0:07

It takes more than upgrading from a standing

0:09

desk to a cartwheeling desk to be a

0:11

great engineer. This is episode 398

0:13

of the Soft Scales Engineering podcast. I'm your host,

0:15

James Sadaan. I'm your host, Dave Smith. Soft

0:18

Scales Engineering is a weekly advice show about all

0:20

the non-technical things that go into the technical field

0:22

of software development. And I

0:25

think I have a specific image in my

0:27

mind of what a cartwheeling desk is. You

0:29

know those circus rings where you spread your

0:31

arms and legs out in them and roll

0:33

around and if you're good you somehow don't

0:35

crush your fingers the way

0:38

I don't understand? Somehow

0:41

there's a desk there and then that's a

0:43

cartwheeling desk. That's exactly the image I had

0:46

except it's mounted inside one of those NASA

0:48

three-ring spinny aroundy things. Oh,

0:50

yeah. So

0:52

it's like can you find this bug

0:55

and not vomit at the same time? Maybe

0:59

this is actually a really good idea. It turns

1:02

out the human brain can find bugs when

1:04

exposed to different vectors of

1:06

gravity. Ah, yes. It

1:08

keeps you from getting stuck. It helps you

1:11

think outside the box more. Exactly. When your

1:13

brain is scrambled. If

1:16

a whole industry of agile consultants can sell their services,

1:18

we can sell this product. Yeah,

1:25

and we will. Next episode. Look out

1:27

for it. This episode is sponsored

1:29

by Red Hat Compiler, an original podcast from

1:31

one of our favorite companies that

1:33

explores all tech topics, big, small,

1:36

and strange. We'll hear more about

1:38

them in the middle of the show, but go check out

1:40

Red Hat Compiler. All right. Jameson,

1:42

you want to thank our patrons? I

1:45

do. I want to thank Dan from

1:47

DroneDeploy, Chase W. Norton, TypeHero.dev, never is not

1:49

just a crater on Mars Flamingo emoji. I

1:51

like chicken. I like liver. Meow, meow,

1:53

meow, mex, please deliver. Trash Panda, the computer science

1:55

book.com, Valentina Dadafold, Santa Hope R. Kenzie

1:58

Dodds, I lost my place. Then he came

2:00

on shadow criminalise the stochastic their patron.com we're

2:03

having urgent question Mark Jonathan thing with Tell

2:05

awesome and to and testing the unsettling nature

2:07

of not knowing the content at Wm Angel

2:09

that nets Travis, Braden Keynes, John Grant and

2:12

Cody Sale. Thank you thank you so much

2:14

we appreciate you. And. You appreciate

2:16

us and that's why the As do the

2:18

thing we just it through few on it

2:20

Joined this group. Who. Have at

2:22

times been called illustrious and if need

2:24

be can be called upon to do

2:26

a heist and less like a true

2:28

and. Then.

2:32

You. Can get soft skills the audio and click

2:34

sports unpatriotic. Any. Amount will get

2:36

you an invite to the slack team and.

2:39

More. Will get you more than and go

2:41

find out what it is. Yeah. You'll.

2:44

Figure it out. They would you like to read

2:46

our first question? Yes, I words Let's

2:48

see here. This. Comes from.

2:51

Send. Your does. That's.

2:55

Where the till the over the and send

2:57

your desk. How do you mentor a junior

2:59

level contractor? My company as the hiring a

3:01

lot of contractors lately. Sometimes they hire out

3:03

a full team from the contacts in south

3:05

to build up to to the feature. other

3:07

times it's an individual developer but with the

3:09

same general mandate. Implement some specific set of

3:11

features from or backlogs over x number of

3:13

months then move onto the next products somewhere

3:15

else. Jones's happens when we have extra budget

3:18

the needs to be spent for the year

3:20

etc and works well enough. When.

3:22

The contractors experience and able to self directed

3:24

focus on just getting work done but sometimes

3:26

the contract or less experienced and need lots

3:28

of guidance and mentorship. Hiring. And

3:30

mentoring and less experienced full developers. The long

3:33

term investment over time that person will become

3:35

more productive and hopefully stay with a company

3:37

long enough to provide a net benefit. But

3:39

when the person is only contact the for

3:41

a short time it seems are effectively paying

3:43

the contact the agency for the opportunity to

3:45

train their employee for them. As a senior

3:47

engineer sliced tech lead said I devote the

3:50

same amount of time to mentorship and growth

3:52

of these contractors or said i just manager

3:54

backlog a mixer. They only get assigned tasks

3:56

that are within their ability to finish before

3:58

the contract runs out. I

4:01

can tell you if you're in the United

4:03

States legally you have to you

4:05

better not be mentoring them or

4:07

they can Claim they're actually employees of

4:09

your company and then then you all

4:11

to receive benefits, right? Then you all payroll taxes Yeah,

4:16

so if you if

4:18

you don't want to mentor them see if you

4:20

can find somebody in legal or HR and mention

4:22

this Contractors

4:25

that seem to need a lot of

4:28

mentoring Yeah Any

4:30

amount of time yeah with them and yeah

4:34

Suddenly, you don't have a contractor problem. That

4:36

would just say in yes. Yeah, I

4:38

think so Yeah,

4:41

I mean contracting is sort

4:43

of like the cold uncaring

4:47

face of Direct

4:49

transactional kind of business stuff where you're

4:51

really supposed to be paying someone For

4:54

value much more even much more directly than

4:57

as an employee where there's a little bit

4:59

of kind of responsibility for long-term Mm-hmm. So

5:01

I feel like I feel

5:04

like I would Not

5:06

want to spend my time Where

5:09

it would not return to me I guess even

5:11

though that feels kind of callous to say that

5:14

you should not have to train up contractors You should

5:16

need to tell them how your specific system works But if

5:18

you have to teach them new skills, then you have

5:21

hired the wrong contractor. That's a good point I hadn't

5:23

thought of that but it's like you don't really have

5:25

a mentorship problem here. You actually have a Contractor

5:28

selection problem, you know

5:30

when when the company chooses the wrong people I

5:32

mean one of the advantages of contracting is

5:35

that as a buyer anyway is

5:38

that you have this? Supposedly

5:40

well-trained talent pool to choose from who can get

5:42

in get paid and get out and

5:45

if you don't have that because they're not getting the job done

5:47

then Maybe you

5:49

should get a discount I guess on

5:52

the contract. Maybe they should pay

5:54

you. Yeah I don't know if a discount

5:56

is worth it. It's what if

5:58

you make a sign away from Oh

6:01

yeah, a contractor trainer. Yeah, what if

6:03

on the side you sign an agreement

6:05

with the contracting shop to

6:07

say, look, I will mentor your people and I

6:10

promise they will end up better engineers that you

6:12

can charge more for and get more business at

6:14

the end, but you're gonna have to give me a kickback for

6:17

all this mentorship I'm doing. That sounds so

6:19

illegal. Unrageously

6:22

illegal. But that's

6:25

all I have to say about that. I don't know,

6:27

I can't think of anything else. Yeah,

6:29

I don't know. I have

6:31

worked with contractors and not treated them as

6:33

contractors and nana nana nana it's too late,

6:35

you can't get me, I've escaped. But

6:38

it always felt gross to like

6:40

shun them and just, I

6:42

don't know, air mail them

6:45

requirements and look away when

6:47

they looked me in the eyes and stuff. But

6:49

that is what you're supposed to do technically. And

6:52

with those folks, it was sort of like,

6:55

we all kind of knew the deal and it

6:57

was, they were experienced, they were experienced

6:59

contractors. I knew they

7:01

weren't gonna take advantage of the

7:04

situation and it was just going to make them

7:06

more effective to know more and have more context.

7:09

But I did not have to teach

7:11

them how to program. Yeah.

7:14

It was just normal team

7:16

stuff, like, I don't know. Talk

7:18

to this person, learn how to debug this

7:20

specific system or stuff like that. Yeah, and

7:22

this specific system that only we have at

7:25

our company that I could never expect a

7:27

contractor to know about before they joined. Yeah.

7:30

Yeah. That all sounds really

7:32

reasonable and I was kind of thinking the pragmatic answer

7:34

to this question, like if I was a business owner

7:36

here, would be

7:38

to create really robust

7:40

onboarding documentation so

7:42

that you can scale this process. Because

7:44

essentially what you have here is a

7:46

repeating business process that requires

7:48

a human touch every time it happens.

7:51

And whenever you see a repeating business process,

7:53

it requires a human touch, I

7:55

should make an acronym of that, by the way, repeating

7:57

business process that requires a human touch. You

8:00

have one of those. You

8:02

need a scalable solution and documentation to me

8:04

is like the first tool I would reach

8:06

for is like super robust, very comprehensive documentation

8:08

that explains to them all the ins and

8:10

outs they need to know so that anytime

8:12

they reach out to you with a question,

8:14

you've got a URL like ready to go

8:16

in your holster like, URL to the

8:18

docs, you know, for everything they ask. Yeah,

8:21

the acronym is ribipatiratit,

8:25

eating business problem that

8:27

requires human touch. There

8:32

you go. I forgot what the R was for.

8:34

The sign of a great acronym is when you can't pronounce

8:36

it or remember what it stands for. It's

8:39

like the perfect acronym. This

8:43

is how movements form, David. Can

8:46

you imagine? I can't

8:48

pronounce it because I'm unfamiliar with its

8:50

ways, but soon I will become a

8:52

convert. Right after you are inducted. Then

8:56

ribipatirat will flow off the tongue.

9:01

You'll hear it at conference venues echoing

9:04

in the halls of coffee shops in Silicon Valley.

9:09

I'll tell you, it is exhausting to have a

9:12

revolving door of people that

9:14

you need to help ramp up on stuff, come in and

9:16

go, come in and go. This

9:19

is actually one of the main reasons, not

9:21

main, but it was a secondary reason that I left

9:23

one of the large tech companies was

9:26

that we had so many people and

9:28

we were hiring constantly. I

9:30

would meet with people and they had no interest

9:32

in getting to know me at

9:34

all, but I was responsible for ramping them

9:36

up, getting them to productive and then I would never

9:38

see them again. It

9:41

wasn't that I was like their onboarding buddy per se. It was just

9:43

like even just interacting with other

9:45

teams, which is kind of reminiscent of what this

9:47

question-ecker is asking. Boy did it wear

9:49

me down. It felt like the

9:52

human part of my humanity was

9:54

gone. All I had left was the itty

9:58

from the team. The

10:01

cold metallic robot heart.

10:06

Yes, that's all that was left. It

10:09

was so rough. So I feel this and

10:11

I think over time I would eventually get demotivated and

10:14

I would stop really investing in getting these

10:16

people up to speed. Now,

10:18

having said that, I work with a team

10:20

of contractors who are more like permanent contractor.

10:22

Like the only reason they're contracting is because

10:24

they're not in the United States and

10:27

we are not incorporated there and we do

10:30

hire through an agency, but they

10:32

are like long-term multi-year people. So we

10:34

treat them like team members,

10:36

unless the IRS asks, at which point they

10:38

are definitely just contractors. We

10:42

treat them exactly as required

10:44

by all regular. Laws and

10:46

yeah. But

10:48

in my heart and only in my heart

10:51

and not on my tax returns, in my

10:53

heart, they are friends and people

10:55

that I love, who I pick up at the

10:57

airport when they come to visit and who I

10:59

invest tons of effort into. But

11:02

I gotta tell you, if they were changing faces every two weeks

11:04

because they were in and out, I would have

11:06

a really hard time doing what I do.

11:09

I'm kind of imagining like the grizzled

11:11

war veteran who just is

11:13

used to seeing these rookies come in and get

11:15

chewed up and spit out. They're like, I don't

11:17

have time to learn your names. You won't even

11:19

be here tomorrow. Yeah. Sort

11:22

of the vibe I have. So

11:25

you need to get crack special

11:27

forces if we're continuing this metaphor.

11:29

Okay. That you don't have to take

11:32

care of because they're just good. They're

11:34

just good and they do things. They're just good, yeah.

11:36

They don't need you to get to know

11:38

them and learn the names of

11:41

their kids. Yeah. Yeah.

11:45

Remember their faces, et cetera. Exactly.

11:48

Yeah. I mean, I do

11:51

think I would express, if

11:53

this is slowing you down, it's possible this

11:56

could be slowing you down overall, but the value

11:58

you get out of this person is less. than

12:00

the time spent trying to train them. And

12:03

that means the company is spending money to slow you

12:05

down. It's not even just that you're slowing down. I

12:09

would give that feedback and say, hey, I'd

12:11

rather have no contractor than this just

12:13

short time with a pretty

12:15

junior person that you pay for and

12:17

don't get anything out of it. And

12:19

I can attest from personal experience that

12:22

engineering management responds very

12:24

swiftly when you say things like,

12:27

I'd rather pay this person to sit and do

12:29

nothing than to need

12:31

my hand holding constantly because now I'm only getting

12:33

half my work done and they're not

12:35

getting any work done and creating problems. I

12:38

actually said those words once. No, I didn't say

12:40

them. I had a coworker who said those words

12:42

to our CTO at a previous company. And

12:45

this is after weeks of me trying

12:48

to complain. I

12:50

don't know what I said or if I said it very clearly,

12:52

but we had a couple of contractors like this. They

12:54

needed tons of hand holding and when they did finally

12:56

ship work, it just created more bugs that we had

12:58

to go clean up. And so I

13:01

was like, I complained about this to my CTO but he

13:03

did nothing. And then weeks later, one

13:05

of my more experienced coworkers went to the CTO

13:07

and said, hey, listen, can we change our policy

13:09

to just pay this contractor to sit at the

13:11

computer but not actually contribute any code? It would

13:14

make our lives easier. And literally the next day,

13:16

the contract was terminated. I was

13:18

like, whoa, those are the magic words. Yeah.

13:26

So now you know the magic words. Yeah,

13:29

just say those. I use them wisely. One thing in this

13:31

question that stood out to me was that it works well

13:33

when the contractor's experienced and able to self direct. I'm like,

13:35

okay, great. That tells me that

13:37

you've actually got a pool of people who are capable

13:39

of being excellent contractors. But

13:43

what that also tells me is that when you do

13:45

occasionally pick up the person whose skills don't line up

13:47

with the job requirements, you can

13:49

actually point to a baseline of good

13:51

performance and say, hey, this person doesn't

13:53

meet the normal standard of quality that

13:56

we expect from your contracting agency. So

13:58

please. please swap

14:00

them out for someone who does. And

14:03

maybe that needs to become part of your process, is there's

14:05

a little bit of an assessment period. What

14:08

I think our European friends would call a probation, but

14:10

not really like a probation. But

14:13

the same principle where you say, let's give

14:15

this person a week on the job to see how they do, and

14:17

after a week we'd like an opportunity

14:19

to formally decline, continuing

14:21

have them on the project. Yeah. Well,

14:25

have we answered the question? I think so. And

14:27

I'm just glad I survived without being

14:30

ousted as the bad contractor in the

14:32

podcast. Well,

14:35

I spent a lot of work

14:37

training you up, Dave. That's true.

14:39

You really invested in me. Hey,

14:41

Jameson, we've been talking about this podcast

14:44

from Red Hat called Compiler. I

14:46

guess people might think we're kind of obsessed with it, and we are. What

14:49

do you want to tell people about it today? I

14:51

want to tell them about a new episode I just

14:53

listened to from Compiler called Warning Signs, which

14:55

is about some red

14:57

flags or disasters or bad things that have

14:59

happened in people's careers, which in

15:01

some ways is the subject of this show.

15:04

So it felt like it was very synergistic. I

15:06

don't know. There's something about hearing

15:08

a good, prod is destroyed story

15:10

that warms my heart. You

15:13

particularly like those. I love them. Yeah.

15:17

And the compiler is good at storytelling about

15:19

engineering. I think that's one of my favorite

15:21

things about it. And

15:24

let's not miss this opportunity to say how much

15:26

better they are than us at production quality. If

15:30

we keep saying it, then it

15:32

becomes like we're doing

15:35

bad production ironically. Yeah, exactly. I

15:38

know we know it's bad and we choose to

15:40

because we're cool. I think that's how it works.

15:42

Right. But seriously, if you

15:44

want to listen to a podcast about software development from

15:46

people who actually know what they're doing and

15:49

sound great and tell good stories,

15:51

Red Hat Compiler is the podcast for you. Yep.

15:54

Go check it out. All right. Should

15:56

I read our next question? Please do. This

15:58

is from an anonymous listener who says Hello!

16:01

I have a really hard time not attaching my

16:03

identity to my work. I know

16:05

I'm not supposed to, but I really take pride in what I do,

16:07

and I feel like if I don't, my performance would take a hit.

16:10

But where this really bites me is

16:12

taking it really personally when things go wrong, like when

16:14

a customer submits a bug report and I find it

16:16

was something that I wrote, or when I take down

16:19

prod and have to involve a whole bunch of C-suite

16:21

people to address and postmortem the issue. I

16:23

understand humans make mistakes, but it eats me up so

16:25

much inside every time. I know all these

16:28

things, but I have a hard time really internalizing them,

16:30

especially when things go south at work. What

16:32

are some practical ways I can train myself

16:34

to approach things without emotion? Ah

16:37

yes, taking the human element out

16:39

again. Yeah, yeah,

16:41

we just covered

16:44

that. You gotta grind

16:46

it off. Sand

16:50

blast it off by having a rotating

16:52

door of coworkers for years. Just

16:56

embrace the meaninglessness of your work and

17:00

stop caring about anything. Just wake

17:02

up. It's

17:04

interesting that you say that, because I was just

17:06

thinking about a coworker at a previous job. We

17:08

were kind of a, we were

17:11

just chatting one time, and

17:13

both said that part

17:15

of what we were struggling with is that it was

17:17

hard to care because of

17:19

some attributes of the environment that we

17:21

worked in, but caring was part

17:24

of what we were good at. If we didn't

17:26

care, then we would be bad. We weren't good

17:29

enough at the job without caring to

17:31

make up for it. We were

17:33

wrestling with a similar problem of like, if

17:35

I just don't care, then what am

17:37

I gonna do is as good of work. That's

17:39

a good point. That's really interesting. We

17:43

never solved that. I don't know. Neither

17:47

of us worked there anymore, I think. Oh wow.

17:49

Maybe that is a solution in one way. You're

17:51

saying find a place that what? Makes

17:54

it easier to care? That, yeah, it's easier

17:57

to care. Yes. Oh, wait. now

18:00

I know what company you're talking about and I felt the same

18:02

way about a company I left it around the same time. It's

18:06

hard to care because we didn't have, we couldn't, it was

18:08

hard to make big impacts because the company was so huge. Yeah.

18:12

Is that your situation too? Uh, yeah,

18:14

yeah, it's certainly part of it. Part of it, yeah. Um,

18:17

I, I'm also a heavy carer. Maybe

18:19

you could call me a care-bearer, I don't know. Use

18:22

the label you want. But you're more of a care-panda.

18:27

Which is a kind of bear. Shoot.

18:31

A care kangaroo, I think was the word

18:33

you were looking for. Yeah, yeah. And

18:37

I have a way of dealing with this

18:39

kind of situation as well, which is that, you know,

18:41

I take a lot of pride in the work I

18:43

do and, and I actually do tie my ego and

18:46

my sense of self-worth to the quality of the work

18:48

that I do. You know, a lot of

18:50

people say don't do that. But I

18:52

think what they really mean is don't get

18:54

so tied up in the details of your

18:56

work, like the way you indent your code

18:58

and like that's your identity. It's like, no,

19:00

no, no. Put your identity, put your sense

19:03

of self-worth in the value that you produce

19:06

for the purposes that you produce them, for the users

19:08

who use your stuff. Make it

19:10

about them and their outcomes. Great.

19:12

Okay, so what do you do when things go really

19:14

wrong? Like when you wrote a bug or you took

19:16

down production and now you have to go in front

19:18

of a bunch of leaders and tell

19:20

them that you took down production. Well,

19:22

here's what I do. I double down on the caring thing.

19:25

And I say, all right, I care so deeply about this.

19:28

I'm going to show you that when

19:30

I make a mistake, I produce

19:32

the absolute best post-mortem documents you

19:34

have ever seen. I uncover every

19:36

stone. I talk about every eventuality.

19:38

I write a four-page FAQ that no one will

19:40

read, but they'll look at and go, holy crap,

19:43

this guy's thorough. And I give

19:45

people- With a three-page summary of the FAQ. Yeah,

19:48

exactly. And I show

19:50

people my caring through

19:53

my response to my mistakes. And I got to tell you,

19:55

I actually had lunch with a former CEO of mine just

19:57

a few months ago who I worked with for a couple

19:59

of years. years and one of the

20:01

things he remembered the most about working for me

20:03

was these incident reports that I would write after

20:05

something went wrong. And I'm like, look, he

20:08

knew I was responsible for this stuff. I was the head of engineering

20:10

at the company. And so

20:12

he loved how transparent I was, how I would

20:14

list every mistake I made and what I'm going

20:17

to do to fix it and

20:19

just all like the graphs and the diagnosis and what

20:21

was the customer experience during this time. So I really

20:23

doubled down on it and it paid dividends. Like he

20:25

was super appreciative of that. I

20:28

think I was going in a similar direction as you

20:31

went with the post-mortem piece where if

20:34

you wallow in the failure and

20:36

the missed expectations and what everyone

20:39

will think of you, that's

20:42

no good. That'll send you to a bad place. But

20:45

this is a great opportunity to learn

20:47

stuff and that's something you

20:49

hear a lot in kind of

20:51

reliability culture, safety cultures, like kind

20:54

of resilience engineering that space. They

20:57

geek out over stuff breaking because then

20:59

you get to understand how things actually

21:01

work. You've uncovered a failure in

21:03

the system or in the model

21:05

that people have of the system. So

21:08

one way that you can maybe get over this a

21:10

little bit is say like, awesome, I get to learn

21:12

something. I get to learn something about myself. I

21:15

don't know, I wasn't careful enough with this bug

21:17

and why wasn't I and dig into that and

21:19

figure out what could you do better next

21:22

time. It's like a

21:25

chance to get some lessons. I think if you show

21:27

that, that's what you were talking about, Dave. If you

21:29

show you're not just going to

21:31

be groveling, apologizing for

21:33

it, you're going to fix it

21:35

and get better. I think that anyone

21:38

worth working for will be pumped about that response

21:41

to something going wrong. Totally.

21:43

Totally. Yeah. I don't

21:45

know. I can't think of a better answer

21:47

than that which is when you mess up, which is inevitable. Then

21:50

just double down on how much you care and the

21:52

pride you take in recovering from the mess up. At

21:55

first, I thought you were going to say, when you talked about

21:57

it before, I thought you were going to say double down on...

22:00

how it wasn't actually a mistake. Just

22:02

don't admit. No,

22:05

the database has nothing to do

22:07

with it. I don't know what you're talking about.

22:10

Yeah, it's all there. I see all the data.

22:12

No, you can't look at my screen. Yeah, no.

22:16

You're looking at staging. No, I'm not. That's

22:20

a good point. And actually, this is a little

22:22

bit of a problem I've observed in others. I

22:24

mean, obviously not me and no one listening to

22:26

this podcast or you, James, and whatever. Isn't

22:30

it wild how easy it is to see how others

22:32

have lots of problems? Oh, yeah. I mean, this is

22:34

all about your friends and your coworkers. Anyone

22:37

who listens to this podcast knows that this is mostly

22:39

about other people. Yes. It

22:42

is tempting when you

22:44

care deeply and take pride in your work. It

22:46

is tempting to sweep issues under the rug or

22:48

hide your mistakes. But I

22:50

assure you that the same heart that takes great

22:52

pride in doing good work will

22:54

be offended and crushed by hiding that. Oh,

23:00

man. It's just not a good plan.

23:02

It basically leads to a world

23:04

of insecurity where you feel insecure, you're not

23:06

confident, you always worry that someone's going to

23:08

out you. Honestly, it's kind of a path

23:10

to imposter syndrome.

23:14

Imposter syndrome is actually kind of reinforced

23:16

by hiding things about yourself that you

23:18

don't want other people to know. And

23:20

when you instead, you put your mistakes

23:23

out on display for everyone. It's

23:25

one of life's great paradoxes, but boy, does

23:27

it build confidence. It really does. It's

23:29

done so for me. It's also

23:31

so much easier to not

23:34

have to pretend like they're

23:36

fine when they're not. Yeah, like all the living

23:38

a lie, like what details did I say to

23:40

who and when? Yeah. Keeping

23:43

my story straight. Yeah.

23:45

Don't recommend it. Yeah, because people will find out.

23:48

And then if you thought people

23:50

disliked you for making mistakes before, wait until they

23:52

find out that you made mistakes and covered it

23:54

up. Yeah. Yeah. Painous.

23:57

A cover-up is worse than the crime, isn't that a thing?

23:59

Oh, a hundred percent. It almost doesn't matter

24:01

what the crime is if you covered it up. Yeah,

24:03

then you then you lie to the FBI about the

24:05

crime And then that's how they get you that

24:08

reminds me of a What

24:10

was the guy's name was it Norm McDonald

24:12

not Norm McDonald the comedian who passed away a

24:14

few years ago? Oh, yeah, I'm not McDonald McDonald

24:16

did pass away a few that was him. I'm not

24:18

gonna say the joke on the air It's not the

24:20

most appropriate joke, but if you want

24:23

to go look at it, it's exactly in the same

24:25

theme of the cover-up Yeah, yeah,

24:27

I thought what was bad about it was

24:30

the hypocrisy right I thought it was the

24:32

crime It

24:36

was honestly like a real slap in the face for me I was like, oh,

24:38

yeah We get so caught up in

24:40

this cover-up thing and it's like what if you

24:42

murdered someone what's worse the murder or the cover-up?

24:46

Probably the murder in this case. Yeah

24:49

Probably not the hypocrisy. Yeah, like you

24:51

didn't murder someone exactly what a hypocrite I

24:53

mean if he had killed him and got away with it

24:56

and then not lied about it, you know Then

24:58

maybe I'd be okay. Yeah, but the fact that

25:01

he lied about it an honest murderer. Oh Great

25:07

shooter At

25:12

least he's true to himself Don't

25:16

be that guy guess oh don't I mean the thing is When

25:19

you are going to eventually murder your production systems

25:22

but it'll be manslaughter because it's unintentional

25:24

and The sooner you come clean

25:26

about it the better off you'll be and the hypocrisy

25:28

is worse in this case down

25:30

prod Yeah,

25:36

you you're unlikely to get fired

25:38

for deleting prod You're

25:40

way more likely to get fired for

25:42

deleting prod and not telling someone because you were

25:44

scared that you would get in trouble Oh, yeah,

25:47

so true and you are

25:49

way more likely to feel good about yourself for

25:51

doing an excellent job with a post-mortem The

25:53

same level of intensity of an excellence you deliver

25:55

when you write your code apply

25:57

that to the post-mortem You're not just a code

26:00

writer and I think this is maybe maybe this

26:02

is the thing that the question asker needs to

26:04

hear is that writing

26:06

code is just a

26:08

one tool in your engineering tool belt

26:11

of delivering value to your users

26:14

and there are many many other tools you need to get good

26:16

at and one of them is writing

26:18

postmortems, process improvements so these

26:20

kinds of things can't happen in the future, large-scale

26:23

fixes you know systems thinking to

26:25

fixes to prevent mistakes like

26:27

this all of these things will

26:29

actually produce so much value and sometimes

26:31

there's no code involved sometimes you just write a bunch

26:34

of Jira tickets for other people to fix stuff yeah

26:36

and now you're on your way to management a

26:38

life of Jira ticket excellence

26:41

yes all right have we answered the

26:43

question I think so good luck best of luck I'll

26:46

say it again it's good that you care because

26:48

yeah it can make

26:51

your work feel more meaningful so this is the

26:54

problem is a consequence of you caring and

26:56

and caring can be good that's

26:59

right it's a blessing and a curse yeah

27:02

all right

27:04

what could people do if they want their own questions

27:06

answered Dave if you care enough to get your question

27:08

answered and you want to just test us to the

27:10

limit go to soft skills audio and

27:13

submit the most challenging question you can think of

27:16

maybe you want us to live calculate the one

27:18

millionth digit of PI we'll do it just put

27:20

it in that form and we will eventually do

27:22

it you can leave

27:24

as much personally identifying information as you want or as

27:26

little as you want we love getting

27:29

your questions every week and this form actually

27:31

doubles as a feedback form this

27:33

is a function of us being too lazy to create

27:36

a separate form you

27:39

can go fill out the ask a question form and don't

27:41

ask a question tell us how we did answering your question

27:43

and we'd like to read some of those on the air

27:46

we only occasionally get these and I think

27:48

it's because most people listen to one episode and then never ever

27:51

come back again If

27:54

you do happen to leave feedback, we'll read it.

27:57

We love hearing how things went. Sometimes people write

27:59

in with answers. From years ago and

28:01

say here's how it went once in a

28:03

very rare while they say it when exactly

28:05

like he said and most of the time

28:08

they have amazing catastrophic stories of doom and

28:10

bad luck which is also really fun to

28:12

read of. So. Thank

28:15

you thank you so much for listening a look

28:17

at next week.