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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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Fresh Eyes - How Anchoring Bias, Bandwagon Effect, Status Quo Bias, and Uniqueness Bias Interact When Joining New Groups

When you are newly joining a team, you have a huge opportunity to do something that no one on the team has: to find your "weathervane." The pressure pushing against you to adopt the beliefs of the team you are joining. What you do with it is one huge way a team can improve, or otherwise, stay the same.

Published: 12/1/2023
Length: ~17m
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The Dark Side of Optimism Bias

Most people believe good things will happen by default. Not to be the bearer of bad news, but there's a downside to this endless optimism. You cannot will good things to happen, and when you don't prepare for adverse events, you won't be ready when they inevitably occur.

Published: 11/27/2023
Length: ~15m
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Backlog Psychology - Breaking Out of the Habit Trap

Your team's process for managing a backlog is probably growing stale because you are running on habit rather than procedure. Break out of procedure and remind yourself why you have a process to begin with: orient yourself to the outcomes!

Published: 11/9/2023
Length: ~12m
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Availability Heuristic and Substituting Hard Questions

What is it about our present situation that changes our perspective? In today's episode we talk about the availability bias and why our present reality looms so large in our decisionmaking.

Published: 11/3/2023
Length: ~17m
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Spend Your Time Intentionally Through Expectation Mapping

What do you expect of yourself? Are you spending your time in ways that align with those expectations? In this episode, I provide you a simple framework as a starting lens for getting a better idea of how you are spending your time in relation to who cares the most about those investments. You'll walk away with a new lens on how to evaluate your most precious resource: time.

Published: 10/26/2023
Length: ~15m
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What is the Real Question? How To Be An Exceptional Listener

Almost every conversation you have will start with a question. Have you stopped to listen closely? Questions are extremely meaningful and deeply human. Paying close attention to questions is a skill that will put you head and shoulders above the average engineer or manager.

Published: 10/21/2023
Length: ~9m
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Backlog Psychology - Fix Your Broken Expectations

How often does reality match your expectations exactly? Sure, you may guess in the ball park, but usually there are errors in our expectations. In today's episode, I talk about a simple shift in thinking that will help improve your expectations for your work.

Published: 10/12/2023
Length: ~8m
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Backlog Psychology - Practice Requires Rhythmic Predictability

In this episode we continue a little mini-series called "Backlog psychology." How do you get better at anything? (Hopefully you said "practice" almost instinctively.) What does good practice look like? Your team has an opportunity to practice every meeting and every day. But if your days look different from one to the next, how will you ever have the opportunity to actually do that practice?

Published: 10/3/2023
Length: ~8m
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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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Developer Tea was a part of Spec and is hosted by Jonathan Cutrell, engineering manager at Guild Education.