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I started Developer Tea in 2015 to help engineers find clarity, perspective, and purpose in regular short bursts of high-value content.

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Backlog Psychology - Hyperbolic Discounting, Tech Debt, and Hacking Your Habits

In this episode we continue the mini-series "Backlog psychology." Would you rather have $5 now or $50 next week? The answer to this question, though it seems logically obvious which is better, does not always produce the same response. The required incentive to convince someone to wait tends to follow an exponential curve upward. This is not just true with money, but for any benefit and incentive: monetary, social, emotional, physical, etc. What does this mean for our backlogs? What about our daily habits?

Published: 9/21/2023
Length: ~16m
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Backlog Psychology - The Ziegarnik Effect - Why Limiting Work In Progress Protects Your Cognitive Load

In this episode we kick off a little mini-series called "Backlog psychology." You've heard you should "limit your work in progress" - why? What makes more work in progress more difficult to handle? Cognitive load isn't just about multi-tasking in the moment - it's also about limiting your open tasks.

Published: 9/17/2023
Length: ~5m
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Two Tips for Better Retros - Add Specificity, Respect Uncertainty

Your retros may feel like deadends where complaints go to die. If you're running retros and treating it only as an avenue for emotional support rather than continuous improvement, today's episode is for you. Retros are for improving iteratively over time. That can only happen if your outcomes are aligned to that iterative mindset. Two simple adjustments can help drive that improvement.

Published: 9/5/2023
Length: ~9m
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One Big Step Versus A Small Random Step

Count the cost of learning. When you choose a path towards a goal, it's absolutely critical to optimize for the cost of learning. Often, with software, it is easier to learn by a series of smaller steps, even if they start out as random, rather than take on the major risk of a large step possibly going the wrong direction. This isn't always true; sometimes, the cost of learning is *greater* with small steps. Determining which is true in your situation can make or break your plans.

Published: 8/27/2023
Length: ~13m
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Interrogate Your Decision Making Rules

Decisions are made in many ways, but one important type of decisionmaking tool is the "rule." This is something you follow without any cognitive processing. But, we eventually develop rules as a part of habit-building. These are "implicit" rules - they aren't necessarily something you have set as a rule, but they are followed as if they were. These are worth interrogating, and perhaps replacing with more explicit rules.

Published: 8/20/2023
Length: ~7m
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Schedule Carving

Are you stuck trying to prioritize your long list of things you need to do? Maybe you're trying to establish a habitual routine or areas of investment in your schedule, budget, or decisionmaking. Figure out what you need to avoid first. This creates the opportunities you need to say yes.

Published: 8/12/2023
Length: ~12m
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Long Term Scoreboard for Short Term Games

Are you measuring the wrong thing for your short term game? If so, you probably continuously change directions and are never sure if anything you do is working. It's time to rethink your scoreboard.

Published: 8/4/2023
Length: ~16m
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Slow Down and Start With One Goal

Your career doesn't have to take off without your approval. Slow down, and make sure you actually have goals you are setting. Control your own destiny by aligning your plan to your actual goal, or vice versa.

Published: 7/22/2023
Length: ~14m
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Using the Accountability Triangle When Diagnosing A Failure

Accountability can be complex. When something goes wrong, fingers start flying: *someone* needs to be held responsible. But true accountability starts before anything goes wrong. In this episode, we discuss the Accountability Triangle, a mental model for ensuring that your accountability structures are valid and actually usable.

Published: 7/13/2023
Length: ~12m
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Career Growth Starts With Improving Your Clarity

Improving your clarity is the beginning of your journey in engineering leadership. This takes courage and patience, but the investment will benefit everyone you influence, including yourself.

Published: 7/3/2023
Length: ~15m
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Tech Lag Over Tech Debt

If you've used the term Tech Debt, you probably know that the metaphor is loose at best. Taking on tech debt sometimes becomes a permanent choice, and the repayment isn't always a clear-cut investment. Most importantly, the concept of "debt" doesn't as easily take into account the human factors involved. Tech lag (taking inspiration from jet lag) is about the thrash involved in changing the standard of quality. In this episode, we talk about how this metaphor applies where you normally might think of tech debt.

Published: 6/26/2023
Length: ~18m
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Good Negotiation is About Collaborative Problem Solving

Negotiation is not about getting more of what you want out of another person. Real artful negotiation is about finding alignment, and solving the problems presented at a level of divergence.

Published: 6/12/2023
Length: ~11m
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Tools To Deal With Layoff Anxiety

Layoffs happen whether we want them to or not. Being prepared with a principled approach can help relieve anxiety and produce better outcomes for when layoffs occur. In this episode, I give you two principled mental tools to help you deal with layoff anxieties no matter where you are in the picture.

Published: 6/3/2023
Length: ~17m
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System Design - Limiting the Responsibilities Of A Given Actor

Everything around us is primarily governed by some kind of system. The question is, are you designing your systems intentionally, or just letting them emerge? In today's episode, I give you one piece of advice when designing your systems: limit the responsibility of a given actor in the system.

Published: 5/20/2023
Length: ~12m
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Focus on Process Orientation for Goal Setting

If you don't have agency over your goals, how can they help you to begin with?

Published: 5/12/2023
Length: ~11m
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How to Give Better Feedback - My Single Biggest Piece of Advice to Increase the Effectiveness of Your Feedback

Good feedback isn't about getting something off of your chest. It's not about sharing your feelings (though that doesn't mean your feelings aren't important). It's about finding a problem that you and the person you are sharing feedback with both care about, and working towards a solution.

Published: 5/5/2023
Length: ~12m
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Planning is About Creating Clarity, Not Certainty

Planning will give you the illusion of certainty. What you really need to execute on your plans is clarity. The reality is that the future is impossible to predict, and the further away from now that you get, the more difficult it becomes to predict at an exponential rate. Focus on creating the best pathways for present decision-making.

Published: 4/28/2023
Length: ~14m
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Process is Primarily for Managing Critical Moments

You may hate hearing the word "process." You aren't alone if you do. But, what feels like a slog today is really in place for when the most critical things happen in your career. Have a process, even if it feels useless on a standard day.

Published: 4/20/2023
Length: ~9m
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Taking Advantage of Hedonic Adaptation

The psychological phenomenon of hedonic adaptation can seem like the enemy of your happiness, but once you understand how it works, you can use it to create lasting habit change and focus on what matters most.

Published: 4/11/2023
Length: ~6m
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Weber's Law and Contextual Framing

Today we look at a mental model from the field of psychophysics called Weber's Law. This concept is a great analogy for a lot of problems we face as engineers and people leaders, and can help us understand just how deeply humans depend on context to understand the world.

Published: 4/3/2023
Length: ~8m
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Developer Tea was a part of Spec and is hosted by Jonathan Cutrell, engineering manager at Guild Education.