Productivity Q&A and Videos

When doing a side-project to add to my resume to learn a new tool (e.g. Spark, Airflow, dbt since I'm a Data Engineer) or even a new language, how long should a good side-project take? I know this question is incredibly ambiguous in that side-projects can have tremendous variability in terms of their depth and breadth, and I know that the best side projects (those with real users) can never end if you're constantly improving them and taking feature requests. Still, if I'm a beginner to them and am trying to add 2-3 in the next, say, 3 months, how long (in terms of hours) should a decent side-project take? I believe Gayle Laakmann Mcdowell says you can do a good resume project in a weekend. That's ambiguous (2 hours or 48 hours straight?), but it at least bounds it.

As I go through the lectures on Taro, it seems like we need to have a lot of ownership, deal with ad-hoc problems to help the team, review a lot of code, refactor, and etc. I feel like this is really hard in a scrum setting where we know what we exactly we are going to do that sprint, and if we do not work on the assigned tasks, our projects get delayed, missing deadlines. I wanted to know what the correct approach is here, do we try to think this beforehand and allocate some sprint points for these tasks? Or as we become higher level engineers, are we just expected to work more? Is it a realistic view that senior engineers could work 40 hours per week, or is that almost impossible? For me, I feel like I have a pattern of getting pulled into these tasks during my sprints and sometimes missing my deadlines by few days and so have adapted to avoiding these tasks. How could I avoid missing deadlines and still work on these tasks, at the same time maintaining work life balance?

Hi guys, I found an interesting point in another thread and I don't know, what should be a correct response to it. Here is it: "You spent 12 hours of work on an issue and got a working solution. You submit a PR with only a day left before the sprint ends. One of your coworkers looks at your code, thinks it's good enough, but suggests a better solution you haven't thought of. What do you do?" Especially, what if I have a bigger feature, spent one week for it and need another 3 days, if I will change my code. What would you do?

In the age of IDEs with autocomplete, chat gpt and copilot does it makes sense to learn it? I have seen Devs who use Vim browse through files and make changes at tremendous speed and am curious if it's a good tool to improve my productivity. I did do a bit of Vim during my bachelor's but mostly used IDEs in all my jobs. It will take me some time to learn and make the switch but I feel it's a good time to learn it. Also what is the importance of setting up your tooling and IDEs in being able to code faster.

More often than not, problems are enlisted in quarterly roadmaps. From a tech complexity perspective, how do you evaluate problems which are highly complex in nature. If such problems don't exist in my team or if they exist but don't generate high outcome, should I look for outside my team to solve such problems?

Recently, I was required to work on multiple things in parallel. Like 1-2 features and couple of bugs. In theory there are dead moments, like waiting 20 minutes for a build, that I can use to do something else. But even in those 20 minutes I feel like my context belongs to that task and it seems hard to switch the branch and investigate a bug while the build is running because of the context switch and when the build is done I have to come back to the previous task and re-switch context. Also the pressure of knowing that I have to deliver multiple things is very stressing. Even though they might not be complicated things, the pressure alone of knowing that I have multiple items and the deadline is coming is very harmful. Is there any "trick" or effective way to work on multiple items at the same time without feeling like "drowning" and to not be affected by the multiple deadlines pressure?

I'm mainly working remotely due to covid and a team distributed across time zones, but I feel like earlier-in-career engineers like myself should have more in-person work. How can I overcome the barriers of remote work?

I used to be a mid-level Business Engineer at a FAANG company and recently joined this company as a SWE 4 months ago. Although it was a pleasant surprise to be uplevelled during the interview, I feel like I am not performing at my level now. There are backend engineering conversations where I lose context pretty fast. In fact the mid level engineers in my team are much more knowledgeable and faster than me. I don't want to bother them to explain too much because it feels like everyone else (even those who are relatively new) "gets it" except for me. I have a young toddler who only goes to daycare twice a week (due to affordability). The rest of the days I have to cook and get him to eat and attend to him during work hours occasionally. As a result, I stretch my day but it feels like I am going to burn out soon. I work from 5am to 11pm daily and work weekends because I feel I am lagging behind too much, but new things always pile up. I feel really mentally drained out doing work continuously over the past few months. At the same time, I don't want the company to think they made a wrong decision to hire me at this level.

Could be unconventional; like you have Nutella sandwich on a fishing line that dangles over your desk and gets closer with each closing of a user story. Or could just be listening to classical music with a nice ambiance.

There is some claims out there that organisations are gaining 20-40% in productivity using AI. I would love to get hear from people of what all tools are being used and what's the impact of each one.

This might have been asked before but I couldn't find an answer. Can be a good video idea. At my company, I am currently owning 3 L-sized (>1.5months) projects in parallel. They are with different teams and different product managers, and I am having difficulty managing all 3 at once. Things I am facing: Every morning, I face the question - "which one do I focus today" When giving estimates in individual project sync meetings, I try to give estimates by assuming my time would be equally divided among the 3, but its almost always unequally divided, meaning some product manager is let down almost always. A lot of times, if I am focusing on project A for the day, if I get pings about project B a lot, then my focus keeps going towards project B, and I can't make progress on both project A and project B. I feel like this is such a common problem, but I cant find a solution that fits my needs. Appreciate senior engineers' input on this

I've recently been working on multiple work items at once. One of them is an older work item that has been blocking me for while and needs research, and the other is on a new project that needs me to learn a different paradigm since the application is built differently (say, something like functional programming). Since the build and deployment for my own testing (prior to pushing code) for each can take time (around 10-15 minutes), I try to swap between tasks to get more done. However, I've noticed a decrease in the quality of my own code in terms of the feedback I've been receiving - similar comments, silly mistakes etc, that I'm not happy with. Part of that might be because I'm working with a different type of application and codebase than what I'm used to, but I still don't feel like I'm able to focus while jumping between things. How do you juggle and work with multiple work items effectively? Do you time block, do it on alternate days, anything you would recommend? Thank you in advance.

I just started my software engineer journey and have a typical 9 - 6 working schedule. I feel like the time is getting so limited after I get back home. My goal is to keep some personal time for learning and personal projects every day but still achieve a good balance. Genuinely look for time management or scheduling advice for newbies in the industry. Thanks a lot!

I have previously worked as a software engineer at an company with a more traditional tech stack and working methods. Now, I am two months into my role as a mid-level engineer at my new company, where I develop microservices using a modern tech stack that supports hundreds of thousands of users. However, I am finding that my personal progress is slower than desired. My performance in the technical interview was alright, and my EM expects me to gradually assume more senior responsibilities to assist our tech lead. Accordingly, I have been selecting tasks that demonstrate leadership qualities. At the same time I feel like I don't have time to plan meetings when I clearly lack expertise in our current tech stack. To bridge the gap in my technical skills, I immerse myself in technology podcasts during my commute and workouts, making the most of my available time. In the evenings, I try to read blogs and work on side projects. Additionally, I rely extensively on Taro for learning the behavioral aspects of engineering. To make up for my slow pace, I ensure my PRs are thoroughly prepared, aiming to establish myself as a reliable engineer. Despite these efforts, I recognize the need to boost my productivity. What further steps can I take to thrive in my new role?

Hello Community, I hope you're all doing well. I'm reaching out to this community because I value the diverse experiences and perspectives we share, and I find myself in need of some advice. Recently, I've been going through a challenging period due to some personal and family issues. Without going into too much detail, these challenges have started to impact my work performance and my ability to communicate effectively with my team, especially during on-call responsibilities. While I strive to maintain professionalism, I've noticed that my current situation has made it more difficult to manage my work communications as effectively as I would like. I understand many of you have likely navigated similar waters and may have valuable insights or strategies that could help me improve my communication during this time. Specifically, I'm looking for advice on: Balancing Transparency and Professionalism: How much should I share about my personal situation with colleagues or management to explain my current performance without overstepping professional boundaries? Requesting Support or Adjustments at Work: What's the best way to ask for flexibility or support from my team or management, ensuring I can manage my responsibilities without compromising the team's objectives? Maintaining Productivity and Focus: Any tips for staying productive and maintaining focus on work tasks during personal turmoil? Self-Care Strategies: How can I ensure I'm taking care of my mental and emotional health, so I'm in the best position to perform my work and communicate effectively? I'm committed to overcoming these challenges and continuing to contribute positively to my team. I would greatly appreciate any advice, tips, or resources you could share based on your own experiences or knowledge in this area. Thank you so much for your time and for any guidance you can provide. This community has always been a source of inspiration and support, and I'm grateful to be a part of it.

I need some advice on how to navigate my situation. I have recently joined a staff engineer role and its has been 2 months. My manager mentioned today that I would be put under PIP. He mentioned that there is gap in the expectations. To give a context, I am the only one person here and everyone else including manager (who is a director) are in different country (in europe), completely different time zone and it has been every hard to get any time from them to discuss anything. I have been left out of important meetings because of the time zone. Now, I am working alone here on a new project independent from others. When I created PRs, they were stuck for ever (sometimes a week or so). I posted in multiple channels, etc. Even sync meeting with team mates sometimes were cancelled because of they were busy and it has been hard. I have raised this with manager but nothing changed. For onboarding, I didn't have a buddy to begin with and manager was my buddy. I am supposed to talk with HR tomorrow and discuss my options. PIP or mutual termination. I am not sure what should I ask HR and what should I do? Any advice would be greatly helpful.

hi, I just started. I've never been at a company this big. I have worked at a 1000 person place before it shrunk (it grew from 3-500 while I was there) and 65 and 500 person shops. How do you suggest I ramp up? It's so many people and so many layers of code and tech. I have a good amount of experience in data/ml and also eng. I don't think I'm a 10x engineer but I am pretty proficient at getting things done. What should my plan be even with holiday slow down coming? People are super nice and I don't feel crazy pressure to ship something rn but I put a lot of pressure on myself and want to do well. I also know code quality is even more important at bigger companies trying to deal with scale. How do I make sure I can keep up?