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Showing posts from January, 2023

How Can I Help?

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  With headline after headline, it's all too easy to find ourselves feeling alone, isolated, even depressed by the seemingly endless bad news. I'll even share: despite generally being a happy and optimistic person, I'm certainly not immune. The recurring feeling, at least for me, is an overwhelming sense of helplessness. But while I may feel helpless, it doesn't mean I'm incapable of helping. Not in some kind of high-horse, self-aggrandizing way. If I can offer expertise - great, I'll offer it. But, mostly, I'm here to be a friend. To share in the ups and down. To listen.  And what gives me hope is I know I'm not alone: Throughout LinkedIn, there are more and more #OpenToHelping badges. As of last week, I was excited to see Marc Caracciolo's #HereToHelp initiative. Whether they're sporting a blue badge or yellow badge, helping is not an original idea. Wherever you are right now, whatever you're facing, reach out. To me. To Marc. To anyone wit...
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She came in through the bathroom window...

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  Third iteration of my at-home office. More than a decade ago, I realized my personal aesthetic isn't too different from a 1950s Private Eye and I've gradually leaned into that inflated sense of self more and more.  And this is where I am today. I'm currently taking cases.
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Retros

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I love a good retrospective. If you've ever replayed an argument in your head during your morning shower, you probably love retros too. Something I learned over the years is retros aren't just for wrapping up a sprint. They're great for evaluating the effectiveness of 1:1s, incident responses, training sessions. Perhaps most importantly, it's the BEST opportunity for any good manager to build trust with the team. While all retros get to the heart of the matter: what worked, what didn't, what should change, varying the questions just slightly can really draw people in (or turn them away.) And as a manager, you really have to push your team to give you good feedback. In my case it was asking: "What do you think can't change, and have given up on trying to change?" Not only did it give me insights on festering frustrations, it also gave me a very simple task list of what I needed to resolve (and, in doing so, build further trust with my team by showing I...
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Case Reviews

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Polymorphic Coders

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After years of providing career advice to recent grads, I've seen a growing trend - particularly with bootcamp grads. I'll often see them struggle to make traction on their job hunt with only 2 or 3 languages under their belt. Months later, they're still struggling. In rare cases 2 or 3 languages may be enough - but you should see it as putting all your eggs in just a few baskets. The pace at which languages come in and out of style is getting faster, and it's easy to fall behind if you've not invested your time and effort in growing your language-agnostic skills. If I could summarize my advice to once sentence it would be this: Get better at applying language-agnostic skills to new languages. If you've (hopefully) learned about object-oriented principles, it's the difference of being an Implementation Coder vs. a Polymorphic Coder. Be a polymorphic coder. Languages are like Jelly-Beans. It's better when you have more flavors.
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How do you Monitor?

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You don't know someone, until you know how they arrange their monitor(s). I'm a D1-type myself. (I spent way too long making this in PowerPoint)
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1 Year of #OpenToHelping

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  One year ago today, motivated by all the #OpenToWork badges I saw across LinkedIn, I created a badge for those who wanted to help. An eye-catching, optimistic, and friendly yellow that would welcome anyone feeling beaten up and bruised. The #OpenToHelping badge gained momentum beyond what I'd anticipated. Many adopted the badge, many connected around this simple idea. I don't have detailed analytics because that's never been the point. What I do have are a mountain of messages that's built over the past year. 1 year on, I still see the yellow badges. I see the connections that formed, and the posts thanking someone with a yellow badge. 2022 was a roller-coaster year, and while a new year brings new hopes, new excitement, new energy, and new budgets, we're also still reading about large layoffs, unprecedented job markets, and uncertainty. There's no way to "celebrate" 1 year of being #OpenToHelping. People are still in need of a helping hand. The cele...
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Let's Talk Networking!

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A couple of weeks ago I polled LinkedIn, asking how people who were recently hired landed their job. I was honestly surprised by the results. I've always known networking works  but I didn't think the disparity would be that large. When I was getting started in my career I was pretty dismissive of networking - thinking it was some relic of the past like a Rolodex, or pagers. People who talked about "networking" were just as likely to call computers "word processors." Then, over time, 3 of my own 7 jobs were landed through networking. Many more opportunities had come my way through my network. Finding a job without  a network is HARD . Your. Network. Matters. And let's not get Networking confused with Social Networking - Sure, LinkedIn is a Social Network, but it's first and foremost a tool for building professional contacts that may immediately, or at some point in the future, provide some career benefits. I've hired people after networking on L...
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Hidden Factories of Helpfulness

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How do you balance your behind-the-scenes work from your foreground work? As a manager, I've encouraged my team members to avoid becoming "hidden factories of helpfulness." While I don't want to discourage anyone from ever being helpful - I also want to make sure it's not being hidden. It isn't simply about giving credit where credit is due. There's also the reality that being a hidden factory of helpfulness can mask deficiencies. It can hide a broken process, impede someone's growth, and it's also a breeding ground for resentment. Despite my own advice, there is one specific area where I'll happily hide behind the curtain: Whenever there's an opportunity to build connection, cohesion, trust, or strengthen the team or our output.
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Sink your teeth into this one...

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When I was 18, I still had my wisdom teeth. I asked my dentist when it would be time to remove mine, and he told me there was no need. I asked why so many have theirs removed and my dentist informed me that some people just don't have enough room in their mouths, and it causes discomfort or a change in their bite. In other cases, they have too difficult a time reaching their wisdom teeth with their tooth brush and so wisdom teeth decay quickly. 20 years later, I still have my wisdom teeth. I consider it a molar victory. 🦷😬
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Popular

Work Experience vs Professional Experience

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In reviewing a bunch of resumes this week, I noticed quite a lot of resumes with a  "Work Experience"  section. In each of those resumes, people had de-valuing some very valuable  experience - and I write that with no exaggeration. The problem is people were looking at their experience purely through the "Job Title/Relevancy" lens and had reduced their experience down to a list of discrete, random, disconnected jobs. No interconnectedness, no narrative thread weaving through it all. As much as you may feel some jobs have no way of being connected, the reality is  you   are always the connection . To not connect them on your resume is to lose all that growth, knowledge, skills, impact, value, and trajectory. In other words - you lose the " You " in the resume. I recommended they start with a small change. Reword "Work Experience" to "Professional Experience" because, ultimately, every single job they had was in service of building their ...
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Let's Clear Up The Ambiguity!

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Job seeking is hard - especially when you factor the ambiguity around expectations, the lack of transparency and consistency around process. It's frustrating dealing with the sheer subjectivity of everyone's opinions. Just think of even the basics: How long should your resume really be? Traditional black and white, or modern? Should you include a headshot? Oh - and cover letters - are those needed? Is anyone actually reading the cover letter? What are they looking for? Is there a bias for people with a more traditional background? Worst of all: The dreaded typo  that you catch only after applying to your dream job.  Are typos really going to cost you the opportunity??? To help bring some clarity to the process, I surveyed a bunch of hiring managers. The results were really interesting, and very illuminating.     If you're on the job hunt, I hope this information helps out! One final note: My recent post,  7 Steps to Writing an Amazing Resume , factors a lot of...
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FAQs for a Software Engineering Hiring Manager

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Technical Interviews have evolved a lot since the early I transitioned from being a Software Engineer to an Engineering Manager. Particularly in the post-Covid era, there's been a greater emphasis on the person, which I think is an important and welcome change. Over the decade of interviewing hundreds of coders, I've also had the pleasure of working with various bootcamps, colleges, and hundreds of individual job seekers on LinkedIn. Across all the changes over the past years, across the various locations and mediums, something remained consistent throughout: The questions I get asked.  With that in mind, I thought - why not make a FAQ from my perspective as a hiring manager? While this is my perspective, it's based off years of observation and supporting data. But that being said, advice is not fact. You may disagree with certain points, and that's OK. Opinions we disagree with allow us to better understand our own views. At best, I hope these responses help you...
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7 Steps to Writing an Amazing Resume

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  Since sharing my resume template  I've received plenty of feedback from job seekers, HR and hiring managers - all of whom value its purpose. Two (now former!) jobseekers even shared that as soon as they used my template, they were getting calls. Something about this template works, and given the traction it's getting others, I wanted to share - in more detail - why  this approach works so well.  Before continuing, let me give an important disclaimer: This resume isn't a miracle cure that's going to land anyone their dream job. Unless they're filled with lies, resumes are only as good as the candidate themselves. But they can also be a whole lot worse. This template and approach are all about maximizing the potential candidates have by highlighting and summarizing key areas.  Last point before beginning: If you don't know me, it's worth stating this advice comes from more than a decade of having hiring a broad range of coders: straight out of college, hig...
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7 Steps to Building your Portfolio MVP

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Often when I suggest to coders that they build a portfolio, I'll hear back: "I don't need one..." "With all the effort it takes to apply, where will I find the time?" Simply put, having a portfolio's never going to hurt your chances at landing a job - it can only help. That second question is where a lot of struggle - because applying to jobs can be time consuming. Especially if you're wrapping up a bootcamp, or having to manually type in your resume info after uploading your resume. That's why I made these 7 steps which, when done correctly, can really help you stand out with a hiring manager. And, the best part is, it should only take you 2 days. Being the Agile-Obsessive that I am, it's all about maximizing value while minimizing effort. Fix links to your Resume, GitHub, LinkedIn, etc. at the top where they're always accessible. Link to everything here - and then remove all other links on your Resume except your Portfolio link . It sa...
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