a little more on how I think about that, but I’d also love your input on how you think about it and what examples you would place in each. Leave a comment, ping me on Twitter, or drop me a note.

    Rent

    When you “rent” something out, you retain ownership of it – the renter just gets the use of it. As the long term owner of the asset, it’s on you to be conscious of the value, and make sure the renter is not destroying the value long term.

    Expertise

    Expertise is a key example here. Your expertise is yours. It’s what will help you get your next job, negotiate your salary (oh hai “market value”). Because “professional development” is a core retention strategy in tech, too many people are complacent and outsource this responsibility to their current employer, instead of being strategic in how they consider their own development. This is why there’s discussion about “staying current ” as a developer. We used to hear the phrase “there are a lot of unemployed COBOL programmers”, and now it’s more like, there are a few COBOL programmers, they make a lot of money, largely from banks or the government.

    This piece is often where the side project dialog goes off the rails. Should you need to do side projects to get a job? Are open source contributions a requirement? I am a hell no on both these points. However, being strategic about where you invest resources (time and money), and/or developing a habit of deliberate practice can help you develop your expertise and command a higher rent on the market. The extent of that investment is up to you.

    I think developers, if they are lucky, can largely get away without thinking too critically about this, because professional development is a core retention strategy of most “good” tech companies. But at smaller companies, levels above senior developer, or in management, training is often limited and deficient, and if the individual doesn’t take control over their own growth they will hit a ceiling. 

    As a hiring manager, the biggest mistake that I see people making in this realm is the resume that shows “X years of experience” (where X>=6) but when you dig in you see the same 1-2 years of experience again and again. These people top out, stop getting recruiter pings and they don’t know why – but it’s because they didn’t consider how to grow their expertise as they switched (or didn’t switch) jobs. 

    Brand

    There used to be a lot of discussion about “personal branding” and frankly it was nauseating. But, as an individual we all have a “brand” or a “profile”. At a minimum, it’s what’s on your resume, and how you build the narrative of your career. Some companies or roles are detrimental to that. If you work at a company that is materially contributing to (and profiting from) the collapse of society, that may reflect on you.

    A common mistake I see is where people have a job title or custom role that does not match the market. Companies sometimes try to pay their “rent” in inflated job titles – I’m extremely skeptical about the value these have on the open market. For a good recruiter or hiring manager, a “VP” or a “Director” job title without an expected scope of responsibility opens more questions than it answers. It’s worth mapping your responsibilities to the expectations of the market periodically, and checking that you’re still generally employable – hybrid roles where people do A and B are particularly susceptible for not meeting the criteria of either A or B externally. An “and role” can be a plus when you do one thing particularly well but have additional skills – for example an engineering manager who does some product work, or a designer who also does some CSS. “And roles” where people do two+ jobs, poorly, do not set people up for success in their broader career.

    But for those of us who have a bigger profile, some recognition in the community, the concept of brand goes beyond the resume. In a leadership role or DevRel, but to some extent elsewhere, your profile and ability to attract talent is part of your value to a company. It’s important to remember that you retain ownership of your profile, and that it’s for the long term. You don’t want to be seen as a shill for a company that later turns out to be problematic.

    I saw a tweet lately that made me think about this; the company thought they were buying this person’s profile. But she was clear it wasn’t even available for rent.

    This point on brand doesn’t apply to everyone, but where it does it’s worth considering carefully. My main point here is: boundaries. Think about how you want to use your profile, what options you want to be available to you, what boundaries you want to set around it. Make sure that you’re balancing between the rent and ongoing market value. 

    Attention / Context

    Attention is also rented. What do I mean by that? Often you work in a particular domain, and you pick up things about it. Maybe you work in fintech and you acquire a bunch of knowledge about financial regulation. Maybe you work on web standards, and acquire a bunch of knowledge about governance. Maybe you work in Open Source and acquire a bunch of knowledge about licenses. Your attention is directed by your domain.

    When you leave, you take with you that context and what you learned, and that can help you elsewhere. Personally, I’ve been working in Open Source and building remote teams for a long time – those things have had my attention, now I know a bunch of stuff about them, and that is one less thing anyone has to explain to me when I switch jobs. In another part of my life, I did a bunch of work on presentation software and picked up various things about file formats and rendering. At times, I use these bits of information. It’s like a shorthand; I can more quickly evaluate a resume, or the likely complexity of a project, because I have that domain knowledge.

    The win of attention is a little additional curiosity can result in disproportionate amounts of learning given current context. Later, you have these bits of useful information that you can use to accelerate things. Being conscious of how you allocate that can make a difference and make more opportunities available – whether you go deep, or pick up complementary / adjacent contexts. The mistake of attention is when people think they know a domain, but really they know a company. I remember the interview where someone told me they were a “$domain guy” when their understanding seemed very limited to questionable business practices of one particular company which… okay yes, did have a product in that domain.

    Buy

    If some things are rented, what is bought? 

    Time

    Time is the obvious one, typically part of the working agreement, officially around 40 hours per week. Some jobs are more than that for whatever reason, and should pay more as a result.

    The time aspect is interesting, because research shows that in senior roles, they are more likely to be held by men, whose wives are less likely to work. Women in these roles have fewer children, and are more likely to be single (source: HBR, see also: “7 in 10 men who have enough income to put their households in the top 1% of earners have stay-at-home spouses” Qz, “Why promoted women are more likely to divorce” BBC).

    What I take from this, is that the time commitment of certain roles is such that it’s extremely challenging for someone to have such a role and be a parent. Those roles are compensated highly because it’s essentially compensating for the time of two people, where one is the “worker” and the other is the person who makes that level of work possible. The US presidency is perhaps the biggest such example, and one of the interesting things about Dr Jill Biden continuing to work at her usual job as a Professor, is that the position of “FLOTUS” (the unpaid second position that comes with POTUS) has to be filled at least somewhat by people who are actually paid… themselves… to do the work.

    Working in a distributed context for years, the biggest mistake people make with time is that they don’t manage it well. Some people cannot cope with the flexibility, they fail to give themselves the structure they need to be effective. The other failure mode is the opposite – people struggle to disconnect from work, overwork, and burn out (for more on this topic, see: Figuring out Remote Work is Figuring out Work).

    Energy

    I include energy as distinct from time, as I think it’s what explains the continual gap between the hours that people work, and the hours that people think they work (much more). My theory is that when people think about how much they work, they count the energy that they spent. When they track the time, it’s more concrete. So a long dinner with friends is definitely not counted as “work time”, but if you’ve had a shitty week and spend half of it emoting… it counts energetically.

    Dysfunctional environments are an energy drain way beyond the time commitment, and typically way beyond what you are actually compensated for. Thinking about it this way is an encouragement to set boundaries, or – if they aren’t respected – draw lines (like turning the phone off, or ultimately look for another job).

    Adherence

    Adherence is the agreements we make as part of any employment contract. Some jobs don’t allow people to do any programming/writing/speaking externally, and this can be a lot to give up. Maybe you have to live in a certain place, work out of an office, etc. In distributed contexts, travel used to be one aspect of adherence. When hiring at my last job, we would be super clear: 49 weeks of the year, you are wherever you like. 3 weeks of the year, you need to make travel work. It wasn’t for everyone, but I think that is normal and expected; not everything is for everyone.

    If your employer is buying adherence, then it needs to be reasonable. Perhaps no amount of money would make you go back to an office – totally get it, but if your employer thinks they have paid for that, you are going to have to figure a way out of that disagreement that may well involve finding a new place to work. Personally, I can’t imagine selling my ability to write and code for fun ever again, but earlier in my career I made that trade-off for a while, and paid for it later. 

    Trade offs

    Thinking about career decisions this way, you can consider different tradeoffs and options that work best for you at any given time. As an employee, it’s typical to allocate more time, more energy, and in return typically receive higher levels of investment in expertise – this helps people grow more, and ultimately earn more over time. The benefit of different working relationships, like contracting, is often to set stricter boundaries around time and energy, which can free people up for other things (or just maximize short term income). I can’t emphasize enough that all choices are valid and that people operate from wildly different constraints, many of which perpetuate systematic inequity. My question is: are you making those choices mindfully? And do they work for the life and career you want?

  • 1 Year @ DuckDuckGo

    1 Year @ DuckDuckGo

    Privacy by Nick Youngson CC BY-SA 3.0 Alpha Stock Images

    A bit over a year ago (14 months ago) I joined DuckDuckGo as an Engineering Director on the Mobile – now Native Apps – team.

    The biggest thing driving a change was getting back on a positive learning curve. Two big realizations pushed me to start responding to recruiter messages (around a year before I finally made the move; I spoke to 4 places in total) the first being that I was getting too far away from the kind of work I like to do and secondly feeling like I was increasingly learning coping mechanisms rather than skills.

    My criteria: net positive in the world, mobile, product development, distributed, director level.

    I was willing to bend on these for the “right” opportunity, but in the end I got lucky (or: was pretty deliberate — both?) and checked everything on the list. Beyond that, the big shift was to an all-business-low-drama environment, meaning that my job was cognitively harder but emotionally easier. Of all times, this was a gift during a pandemic, and opened up more space emotionally for the rest of my life.

    It’s been fascinating to learn more about the privacy space. I was previously very European in my approach to it, seeing it as human right and not something that I needed to pay too much attention to. I was (and am) extremely particular about some things (largely because of previous experiences of online harassment), but not worried about others. I never click on adverts, so creepy ads following me around the internet was a mild irritant, and judging from the ads I see on Instagram, even Facebook knows nothing about me. Understanding more about the extent of surveillance that enables behavioural advertising has made me glad to have the opportunity to work on giving people alternatives. There are some sneak previews of things we’ve been working on in this WIRED article.

    It also makes product development more interesting, many tech companies rely heavily on analytics, tracking everything they can about an individual’s behaviour (quote from someone about a food delivery app, “it was a tracking app, that also happened to have a food delivery integrated”), but ultimately these aren’t needed to make good decisions and build a compelling product. I talked a little bit about our approach to metrics and product decision making in this conversation with Paul Hudson.

    All of this to say, it’s been a good year; here’s to the next one. Excited to keep shipping and building out the team!

    (yes, we’re hiring)

  • One Year as 📱👑

    One Year as 📱👑

    One year ago today, I tweeted:

    Three weeks after that, when my support rotation ended…

    As I recall, my friend James described it as “the most low key new job tweet”. I pointed out the extremely descriptive emoji for my job title, and he said “I felt both enlightened and informed”.

    I think he was being sarcastic.

    I hear the thing to do is to write one of those omg I have a new job and I’m so excited posts but that’s not my style. Not that I wasn’t excited – I was, I still am – but it always seems a bit dangerous to be excited in public about something I haven’t proved I can do yet.

    In the final year of my undergrad, I was a teaching assistant. I remember this dude from my course – I don’t think I knew his name at the time, and if I did it’s long forgotten now – said “why are you a TA?”

    Just the usual drive by misogyny, I guess. But it’s the kind of question I worry about, the kind that I don’t want to invite (where invite is… showing up and doing my job?) until I have a good answer for it myself.

    And the timing. I was coming into this out of a failed startup. I’d taken ~6 weeks between finishing my job search and starting, and gone all the way to Tuvalu to escape everything. I was still kinda wrung out from that experience. The US election results came in, and the world seemed to be ending. I finally believed Brexit would happen. It didn’t seem like a time to be excited about things at all, let alone in public.

    Anyway, I started with three weeks in support. This was eye-opening, as I saw the ways in which the app was confusing and failing our users. The queue was embarrassingly long, I worked on better FAQ answers, trying to get better, faster, answers to the people who had a simple question that they should never have needed to ask at all. It is weird, and more than a bit intimidating, to start in a job that I didn’t apply for and didn’t think I would be good at. But perhaps that’s the point – I learned a lot.

    My job title was emoji for a reason. A way to own my responsibilities, but in a cute, not-too-threatening way. Finished in support, I am the 📱👑. There were three teams, with three leads. I was somehow responsible for all of it. I spent a lot of time listening, making sense of things. I knew people were nervous about change, so worked to be accessible and transparent. Trying to turn a disconnected non-team into a high performing one. My first two weeks as 📱👑, I did a 1:1 with every person on the team, and flew from Buenos Aires to Philadelphia for WCUS where I met Matt (the CEO, who had recruited me) and one of the team leads for the first time. The lead – Will – and I ran user tests together. Saw in real life some of those things I saw in support.

    I took all this information and tried to figure out where to start. What is a symptom, and what is a cause? 

    Some time in December, I cried and allowed myself to question if I had made the right decision.

    I put that question in a box and kept going.

    • We clarified the purpose of each project and started talking about timeframes.
    • We started doing daily standups.
    • We revamped our bi-weekly updates (now with more emoji).
    • We defined new projects that put user benefit at the centre.
    • We took a hard look at the ways we were failing users.
    • We shipped something.
    • We started talking about user empathy – we challenged ourselves to use the app as a user would.
    • An engineer got so annoyed by a piece of terrible UX we called “the seven item monstrocity”, he prototyped a new media picker experience over a weekend.
    • We changed up team leadership to have five teams, including a design team.
    • We set better standards around clarity, feedback, and 1:1s.
    • We thought about on-boarding, and defined a process for it.
    • We shipped again.
    • We worked to make the leads a team.
    • We were moved out to become our own division, with me reporting to Matt.
    • We failed. But this time we talked about it.
    • We shipped more.
    • We worked to be more accountable – to each other, and the wider organisation.
    • We kept shipping.
    • We revamped our hiring process, and opened it up again.
    • Ship. Ship. Ship.
    • …

    At some point… we became a team. When we got together at the Grand Meetup, it was really noticeable. We did an exercise called “Plusses and Deltas”, the plusses were things we had worked so hard on. The deltas included things that really showed how far we’d come.

    Our design lead wrote about the process of building the design team, and I love it because it captures something of the hard work, and where we are now compared to where we started.

    For me, I learned how to onboard and ramp up new managers. I levelled up my communication and coaching. I invested in getting better at product. I conducted interviews via text for the first time. I made ever more elaborate spreadsheets as I got further away from writing code. I got better at setting an example then letting things go. I reached new limits of how much I can get done in a week. I made hard decisions, and I had hard conversations, and I got better at both of them. I experienced that when you help a manager level up, a team levels up, and it was amazing. I built relationships with my peers and appreciated the difference that makes. 

    The past year has been brutal. Exhausting, challenging… I’ve had my share of moments of doubt. But I work with people I really like, at the intersection of things (mobile, writing, open source) that I love. I wouldn’t change it for anything… so bring it on, year two.

     

  • On Coaching

    On Coaching

    I’ve been working with a coach for the best part of a year now. I started because I called my friend Camille stressed out of my mind and she said – like a good friend will – you need someone to do this for you. It was one of the most helpful pieces of advice I have ever got and I really appreciated her giving it me.

    There’s a lot of stuff all over the internet about coaching – what it is and what you will get out of it. But here are three things that have really made a big difference to me.

    Context and Continuity

    A lot has changed over the last year – I was living (kinda) in Colombia and leading a 6 person team at a struggling startup. Now I’m living (still kinda – I guess that bit hasn’t changed) in Lisbon and leading a ~25 person team at a company that has been around for over a decade. My coach gets WTHIC, we speak three times a month and before each call I send my “prep”. She has more context on my life than almost anyone else. But she’s not part of it – she doesn’t work at the same company, we don’t move in the same social circle. This is so helpful. Often the thorny problems in our lives have so much backstory and context, and when we seek someone out to talk to we have to explain that. But like any relationship, when you invest in over the long term, it gets easier and easier to talk about things.

    The Best Cate

    Whilst coaching definitely makes me better at my job, the focus is on me holistically. Medium to long term happiness and success depend on every part of my life being sustainable.

    Personal Goals

    At the end of 2016 we did a year review, and I set 40 goals for 2017. I put it in a spreadsheet, and now we’re in Q2… I colour coded it.

    I’m terrible at personal goals, and this is why I rely on processes. My ability to define processes and execute on them is a strength – and a curse. I can blog multiple times a week for years, but can’t contemplate how to do something bigger and more nebulous. Something like… write a book. It’s much harder to define a sustainable process that will achieve that kind of larger project. I know this about myself, so I rarely set goals for myself.

    But when you work with someone else, you get another perspective on how to approach and evaluate things. It’s exciting that I defined goals for the year for once, and cool that I already achieved two of them and made progress on many others. It’s nice that I can see clearly what I important to me that I haven’t made progress on and interesting to see how my ideas of what is important have changed over the past three months.

  • The Reaction

    The Reaction

    person looking at small hole of light
    Credit: Pexels / Unsplash
    Since that article on Uber dropped, I’ve been watching people’s reaction. There was the shock from people who should know better, and the lack of surprise from many women but there was also something that I can only describe as a PTSD reaction from many technical women I know. I saw it on Twitter. I saw it in our Slack team. I felt it myself.

    It’s one thing to intellectually know that this stuff is happening, constantly, and another to be read another woman’s story, see the exact details, all the things that match up to your own experience. The threats – overt or more subtle – and senior leadership not giving a shit. To see the PR blitz, because there’s always a PR blitz, and then see the tweet about the smear campaign that goes with the PR blitz and be like. Oh. Of course. That too.

    My post All the Shades of Unsurprised got a lot of traffic last week. But you know what else did? The one I wrote about leaving tech in 2014. Of being driven away by all this bullshit. Of deciding not to take anymore.

    I must have spent a year thinking about that blogpost before I wrote it. I sat on it for months before publishing it. Nearly three years later, that piece is still going. The industry hasn’t changed.

    I’ve changed, though.

    I chose the management track because I realised that the best way for me to be part of an inclusive team is to run one. I picked smaller companies and leaders who exhibited some degree of awareness. I learned to be more reassured by the phrase “we’ve fired people for harassment” than “nothing has happened here”. I realized that I care more about numbers for women in leadership roles than gamed metrics of overall representation. I chose working remotely because in an office there’s a constant, visual, reminder that I’m in the minority. Also I would have to get dressed and brush my hair every day. But sometimes I feel like I failed because it wasn’t a free choice, I didn’t look at management vs staying an IC and feel like I could do either. I chose the route I felt was survivable.

    And I worked hard to identify the ways that being a woman in tech, experiencing the things that we all seem to experience, and watching those things happen to my friends, too, had made me a less good, less nice, person. And then I worked hard on them, on not being damaged by that whole experience. Because it turns out, that becoming a jerk is a normal reaction to being treated badly by jerks. And the only person who was going to fix that, was me.

    Don’t get me wrong – I love my job. I love building functional and inclusive teams. But I wish I knew what it was like to be an engineer on a functional team, in a supportive environment. Where I didn’t regularly feel other or put up with overt, or “nice” sexism.

    There’s this collective trauma here, and it’s not from one incident. The myriad effects create a map that explains the careers we have – or haven’t had. The choices we made, and the ones we didn’t believe were there. And the systematic inequity of opportunity that it seems will never go away.

  • Cate’s Career Coaching Process (AKA A Process for Finding Your Next Job)

    Cate’s Career Coaching Process (AKA A Process for Finding Your Next Job)

    A young woman sits accross from an older woman who has a notebook. Both are wearing old fashioned dress. It looks like a job interview.
    Credit: Flickr / Ethan

    I know a number of people who have been laid off recently – the market is on a downturn and this is more common than seems to be being talked about. I’ve spent time helping a few people try and find their next thing lately, and after some iterations I now have a process.

    1. What are you going towards?

    Whether someone is leaving their job voluntarily or not, there’s a good chance it hasn’t been great for a while. This makes it easy to focus on what you don’t want rather than what you’re going towards. But you make better decisions when you focus on what you want rather than what you’re trying to avoid.

    Be brutally honest – what do you really want to be doing? What do you want your life to look like? How do you want your job to fit into you life?

    Only once you’ve done this, consider what tradeoffs you are prepared to make.

    For me: I loved managing a distributed team, and I wanted to keep doing that if possible. But I knew there weren’t many of those kind of jobs, so I was realistic that I might have to compromise. There were two dimensions of compromise: on-site management, or remote IC (individual contributor) work. On-site IC wasn’t something I was going to consider until those options were ruled out.

    If you’re helping someone else: It’s easy to think you know what someone wants (if you think you know them well), but don’t assume. Ask questions, make observations about what they seemed to enjoy and what their strengths are, but let them figure out what they are going towards. It’s great if you are surprised! This sometimes takes people a while (and multiple conversations), but it’s really worth the time because it’s the foundation of everything else. Once they’ve figured it out, don’t help them be “realistic” even if you think that it’s going to be hard to find what they want. It’s unlikely to be helpful. Most people who you actually want to help have no trouble being realistic.

    2. Resume.

    Honestly, I hate resumes. Even as a hiring manager, I take very little interest in them (I think resumes are mainly a bias vector). I don’t have one, I got my last 4 job offers without one, and when I did have one it was one I paid someone else to create for me. If that’s an option for you, I really recommend it and I’m happy to connect you to the person who did mine (tweet me – @catehstn).

    Unfortunately most people still need resumes.

    The main points with resumes:

    • Focus on what you achieved, not what you did.
    • Keep it short.
    • Make it readable. Use clear and concise language.
      • Prefer short paragraphs to long bullet points.
      • Use a service to check the reading age.

    Once you’ve written up your experience, write your summary. The summary is two to three sentences that position you as a good person for the job you want, and should be backed up by the experience you have.

    When you think you’re done, send it to three friends whose opinion on this is worth having. Ideally they review or at least see resumes for the kind of job you want. They might point out stuff you’ve missed. Try and find at least one native speaker of the language your resume is in.

    If you’re helping someone else: This really depends on how much time you have. I don’t believe resume writing is a useful skill, so I’m happy to rewrite sections for someone. The process I followed was: I rewrite (or write) the section from their last job in discussion with them, they rewrite other jobs, and then I go through and edit those. Then, we write the summary together. If you’re just reviewing someone’s resume, focus on how they are coming across, or any information that appears to be missing, rather than how you personally would write a resume.

    3. “Soft” interview questions.

    Resources:

    The purpose of these interviews is normally to get a sense of your experience, personality, and ways of working. When you wrote the summary for your resume, you made a conscious effort to think about how you want to present yourself. You want this to come out in your answers. This means not just answering the question, but deciding what you want the takeaway from your answer to be – something that supports your summary – and then telling a story that showcases that. This means that the same story can be an appropriate answer to multiple questions, depending on what you highlight.

    The more open ended the question, the more scope you have for this. For example the question “tell me a bit about your background?” You can answer this question directly and chronologically (“I went to university at XXX and then I worked at YYY and did ZZZ and then…”) or you can frame the interview with your answer.

    When I get asked this question, I say something like: “I’ve spent my whole career working on mobile, including writing a J2ME app a long time ago! At Google, I built most of the first generations presentations experience on iOS and ran a team building a location-based B2B app, and also worked on that app on Android. Most recently, I ran the mobile team at Ride.”

    When answering these questions, one thing to keep in mind is that stories about dysfunctional environments are not helpful. For example a question like, “tell me about something you worked on that failed?” The answer that most springs to mind might be the one where the business didn’t know what they wanted, asked for unreasonable things, didn’t listen to engineering, and of course it didn’t ship or what eventually shipped was something that people didn’t want. If you don’t have a better lesson from this than “don’t work in that kind of environment” (a very fair lesson to learn from that experience), it’s not a good story to share. A less epic failure with more concrete takeaways is a better option.

    If you’re helping someone else: Don’t just consider if the answer seems good, consider if it relates to their summary. If you’ve worked with them or know them well, point out other stories or achievements they might have missed – people are often a little blinded to their strengths, because they come more easily.

    3b. Recommendation.

    If I’m writing (or likely to write) someone a recommendation, I write it after we’ve done this together – it’s when their achievements are top of my mind, and I can write something that a) supports their summary and b) highlights some stories they might want to talk about in an interview.

    If you’re asking for a recommendation: Make it easier on your recommender, and highlight some bigger achievements that you think they can speak to. These should relate to your summary. E.g. if your summary highlights your love of experimenting with new technology, include that experimental project you did that influenced something in a useful way.

    4. Technical interview preparation.

    Resources:

    When I give someone a mock technical interview, I give them my standard technical interview but I am less nice. Mainly, I do less time management for them – allowing them to spend too much time in places that aren’t helpful, if that’s their inclination.

    I think Time Management is the easiest and most overlooked skill of technical interviewing. When people don’t know the answer they are very tempted to spend a bunch of time on peripheral things like validation, or writing a bunch of different function definitions, or setting up an elaborate test suite. Sometimes they start writing a brute-force solution with the goal of better understanding, but this takes up a more time than it provides utility. All of these might be good and useful things to spend time on in Real Life Programming, but can work against you when you are trying to show your capabilities in 45 minutes to an hour.

    Other common mistakes:

    • Not taking the time to think of more than one option for solving the problem.
    • Not communicating clearly, meaning the interviewer has to guess what you are doing.
      • It’s easier to give someone feedback and guidance when you understand how they are thinking, what they are doing, and why.

    5. Introductions.

    Some people spread a broad net, my preference is to speak to a few places that I have strong introductions into. It’s more likely to be a good fit, and I’m more likely to be successful in the process. When I was looking for a job in August / September, I spoke to four places with strong connections and ended up with two offers that I felt great about. This is my preference with introductions – to introduce people to places where I think they have a good chance of success, and where I think they would be happy. I use a customised version of the recommendation I wrote to introduce people.

    Time

    I estimate that taking people through this process took ~8 hours per person (and these were people I knew well). As a result it’s not something that I would make time for other than for close friends or people I have a professional commitment to. They probably spent at least that, more, working on parts of it by themselves – technical interviews especially are a lot of work to prepare for.

    TL;DR

    Job hunting is a PITA and a ton of work. It helps to think about how to be effective at it.