This is a great question. I've been there plenty of times so I know how you might feel nervous potentially looking not knowledgeable.

In short, **always be honest**. People in the industry are smart, and generally can read body language. So they will know if you are just saying "uh huh" without getting it.

I'll be direct a lot of the time with just, "I'm just gonna be honest, I find this part really confusing." Or "I didn't really get what you meant with this part, can you explain that one more time?"

A lot of the time people in tech will view it as a problem with their explanation rather than the fact that you didn't understand, since like I said, the general assumption is that people are pretty smart. So don't feel bad if you didn't understand it. It genuinely may be that they didn't explain it well or that they assumed some context you don't have

Senior Software Engineer and Career Coach

Jordan Cutler

The main thing would be putting what are the goals of the business first, then tying anything you did to that.\
\
Ideally, if you are able to tie your impact to monetary value that would be best.

I wrote an article about some of the mistakes I've made in the past around performance review docs, and there are some good learnings there that I'm sure would be valuable: <https://careercutler.substack.com/p/dont-make-the-same-3-performance>

Very interesting question. I think it depends what you are optimizing for.

For promotions and "career progression" I'd say the answer lies between both of those in "Impact." Whatever mix of technical expertise and domain expertise gets you that, you'd want to optimize for. But as a senior SWE you should have at least 1-2 areas people go to you for / consider you the domain expertise, even for interviews if you decide to job switch. But on top of that it gives you so many other benefits too, including opportunities for impact.

For me, I focus on the technical expertise aspect outside of work, and then focus on impact and domain expertise at work. Domain expertise will come over time though from being there longer and ensuring you aren't constantly working only on the same thing.

As someone who spends A LOT of free time consuming content, and has over the past few years, I get you. It can be tough to see so many things that seem valuable and deal with the feeling of "not seeing it."

I have a couple pieces of advice around this:

1. Accept that there is billions and billions of content out there and there is no way to consume everything. Instead, view your life as a journey. Focus on progress over perfection. If you're growing, you're doing something right.
2. With the fact that there are billions and billions of content out there, you'll also realize that a lot of it is repeated. So if you miss something, realize that you'll probably see the same thing next week, next month, or next year.
3. Constantly assess whether the things you consume are actually providing any value in your life. You get out what you put in. So if you consume a bunch of content but don't actually do anything with it or change your habits, then its a waste. So either change your habits along with the consumption, or find something else that's productive to do with that time.

I hope this helps!

This is a great question and a tough conversation to have.\
\
Some good news for you: I've seen a coworker do this before and it work. I'd imagine some of the feedback you'll get is that you shouldn't do this at all, which might be true but I can say anecdotally it has worked at least once 😂.

I haven't personally tried, and it would probably be a good idea to get advice from an engineering manager, but this is my take:

1. Only directly say the (in a sense) ultimatum, if you really are willing to stand by it.
2. Before stating the ultimatum, try to be as direct as possible in getting an answer on if promotion would be expected **without** needing to state the ultimatum. For example, "Hey so I know we've been chatting a good amount recently about the expectations for the next level, and based on our discussion, I've gotten the impression that I've been meeting the expectations for the next level for X months. Does that align with your thoughts and if it does, would it be fair to say a promotion is in the cards for this upcoming review cycle?" \
   \
   I'm not sure about the exact wording, as it will be different for each person, but hopefully that explains it well enough to where you can reword as you see fit.
3. If the answer is no, have a fair discussion about it, be willing to stand your ground on whats been said in the past and push back respectfully. When I say push back, basically have examples ready about how the goals the two of you set up have been getting consistently met. 
4. At this point, the hope is that you wouldn't have had to issue the ultimatum. However, if you really feel backed into a corner and there is absolutely nothing you can do, I would suggest doing some sort of "deferred meeting." \
   \
   You would say something like, "Thanks for having this discussion with me and this gives me a lot to think about. How about we schedule a follow up to discuss this further next week after I've had a chance to process all this?"
5. Then, you schedule the follow up, and genuinely reflect on the conversation. AFTER this point, you can then decide if you still want to issue the ultimatum or if what your manager is saying genuinely makes sense and you do have some things to do before the promotion. If at that point, you still are feeling that the ultimatum is the only way, then you could go into the follow-up conversation respectfully bringing that up, and stating it by backing up how you have been meeting the expectations of the next level with a few examples (to show its not purely an emotional decision). You can also say that you understand that this creates a difficult situation, and your intention is not for it to create a negative relationship moving forward or creating this difficult situation, it's just stating what you believe strongly. Again, just keeping it respectful throughout the whole thing and understanding that there is a person on the other end.

I hope this helps and best of luck with what route you end up going with!

I agree with Seoyoon and I'd also add that this can be very team dependent.

In some teams it may be very easy depending on the process. Everyone might get together estimating things and you have senior people able to give pretty solid estimates.

However, it's not always the case. To give you a better answer, I'd love to know how your team process works a bit more.

In the meantime, if it helps, I wrote an article on this very topic that echoes Seoyoon's advice too. It might give some other insights to pick up on: <https://careercutler.substack.com/p/how-to-get-estimates-right-95-of>

It's a good question! I would advise you to check out this very short article which will give you better advice than I could write up in this post. 

However, if you have follow up questions afterward--I am happy to answer.

<https://careercutler.substack.com/p/being-blocked-sucks-heres-what-to>

Also on the Taro blog here: <https://www.jointaro.com/blog/being-blocked-sucks-heres-what-to-do-when-it-happens/> (slightly modified version)

Love this question and I definitely have some good resources and advice for you. I'm also looking forward to hearing others chime in, especially the more senior people.

- **What does a good tech vision doc look like?**

This, I will say I have less experience in, but, thinking at a high-level, it doesn't seem super important.

The main thing I'd say is from a writing perspective, think about 2 things:

1. Who is your audience? - It seems like this is management, engineers, principal engineers, etc.
2. What is the goal of you sharing this with them? - It seems like this is "Ensuring everyone is on the same page about a technical direction" but you have the most context here.

Once you have the answer to these 2 questions, write the doc with that in mind.

Organize it however you want. **As long as it is in service of the goal. Don't add unnecessary stuff that is not needed for the goal.**

Now, with this high level advice in mind, I do understand the root of your question is more about: "From experience, what *works* as a technical vision doc?"

I have these resources that might be helpful to use for some ideas:

- [Staff Eng: Writing an Engineering Strategy - this links off to many other resources as well](https://lethain.com/eng-strategies/)

- [Google: Building A Shared Vision](https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1cVWgMmIzDb-BXxgngQ-4IQyHSbkO7K79bc0RP69SC7M/edit#slide=id.g2906151feb_0_0)

---

- **How do I "sell" this vision? & What upfront legwork can I do before I present this doc to everyone?**

1. Understand everyone's incentives. Identify how you can align and make them want what you are proposing.

- **Managers:** What will be the delta between existing and new system? How will engineers be able to make more impact. Managers get promoted through…
  - Their team should deliver on the key features and outcomes for the business.
  - The manager recruits and retains the correct engineers on the team.
  - The manager coaches and grows high-potential employees, and removes low performers before they cause too much damage.
  - The manager collaborates with other teams to identify potential issues or opportunities.
  - The manager contributes to the strategy and roadmap for their team and broader org.
- **Senior eng:** Less stress, ship projects faster, opportunity to show technical depth
- **Junior eng:** Show signal for promotion, ship projects faster, less stress, learning opportunities

(taken from the presentation on revamping on-call processes: <https://www.jointaro.com/event/revamping-oncall-for-20-instagram-engineers-senior-to-staff-project/> highly recommended viewing for your question)

1. The upfront legwork you do will help you sell much easier. Schedule 1-1s with the people you know will disagree with you. Work on it with them. Ask for their advice but also explain why you think a particular way will be better in their language by making a case for their incentives. You might not be able to 100% do this, and this is why for those cases I'd recommend also 1-1ing with people that would be in the middle or on your side to get further buy-in, so you have an overwhelming majority in your favor before the meeting.

---

- **What pitfalls should I be aware of while doing this work?**

The main pitfall to be aware of in my opinion would be thinking about it from your perspective instead of everyone else's. Realistically, you are introducing a large change to maybe 30-50+ people for the next year or so. That's a big deal. You shouldn't go into it thinking, "I need everyone to agree to my proposal." It should be, "How can we come to a solution together that most people would agree will leave us better off in 1+ years"

By the way, I'm not saying you were thinking of it like the former, just wanted to answer your question about a common pitfall.

I hope this helps and best of luck! It seems like this is a really awesome learning opportunity.

Also, shameless self-promotion: I share advice [on my newsletter here](https://careercutler.substack.com/) and your question actually inspires me to make a post about this in the future. Maybe I can combine some of the other advice you receive on this and attribute it. <https://careercutler.substack.com/>

I think it kinda depends. For me, I don't necessarily want my company super involved with the outside stuff I'm doing or concerned that it will impact my work--so I keep a lower profile. Additionally, I wouldn't want any of my personal opinions to be tied to the company and backfire on them and it become a problem with HR for me.

But if that is different for your situation and you're just educating on more "matter-of-fact" things like teaching a programming language, the harm seems minimal especially if you make the slide not a big deal and just a kind of "hey, by the way"

This is an interesting question and it's definitely a good problem to have for Taro. 

Taking a step back, remember that most of your learning will come from "doing." Taro is great to expose yourself to new ideas and frameworks that you might have only learned about over years worth of time with proper mentorship.

However, it means nothing if it comes in, you feel like you're learning, and you don't have a chance to retain it.

So I'd say the best use of Taro would be one where you can actively retain a lot of what you pick up. A good way of doing that, in my opinion, would be identifying a growth area for yourself, and then searching for knowledge in that area specifically. Spend time actively applying the techniques you learn, and when you feel you're ready for a new growth area, move on to a new one.

Over time, you'll have built up multiple skill sets! I hope this helps :)

I'm sorry you have to go through this. 

I'm glad you are looking for ways to work through it rather than job-switching right away. You may end up getting to that point, but situations happen like this at many places, so there's no guarantee job switching would get you what you want.

In terms of advice, I'd echo Rahul's thoughts on having direct discussions about this.

However, one thing I'd watch out for is to be aware of any assumptions you may be making.

In some cases, for example, an assumption such as "This person is showing favoritism" may actually be the following:

- The person receiving favoritism has been feeling severely demotivated lately and recently had a chat with the person who "appears" to be giving favoritism about this. The person who is giving favoritism is actually just trying to be supportive of the other person and get them out of their demotivated situation.

Now I just totally made that up as 1 story. Your story may be right instead. But reading your message, I do get the sense that you've formed a lot of "stories" around why each thing is happening.

My point is that it's ok to have those stories, but recognize them as such. They may not be fact. You will only have all the facts by speaking with the right individuals and coming at any conversation with an open mind to other possible reasons these things may be happening.

Since the above covers everything that I think would be personalized to your case here, for the rest of the advice, I will link you to an article I wrote on having difficult conversations as it talks a bit about the above generally + gives a step by step process for approaching the conversations it appears you should have: <https://careercutler.substack.com/p/what-the-mandalorian-can-teach-you>

I also touch more on this topic in the Taro answer here: <https://www.jointaro.com/question/mNYdLgsDo6kejwgBli1c/how-to-scope-tasks-that-you-have-not-done-before/>

I hope this helps!

Love this question.

I actually had similar feedback which got me rejected as a Senior when interviewing. After working on fixing it, the offers started coming in. I had a LinkedIn post that explained it in a bit more detail: <https://www.linkedin.com/posts/jordancutler1_techcareergrowth-softwareengineering-learning-activity-7042993957881950208-pDqx?utm_source=share&utm_medium=member_desktop>

Overall though, I get you. I had a mindset of making a decision based on everyone else's thoughts first. We are taught to be open-minded and to listen. This is correct, but in some cases we can take it too far.

The way to fix it in my experience has been...

1. Form a technical opinion based on weighing pros & cons before hearing everyone else's thoughts
2. After hearing everyone else's thoughts, you can combine your original ideas and their ideas with what might be the best approach.
3. Over time, reflect and understand where you generally fall in your opinion space. Where can you improve? What assumptions were incorrect? What can you learn from how your initial opinion changed from the ending opinion? By reflecting on these, you'll start to get a better understanding of yourself, your ideas, and be able to build stronger cases for technical decisions.

Hope this helps!

I'm sorry this is happening and these situations suck.

I want to give advice but I'm also curious what you have tried so far. It seems you have brought this up in 1-1 with him, but he's still continued? I'm curious how you approached giving the feedback before and what his response was.

If you did give it already, then I think it could be worth bringing it up again. The main thing with being "assertive" or "direct" is to show it through your actions, a tiny bit of tone but not too much, and using silence to your advantage.

For example:

You: "Hey manager, I wanted to bring up a concern that's been giving me trouble (can replace this with exactly what you are experiencing, like lack of focus or something) during my day-to-day."

*now wait*

Manager: "Okay, what's up?"

You: "A few 1-1's ago I mentioned that I felt like I was experiencing an aggressive tone during meetings, and while I noticed some improvement, I still feel like its happening a lot."

*again, now wait*

Manager: "Oh, wow I actually didn't even realize I was doing that. Can you tell me some examples?"

You: ... some examples

Now that he sees from those examples he hopefully understands better and can learn from it in the future.

///////////////////////

Alternatively, you can start your 1-1 like: "I just wanted to check myself, are you frustrated with me?" (after "hey, how you doing?")

This question plays on a few psychological / negotiation strategies:

- People feel more comfortable saying "no" than "yes." So its very easy for him to say, "No, I'm not frustrated with you" and be on your side right away
- It puts an implicit blame on me, so that the manager feels safe and likely asking himself, "What did I do to make { your name } feel like I'm frustrated with him?"

If he has been noticing something, he can immediately jump into what is actually going on.

If he hasn't been noticing anything, then he is inclined to ask for more details about why you feeling what you're feeling, in a way that doesn't make you the pushy one.

I can't go into a lot of detail about my experience on this for privacy but I can say that this has worked for me in the past really well. 

I hope either of these 2 approaches work out for you!

I agree with Jonathan's points on how you can improve the planning process.

However, I'd say only escalate to the skip if you've had a conversation with your manager directly about this first, unless you have a really good relationship with your skip.

If you do have the conversation with the skip, and they have a much better relationship with your manager than they do you, there's a chance it could come back to bite you in various ways:

- Your skip views you as the problem instead of your manager (not your fault, just how it can be sometimes)
- Your skip tells your manager about this problem in a way that isn't great, and it leads to your manager having a negative view of you, which then translates to worse performance reviews

For having the conversation with your manager, I'd recommend following a framework that can help you address it directly but respectfully.

I have a previous Taro answer that goes into how you can approach difficult conversations like this: <https://www.jointaro.com/question/mNYdLgsDo6kejwgBli1c/how-to-scope-tasks-that-you-have-not-done-before/>

With that said, I'd say do this in ADDITION to what Jonathan pointed out. And you can even incorporate those into the conversation with your manager, saying that these are ideas you have for improving the process

Great question. As an avid context switcher, I have some tips for this.

- Schedule time on your calendar to yourself to specifically work on something. Reward yourself if you manage to spend time doing it or punish yourself if not (like doing 20 pushups)
- Look up the GTD system and Clark Kegley Notion templates. I personally have not tried them but they help for stuff like this. The general idea is that you track what you plan to do in a couple buckets that make it easy to just pull from the right "queue."
- Set slack reminders. You can use the "remind me later" feature in Slack to not let things slip.
- Try to be observant about when you said you would do something but haven't got around to it. Most times the other person just wants to know you didn't forget about it, so you can let them know you haven't forgot but haven't got to it. For me, I have literally just a bullet list at the top of my Notion inbox and I check it every day or two. If I see something is on there that I know someone has been waiting on for awhile, I'll DM them to let them know I didn't forget

Hope this helps!

Great question and something awesome to be thinking about. Books have definitely been extremely impactful in my career.

For your goals:

1. [A Philosophy of Software Design](https://www.amazon.com/Philosophy-Software-Design-2nd-ebook/dp/B09B8LFKQL/ref=sr_1_1?crid=1QBIKK6EGJEM3&keywords=A+Philosophy+of+Software+Design+by+John+Ousterhout&qid=1683376795&sprefix=a+philosophy+of+software+design+by+john+ousterhout%2Caps%2C94&sr=8-1)
2. [System Design Interview Vol 2](https://www.amazon.com/System-Design-Interview-Insiders-Guide/dp/1736049119/ref=sr_1_3?crid=Q22EZFFVTA13&keywords=system+design&qid=1683891090&sprefix=system+design%2Caps%2C126&sr=8-3)
3. [Designing Data-Intensive Applications](https://www.amazon.com/Designing-Data-Intensive-Applications-Reliable-Maintainable-ebook/dp/B06XPJML5D/ref=sr_1_1?keywords=designing+data-intensive+applications&qid=1683891125&sprefix=designing+data%2Caps%2C240&sr=8-1)

I also have a full set of recommended books that have helped me in my career here: <https://bento.me/jordancutler>

On the soft skills topic:

This is something I struggled with and in a way continue to struggle with because of a very strange upbringing. I often feel like there's something I'm "missing" in a way that it doesn't feel like other people are. So I totally get you.

The way I have learned a lot of my skills is in a way--robotic. I've watched charisma videos, social skills videos, and read tons of books. 

Now, if you were to wave a magic wand and watch and read everything that I did in 1 afternoon, it wouldn't magically make you a soft skill expert.

What will make you a soft skill expert, or at least help you get better at it over time, is to take in these concepts and apply them over time to your day-to-day situations. Understand that change takes time to happen.

Given that, if you're interested in the resources I've used to start applying these over time:

- Check out the "Communication books" section here: <https://bento.me/jordancutler>
- I also recommend watching the "[Charisma on Command](https://www.youtube.com/@Charismaoncommand)" youtube channel. They analyze celebrities and highlight their soft skills or ways they can improve, so it's a fun way to learn.

Agreed with the existing responses, I'll just add one thing.

Equally important to stating what you do intend is stating what you don't intend.

**Example:** "**My intent isn't to be a blocker or an annoyance during PR review,** it's to work together on the code in a way that works for both of us and ensures consistency / maintainability."

The "your actual intent" part can be modified how you like. The first sentence is the "what you don't intend part" and it opens the other person up.

In their head, they may have a "story" that they created about you. It might be something like: "This person is just an annoying blocker that I don't want to deal with when I put up code reviews." Expressing what you don't intend helps to start canceling out the story they've built up in their head, makes them come back down to earth, and realize that you are just a human trying to make things better together

I agree with Kuan's point entirely. I'll just add one major tip for improving code velocity:

Schedule pairing sessions with more senior engineers. First, ask if you can shadow them as they work on a feature. After a few times, ask if they would be open to shadowing you or working together on a feature.

The more important one is shadowing them though. 

Take advantage of your time as a junior engineer to learn from your more senior peers about things you likely don't know you don't know. Things like interactions with git, navigating the codebase, finding edge cases, testing, verifying your changes, deploying, etc. 

Do this and you will learn a lot on how to ship at a faster pace

Thanks for being open to sharing the habit you do to learn from your mistakes.

I think whether its an unhealthy habit would depend on its impact on you. 

- Does it make you feel bad about yourself as a person?
- Does it actually help you get better at these things?
- Does it lower your self-esteem?

Be cautious about it depending on the answers above.

Regardless of what you do to help you learn from your mistakes, it's important to remember that none of us are perfect. We are far from it. It's completely normal to have things you want to get better at. So there's no sense in beating yourself up over it.

With that said, if you're looking for other approaches, here are some that come to mind:

- Identify a pattern or group of things you'd like to work on. Read a book on it, take highlights with Readwise, then set Readwise to give you highlights of that book every day. Try to apply some amount of the tips you read into your day-to-day. Check them off over time
- Meditate. I personally can't commit to this but I know it is highly recommended. You could either do the "not thinking about anything" meditation or a more "reflective" meditation, where you just let yourself think about the different parts of the day that happened, what went well, and what you think could have gone better.
- In general, reward yourself when you do things that show you are making progress. It can be getting a nice meal, dessert, a new video game, watching extra Netflix, getting a massage, anything like that. It will help reinforce your growth mindset and help your mind relax.

Regardless of what you do, I recommend reading or watching an Atomic Habits summary. The one by Ali Abdaal is good: <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YT7tQzmGRLA>. Him and Clark Kegley have good videos about habits: <https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=clark+kegley+habits>

Best of luck!

This is a great question and topic and I appreciate the context you've given around everything.

From your writing alone, I can tell you are doing what you can and taking every step in the right direction.

The sense that I get is that the feedback you are receiving and the structure within the team is very informal. It seems like the feedback given was more offhand and not part of targeted growth conversations. Let me know if I'm off here. I'm going to work under that assumption.

With that, I think what could help your situation is **adding** structure. 

Given what you're experiencing, to start I'd recommend asking your manager to have a conversation about growth to get a sense of where you're at and what you can improve and start working toward to ensure you're succeeding at your current level and can start thinking about the next level. 

Let your manager know that what you'd like to do is look at the current level expectations and the next level expectations. You'd like to discuss them and categorize where you're at with each of them as a "red", "yellow", or "green." **All of this should be done outside of the context of the problems you brought up in this question**. It should just be a general career growth discussion.

As you go through each expectation, you can ask questions that get you more info on what sort of things would get you to a green (from a red or yellow). "What actions would you recommend to bring me to a green?" Or you can suggest some. "If I started doing these things by this date would that get me to a green?"

Color coding:

**Green:** Has been meeting this expectation for some time and shows that will continue

**Yellow:** Has started to meet this expectation but needs to show it more continuously

**Red:** Has not shown this expectation yet or has only shown it minimally.

The reason I recommend this exercise is that it will move you away from the offhand feedback to a higher level. Once you have the higher-level picture, you can take that into your current project and figure out how you can apply it there. You can also more easily align with your manager on why you may be taking certain actions. "Based on our discussion around expectations, since these were my biggest areas of development this is what I'm working on."

I'll quickly jump back to your first question:

- Let your TL know you'd like to take on more responsibility and ask how you can help. Ideally, you could be involved in a more leadership capacity. Ask if they would be open to that or if any ideas come to mind for them. If you have ideas of ways you could take stuff off their plate so they can do stuff they want to do more of, then feel free to suggest it
- Find some other area to excel or be an expert in. Something that will be memorable by the stakeholders. It could be just having a really solid understanding of the technicals, shipping before deadlines, cutting scope, giving really memorable demos, being a role model for communication, creating high quality documentation, there's always room to stand out.
- Be ok with just doing what the TL expects in a really solid way. Sometimes the opportunity to shine won't be there as much. That's okay. You could let your manager know that you'd like to take on a leadership role in an upcoming project; or you could find some opportunity for improvement and try to make it become a project. If you are the one bringing it to the team, you'll almost certainly be the one to lead it.

I hope this helps and I know this topic has a lot of nuance around it. I offer coaching calls that are free for the first 15min one. Feel free to take advantage if you'd like to discuss this in more detail: <https://superpeer.com/careercutler>

This definitely seems like a challenging situation.

In summary, if I'm understanding correctly:

- Your manager and teammates are working on the weekends, implicitly giving you an expectation of doing the same
- You're underestimating tasks, further adding to the pressure of working weekends to meet the "deadline" you set for yourself

The second one is an easier one to solve, but the first one is really adding to the pressure of working weekends; so let's start with that one.

To me, it seems like you'd really need your manager's support to not feel that pressure. **You could just start not working the weekend, and that is totally a valid option.** At that point, you can wait to see if your manager brings it up and if it starts to create other challenges.

But for now, I'll assume the goal is to get your manager to explicitly say to you: "Please do not work weekends."

In this case, you'll want to have another conversation with your manager. Here's how to approach it:

1. **Establish mutual respect and purpose**\
   For more info on this, [see my article here](https://careercutler.substack.com/p/what-the-mandalorian-can-teach-you), but the general idea is you want to start off by getting on the same page with your manager about your common goals. You both want to see the company and team succeed. You appreciate all that your manager has done for you and you notice how much he cares about the team. You feel the same way about wanting to be on a great team with a good culture. Afterward, you can get into the main topic. Doing this creates safety in the conversation, makes your manager feel good, and gets him or her to want to help.
2. **Make it about your mutual purpose, not your personal passions.** \
   You could start the conversation off by asking something like, "With that said, I wanted to talk to you about some of the expectations I have been feeling lately and the impact I feel it could have on our goals as a team. Would that be okay?"\
   \
   Afterward, you can explain how the specific actions that have been making you feel pressured (like everyone working weekends), which is leading to a feeling of burnout on your end. You're worried that this may impact your ability to productively contribute impact toward our goals over time. You could also mention the impact on your mental health. And then ask, "What are your thoughts?" or "I'd really like to hear your opinion on this."

This is actually the exact 3-step approach in the article here: <https://careercutler.substack.com/i/113691080/step-approach-to-success>

Here it is copied and pasted in:

1. State what you have noticed from a factual perspective

2. Describe the impact on the mutual purpose

3. Ask their thoughts

   1. “What are your thoughts?”

   2. “I’d really like to hear your opinion on this.”

   3. “Please let me know if you see it differently”

After you ask their thoughts, the hope is that they would be receptive. However, that might not be the case. They may say something like you previously mentioned of, "We should be lucky to even have a job in this economy." If they do, here's a sample of how you could keep pushing at it:

"Yeah, I get that. The economy is really tough right now. However, I can't help but feel like this will hurt us in the long run. I'd really like to talk through a solution with you."

Alternatively, if it seems like your manager won't budge, you should probably start looking for new positions--or just don't work weekends and see what happens. Your company isn't paying you for working on weekends so you really shouldn't be.

Lastly, since this is already pretty long, on estimates, check my LinkedIn explainer here: <https://www.linkedin.com/posts/jordancutler1_softwareengineering-activity-7051234920660099072-cwyg?utm_source=share&utm_medium=member_desktop>

Just a small add-on to Brad's response...

One way to identify this or grow your skills a bit is check out <https://www.frontendmentor.io/> (specifically since you said you were into frontend).

As you look through the various things you could build, question if you think you could do it. If not, there might be some learning opportunities there!

Oof, that situation is rough + the skip level's response to "don't take it personally" and read this book might be nearly as bad.

I agree with Lee's points, and have a couple other suggestions to tack on to hopefully improve **your** relationship with this E6 in the meantime of the managers hopefully working on it too.

The first thing is on mindset: **It will be very difficult for your E6 to be offended by your questions if the following 2 things are in place**

1. **Intent:** If your E6 knows that your intent with your questions is purely to gain a better understanding of the task he is assigning you
2. **Mutual purpose:** Do both of you want the same thing? If he believes this to be true, then again it will be very difficult for him to get frustrated by your questions. For example, do both of you want to just perform well so your EM can notice and then give you a positive performance review. Probably. But in the moment, he's probably not thinking about this.

See if you can get him to align with you on these. Don't call it out as explicitly as I did. But here's one potential avenue for approaching asking:

"Hey E6, I'm looking forward to jumping into this. It seems like an interesting task. Thanks for sending it on. So that I can get a better understanding for my process, would you be open to a 15 min zoom where I ask a few additional questions?"

I padded in a bit more niceties than you may need, but modify based on your style and relationship. That could hopefully communicate the 2 things of intent on why you are asking your question and mutual purpose, that both of you just want to do well. On mutual purpose, you may be able to add in something else to emphasize it a bit more.

As a second piece:

You can have a 1 on 1 with your E6 where you let them know some of the challenges you've been experiencing and how it has been making you feel. 

I'm not great on advice for asking for the 1-1, but generally, when requesting it, don't put them on the defensive like saying "Hey, can we talk about your communication this last week." Instead, maybe something like, "Hey, I had some things on my mind about the handoff process we've been doing and was wondering if you would be open to having a zoom 1-1 to chat further?" I don't necessarily like that too much, but just giving you a general idea.

For the actual 1-1, this goes into the "giving feedback" form of advice I'm sure you can find on Taro; but some things to keep in mind are...

**Focus on these:**

1. The situation and actions, not him as a person
2. The impact on you
3. The intent and mutual purpose that you share above.

Tell him that you want to have a great relationship with him and you'd like his thoughts on how to better accomplish that.

If you did your job right, he will probably first apologize profusely for his actions, tell you he is going to take steps to correcting it, and get a better communication process with you going forward. He may not do exactly this though just FYI, especially based on his prior actions. But based on his level that's what I would expect.

I wish you the best of luck with this sticky situation! Feel free to connect with me on LinkedIn: <https://www.linkedin.com/in/jordancutler1/>. I'm always looking to grow my network with like-minded people :)

Hey there! This is a great question I'd love to weigh in on. I know this got partially answered during office hours so I'll reiterate for posterity + add some thoughts of my own.

During office hours (and I 100% agree):

- Set up a framework / process / policy for contributing to your area of the code. It's so much easier to defer to policy as a rule to follow rather than getting in a verbal or typing battle with someone
- Make it easier to contribute in a way that doesn't lead to bugs. As Lee mentioned, depending on what's being added, you may be able to allow them to add code elsewhere that "plugs in" to your system without it affecting much of your code. This may be a win on both ends. You don't need to maintain it or review their code, and they don't need to view you as a blocker.

Here's what I'll add regarding communication:

- **Be ok with being the gatekeeper. Just do so respectfully but sternly.** Given you are a senior engineer, it's your responsibility to safeguard the code from bad patterns and bugs, especially from external teams. I can't imagine the external teams challenging that authority at all. So the only question then is how to approach that safeguarding mentality...
- **Be as collaborative and understanding as possible.** If they are adding features or at least making an attempt to make your system better, they are making an active step to avoid putting that work on you as a feature request. This should be viewed as a positive thing and you can have the mindset that they are a good samaratan that just needs a bit of guidance. For example, thank them for their contribution and the time they spent on what they are trying to add. After thanking them, suggest having a chat over zoom so you can get a better understanding of the change and go through it together. In zoom, communication will be much easier than typing. In zoom, you can bring the topics up like you being looped in earlier so that you can have ample time to review and its not a surprise to you. Speak from your perspective on this and how it has affected you, and don't make it about them. Make it about the behavior / action that has occurred of a large review being sprung onto you. Speak about it in a way that they will empathize with. Doing that would hopefully create a more collaborative and understanding relationship. You can then ask them given that, what suggestions would they have for a process that would be beneficial for both of y'all. What is it that you can provide that they need? And you can offer up a suggestion or two.

That last bullet spiraled out of control a little bit, but I just wanted to nail in the mindset of the collaborative relationship, and you are just looking for a process or way that you two can work together that will benefit both of you.

Hope this helps! Best of luck.

This is a fantastic question! I have a few thoughts:

First, let me just start by saying I totally get where you're coming from. In my first job, I ended up having a time where my manager needed to get me and another coworker into a room because we were constantly not seeing eye-to-eye. And we needed to hash it out with him there. It was not a great time.

From that and other experiences, here's what I've learned:

1. **Fix the problem before it begins.** Oftentimes, you can feel a sense of tension building between you and another coworker. If you feel that, try to find ways to lower that tension and build a relationship of greater compassion. For example, you can lightly bring up things in a recurring 1-1 with that person before it spirals into a barrage of things that have built up over the past few months. Or you can catch yourself and find other ways to ensure a good relationship.
2. **Understand that anger / frustration is almost never the answer, so it's in your best interest to think of alternatives--at least when speaking directly with that person.** It's ok to let out frustration to others such as a friend, mentor, or coach. But don't show that to the person you're disagreeing with. Let's say you are frustrated with someone else because they don't code review your code often. You'd probably see a better result empathizing with the fact that they're probably very busy and wondering if there's any way you can help them out (assuming you see that they are busy) instead of expressing your frustration for them taking long to code review your PRs.
3. **Understand that sometimes there isn't much you can do to change others, so be okay with agreeing to disagree.** Sometimes you just won't see eye-to-eye with people. And that's ok. Just be respectful about it, acknowledge their points, but agree to disagree.

Lastly, here's a copy-paste of the bullets I refer to when I get in a disagreement to help me stay level-headed.

If someone disagrees with you, the first instinct should not be to show why they are wrong but to **understand why they disagree**.

## Process

1. Try to bring the conversation into zoom instead of over text. This makes it easier to get an understanding for each other.
2. Approach the discussion with an open mind and understand why they disagree.
3. Repeat back to them their point to make sure you’re on the same page.
4. Weigh the pros and cons, and evaluate what makes sense as a step forward.
5. Consider other potential options that take both sides into account
6. If a stalemate occurs, call it out and bring in a 3rd party like the rest of the team. At this point, I would try to collaborate with the person on a pros & cons doc that describes both options to bring to the team.

If you found my answer helpful, I'd sincerely appreciate a follow/connect on LinkedIn! I'm working on building up my network and would love your help. <https://www.linkedin.com/in/jordancutler1/>

You've asked a really solid question and it's a difficult situation.

From a high-level, when facing problems such as this, there are 3 levers you can pull.

1. Scope - how much do you expect to accomplish. What can you cut to meet the deadline you want
2. People - Can people be added to speed up the project
3. Time - The other 2 lead into this one, and if you can't get more time, you need less scope or more people.

Given that, you could essentially have a discussion with your manager about any of those three things. Maybe he can get you more people to help, or you could find ways to cut scope or add technical debt in the short term.

One thing I would suggest is to think about it from your manager's perspective--why does he feel the need to imply that people work overtime to get this done? Is it because this project landing is essential to the survival of the company? Is it because he will be impacted negatively in some way by the project not getting shipped on time? In what way will he be impacted? If you can find that out, you might be able to come up with the best way to communicate your concerns to your manager, and potentially solve the problem he has with it going on a bit longer.

Some actionable approaches to the conversation with your manager:

- As always, make sure to stay level-headed and come off as respectful, but be willing to stand your ground
- Approach to asking: "I understand there were some unexpected roadblocks that came up which are giving us some issues with meeting the deadline; I plan on scheduling a team retro so we can discuss how to plan better in the future. For the current state of the project though, I'd love to explore what options we could come up with to get as close to the deadline as possible. Would you be open to that?" Manager says yes, then you present a couple options. 
- If in the end, it ends up leading to no possible options (not able to reduce scope, add people, maybe reduce time spent in meetings, etc.)-- again, try to find what the urgency is around the deadline and discuss solutions around that.
- If THAT ends up leading to nothing, this is the point where you have to decide if you want to stand your ground. If you do, do so respectfully--"I'm not comfortable with asking my team to work overtime. And I have responsibilities I need to take care of after work. I understand that this isn't a great situation; I can promise you though that I will be working as hard as possible during working hours and am going to keep you updated with the progress of the project".

My advice here is a bit more specific to your situation, and I'm sure there are other approaches, so it might be worth waiting to see if others chime in.

There is a video on this I recently watched here too, which may not apply 100% directly but you can get some general principles from: <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sBNHvx8Vc6M>

Please let me know how this goes! I'm very curious and I'd like to know if this ended up being helpful. Reach out to me on LinkedIn here: <https://www.linkedin.com/in/jordancutler1/>

I love this question!

TL;DR - There are many different approaches. Pick the one that works the best for you. One approach I recommend is the following 2 step approach:

1. Ask yourself who your audience is and how that affects what content you write and how you write it
2. Ask yourself what is the one concept or takeaway you want your readers to get. Emphasize that, and divide into sections that further help the reader grasp that takeaway.

**More things to do to help you achieve your desired outcome:**

- The person you are working with likely has their own methods. Consider asking if you can shadow or work on a doc with them to learn from how they do it. You can also continuously try to pick up any patterns just from reading the docs they write.
- Ask them for mentorship on a doc you are writing so they can tell you what you may be doing wrong or could be doing better.
- Follow formats or pull from formats you like in other articles. Here is a few I have saved up:
  - <https://dondo.org/2022/02/18/on-writing-documents/>

    <https://laurensperber.com/2016/02/25/presentation-building-software-at-etsy/>

    <https://about.gitlab.com/direction/>

    <https://rinaarts.com/how-to-write-an-effective-design-document/>

    <https://adr.github.io/>

    <https://blog.pragmaticengineer.com/scaling-engineering-teams-via-writing-things-down-rfcs/>

    <https://www.lennysnewsletter.com/p/my-favorite-templates-issue-37?s=r>

I hope this helps! 

Feel free to follow me on LinkedIn for more advice like this to a broader audience: [www.linkedin.com/comm/mynetwork/discovery-see-all?usecase=PEOPLE_FOLLOWS&followMember=jordancutler1](http://www.linkedin.com/comm/mynetwork/discovery-see-all?usecase=PEOPLE_FOLLOWS&followMember=jordancutler1)

Senior Software Engineer at Series C Startup

Awesome! So glad that’s helpful. Thanks for posting the original context. That’s helpful. Have a great night!

For me, one of the biggest things is having a source of new knowledge coming in via people you respect or admire as engineers who set the bar for the rest of the industry. I follow peoples newsletters and LinkedIn and catch up on their posts and read their articles daily or at the end of the week if I didn't have a chance during the week.

I make it easy to catch up on them using a tool called Mailbrew (<https://mailbrew.com/>) which bundles up your emails into one for the day (though I think there are other tools too)

I'm happy for the question, though I do want to share a bit of feedback. When asking the question that involves external context, try to provide the resources or summarization necessary for the answerer to get caught up on that context as quickly as possible.

To roughly quote Alex, "make it easy for the person answering your question to help you"

So with that said, I don't really have context on this "One Diff, One Thesis" video; I tried to look it up but didn't see anything. But I can take a guess at it and give you advice based on what I got in your question.

This is going to be short and simple but, "Make a stack." PRs should really only be &gt; 500-1000 lines if you are doing some large change across the codebase that literally requires it to be that long, like a library upgrade or implementing a new linter rule or migration or something.

A PR stack involves having a feature branch, which then has multiple branches over time branching off of it to implement small parts of that feature. It may be a small piece of the logic for example. As long as each PR gives the broader context to the rest of the PRs and the vision as a whole, you should be fine to take this approach for something you would have considered to be a 2000 line PR otherwise. A tool called Graphite exists that makes making stacks easier <https://graphite.dev/stacking> for people who don't have the tooling at their company by default (like there is at big tech companies).

I hope this helps!

This is a fun question. 

It's hard to tell exactly without being in the situation, but thinking from your leads' perspective, **any feedback is good feedback**. The fact that you are feeling this, means that whether you are right or not, the lead (or the two of you) should sort out a better understanding of each other.

Action items for this would depend on how close you are to your lead and how candid you can be with them.

One thing that stands out to me as a potential reason why it comes across as defensive is that he is bringing up the timeframe that X task was ago. For example, 

"What about task y?" sounds much less defensive than "What about task y from 2 weeks ago?" because the 2 weeks ago example shows he is keeping much more of a micromanaging eye on it.

I think one avenue could be providing that feedback to him of saying that you understand where he's coming from with wanting to check in on those things, and that one way to make it come off a bit softer to you personally would be to not mention the time ago that it was. Leave it at that. Don't add to the feedback more than that. Before sharing this feedback, you could leave them open to it by first asking if they would be open to you sharing a small piece of feedback that you think could help **you** out a lot. Again, the focus should be on you. Don't make it about the team since you don't want to speak for the team; just yourself.

Hope this helps!

This is a great question, and one that I often struggle with as someone who loves to read books and take tons of highlights and retain only a few things.

I think I've found my groove at this point though. Here's my advice:

1. Let yourself know that it's ok to go down those learning rabbit holes. Life isn't all about the side projects you accomplish. If you're having fun learning, let yourself enjoy it.
2. With that in mind, it's important to make sure you are actually learning. There are a bunch of approaches to this. Here's a few...
   1. Build a second brain from what you are learning: <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K-ssUVyfn5g>. Take notes and categorize to better your retention.
   2. If reading a book, use Readwise so they refresh you on your highlights, and read with the goal in mind of getting little snippets you will be reminded about that will be valuable to you.
   3. Reverse your learning. Focus on the side project, and when you hit a roadblock, do some learning. Once you got yourself past that roadblock, continue on the side project.

I hope these tips help. If you find my advice helpful, feel free to follow me on LinkedIn: 

[www.linkedin.com/comm/mynetwork/discovery-see-all?usecase=PEOPLE_FOLLOWS&followMember=jordancutler1](http://www.linkedin.com/comm/mynetwork/discovery-see-all?usecase=PEOPLE_FOLLOWS&followMember=jordancutler1)

Love this question!

\+1 to Rahul's comment about giving credit. Give credit even for the smallest things, like if you did something above and beyond in standup but you being able to do that quickly was due to very fast code reviews from another team member, give them a shout-out.

A couple of other ideas come to mind as someone who leans heavily on the side of self-promotion:

- Try to be self-aware of how many times you may be saying something that could come across as bragging, even if you're not, and just gauge it / minimize it based on the vibes you get.
- Only give updates that are relevant to other team members. For example, if you shipped a change that is an internal tool that people can now use, feel free to tell the people it would be valuable to. But if you are working with someone outside of your team and helping them on something, it's not relevant to bring up in your teams standup unless it is negatively impacting your ability to get your things done. Instead, ask that person for feedback regarding the thing you helped them with when reviews time comes around, and your manager can find out about it then (or in 1 on 1 if relevant)

Join Taro and [Jordan Cutler](https://www.linkedin.com/in/jordancutler1/), a Senior Engineer at Pinterest and [High Growth Engineer](https://read.highgrowthengineer.com/) author to learn 21 rapid-fire ways to become a better engineer. You'll learn the top underused tips and skills to grow in your career.

We'll cover:

- Career growth
- Influence
- Communication
- Managing up
- Leading projects
- Technical skills
- Productivity

Be ready for practical and actionable advice. No BS included.

See you there!

Senior Engineer at Pinterest, Author of High Growth Engineer

Tech Lead @ Robinhood, Meta, Course Hero

Alex Chiou

Tech Lead/Manager at Meta, Pinterest, Kosei

Rahul Pandey

21 Ways to Make Yourself a Better Engineer

This is one of most important interview rounds, especially for engineers targeting more senior levels. However, so many engineers struggle in these interviews due to poor communication skills.