do you think about the long term or the short term most people consider themselves either a long-term thinker or the opposite usually people wouldn't label themselves as short-term thinkers there's kind of a negative connotation there but they might label themselves as action-oriented and sometimes this is the kind of the equivalent to someone who is not necessarily future-oriented so if we're talking about long-term versus short-term we should consider what are the ways that we're thinking that might be optimal or suboptimal for each of those problem types I've heard this often in discussions and opinions between two engineers where one engineer will make an argument that is better calibrated for a long-term argument another engineer may make a short-term argument and interestingly it's kind of hard to parse which one is most relevant in the moment and so it might make sense to take a step back and discuss is this a short-term problem or is it a long-term problem I'm going to give you some framing for how to discuss that and also how to spot a short-term argument versus a long-term argument right after we talk about today's spots on Square this episode is brought to you by Square millions of sellers across the globe using Square to run every aspect of their business I just used Square this past weekend actually many of the people using Square are using Square to run their business and they're using Square to run their business they're looking for customized solutions they're deeply connected and easy to use and work directly with their business's needs and this is where you as a developer can come in you can grow your own business by extending or integrating with Square using their free APIs and SDKs to build tools for those sellers go and check it out you can learn more by going to developertea.com slash square that's developertea.com slash square thanks again to Square for sponsoring this episode today's episode of Developer Tea I'm going to give you a framing for this conversation and I'm going to give some credit for this framing to Paloma Medina and Lara Hogan the framing is very simple it's a single question what are you optimizing for? what are you optimizing for? in any discussion where you have two opinions and both of them sound like they could be right but one is focused on a future concern and another is focused on a present concern you may ask this question to help clarify whether the concern for the future is warranted whether we need to be thinking further out than the concern for the present is providing and whether we need to be thinking further out what are you optimizing for should trigger us to think does what I'm saying matter does the thing that I'm focusing on produce the value that I care about here's what so often happens we have a long term concern and we're applying it to a problem that only has a short lifetime I'm going to give you some basic heuristics to help identify when this is a problem and when this is a problem usually not always but usually short term problems are solved with very explicit solutions this means that you're doing kind of a point to point connection the specifics of the problem you are providing a very specific solution but long term problems tend to be argued from a position of principle think about this for a second long term problems are argued from a position of principle there's not necessarily a right or wrong way here once again what are you optimizing for this is the critical question because longer term calibration if you are kind of shifting your brain to think longer term you are accepting the reality that you may not know what's going to happen this is why when we start thinking about solving long term issues or having a long term mindset we're using principles we're using principle thinking to try to prevent problems downstream we're trying to use principle thinking to bolster the thing that we're building short term problems tend to be focused on directly solving a problem whereas long term mindset tends to be focused on preventing problems or solving problems that we don't yet know that we're going to have I can't stress this enough that there is not a wrong way to approach problems here you could have both of these things in mind when you're solving the point to point issues one at a time you can also inform that with longer term thinking just because you're solving or optimizing for a short term problem doesn't mean you have to be counterproductive to your long term problem the best kind of solutions and the people who tend to succeed in their careers are the ones that align the short term problem solving with the longer term strategy they allow their principles to inform both the short term and the long term but they don't allow their principles to stall them out in solving the short term problems thanks so much for listening to today's episode of developer t thank you again to square for sponsoring today's episode if you want to learn more about building custom solutions for millions of sellers around the globe head over to developer t dot com slash square it's developer t dot com slash square if you enjoyed this discussion I'd encourage you to do two things one to help the show by going and leaving a review in whatever platform you use iTunes is still the most kind of impactful platform to leave a review in so if you are an iTunes user please leave a review there first and then secondly to help you to help you become a better engineer help you become maybe a better person even head over to developer t dot com slash discord you're going to join the discord community this is 100% free we're never asking for money in fact we don't even ask you for any kind of personal information or anything like that you're just part of this community through discord and you can talk to other software engineers like you who are on the same journey maybe they're a little bit ahead of you they have a few steps ahead of you or a few years of experience past yours or maybe you want to try your hand at helping others is one of the best ways that you can grow your career is by helping other people go and check it out developer t dot com slash discord thanks so much for listening and until next time enjoy your tea you you you you you you you you