All Episodes
Developer Tea — 1000 episodes
Why Reducing Complexity Is A Sign of Seniority
A Pragmatic Definition for Accountability
Using Substition to Make Decisions Simpler
Your Single Most Important Tool for Managing the Uneven Downsides of Risk
Why Can't You Go Faster With AI? Focus on the Friction to Find Out
Software Engineering Principles That Still Hold Up in an Agentic World - Old Lessons Made New
Principles Oriented Thinking as a Durable Skill in an AI First World
What the Science Actually Says About Effective Feedback
Rebuilding Your Mental Models In the Midst Of an AI Tech Revolution
Practice Isn't Enough for Senior Engineers - Adaptation Is a Key Skill in an AI-First Industry
Senior Skills to Maintain Employment Through the AI Wave
You're Wrong All the Time, But All You Need Are Better Explanations
AI-Proofing Your Skillset - High-Meaning, High-Specifity Vocabulary is the Path to Growth
Building Real Skills During the AI Boom - No, Not That Kind of Skill
Chaos Doesn't Have to Win - Maintaining Order in the Midst of AI Change
Mourning the Loss of Coding, Senior Tooling Mindset, and Shaping Your Environment
Useful Illusions and Exploiting Heuristics
Decision Making is Your New Core Skill, So it's Critical to Avoid These Two Traps of Collaborative Decision-Making
What's Brewing, Edition 1 - What Jonathan is Learning, Using, and Thinking
From Software Engineer to Agent Manager - How Work is Changing in A New Software Development Paradigm
AI Moves the Bottleneck - Are You Ready for What That Means For Your Career?
Listener Question - Abdul Asks About How to Balance Career Strategy Between Money, Meaning, and Skill Transitions
AI-Era Employability and Job Security for Software Engineers - Mental Models for Finding a Competitive Advantage Without Selling Out
Why Getting Paid Stole Your Drive and How to Get Into the Flow Again (Career Growth Accelerator)
The Meta-Habit of High Performers: How Outer Loops Unlock Growth (Career Growth Accelerator)
Career Growth Accelerator - Promotion Roadblocks and Knocking it Out of the Park During Performance Review Season
Career Growth Roadmap - De-risking Your Career By Understanding Your Vulnerabilities
Career Growth Accelerator - Assessing Yourself - Using a Nine-Block to Map Your Skill, Potential, and Energy Investment
Career Growth Accelerator: Going from Autopilot to Purpose
Announcing - Career Growth Accelerator, Episode Zero - Getting Out of Your Own Way
Announcing: The Career Growth Accelerator Series
Problem Definition As A Path for Career Growth
You Know The Hard Thing You Need to Do Next - Here's Why It's Worth Doing Now
Career Fundamentals - Avoid Career Traps by Focusing on Primary Paths of Improvement
Getting to Senior - Taking Ownership Without Leading Projects
Part Two - Bryan McCann, CTO of You.com, on AI, Engineering, Art, and Everything In Between
Part One - Bryan McCann, CTO of You.com, on AI, Engineering, Art, and Everything In Between
Going to War with Burnout - Less Hours Isn't Your Only Option
The Good and Bad of Choosing Measurements - Traps and Opportunities of Measuring What Matters
Engage in Deliberate Practice to Level Up Your Engineering Leadership Skills
Shift Your Locus of Control to Take Charge of Your Engineering Career
Resumé Driven Development - Your Career is In Your Hands
Forced and Unforced Errors
View Your Productivity Through the Lens of Values and Priorities
This One Skill Signifies Seniority For Software Engineers
Backup Plans and Risk Reward Curves
Second Order Consequences and Forcing Functions
Don't Try to Solve Hyperobject Problems Once
Behavior Change 101: Trigger, Incentive, and Ability
Goal of the Goal - Using Goals As A Prioritization Clarifying Tool
Your Capacity for Growth Is Dependent on This Factor - Cognitive Load Theory
Investigating Your Invisible Systems
Perfection Is Fragile, and You Should Avoid It
Your System is Perfectly Designed for Your Current Outcomes
Using LLMs To Expand Your Working Vocabulary
Great Reviews and Terrible Tacos - Sharpening Substitute Questions with Counterfactuals
Why Maintenance Matters Now - Construal Level Theory, Marshmallows, and Hyperbolic Discounting
Follow This Principle - Establish Your Baselines
Advice on Advice - Taking Everything with a Grain of Salt
Career Advice for Surviving AI Outsourcing
Take Back Your Time - Volatility, Pliability, and Agency and Your Obligations.mp3
Iteration or Target State Planning
Three Principles of Preparedness - Mitigate Risks and Capitalize On Opportunities
Did I Get That Right? - A High Leverage Habit that Requires Virtually Zero Skill
Meta Models - Logarithmic Returns
Dimensional Reframing - Think Along a New Axis
Chesterton's Fence - Why You Should Think Twice Before Rewriting That Project
Reframing Areas of Growth to Your Manager
Owning and Requesting Forward-Framed Feedback
Work Modes Using Autonomy and Definition Clarity Quadrant - Manager Frameworks and Tools Series
Manager Frameworks and Models - Product Lifecycle Governance
Philosophical Frameworks that Inform Your Decisions (Without You Even Knowing It)
How Can You Prepare for High-Impact Unknown Events?
Misconceptions about Exceptions and Cultural Shifts - Invisible Inertia
Action Orientation and Making Faster Decisions
Match your Action to Intention - Pairing Five Whats with Five Whys
Upgrade Your Resolutions
Ten Years of Developer Tea
Better Low-Information Estimates - Putting the "Scientific" in SWAG
Agency - How The On Over In Model Can Help You Grow Your Career
Using ChatGPT for Career Experience Simulations - LLMs and Direct Simulations for Faster Career Experience Gains
Coaching Yourself: Career Coaching Personas for Everyday Engineers, Part Three - Shoulder Socrates
Coaching Yourself: Career Coaching Personas for Everyday Engineers, Part Two - The Overoptimizer
Coaching Yourself: Career Coaching Personas for Everyday Engineers, Part One - The Available Manager
The Highest Leverage Work You Do - Footing the Ladder
Prioritization is the Ultimate Skill
Career Growth Comes From Finding Low Hanging Fruit in the Gaps
How Culture Might Eat Your Values For Breakfast
The Tricky Parts of Merit Cycles
Limiting Factors - The Hidden Focus That Matters the Most
Improve Your Chances In Your Engineering Job Search Using the Scientific Method with Brian Pulliam
Improve Your Chances In Your Engineering Job Search Using the Scientific Method with Brian Pulliam
Focus On Outcomes By Resetting Your Base
Portraying Confidence in the Face of the Unknown
Now, Next, Later, Never - A Simple Daily Framework for Managing Information and Prioritization
Bias to Action As A Skill
Managing Using Core Indicators of Team Outcomes
Inverted Thinking As a Strategy To Combat Bias
Talking To Yourself for Better One-On-Ones
Interview Prep: Two Counterintuitive Tips
The Top Resumé Mistake I See, Plus the Best Resumé Advice I've Ever Received
Prioritization Using Critical Path Thinking
Cultural Antidotes - Clarity Isn't Just Honesty
Demystifying Culture and Values
Principles of Work - Shorten Your Feedback Loops
Principles of Work - Be Your Own Advocate
Practical Application of Information Theory
Revisiting Core Working Principles - Hyperfixation on Measurements and Communication Degradation
Revisiting Core Working Principles - Clarity as a Precursor to Focus and Strategy for Possibilities
Two Principle Categories To Judge Productivity Advice
Cost of Delay Curves and Classes of Service
Taking Personal Accountability for Systematic Failures
Stat Series: What Statistical Measure Are You Overusing? (And What to Do About It), Part Two
Stat Series: What Statistical Measure Are You Overusing? (And What to Do About It), Part One
Treat Your Time as A Product You Own
Von Restorff Isolation Effect and a Backfiring of Process
Perform a Career Premortem
Delegation, Ownership, Responsibility, and Agency
Apply Little's Law To What You Can Control
Finding Leverage by Escaping Functional Fixedness
Is it Actually Important to Question Assumptions?
9 Years - Persistence by Reducing Expectation
Good Plans, Bad Plans, and Road Trips
Negative and Positive Lollapalooza Effects
Fresh Eyes - How Anchoring Bias, Bandwagon Effect, Status Quo Bias, and Uniqueness Bias Interact When Joining New Groups
The Dark Side of Optimism Bias
Backlog Psychology - Breaking Out of the Habit Trap
Availability Heuristic and Substituting Hard Questions
Spend Your Time Intentionally Through Expectation Mapping
What is the Real Question? How To Be An Exceptional Listener
Backlog Psychology - Fix Your Broken Expectations
Backlog Psychology - Practice Requires Rhythmic Predictability
Backlog Psychology - Hyperbolic Discounting, Tech Debt, and Hacking Your Habits
Backlog Psychology - The Ziegarnik Effect - Why Limiting Work In Progress Protects Your Cognitive Load
Two Tips for Better Retros - Add Specificity, Respect Uncertainty
One Big Step Versus A Small Random Step
Interrogate Your Decision Making Rules
Schedule Carving
Long Term Scoreboard for Short Term Games
Slow Down and Start With One Goal
Using the Accountability Triangle When Diagnosing A Failure
Career Growth Starts With Improving Your Clarity
Tech Lag Over Tech Debt
Good Negotiation is About Collaborative Problem Solving
Tools To Deal With Layoff Anxiety
System Design - Limiting the Responsibilities Of A Given Actor
Focus on Process Orientation for Goal Setting
How to Give Better Feedback - My Single Biggest Piece of Advice to Increase the Effectiveness of Your Feedback
Planning is About Creating Clarity, Not Certainty
Process is Primarily for Managing Critical Moments
Taking Advantage of Hedonic Adaptation
Weber's Law and Contextual Framing
What Defines a Senior Developer? - You Won't Use All of Your Knowledge
The Pitfall of Control and Antidote of Trust
Working Balance - Confronting Reality with Optimism
What Defines a Senior Developer? - Choosing the Right Granularity Level
What Defines a Senior Developer? - Difficult Does Not Equate To Valuable
What Defines a Senior Developer? - Systematically Communicating Value
What Defines a Senior Developer? - Dynamic vs Static Understanding of Situations
Long Game, Short Game
The Rate of Change for Change Itself
Protecting Flow State - Setting Your Session Feedback And Goal
Protecting Flow State - Plan Now, Pause Later
Golden Advice - Always Leave Margin For Extra
Your Purpose is A Projection of Your Complex Identity
Demystifying Purpose by Focusing On Your Purpose For Today
Reframing Deficiencies as Strengths
Management Model of Ability and Will Applied to Self
Beginner Confidence
Comparing Cost Curves and Second Order Thinking
Spectrum of Buy-In For Behavior Change
Your Learning Investment Portfolio
Celebrating 8 Years - Plus, What it Feels Like to Be Wrong
Using Strategy, Tactics, and Operations to Achieve Intentions
Resolve To Make Important Asks In The New Year
Complexity As A Depreciating Asset
Your Biggest Opportunity is In Your Daily Influence
Get Acquainted With What Holds You Back
How Ordering Your Events in A Day Can Matter
Don't Fear AI Taking the Coding Jobs (Fixed Audio)
Don't Fear AI Taking the Coding Jobs
Focus On Activities With Asymmetrical Upside
Misjudging Others Attention On Us
An Outsider Exercise in Gratitude
You Know The Right Decision, Now Reduce The Friction
Using Observational Techniques to Find Your Personal Values
Avoid Defining Success Outside Your Locus of Control
The Toxic Laziness of Overwork Culture
Start With Precise Communication
The Error of Discounting the Unexpected
Looking at What Wasn't Done
Success is Born From Luck and Action
Build Environments That Produce Habits
Design Your Low Stakes Environment As A Mirror of Your High Stakes Environment
Better Goals - Deriving Values from Personal Investment and Risk Tolerance
Better Goals - Finding Cohesion Between Your Long and Short Term Goals
Better Goals - Two Guidelines for Better Outcomes
5 Powerful Questions To Design Your Time More Effectively
Short Term Tactics, Long Term Principles
Revolutionize Your Most Important Meetings with Powerful Questions
Diffuse and Focused Thinking
Why It's Hard to Do Nothing
Demystifying Decision-Making - Success is Not Just About Making Good Decisions
What You Have In Common With the Smartest Person In the World
A Way Out of Overwhelm
Understand Position and Interest To Make Better Collaborative Decisions
Future Thinking Is Not Planning For A Single Course of Events
Balancing Decision Frames
Copy of How Feedback Loops Shape Our World (Fixed Audio)
Reframing Every Decision As A Tradeoff
Judging Quality of Decisions Instead of Outcomes in Performance Reviews
How Feedback Loops Shape Our World
Solve Specific Problems by Composing General Solutions
Common Excuses for Not Setting Goals
Better Process to Match Intentions to Actions
Change Through the Lens of Adjustment and Maintenance
Built to Change
Deconstructing Status Meetings
Lower Cognitive Load - Pick Your Tools, Then Do Your Work
Lower Cognitive Load - Primary Activities, Modes, and Cues
Lower Cognitive Load - Limit Everything In Progress
Lower Cognitive Load - Principle of Least Surprise
Applying Systems Thinking for Better Thoughts
Outside View or Anecdote? The Right Answer is Both
Protect Transparency On Your Team
Meeting Red Flags - Problems In Your Meetings That Signal Issues In Your Culture
Better Meetings: Who Is the Audience?
Better Meetings - What Kind of Meeting, What Kind of Goal?
Your Career Growth Doesn't Just Depend On Your Competency
Two Questions Focused On Unearthing Hidden Information In Yourself
Asking a Taboo Question
Reframe Play as a Principle
Interrogating Beliefs and Treasuring Those Who Disagree With You
Two Forks in the Road On the Path Towards Optimization and Productivity
Techniques for People Struggling to Define Their Values
Using Core Tools and Activities for Grounded Productivity
Productivity, But Only On Paper
The Only Productivity Discussion Worth Having
Make Room to Expect the Exceptions
You Need Better Inputs to improve Your Options
Tradeoffs Of Control Optimized To Serve Your Goals
Scheduling Time To Go The Extra Mile
Premortems for Personal Goals
Compare, Carefully
Busting False Coupling and Finding Positive Negotiation Positions
Making Space for Intuition in Decision-making
Blueprint for Better Intermediate Decisionmaking
Finding Perspective On Purpose - Make it Visible, Make it Clear
The Principle of Isolation
Better Report, Better Manager - Reiterate and Reflect for Better Communication
Ambiguous Target Decisions and Noise
Better Report, Better Manager - The Assumption of Motivation
The Big Picture Pyramid
Better Report, Better Manager - Two Questions to Find Guidance If You Don't Have A Manager
Swizec Teller and the Senior Engineering Mindset, Part Two
Swizec Teller and the Senior Engineering Mindset, Part One
Better Report, Better Manager - One-On-One Frameworks: Focus and Fears
Better Report, Better Manager - Investing in a Healthier Manager-to-Report Relationship
Better Report, Better Manager Series: Calibration Conversation - 3 Questions to Ask Your Manager ASAP
No More Status Meetings - A Forcing Function For Better Team Information Flow
Two Principles To Improve Your Software Design Decisions
Clearly Define What Your Toolset Can't Do
When Sense-making and Statistics Collide
Opportunities of Convergence and the Cost of Divergence
Viewing Teams Through the Lens of Trust
3 Habits For Your First 30 Days As A New Engineer On A Team (Corrected Audio)
Your Media, Your Message
Two Shifts to Change Our Working Mindset from Static to Dynamic
Taking Advantage of Uniquely Human Capabilities
Seek Context to Offset Prediction Errors
Excessive Cohesion - When We Fill In Gaps to Make Things Make Sense
Some of My Productivity Mechanisms
Assimilating Advice - Dealing with Information Overload
Help, I'm Blocked! Four Common Root Causes for Developers Getting Blocked
Julian Gutman, CPO at Patreon, Part Two
Julian Gutman, CPO at Patreon, Part One
Purpose Oriented Resolutions, Part Two, and 7 Years of Developer Tea!
Developing Purpose Oriented Resolutions
Your Only Challenge Is To Focus
Taking Back Ownership Over Your Priorities
3 Cognitive Pitfalls of Mental Models
Using Proactive Decision Tools To Reduce Reactive Decision Error
Two Perspective-Sharpening Tools For Your New Year's Resolution Making
Two Tools for Improving Your Closest Relationships
Welcome Back Interview with Ernie Miller, Head of Engineering at Monograph, Part One (Fixed Audio)
Input Quadrant - A Tool for Better Retrospectives
Welcome Back Interview with Ernie Miller, Head of Engineering at Monograph, Part Two
Welcome Back Interview with Ernie Miller, Head of Engineering at Monograph, Part One
The Focus IS the Work
Dealing with Inevitable But Unpredictable Events
Think in Composition
Substitute Better Questions
Focusing On Fundamentals Is Not Repetition, It is Refinement
Metamodeling and Steering Systems for Self Improvement
When Pressure Turns To Poison
Less Confidence, More Bravery
Habits, Languages, Processes, and Other Behavior Engines
Mindful Job Search: Myths and Psychology of Interviewing
Mindful Job Search: Is it really time for me to quit my job?
Can You Really Pick the Right Tool for Every Job?
A Statistical Case for Iteration Over Perfect Preparation
Avoid Unnecessary Prediction
Give Random a Chance
Two Illusions of Agreement
Limit Your Options By Limiting Your Obligations
Feature Exploitation
How Averages Can Trick You and Obscure the Truth
Dominik Zane, Founder of Around - Part Two
Dominik Zane, Founder of Around - Part One
Inner and Outer Layers of Context
Finding the Good in the Negative - Ask, "what do I do about this?"
Two Razors for More Efficient Decision-making
Use Your Expectations As a Tool
Flexibility is a Resource to Gather When You Least Need It
Deconstructing Purpose
Two Variations of Confirmation Bias
How You Shape Your World With Macro and Micro Stories
Friday Refill: Always Keep Your Tank Full
The Most Critical Career Mistake You Can Make
Failure is an Opportunity for Responsibility
Friday Refill: What Are Your Ideals?
4 Questions To Understand Your Long Term Career Trajectory
Joel Beasley from Modern CTO, Part Two
Friday Refill: Give Tomorrow-You Advice from Today
Joel Beasley from Modern CTO
Uncomfortable Silence: What If You Do Nothing?
Friday Refill: Imaginary Comparisons
Implicit Hypotheses
Model Manager - What We Don't Manage
Friday Refill: Waiting and Replaying
Reframing Discipline and Elastic Habits
Model Manager: Human Behavior is the Primary Output of Engineering Processes
Friday Refill: Focusing On Mastery Will Not Limit Your Options
Compounding Time In Your Favor
The Bowl of Mediocrity
Friday Refill - Stay Mindful During Phases of Execution
Step One Always Goes On Your Calendar
The Tension Between Purpose and Mindfulness
Friday Refill: Intuition Over Memorization
Local and Global Rationality
Skill-Building Is Not One Dimensional
Balancing Entropy and Focus
Decision-making Skills: Two Types of Probabilistic Thinking
Using Cognitive Dissonance as a Tool
Non-Linear Learning and Progress
Friday Refill - Clarified Intentions and Flexible Goals
Too Serious to Succeed
Make Your Obstacles Irrelevant
Friday Refill: Growth, Uncomfortability, and the Unknown
Finding Resonance
Reframe Your Plateaus
Friday Refill: Your Baseline Determines Your Leverage
Ethan Kross, Author of Chatter - Part Two
Ethan Kross, Author of Chatter - Part One
Friday Refill: Inviting Growth Into Your Regular Schedule
Becoming Your Best Coach - Questioning Your Self
Sources of Truth
Friday Refill - One Thing at a Time
Katy Milkman, Author of How to Change and Host of Choiceology, Part Two
(Fixed Audio) Katy Milkman, Author of How to Change and Host of Choiceology, Part One
Friday Refill - Seeking a Different Inside View
Detaching to Seek an Outside View
Conflating Uniqueness with Value
Refill Friday - Best Practices and Asking When
Welcome Back Ali Spittel - Part Two
Welcome Back Ali Spittel - Part One
Friday Refill - Complexity Inversion (Fixed)
Friday Refill - Complexity Inversion
The Scout Mindset with Julia Galef, Part Two
The Scout Mindset with Julia Galef, Part One
Introduce Intentional Asymmetry
Narrative Complexity
Changing Work Environments and Availability Bias
Friday Refill: Making Limited Work Look Good on a Resumé
Minding the Observer Effect as We Transition Together
Find Your Values in the Dark
Friday Refill: Seek Leverage and Access
Dan Pupius, CEO and Co-Founder of Range, Part Two
Dan Pupius, CEO and Co-Founder of Range, Part One
Friday Refill - Stop Your Weekend Half-Thinking
Ban the Heroics On Your Team
Two Blessings and Two Curses of Intuition (Corrected)
Two Blessings and Two Curses of Intuition
Friday Refill: How Patience Pays Off
Geoff Schmidt, CEO and Co-founder of Apollo GraphQL, Part Two
Geoff Schmidt, CEO and Co-founder of Apollo GraphQL, Part One
Friday Refills - Stop Predicting Your Priorities
Superpowered Imagination
Biases of Attention
Friday Refill - Divergent and Convergent Meetings
Clean Up Your Goals
Lego Problems - Modes of Operation on Component-Driven Problems
Friday Refill - Anchor Behaviors
Quincy Larson, Founder of freeCodeCamp - Part Two
Quincy Larson, Founder of freeCodeCamp - Part One
Friday Refills - Rest is Not an Optional Luxury
Post-Pandemic Work and Life as an Engineer - Skills for a Different Future
Post-Pandemic Life and Work as an Engineer: Back to Normal-ish
Self Distancing
Design Lead at Basecamp, Jonas Downey - Part Two
Design Lead at Basecamp, Jonas Downey - Part One
Friday Refills - Don't Cram the Information Firehose... Filter and Focus!
Post-Pandemic: Work and Life as an Engineer - Remote Everything?
Series kickoff - Post-Pandemic: Work and Life as an Engineer
Friday Refill: Consider an Alternate Story
Paying the Tax for Our Decisions
The Downside to Inaction
Friday Refill - Ignore Motivation, Focus On Removing Obstacles
The Bucket Model
The Shape of Work
Why We Believe Ourselves (Even When We're Proven Wrong)
Designing Your Skill Portfolio
Optionality Sweet Spot
The Dangers of Measuring Side Effects
If Actions Speak Louder Than Words, What Are Yours Saying?
Imagining the End
Making Things Invisible
The Paradox of Transcendence
Misusing Exceptions in Code and in Life
Refactor Your Labeling Techniques
Learning in Public w/ Shawn Swyx Wang (part 2)
Learning in Public w/ Shawn Swyx Wang (part 1)
Teaching in Public w/ Kent C. Dodds (part 2)
Teaching in Public w/ Kent C. Dodds (part 1)
Building Products w/ Keith Pitt (part 2)
Building Products w/ Keith Pitt (part 1)
Maintainability w/ Robby Russell (part 2)
Maintainability w/ Robby Russell (part 1)
Leading A Team During Difficult Times w/ Venkat Venkataramani (part 2)
Leading A Team During Difficult Times w/ Venkat Venkataramani (part 1)
Exactly How Different Are You From Average?
Think About Invisible Things More Often
Why It's Harder to Accept That You're Wrong if You Have More Experience
Explicitly Choose What You Won't Do
4 Ways Smart People Make Bad Decisions
Leadership & Management w/ Ravs Kaur (part 2)
Leadership & Management w/ Ravs Kaur (part 1)
Elm in Action: Interview w/ Richard Feldman (part 2)
Elm in Action: Interview w/ Richard Feldman (part 1)
Self Confidence is Accepting Your Weakness
Interview w/ Michael Kennedy (part 2)
Interview w/ Michael Kennedy (Part 1)
Interview w/ David Marquet
Give Up Control, On Purpose
Naomi Ceder Interview - 20 Years with Python (part 2)
Naomi Ceder Interview - 20 Years with Python (part 1)
Intention, Action and Result
Complexity Is A Scarce Resource
5 Stages Of Relationships With Mistakes
How Zero Sum and False Dichotomy Thinking is Distorting Your Decisions
Interview w/ Nicole Archambault (part 2)
Interview w/ Nicole Archambault (part 1)
4 Things You Have to Leave Behind as a Beginning Engineer
Building Empathy To Focus on Downstream Effects
The Unique Advantages of Being a Beginner
Explicit Heuristics and Cheap Tests
The Critical Importance of Labels
Using Your Brain Without Thinking
Interview w/ Aaron Upright (Part 2)
Interview w/ Aaron Upright
Are You Really An Exception, Or Are You Inflexible?
Future Focused Feedback
Stop Pushing Down Your Emotions
Small Problems and Principled Engineering
The Stories Your Code Tells
Offensive and Defensive Software Engineering Strategies
Your Present is Soon Your Past
Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde - Rejecting a Duel Identity
Uncomfortability, the Ultimate Teacher
Baseline Happiness and Delayed Achievements
Finding Underlying Motivations to Stay Resilient In Your Career
Strategies for Overcoming Mental Blocks
What Will You Say When You Don't know?
Wishes, Beliefs, and Knowledge
Listener Question from Saul: How Do I Communicate with Non-Technical Decision Makers?
How Questions Influence Pathways to Solutions
4 Points Of Advice For Brand New Developers
What Does It Take To Change Your Mind?
Play, Stakes, and Learning
Leveraging Our Emotional Goals
Mental Models for Finding Balance
High Certainty, High Value Defaults
3 Ways to Be a Better PR Author
4 Ways to Be a Better PR Reviewer
What is Code, to Our Evolved Mind?
Correlation, Causation, Post Hoc, Ergo Propter Hoc
Context-Dependent Decisions and Linear Heuristic Mental Models
Productive Self-Sabotage
Simple Prioritization Visualization
There Is No, "Way We've Always Done It"
When To Walk Away From (and come back to) A Problem
Default Problem Solving Modes
What Orders Have You Inherited?
Upstream w/ Dan Heath (Part 2)
Upstream w/ Dan Heath (Part 1)
Protecting Uncertainty
Learning Isn't A List of Items Your Can Check Off
Consider Your Cues
How Little We Really Know
Improving Through Bad Ideas and Silly Questions
Forcing Functions
Growth, Uncomfortability, and Deliberate Practice
Practical Steps for Reframing Problems
Take Advantage of What You Already Have
Stress and Tolerance
Architecting Change - Interpolation
When Do Long-Term Models and Habits Betray You?
The Overreaction Paradox
Hidden Environment Inputs - Mindful Remote Work
Interview w/ Carl Yates Perry (Part 2)
Interview w/ Carl Yates Perry - Part 1
Flattening the Cost of Change Curve
4 Reasons You Will Never Pick the "Right Tool For the Job"
Four Questions for the Weekend
Breaking Your Own Rules Accelerates Bad Habit Formation
Redefine Your Career Search Rules
Functional Autonomy and Finding Meaning in the Small Things Today
Your Influence is Catalyzed By What is Influencing You
Your Time is An Account With An Unknown Balance
Don't Make the Problem Fit the Model
Implicit Models and Processes
Measuring Freedom to Change
Embracing Confusion
Thought Experiment - Rejecting Your Intuitive Solution
You Don't Have to Be a Slave to Self-Improvement
Getting Stacked Value From your Daily Activities
Defining Your Reference Points
Engineering Your Habits Like Interfaces
Plans Should Be Functions, Not Documents
What Are your Fundamentals?
Getting On The Right Level When Solving Problems Collaboratively
Management Anti-Pattern - Detail Abstraction
Management Anti-Patterns - False Homogeneity
Management Anti-Patterns - Implicit Assignment of Responsibility
Two Biases that Can Affect Your Work and Relationships
You'll Never Have All of the Information
Productivity Isn't About How Much You Get done
3 Guidelines for Happier Work with Designers
Connecting Tasks to Operating Modes
Success and Cumulative Advantage
A Key Misconception About Resolutions
Holiday Re-Air: Interview w/ Gabriel Weinberg (part 2)
Holiday Re-Air: Interview w/ Gabriel Weinberg
Simplifying
What We Do With a Lack of Information
Disagreeing Better, On Purpose
Two More Guidelines for Better Feedback Loops (Part Three)
Two Guidelines for Better Feedback Loops (Part Two)
Better Feedback Loops (Part One) - Validation and Cycle Time
Justifying Feature Work with User Roles and Motivations
Hypocognition and the Importance of Concepts
Colliding Titles and Roles
Managing Requests, Making Commitments
The Benefit of Our Predecessors
The Illusion of Balancing Priorities
Commit To Actions, Measure Outcomes
Check Your Leverage
Meetings Can Trick Your Emotions
Preserving Subcultural Language
Different Behaviors with the Same Values - Practicing Modes
How Small Behaviors Cascade into Life-Changing Results
Focusing On Improving One Value At A Time
Tracing Chained Motivations
Productivity In The Face of Ambiguity with Functional Assumptions
Ask Better Questions
Interview with Anil Dash (Part 2)
Interview with Anil Dash (Part 1)
Seeking a Disconnected Perspective
Balancing Accountability and Empathy
Habits of Successful Software Engineers - Multiplying Value by Thinking in Systems
Messages in Object Oriented Programming
Be Present While Thinking on the Past and Future
Leverage As A Career Heuristic
Don't Use Transparency As a Weapon
Steps to Become a Terrible Developer
The Ocean of Choice Between Can and Will
Priming Effects
Dealing With Overwhelm
Admitting When You Don't Know
From Explicit to Implicit: When Our Mental Energy is Wasted
Implicit to Explicit: Management Systems
Implicit to Explicit: Perception and Emotions
Moving Implicit Systems to Be More Explicit
Progress by Habit, Perception by Exception
Product Mindset w/ Jessica Hall (Part 2)
Product Mindset w/ Jessica Hall (Part 1)
How To Be A Bad Manager
Imagining a Clearer Reality
Digging Up Your Purpose
The Nuances of Behavior and Research
Advice I Would Have Rejected Ten Years Ago
Your Purpose is Not a Point in the Future
Listen To This In You're Feeling Stuck
Improve Your Team by Rejecting These Bad Assumptions
Using Pre-Mortems to Find the Opposition to Our Focus
Taking Advantage of Your Time as a Student
Beating Boredom in Your Career
Short Term Decisions, Long Term Mindset
Beating Dogma And Choosing The Right Tools
Reaping Rewards by Expecting Success
Going Beyond Simply Fixing Failures
How to Engineer More Epiphany Moments in Your Day-to-Day
3x3 - Misconceptions About Senior Engineers
3x3 - Relating Better With Difficult Coworkers
3x3 - Uncovering Hidden Information
Belief Substitution
Career Decisions and Penalty Kicks
How to Affect Organizational Change
Every Decision is an Opportunity Tradeoff
The Dangerous Characteristics of 10x Engineers
You're Not So Important - Why Our Ego Drives Anxiety in the Workspace
Finding Beginner's Luck Again
Part 3: An Elegant Puzzle Book Discussion w/ Will Larson
Part 2: An Elegant Puzzle Book Discussion w/ Will Larson
Part 1: An Elegant Puzzle Book Discussion w/ Will Larson
What You Feed Will Grow
Mid-Year Resolutions
How Do I Choose a Starting Point for Best Practice?
Reversing Adversarial Dynamics in Interviews
Accelerate Your Career with Pattern Matching
Individual Contributor Career Growth w/ Matt Klein (part 2)
Individual Contributor Career Growth w/ Matt Klein (part 1)
The Connection Between Imagination, Confidence and Performance
How Can Two Rational People Disagree?
Test Driven Meetings - Measuring Outputs and Side Effects
3 Assumptions That Can Hurt Your Job Search
Mental Models w/ Gabriel Weinberg, CEO of DuckDuckGo (part 2)
Mental Models w/ Gabriel Weinberg (part 1)
Great Code is Marked by Flexibility
Crafting Your Work By Your Strengths
Make Your Problems Smaller
Three Things I Wish I Learned Earlier in My Career As A Software Developer
3 Red Flags that You're Heading for Burnout
3 Principles for Your Job Search
Mental Simulations - Information (A)Symmetry
Mental Simulations - Persona Perspectives
Metal Simulations - Artificial Constraints
The Fear : Value Connection
What Kind of Decisions Are You Optimizing For?
Contingencies and Planning for Failure
Three Career-Changing Perspective Shifts When Preparing to Start A New Job
Uncovering Your Unconscious With Flagged Behaviors
Meetings - Good, Bad, Or Just Complex?
Modeling Decisions as Dynamic Functions
Thinking in Bets w/ Annie Duke (part 2)
Thinking in Bets w/ Annie Duke (part 1)
Uncovering Deeper Motivations and Goals
Ambiguous Goals, Concrete Actions
Focusing Career Progress
Fail Mode
Feedback Shouldn't Be Scary
Mental Accounting
Headroom
Seek to Understand Rather than Persuade Others Perspectives
Bonus Episode - Soft Skills Engineering Meets Developer Tea
Habits and Replacement Behaviors for Interrupting Triggers
Interview w/ Ali Spittel (part 2)
Interview w/ Ali Spittel (part 1)
Witness Protection Program
Habits of Successful Software Engineers - Getting to Code Quickly and Model Thinking
Habits of Successful Software Engineers - Clarity, Brevity and Context
Interview w/ Bryan Helmig - CTO at Zapier (Part 2)
Interview w/ Bryan Helmig - CTO at Zapier (Part 1)
Habits of Successful Software Engineers - Seeking Feedback
Stress Response and Anger as a Secondary Emotion
Problem Solving Intuitions - Additive, Subtractive and Reorganizational Thinking
Starting Your Work Day with Autonomy
Making Decisions - Fighting Fear and Time Warping
How We Construct Software, Part 4b: Code and Communication
How We Construct Software, Part 4a: Code and Communication
How We Construct Software - Part Three (Decision Variance)
How We Construct Software - Part Two (Beliefs and Models)
How We Construct Software - Part 1 (Substitute Questions)
Beating Procrastination
Poisoning Retrospectives With Hindsight Bias
When Best Practices Backfire - The Peltzman Effect
Replace Your Implicit Questions to Break Out of Incrementalism
Self-Awareness and Intellectual Honesty
Treating Your Brain as More Than a Machine
Improving Confidence and Neutralizing Threats Through Detached Perception
High-Churn Code Should Be Your Cleanest Code
Mental Models - Lenses for Thinking and Decisions (Part 2)
Mental Models - Lenses for Thinking and Decisions (Part 1)
Adding tests to a big untested codebase - Where do I start?
5 Tips for Improving Your Principles of Experimentation
Visualize Your Goals in Details
Expectations vs. Reality
Interview w/ Ben Orenstein (pt. 2)
Interview w/ Ben Orenstein (Part 1)
Interview w/ Michael Chan (pt. 2)
Interview w/ Michael Chan (pt. 1)
Why Rules Apply Especially to Exceptions
3 Practical Steps for Avoiding Narrative Biases
Proof of Complexity and Seeking Simplicity
The Zen Developer - What Are You Pushing On?
Bad Bugs - Avoiding Burnout When Solving Elusive Problems
Practical Tips for Minding the Details
Practicing Non-Attachment as a Developer
A Discussion On Falsehoods Developers Believe
Three Overconfidence Smells
A Challenge Towards Gratitude
Observing Your Stress Responses
How Relative Comparisons Affect Our Decisions
Interview w/ Julian Shapiro (part 2)
Interview w/ Julian Shapiro (part 1)
Inhibition, Fear, and Two Mindsets for Moving Forward in the Face of Uncertainty
Make Programming Principles More Useful with These 3 New Angles
Could We All Be Right? Event vs. Construct Theories
3 Rules for Designing Lasting Habits
Exit Points - Where Productivity Turns Into Procrastination
3 Counterintuitive Rules of Communication with Co-workers
3 Considerations of Symmetry in Code
Learning React - Part 2 (Three lessons from the perpetual path)
Learning React - Part 1 (More than just tooling)
How to Argue Better
Three Perspective Shifts for Philosophical Engineering
Harmony Over Perfection
Backwards Reasoning
Elected Distractions
Interview w/ Trevor Hinesley (Part 2)
Interview w/ Trevor Hinesley (Part 1)
Exploring the Dreyfus Model
How Code Evolves Through Human Influence
Why Great Developer Still Google Their Errors
5 Learning Anti-Patterns
Three Co-Worker Anti-Patterns
When (Not) To Listen To Advice
The Truth About Self-Consciousness & Likeability
Advice and Survivorship
Evaluating the Downside of Shortcuts
Purposeful Mini-Rituals
Change Yourself Instead of the World
Facing Fears Instead of Supporting Them
The Advantage Inexperienced Developers Have
Magnitude of Our Beliefs
What Exactly Is Bias, Anyway?
2 Ways to Use Explicit Systems
Suffering, Fear and Safety
3 Ways to Simplify and Avoid Ego Depletion
Power of Expectations
Interview with Daniel Pink (Part 2)
Interview w/ Daniel Pink (Part 1)
Accepting Change by Focusing on Continuity
Appreciating Jerry Weinberg
Asymmetry and the Halo Effect
Fixing Remote Work Communication
Accepting Irrationality
Fluidity of Time
Primitive Obsessions
Future Features (Are Futile)
Evidence is Not Proof
Fixing Overconfidence with Probabilities
Replacing Implicit Questions
Underestimating the Effects of Gratitude
Smaller Purpose
Problem Chains
Rollercoasters of Emotions
Astrology and The Barnum Effect
A Bug Story - How Narrative Bias Creates Blind Spots
A Research-Backed Argument for Empathy
A Problem Solving Paradox
Attentional Bias & Cognitive Expectations aka "It Was Right In Front Of You The Whole Time"
No Good Options
Choice Frameworking
Three Ways To Avoid Choice Paralysis
Internal Dialogues and Barriers to Change
Coding In The Moment
We Become What We Get Used To
Breaking Out of Incremental Thinking
Interview w/ Andrew Ofstad from Airtable (part 2)
Interview w/ Andrew Ofstad from Airtable (part 1)
Treating Time Seriously
What You Get Wrong About Productivity - A Humanist Approach
Debugging With Isolation & Modularity
Future Thinking & Imagination Barriers
Interview w/ Jon Yablonski (Part 2)
Interview w/ Jon Yablonski (Part 1)
Obligations and the Consequence of Assumptions
Motivation Batching
3 Habits of Learning Developers
Write the Code You Wish You Had
Problem Solving Series #4: Inductive and Deductive Reasoning
Problem Solving Series #3: Perspective Shifts
Problem Solving Series #2: Reframing
Avoiding Dogmatic Protocol
Problem Solving Series #1: Starting By Making It Worse
Secondary Tools
Randomizing live w/ Max Hawkins (Part 2)
Interview w/ Max Hawkins (Part 1)
Subtractive Thinking
Fear, Change & Instincts
Zero Dead Ends - Why Complaining Can Hold You Back
2 Reasons Your Habits Aren't Sticking
3 Ways to Better Cultivate Coworker Connections
4 Code Smells (And How to Fix Them)
4 Principles of Great Learners
Slow Down on Your Quest for Happiness
Fixing Fear: A Heuristic for Maintainable Code
Creating Consensus, Defeating Bias and Getting Better
Broken Brains Take On Statistics
More Misunderstood Truths About Statistics
Misunderstood Truths About Statistics (Part 1)
Why Most People Fail at Fixing Operations
2 Structured Thinking Methods For Problem Solving
3x3: Three Habits for Mental Hygiene
3x3: Three Questions to Help You Uncover Your Short Term Purpose
3X3: Three Questions To Get Unstuck On Big Problems
Setting Better Problem Solving Parameters
3 Problems Every Developer Will Face
Using Bloom's Taxonomy to Learn More Intentionally
Better 1-on-1s With This Simple Question
How Our Tools Shape Us
Delayed Pain
Improvisational Problem Solving Based on Characteristics
Accepting The Unexpected
Asking "Dumb" Questions
The Importance of Mental Models
Actions As Objects
What Are You Creating?
Thinking, Acting & Marshmallows
Olympics, Statistics & Raising Your Average Performance
Project-Oriented Mindset
Research Bias (Part 3)
Research Bias (Part 2)
Research Bias (Part 1)
The Detriments of Social Comparisons
Your Brain Might Betray You
Your Brain is Non-Linear
3 Times When More Code Means Better Code
Our Imagined Fictions
Bringing Your Whole Self to Work
How Can We Be Wrong...Without Knowing It?
Your Angle of Approach in Problem Solving
The Perception Principle
Deconstructing The Lies We Tell Ourselves
Interview w/ Chris Shinkle (Part 2)
Interview w/ Chris Shinkle (Part 1)
Finding Perspective in 2018
Re-Air: The Anatomy of Change
Setting The Course For 2018
2017 Year End Recap
Data Science w/ Elena Grewal (Part 2)
Data Science w/ Elena Grewal (Part 1)
3X3: Anti-Resolutions To Kick Off Your 2018
3X3: Questions that Could Change the Way You Think
3X3: Fallacies to Avoid as a Developer
Interview with Joshua Aziz (Part 2)
Interview with Joshua Aziz (Part 1)
The Power of A Question
Practical Advice for Changing Your Habits
How A Text Message Can Trigger Behavior Change
Inspiring Stories From Listeners - Basil's Story
Interview Week: First Impressions
Interview Week: Characteristics of Growth Oriented Questions
Interview Week: Heather Asks a Question About Dev Ops
"Mindful Distractions" - Focus Week Listener Question
Focus Week: 3 Focus Factors
Focus Week: Deconstructing Distractions
3x3: Morning Routine Tasks Every Developer Should Do
3x3: 3 Things You Can Do To Improve Your Resumé In Just 10 Minutes
3x3: The 3 Things you Shouldn't Be Doing As A Developer
The Future (and Past) of Legal for Developers w/Gary Nissenbaum (part 2)
The Future (and Past) of Legal for Developers w/Gary Nissenbaum (part 1)
Interviewer's Wishes with Jason Vasquez (Part 2)
Working Environment and Secondary Skills w/ Jason Vasquez (Part 1)
Your Interview is Tomorrow? Here's Some Last Minute Advice
How To Navigate Communication Problems - Listener Question from Enrico
Interview w/ Kristen Gallagher (Part 2)
Interview w/ Kristen Gallagher (Part 1)
The Most Important Part of My Day (Part 2)
The Most Important Part of My Day (Part 1)
Interview with Mark Engelberg (Part 2)
Puzzle Games with Mark Engelberg (Part 1)
The 3 Steps in the Cycle of Technological Abstraction
DCR: Traits of Being A Great Developer (Recap)
DCR - Bravery
DCR: Ownership Level Responsibility
DCR: Open Minded Curiosity
DCR: Growth Mindset
DCR: Traits of a Great Developer - Communications Model (Deep Dive)
DCR: Traits of a Great Developer - Communications Expert
DCR: Traits of a Great Developer - Expanding Perspective
DCR: Traits of a Great Developer - Grit of a Scientist
DCR: Traits of A Great Developer - Humility
Introspection - Part 2 - Why & Why Not
Introspection - Part 1 - Finding What You're Best At
Interview w/ Rachel Nabors (Part 2)
Interview w/ Rachel Nabors (Part 1)
Mystery Voices
Planning Series: Scaling and Detailing of Features
Learning Environment
Tips For Students (Re-Air)
Listener Question: Michael Asks About Dev Bootcamps
No More Launches
Thinking in Intervals (Re-Air)
Minimum Viable Prioritization (Re-Air)
Plato's Cave and Defeating Biases
Interview with Kevin Kelly (Part 2)
Interview with Kevin Kelly (Part 1)
Interview with Chris Ferdinandi (Part 2)
Interview with Chris Ferdinandi (Part 1)
3 Lessons of Productivity
Idea Portfolio
Listener Question: Simon Asks About Over-Positivity
Iterative Learning
Strong Opinions Weakly Held
Aesthetic Aha
Listener Question: Daw Chih asks About Over Execution
The Value of The Third Option
Turbulence (Re-Airing)
Don't Throw It Over the Wall
Interview with David Hoffeld (part 2)
Interview with David Hoffeld (part 1)
Listener Question: Andy Asks About His Degree in Mechatronics
The Messaging Paradigm (re-air)
Baby Announcement
Atomic Words
Spiral Learning
Listener Question: Joel Asks About Remote Work As A Junior Developer
Interview with Tom Eich (part 2)
Interview with Tom Eich (part 1)
Creating New Understanding Through Synonyms
Failure Rates, Machine Learning, and You
Anonymous Listener Question: Cowboy Coders
Law Of Conservation of Uncertainty (Part 2)
Law Of Conservation of Uncertainty (Part 1)
Squares Conference (feat. Marcus Morrison)
Squares Conference (Will Riley)
Squares Conference (feat. Noah Labhart)
Squares Conference (feat. Anne Grundhoefer)
Squares Conference (feat. Alex Zub) Part 2
Squares Conference (feat. Alex Zub) Part 1
Squares Conference (feat. Aaron Irizarry)
Squares Conference (feat. Aaron D. Campbell)
Job Descriptions vs. Job Realities
Listener Question: David asks About How to Answer Tooling Questions
Feedback Loops - The Smallest Unit of Learning
Interview with Chris Albon (Part 3 of 3)
Interview with Chris Albon (Part 2 of 3)
Interview with Chris Albon (Part 1 of 3)
Building Your Intuition
You Can't Control Random
Interview with Ben Halpern (@ThePracticalDev, Part 2)
Interview with Ben Halpern (@ThePracticalDev, Part 1)
A Simple Shift for Your Email Inbox Strategy
Listener Question: How Do I stand Out as a Job Applicant?
Listener Question: Jonathan Bocarra Asks About Content Generation and Baby Preparation
How to Hire Well, Even When Limited by Company Policies
Ep. 365 - Practical Ways to Jumpstart Brainstorming
Listener Question: Kan Asks About Creating Reliable Behavioral Systems
This Mistake Could Be Killing Your Resumé
Why You Should Evaluate How You're Spending Your Mental Energy
One Super Simple Tactic to Regain Your Time
Using Substitute Questions to Gain a Better Perspective
Interview with Brad Frost (@brad_frost, part 2)
Interview with Brad Frost (@brad_frost, part 1)
Listener Question: Can I Lead Remotely? (part 2)
Listener Question: Can I Lead Remotely? (part 1)
Interview with Dain Miller (@dainmiller, part 3 of 3)
Interview with Dain Miller (@dainmiller, part 2 of 3)
Interview with Dain Miller (@dainmiller, part 1 of 3)
Don't Trust Your Friends
Not So Trivial: Things That Can Kill Your Focus
How the First Guideline Changes Your Behavior Drastically
Folklore In Your Code
System Vs. Will Power
Interview with Laurence Bradford (@learncodewithme), Part Two
Interview with Laurence Bradford (@learncodewithme), Part One
What it Means to Rush
Listener Question: Harshitha Asks About Startups Vs. Personal Projects
Create an Effective Communication Protocol With these Rules
Three Insights About Heuristics That Can Supercharge Your Decisionmaking
Code Review Excuses
Interview with Lauren Cutrell (part 2)
Interview with Lauren Cutrell (part 1)
The Einstellung Effect
Interview with Kalid Azad (part 3 of 3)
Interview with Kalid Azad (part 2 of 3)
Interview with Kalid Azad (part 1 of 3)
Listener Question: Johannes Asks About Getting Hired in the United States
3 Questions Your Should Be Asking Before Starting A Project
Interview w/ Wes Bos (part 2)
Interview w/ Wes Bos (Part 1)
Prototyping A Pilot Project
Finding Your Perspective
Understand Your Environment
Async Code & Promises
2 Years of Tea
The Anatomy of Change
Interview with Josh Muccio (Part 2)
Interview with Josh Muccio (Part 1)
How Time Affects Decisions
Avoiding, "I Told You So"
Listener Question: Alex Asks About Getting Back Into The Game
Lessons From The Lab
Listener Question: John Wood Asks About Looking for Development Jobs
Two Anti-Patterns To Avoid
3 Commitments for 2017
Listener Question: Cody Asks About Developer Speed
Listener Question: Josh Asks About Getting A Raise