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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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Better Report, Better Manager - Two Questions to Find Guidance If You Don't Have A Manager

What should I do if I don't have a manager? There's a lot of answers to this question, but the first route I want to suggest is to find someone who can provide the guidance and empowerment you need in your career. This is someone who has skin in the game and the agency and skill set to actually help you.

Published: 3/28/2022
Length: ~10m
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Swizec Teller and the Senior Engineering Mindset, Part Two

In today's episode, we talk with Swizec Teller, senior engineer at Tia. Swizec created SeniorMindset.com, discuss the differentiators and mindset shift when becoming a senior engineering mindset. If you missed the first episode, make sure you go back and listen to that first!

Published: 3/23/2022
Length: ~41m
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Swizec Teller and the Senior Engineering Mindset, Part One

In today's episode, we talk with Swizec Teller, senior engineer at Tia. Swizec created SeniorMindset.com, discuss the differentiators and mindset shift when becoming a senior engineering mindset. If you missed the first episode, make sure you go back and listen to that first!

Published: 3/21/2022
Length: ~34m
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Better Report, Better Manager - One-On-One Frameworks: Focus and Fears

What does a good 1-on-1 look like? We'll answer this in many different ways. For today's episode, I want to share a micro-framework for you to try out in your next 1-on-1 that could elicit some of your career's most critical conversations.

Published: 3/18/2022
Length: ~7m
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Better Report, Better Manager - Investing in a Healthier Manager-to-Report Relationship

What should I look for in a healthy relationship with my manager? In this episode we talk about a variety of signals that you can expect if you have the right kind of relationship with your manager.

Published: 3/14/2022
Length: ~18m
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Better Report, Better Manager Series: Calibration Conversation - 3 Questions to Ask Your Manager ASAP

In this episode we are kicking off a series called "Better Report, Better Manager" - in this series, we'll discuss how you can improve your relationship with your manager from a practical standpoint. Your relationship with your managers is likely one of the most critical relationships you'll have in your career. In this episode, we'll start by getting you aligned with your manager by asking 3 calibration questions.

Published: 3/11/2022
Length: ~23m
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No More Status Meetings - A Forcing Function For Better Team Information Flow

Your status meetings are an old holdover from less useful business practices. Do away with status meetings, and instead get to the core of your discussion faster.

Published: 3/7/2022
Length: ~14m
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Two Principles To Improve Your Software Design Decisions

In today's episode we discuss two principles that will help you make better software design decisions. Talk about these principles and how they apply with your manager, teammates, mentors, or other engineers in your community!

Published: 3/2/2022
Length: ~12m
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Clearly Define What Your Toolset Can't Do

Defining what your tools, teams, processes, and even you yourself are good at is hard, and often we stray past the boundaries of focus that would keep us performing to an optimal degree. In this episode, I encourage you to perform an exercise of inversion, to look at tasks your tools are simply not suited for.

Published: 2/28/2022
Length: ~9m
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When Sense-making and Statistics Collide

Our ability to make sense out of things is powerful. When we hear "90% of the way there", our brain fills in the gaps and often stretches that to mean "basically 100%." However, this is a cognitive error. In this episode, we talk about the importance of combining statistical thinking with sensemaking.

Published: 2/24/2022
Length: ~11m
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Opportunities of Convergence and the Cost of Divergence

Opportunity comes in moments of convergence. Loss is measured in divergence. Pay attention to what is converging now - this is how you take advantage of opportunities and reduce your cost from divergence.

Published: 2/22/2022
Length: ~12m
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Viewing Teams Through the Lens of Trust

Everything we do in our teams is based on trust. Trust, however, is a limited resource. We should spend it wisely.

Published: 2/17/2022
Length: ~16m
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3 Habits For Your First 30 Days As A New Engineer On A Team (Corrected Audio)

You're a new engineer - what should you start doing in your first 30 days? In this episode, we talk about 3 behaviors you might be resisting, but that you should actually embrace in order to improve your team. Managers especially need to listen up on this one.

Published: 2/14/2022
Length: ~18m
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Your Media, Your Message

In the mid 20th century, Marshall Mcluhan brought philosophy into the spotlight with his claim that the "medium is the message." We discuss the meaningfulness of this, and apply it to our work as engineers and on distributed teams, in today's episode.

Published: 2/10/2022
Length: ~11m
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Two Shifts to Change Our Working Mindset from Static to Dynamic

The world around us isn't static, but our brain processes as if it is. In this episode we talk about subtle shifts to help break that mold for the most important interactions we have in the world.

Published: 2/8/2022
Length: ~17m
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Taking Advantage of Uniquely Human Capabilities

In today's episode, we discuss the fact that intuition isn't all that bad to use when estimating... we just shouldn't use it to estimate a number. Taking advantage of things humans are already good at (rather than limiting people to processes that work around those skills) is a powerful shift in thinking.

Published: 2/3/2022
Length: ~10m
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Seek Context to Offset Prediction Errors

When we have context, we predict more accurately. When we translate numbers into more meaningful concepts, we create context where previously things were fuzzy. This makes our predictions more meaningful and grounded.

Published: 2/1/2022
Length: ~9m
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Excessive Cohesion - When We Fill In Gaps to Make Things Make Sense

In today's episode we talk about a concept called excessive cohesion - when our brains fill in the gaps when information is missing. This is an important function of our brains, but sometimes it can lead us to wrong conclusions or faulty processes.

Published: 1/27/2022
Length: ~15m
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Some of My Productivity Mechanisms

Increasing clarity informs perspective. Changing perspective often brings new clarity. When we manage our work through effective process, we are seeking clarity on that work. We refine our to-do list by clearing up ambiguity. We add clarity by getting input from others, breaking work down into simpler pieces. In this episode, I talk about this relationship between clarity and perspective, and how simplification benefits my productivity drastically.

Published: 1/24/2022
Length: ~17m
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Assimilating Advice - Dealing with Information Overload

How do you consolidate all of the advice you receive? More importantly, how can you put it into practice day in and day out? We'll talk about two strategies for making this happen in today's episode.

Published: 1/20/2022
Length: ~17m
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Developer Tea was a part of Spec and is hosted by Jonathan Cutrell, engineering manager at Guild Education.