Your intuition says that control is the ladder you climb to improve your career. But most great leaders tend to do one thing: the opposite of increasing control.

In today's episode we explore the duality between confronting difficult realities while maintaining optimism. Specifically, we discuss a critical question: what does it mean to be optimistic?

The traits that define a senior engineer are not catalogued perfectly in one spot. But, nevertheless, we'll try to cover some of the most important traits and habits of a senior engineer. In today's episode, we'll add more detail to the commonly recommended skill of "work breakdown." Sometimes this extremely valuable skill is the opposite of what you really need to practice. Feel free to incorporate these into your skill matrices, reviews, or job descriptions - I'd love to hear about it if you do!

The traits that define a senior engineer are not catalogued perfectly in one spot. But, nevertheless, we'll try to cover some of the most important traits and habits of a senior engineer. In this episode, we'll discuss the fact that difficulty does not equate to value, and hazard a guess as to why we can easily confuse this, especially as we begin to grow from junior to senior roles. Feel free to incorporate these into your skill matrices, reviews, or job descriptions - I'd love to hear about it if you do!

The traits that define a senior engineer are not catalogued perfectly in one spot. But, nevertheless, we'll try to cover some of the most important traits and habits of a senior engineer. In this episode, we'll discuss the importance of systematically communicating value to various audiences. Feel free to incorporate these into your skill matrices, reviews, or job descriptions - I'd love to hear about it if you do!

The traits that define a senior engineer are not catalogued perfectly in one spot. But, nevertheless, we'll try to cover some of the most important traits and habits of a senior engineer. Feel free to incorporate these into your skill matrices, reviews, or job descriptions - I'd love to hear about it if you do!

We play the short game so we get the chance to play the long game. Early in our careers, we imagine the best way to play is always focus on the long game. But in reality, we need both. Be aware of leaning too far the opposite direction, and accidentally abandoning the long game entirely.

We can become accustomed to the rate at which we experience change, and imagine that that rate will continue to increase linearly. Eventually, change will level off. We accumulate fewer skills later in our careers, our network of connections might seem to top out, or our salary bumps slow down. If we know that change tends to follow a logarithmic shape, we can prepare and plan better for the changing rate of change.

At the beginning of any work session, practice, performance, or any other activity you want to achieve flow during, you can give yourself the best shot at getting into flow by controlling a few simple variables. We talk about two of them in today's episode: Session Feedback and Session Goal.

Protecting your flow state may help you have more "peak experiences" - whether in your career or in your personal life. This is your opportunity to make the biggest strides and highest achievements. In this episode we start a conversation about what it takes to protect your flow state.

Sometimes I hear advice that is worth its weight in gold. In today's episode I share one piece of advice that is almost universally applicable across life and career efforts.

If your identity is complex, your purpose is by extension complex. In this episode, we talk about purpose as an expression, rather than a regulator, of your identity.

You don't need to overthink purpose. Focus on clarity, and finding your underlying motivation. That clarity can be short-lived; purpose is a dynamic and powerful force, but only if you hold it lightly.

What you are afraid of in your career may be the thing that propels you. It's all about framing, and removing the negative and positive language. Instead, think about how you can best position yourself and that behavior to be valuable instead of a detractor.

If you aren't doing something, you either can't or won't. In today's episode, we explore this very simple starting point for behavior change and habit development, and explore the boundaries of the model.

You aren't going to put your foot in your mouth, or reveal some devastating level of ineptitude. Asking questions, especially as a beginner, is much more likely to gain you favor than disdain.

What does a feature cost? Your first answer will probably focus on the time to build, or the features needed... Maybe the amount of hiring necessary to deliver. But what about after that? The cost of our decisions is not limited to the short term - usually, a decision has a long term cost curve. Knowing what the cost curve is for any significant investment helps you make better decisions and have clearer anticipation and planning intuition.

There is a spectrum of buy-in for behavior change. In today's episode, I'll give you a thinking model for considering different types of buy-in along this spectrum, and when one might help you make better systems for behavior change in your organization.

What is your learning strategy? If you don't have one, you are implicitly saying that all learning is equal. Learning is an investment of time. Choose what you invest in carefully.

Developer Tea has been around for 8 years. Thank you so much for your incredible support over these years! In today's episode we discuss how it feels to be wrong.