This week we discussed sections 6.1 and 6.2.
Section 6.1: Roles over rocket ships, and why hypergrowth is a weak predictor of personal growth
- It’s been the norm in tech to stay someplace for two years and move on. Jamie asked, “What is normal? Why not six months or ten years?” People put too much stock in loyalty to a company. Companies will drop you if it’s convenient. Jamie doesn’t look at how long they’ve worked someplace because he doesn’t find that to be a determining factor in hiring.
- Dennis talked about the T-shaped developer (generalized across many areas, but focused on one area). This has upsides and downsides (too specialized to work anywhere else). There’s a stigma of staying somewhere too long.
- Fear: getting too deep in something that you find you’re irrelevant. Another fear: keeping up with everything such that you don’t have any depth.
- It’s a mindset shift to realize that just because a senior dev knows language X that they wouldn’t be able to bring any value because they don’t know language Y.
- Interesting analogy: “Working at a company isn’t a single continuous experience. Rather it’s a mix of stable eras and periods of rapid change that bridge between eras.” Dennis wished he would have written out his narrative around his periods of change.
- The title of this section is from Sheryl Sandberg: “If you’re offered a set on a rocket ship, don’t ask what seat! Just get on.”
- “By tracking your eras and transitions, you can avoid lingering in any era beyond the point when you’re developing new masteries.” Geoff is trying to grapple with this vocational religion of “If you’re not growing, you’re dying.” Jamie shared the analogy of sharks needing to have water moving over their gills to breathe. You need times of stability and times of rest. Our society doesn’t support staying static. We’re optimizing toward things like innovation or new for new’s sake; we rarely stop to ask whether we should do things (i.e., do we need folding cell phones).
- Houston said he watched a TED talk where the speaker said the continuous growth everywhere is cancer. We don’t think about carrying capacity of our teams, businesses, or the environment.
- Jameson agreed that growth comes from change; much of personal growth is around the tech you’re forced to use. Jamie said you have to be more innovative with constraints (e.g., old tech). Can you bring new techniques to old technologies (e.g., CI/CD, testing). You also need time to learn — build in slack. Jameson found that most companies haven’t given him dedicated time to learn things vs. on-the-job training. Some of it is in your control and some isn’t.
- You need resources to invest in growth.
Section 6.2: Running a humane interview process
- Geoff has used the technique of coding during an interview (on a laptop, not whiteboard). However, the author suggested that the candidate use his/her laptop. Unless the problem is generic enough, how does this work? Yes, they can have their environment and tools set up just so, but how can they solve real problems like this? It’s probably more about comfort and sharing how you work, and maybe demoing something you’ve built. It’s especially powerful to have the candidate describe how something was built, the limitations it has, and what you care about.
- Dennis has asked people, “What’s the dumbest thing you’ve ever done in tech?” It describes how you learn from your mistakes. Jameson said there’s no better teacher than embarrassment.
- Geoff liked the notion of trying the four techniques (having candidates prepare a presentation on a topic, coding, giving demos of an existing product/feature, roleplaying) while finding other activities that “improve your chance of finding signal from different candidates.”
- Jameson said it’s important to be prepared when you interview people. You can’t just walk into the room having received their resume five minutes beforehand. Dennis said without the specific job interview and reason why we need this role.
- Geoff thought this idea was classy: “Whenever you extend an offer to a candidate, have every interviewer send a note to them saying that they enjoyed the interview.”
- What do we think about panel interviews? Houston was interviewed by the team he would have hired into, and he thought it was good because you can see how you’d jibe. Jamie finds they can be random because you have different roles/titles in the room. Going out to lunch with the team is another option. Jameson said panels can be intimidating.
- Interesting interview question: What would you do if you got to work and you were the only one there? Apparently a common answer was “Wait until other people show up.”
- Idea: Keep asking technical questions until you hit, “I don’t know.”
- Geoff was able to pat himself on the back for having used the technique of having every interviewer write up their feedback independently before discussing (reduces bias).