Developer Tea

We had some gremlins in the audio processing of the first part of the interview with Ernie Miller. They've been banished! Sorry about the trouble, and thank you for listening.

Today I talk with Ernie …

We have an illusion of control when things go our way, and a bias to shift the blame when things don't go our way. In retrospectives, we also believe we know all of the variables at play.

In today's e…

Today I talk with Ernie Miller. Ernie is the head of engineering at Monograph. (They are hiring!) This is the second part of my interview with Ernie.

We talk about the four-day work week, fragility of…

Today I talk with Ernie Miller. Ernie is the head of engineering at Monograph. (They are hiring!)

We talk about the four-day work week, fragility of culture and the importance of taking care of it, an…

The focus is the work.

When anyone asks how they can be more productive, I give them the exercise I talk about in this episode. It's extremely simple, but not easy.

What are you focused on, right now? …

Bugs are inevitable, but individually unpredictable. Trying to use a single strategy for dealing with these events will miss a huge number of the events, while requiring massive efforts. Instead, we …

Most things are compositions of other things. Most problems are multi-factorial. Most opportunities have more than one selling point.

Sometimes, it helps to realign your thinking to composition, using…

Substitute with better questions, and you'll have more insightful answers. Questions are a major contributing factor to behavior, and the way you ask questions is a habit that can have a high-leverag…

Focusing on fundamentals may seem boring, or like a sports catchphrase used to motivate people to practice. The truth is, these fundamentals are still going to be the most important value-making acti…

Metamodeling is creating a model of models. Confused yet? When we use models, we often assume they are complete. But what characteristics could make all of our models better? That's the concept of me…

Stress often comes from pressure. When we experience pressure, we usually respond by trying to relieve it - often to the detriment of our work.

In today's episode, we talk about the dangers of pressur…

Confidence is often used as an artificial bluff, to help us feel less dread of failure. But this is problematic; when we put blinders on, we don't prepare adequately, often leading to blame-shifting …

What do you want to change? The things you do repeatedly have the most impact on your life. Focus on the systems that produce repeated behaviors. We talk about these as "engines" of behavior in today…

We continue talking about conducting a mindful job search in today's episode.

The truth is, that next application you put in is probably not going to end in an accepted offer. Whether by your decision…

If you've ever felt bad about looking for a job, or you're wondering if now is the right time because a bunch of coworkers or friends are on the move, this episode is for you. We talk about approachi…

Pick the right tool for the job.

But who is picking? What tools can they choose from? And what is the actual job, anyway? This advice is important because it gives you a starting framework to answer s…

You are much more likely to succeed with iteration than you are with a perfect first attempt.

This is purely a function of probability, and is even more supported by the idea of progressive improvemen…

When you have to predict, you're likely to have error in your prediction. Sometimes that error is easily handled - other times, it can be catastrophic in effect.

The next time you have the urge to pre…

Random choice may actually be your best bet. At the very least, starting with random is a good exercise in self control, and will help reveal information more easily than intuitive guessing might.

Giv…

It's easy to believe that everyone you get along with agrees with you about anything and everything.

The truth is harder to confront, but often, this illusion can cause problems - especially when you …