Engineering Advice You Didn't Ask For – Details, episodes & analysis

When negotiating your best Tech Offer. What should you consider beyond the money money money?

Links:

• Weighted Decision Matrix: https://www.mindtools.com/pages/article/newTED_03.htm
• The Fearless Organization: Creating Psychological Safety in the Workplace for Learning, Innovation, and Growth: https://www.amazon.com/Fearless-Organization-Psychological-Workplace-Innovation/dp/1119477247
• Progressions.FYI: https://progression.fyi/

Promotion

• level 1 to level 2
  

Projects

• impact
• should you go deep
• or should you go for breadth
• scope of influence?
  

What is a promotion packet

• How do you become visible internally without hogging all the oxygen?
• Opportunity is unevenly distributedHeadquarters vs distributed office
  Company culture biased towards delivery or operations
  

Finding your sponsor

Activating your sponsor

Does bias play a role?

Topics: 

• Avoiding Burnout 
• Effective Remote Leadership
• Effective Remote Work
• Effective Remote Meetings
• What does it mean to be Async-First & People-First?
• Remote-First vs. Remote-Friendly  
• People-First vs. Business-First
• Recovering from Burnout

Shownotes: 

• Marissas's Course - Avoiding Burnout from Remote Work: https://marissagoldberg.gumroad.com/l/avoidingburnout
• Marissa's website: https://www.marissagoldberg.com/
• Marissa on Twitter: https://twitter.com/mar15sa
• Adam Grant on Fighting The Zoom Fatigue (Cameras off doesn't reflect disengagement. It helps to prevent burnout and promote attention): https://twitter.com/adammgrant/status/1430882464407474180
• Book - The Culture Map: https://www.amazon.com/Culture-Map-Breaking-Invisible-Boundaries/dp/1610392507/

Topics:

- Teams hiring juniors

    - How important is it to hire juniors?

- How do junior engineers get experience

- What should ideal team look like

- How do evaluate the company for you?

- Expectations as a junior engineer

    - Contributions first 90

- How to onboard junior vs senior

- Is Bootcamp a valid path?

Shownotes:

https://www.crunchbase.com/

https://github.com/tBaxter/questions-for-employers

https://github.com/lkostrowski/job-interview-questions-to-ask-companies

Topics:

• When to promote from within? Why?
• Who is the best kind of engineer that will most succeed as a manager? The generalist or the specialist? The backend-heavy or the frontend-heavy?
• Do they need to be at a certain level? Do they need to be Senior to transition into management? How technical should it be?
• How to convince engineers that have the profile (traits + hard skills), but are skeptical about moving to the dark side of management?
• What if there are two or more who want it?
• The team’s opinion matters more than yours as the hiring manager?
• When to hire externally?
• What are your favorite questions for external candidates?

Shownotes:

• https://twitter.com/thiagoghisi/status/1496625130188857348
• https://twitter.com/ramannoodlez/status/1495146825736675334
• https://twitter.com/LBacaj/status/1490931625953308674
• https://twitter.com/marcprecipice/status/1479731951162380288

Topics:

• Managing poor performance
• PIPs (Performance Improvement Plans)
• Firing - Letting go.
• Layoffs

Show Notes:

• The five keys to a successful Google team (Psychological safety): https://rework.withgoogle.com/blog/five-keys-to-a-successful-google-team/
• Blitzscaling: The Lightning-Fast Path to Building Massively Valuable Companies: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0791239V7/

The Great Resignation gained steam again in November, as a record number of 4.53 million Americans quit their jobs.

Topics:

• Changing Jobs
• The reasons why people change jobs: The right reasons & The wrong reasons
• Do most people leave their company or leave their manager?
• Mental health/burnout - is this a trigger?
• Is the grass greener on the other side? 
• Do you go towards a better job? Are you leaving a bad job? 
• What is the cost of changing jobs?
• How often is healthy for your career to change jobs?

Show Notes:

• Glassdoor - Company Salaries
• Levels.FYI - Tech Companies Levels & Salaries
• Blind: Anonymous Professional Network
• H1B Visa Salary Database - By Employer, Job, or City
• VisaDoor - Green Card PERM Salary Database
• VisaDoor - Search Example: Netflix Engineering Manager 2021 Green Card Petitions
• Book: No Rules Rules: Netflix and the Culture of Reinvention

The one about the famous one-on-one meetings.  

• What is the purpose of 1:1 meetings? 
• How often should you have 1:1s? 
• Whose responsibility are they? 
• What should their frequency be? 
• Some advice for new managers? 
• What if the person isn’t engaging or contributing? 
• Some common pitfalls to avoid 
• Should you come to them with an agenda?

Transcript: