Engineering Advice You Didn't Ask For: Recent Episodes
Keyur, Louie, Mitra, Thiago & Vic
A Weekly Podcast about Engineering Leadership with Keyur Hindocha, Louie Bacaj, Mitra Raman, Thiago Ghisi, & Vic Vijayakumar.
When negotiating your best Tech Offer. What should you consider beyond the money money money?
Links:
- Weighted Decision Matrix: https://www.mindtools.com/pages/article/newTED_03.htm
- The Fearless Organization: Creating Psychological Safety in the Workplace for Learning, Innovation, and Growth: https://www.amazon.com/Fearless-Organization-Psychological-Workplace-Innovation/dp/1119477247
- Progressions.FYI: https://progression.fyi/
Article about Louie's Career Trajectory by Gergely Orosz on PragmaticEngineer.com:
https://newsletter.pragmaticengineer.com/p/from-engineer-to-director?s=r
Shownotes:
Zain's FAANG Interview Course: https://zainrizvi.gumroad.com/l/insider-advice-on-how-you-can-pass-faang-interviews/ea Zain on Twitter: https://twitter.com/ZainRzv
Promotion
- level 1 to level 2
Projects
- impact
- should you go deep
- or should you go for breadth
- scope of influence?
What is a promotion packet
- How do you become visible internally without hogging all the oxygen?
- Opportunity is unevenly distributedHeadquarters vs distributed office
Company culture biased towards delivery or operations
Finding your sponsor
Activating your sponsor
Does bias play a role?
Topics:
- Avoiding Burnout
- Effective Remote Leadership
- Effective Remote Work
- Effective Remote Meetings
- What does it mean to be Async-First & People-First?
- Remote-First vs. Remote-Friendly
- People-First vs. Business-First
- Recovering from Burnout
Shownotes:
- Marissas's Course - Avoiding Burnout from Remote Work: https://marissagoldberg.gumroad.com/l/avoidingburnout
- Marissa's website: https://www.marissagoldberg.com/
- Marissa on Twitter: https://twitter.com/mar15sa
- Adam Grant on Fighting The Zoom Fatigue (Cameras off doesn't reflect disengagement. It helps to prevent burnout and promote attention): https://twitter.com/adammgrant/status/1430882464407474180
- Book - The Culture Map: https://www.amazon.com/Culture-Map-Breaking-Invisible-Boundaries/dp/1610392507/
Topics:
- Teams hiring juniors
- How important is it to hire juniors?
-
How do junior engineers get experience
-
What should ideal team look like
-
How do evaluate the company for you?
-
Expectations as a junior engineer
- Contributions first 90
-
How to onboard junior vs senior
-
Is Bootcamp a valid path?
Shownotes:
https://www.crunchbase.com/
https://github.com/tBaxter/questions-for-employers
https://github.com/lkostrowski/job-interview-questions-to-ask-companies
Topics:
- When to promote from within? Why?
- Who is the best kind of engineer that will most succeed as a manager? The generalist or the specialist? The backend-heavy or the frontend-heavy?
- Do they need to be at a certain level? Do they need to be Senior to transition into management? How technical should it be?
- How to convince engineers that have the profile (traits + hard skills), but are skeptical about moving to the dark side of management?
- What if there are two or more who want it?
- The team’s opinion matters more than yours as the hiring manager?
- When to hire externally?
- What are your favorite questions for external candidates?
Shownotes:
- https://twitter.com/thiagoghisi/status/1496625130188857348
- https://twitter.com/ramannoodlez/status/1495146825736675334
- https://twitter.com/LBacaj/status/1490931625953308674
- https://twitter.com/marcprecipice/status/1479731951162380288
Topics:
- Managing poor performance
- PIPs (Performance Improvement Plans)
- Firing - Letting go.
- Layoffs
Show Notes:
- The five keys to a successful Google team (Psychological safety): https://rework.withgoogle.com/blog/five-keys-to-a-successful-google-team/
- Blitzscaling: The Lightning-Fast Path to Building Massively Valuable Companies: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0791239V7/
The Great Resignation gained steam again in November, as a record number of 4.53 million Americans quit their jobs.
Topics:
- Changing Jobs
- The reasons why people change jobs: The right reasons & The wrong reasons
- Do most people leave their company or leave their manager?
- Mental health/burnout - is this a trigger?
- Is the grass greener on the other side?
- Do you go towards a better job? Are you leaving a bad job?
- What is the cost of changing jobs?
- How often is healthy for your career to change jobs?
Show Notes:
- Glassdoor - Company Salaries
- Levels.FYI - Tech Companies Levels & Salaries
- Blind: Anonymous Professional Network
- H1B Visa Salary Database - By Employer, Job, or City
- VisaDoor - Green Card PERM Salary Database
- VisaDoor - Search Example: Netflix Engineering Manager 2021 Green Card Petitions
- Book: No Rules Rules: Netflix and the Culture of Reinvention
The one about the famous one-on-one meetings.
- What is the purpose of 1:1 meetings?
- How often should you have 1:1s?
- Whose responsibility are they?
- What should their frequency be?
- Some advice for new managers?
- What if the person isn’t engaging or contributing?
- Some common pitfalls to avoid
- Should you come to them with an agenda?
Transcript: