Learnings from the Middle: Recent Episodes
Brian Olson and John Christensen
A software engineer and a product owner, long-time friends, occasional coworkers, and occasional Halo opponents, delve into their career experiences and learnings over the last decade+. Covering topics like stress at work, positive product, and engineering interactions, and projects we’re most proud of we hope you can benefit from what we’ve learned so far and see us continue learning as we go!
All opinions are our own and not our employer’s or anyone else’s.
We've all been there - someone wants more meetings, someone wants fewer. But how much time spent talking to each other do projects require?
In this episode Brian and John delve into the topic from their own backgrounds.
All opinions are our own and not our employers or anyone else's.
Another episode of Learnings from the Middle! John and Brian take a light-hearted approach to wondering if their jobs make them better people, defining "jobs", "better", and "people" along the way.
All opinions are our own and not our employers or anyone else's.
In this episode John and Brian dive into what they love about their current jobs, why, and then touch on what skill sets they want to expand on next.
All of that leads to a discussion on what jobs they'd love to have in the future and skills they want to develop.
All opinions are our own and not our employers or anyone else's.
In this episode Brian and John talk about what ownership means in software engineering and product management, realizing they've been using the same word an meaning different things for years!
All opinions are our own, and not our employer's or anyone else's.
In this episode John and Brian go through their elevator pitches for their jobs, asking the ominous, "So what do you do for a living?" question you get at dinner parties.
All opinions are our own and not our employers or anyone else's.
Should product management be a part of operations? What is operations? What is a product development team?
In this episode, Brian and John debate the pros and cons of having a single team handle operations and new product development, and both learn something along the way.
All opinions are our own and not our employers' or anyone else's.
In this episode, John and Brian revisit their favorite job in their career so far, minus their current positions. They have some fun realizations along the way like the differences in offline work for product owners and software engineers, the importance of team dynamic for job satisfaction, and how Brian would usually rather write code than talk to people (only half joking).
All opinions are our own and not our employer's or anyone else's.
In a light-hearted episode, John and Brian go over buzzwords from each other's domains, discussing terms and are over and underused.
All opinions are our own and not our employer's or anyone else's.
When do you start talking to recruiters? How do you decide you're ready to hear about a new job? When do you decide it's just time to move on?
In this episode, John and Brian delve into the job changes they've gone through and discuss their approaches to deciding it's time for a job change.
All opinions are our own and not our employer's or anyone else's.
John and Brian review their experiences at big and small companies and the pros and cons to both of them.
All opinions are our own and not our employer's or anyone else's.
Sometimes engineers gloss over detail, and sometimes you have to call them on it! John and Brian have a light-hearted conversation about times they've been caught glossing over details and caught others glossing over details. The disasters they've averted, and the disasters they've made worse.
All opinions are our own and not our employer's or anyone else's.
John and Brian recently changed jobs and talk through their approaches to getting ramped up in a new role. They cover gaining practical credibility, building rapport with coworkers, and the more abstract ways they find meaningful ways to contribute quickly.
All opinions are our own and not our employers or anyone else's.
John and Brian talk about their regular one on ones with managers over the course of their careers, touching on one on one cadence, whether or not they share personal topics, how tactical or strategic they try to be, and how often they take a step back to talk about career development.
All opinions are our own and not our employers or anyone else's.
John and Brian delve into the different dynamics of stress at work as a product owner and a software engineer. What causes you stress? What do you do to get perspective? What practical steps do you take to move forward? How do you gain empathy for that difficult coworker who seems to cause a lot of stress? We'll discuss these questions and more this week!