I especially loved knowing what Louie looks for when interviewing engineers.
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Louie mentions two kind of unpopular & almost forgotten ideas these days, but that I fully agree, and that, in my opinion, are crucial for ICs & Managers: work ethics & extracurricular activities.
- Tell me about your work ethic
- What have you done outside work?
This reminded me of another kind of unpopular career idea that I read in one of @simpleprogrammr's book :
> Who would you hire?
An Engineer that has worked for 10 years on the same company on the same codebase with the same kind of technology as has never build
OR, An Engineer that has worked for the same 10 years, but in 10 different companies using 10 different technologies?
John takes it further...
For someone with only 1 year of experience, would you be more valuable?
1. someone that has published 10 different apps in the AppStore? 2. or someone that has only worked in 1 app and not published any of their own app?
My take: In 99% of the cases, I would probably bet on the person that has shipped 10 different apps instead of the person that has only worked in 1.
After my article about Behavioral Interviews last week, many folks asked me for examples.
Today, have left that world, I'll be vulnerable and share the essay that landed me three $650k+ job offers at BigTechs last year.
Question: What is the most innovative thing you have done?
> My Answer (from Jan 2021).
During my first year as an Engineering Manager on the Mobile Engineering Team at American Express, my team and I struggled to deliver two important features on the Amex Mobile App, doing only two “Big Bang” releases throughout the year.
After realizing that our dev. approach wasn’t working well, I switched to a lean development approach that has since helped us slice dozens of large business initiatives into small incremental releases, increase our team productivity by 12% and reduce our cycle time by half.
The 5 Engineering Leadership Levels of Ownership in Code Review/PR Comments (How do you lead by example on PR reviews?)
🚼 Level 1 - Complain Generally. “This is a piece of s***"
continue...🧵🧵🧵
🚶Level 2- Complain Specifically / Pin Point the issue, but leave it as it is. “This method is not as functional as it could be. It is not testable:"
🏃Level 3- Propose a Solution Forward. “This method is not as functional as it could be. It is not testable, you can use this tool to do this. Here is an example: xxxx:"
Try to do it right after 15 minutes of meditation first thing in the morning.
Why does it work?
After 15 minutes of meditation trying to not follow your thoughts, it is almost impossible not to have things to journal about.
For the first time in my life I have been able to journal for 10 days in roll.
For years I have been reading 1 chapter of a book as the first thing in my morning routine.
A mistake I made many times was try to journal as the first thing in the day when I had nothing in mind, didn't work. I often had nothing to write about or felt it was dumb to write only what I was grateful for for instance.
Got asked a super interesting question by a former engineer this morning:
> Why is it that when you get promoted within the same company to Senior, you 99 out of 100 don't get paid as close as someone who joins from external?
I thought I knew the answer...
What is your take?
Promoting within is much lower risk, high return. The person already has a lot of goodwill in the org. The person is already onboarded. The person already knows all the processes and culture.
Hiring from outside is much higher risk, low return. The person doesn't know the culture. There is a high change of team incompatibility issues. There will be a big cost of ramp-up and onboarding ahead that might take months or years.
I'm in love with the "10 Keystones of Personal Development for Staff-Plus Engineers" that @Lethain listed on his new book.
🧵 Thread 🧵
1) Work on what matters: to make the most of the working hours you have, particularly as you get further along in your career and life's commitments expand.
2) Write an engineering strategy: to guide your organization's approach to supporting your company's business objectives with its architecture, technology selection, and organizational structure.