Soft Skills Engineering - Episode 124: Pair Programming Pain and Side Hustle CEO

Episode Date: September 17, 2018

In this episode, Dave and Jamison answer these questions: I joined a new team that has a different way of working, which has exposed a lot of my shortcomings. On my previous team, collab...oration was limited to discussions around architecture and strategy; after reaching consensus, we’d implement the components independently. I was very comfortable with this because I don’t have good intuition for how to interact with others. On the new team, we pair-program. Teammates have pointed out mistakes I’ve made while pairing, such as trying to control the mouse when they are in the middle of doing something or investigating something on my own computer without communicating what I’m doing. On this team, we are also expected to be much more engaged in group decision-making. As a result, I’ve made tons of mistakes in how or when I pose questions. Each time I make a mistake, it increases my self-loathing. I tried telling myself that I didn’t have bad intent when I made the mistake and the only way to grow is to make mistakes. I also told myself that this self-loathing doesn’t do anything for the team. I also do a personal post-mortem on each of my mistakes because I thought that would help me move on. These approaches didn’t work and my confidence has dropped substantially. I know it’s essential for me to learn how to work effectively with others instead of staying in my comfort zone of heads-down coding. Do you have suggestions for how to get through this learning process without letting it affect my self esteem and motivation? Hey Soft Skills Engineering, Love the podcast! You’ve helped me understand so much about the software engineering career field that I probably would have otherwise learned the hard way. I’ve been working at my current job for almost 4 years. The pay is very much below market (it’s a non-profit), the work is too easy, I can finish any task in a couple of hours, but we are given an automatic 1 week+ deadline to finish anything, and I’m much more technical than any of my co-workers, to the point where I can’t even have nerdy conversations with anyone at work. However, I’ve stuck around because the job is pretty much stress-free, I don’t have to think about work at all outside of work hours, and all the free time allows me to take on side-projects and learn new technologies, including every level of software development. With all this free time, I’ve started a company. In the last few months, I’ve managed developers, designed a system using blockchain tech, designed and implemented a database, learned the ins and outs of AWS management and server-less development, built a REST API from scratch, developed a full front-end in React/Redux, and learned a ton of other things. Since I’m in the prototype phase, my startup hasn’t gotten any revenue, and I’m aware it might take awhile to get any revenue if it ever does. I need to pay bills, and I need to start thinking about my financial stability. So I think it’s time to get a new job, even if it means not having as much freedom to work on the startup. I’m not sure on how to approach my next step. I want to continue working on the startup after I get a new job, but I’m aware that employers might not be fond of “CEO” on my resume when there’s no end-date on the position, because I might leave at any time if my company grows. If I don’t put anything about my company on my resume, then it seems like I have nothing to show for all the technical skills I claim I have (since all the learning, management and implementation has all been for my company). Do I put anything about the startup I’m working on in my resume? If not, then how would I showcase all the experience and skills I’ve gained by beginning this startup? Should I just keep getting by paycheck to paycheck while I build the company? Thanks

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Starting point is 00:00:00 It takes more than figuring out how to exit Vim to be a great software engineer. This is episode 124 of the SoftSkills Engineering Podcast. I'm your host, Dave Smith. I'm your host, Jameson Dance. SoftSkills Engineering is a weekly advice show for software developers about non-technical topics. I exit Vim by throwing my computer in the garbage and buying a new one. Oh, I went into Vim.
Starting point is 00:00:26 i guess i guess i need a new computer that's hilarious is ed i think i've gotten stuck in ed before i don't think i've ever used ed dave as a vim person i am contractually obligated to say well i'm a vim user so exiting vim is trivial for me it's trivial open up another session another terminal and say kill all dash nine vim a friend of mine pointed out to me this pull request he found on github and the so in lots of computers the default editor is vi or vim sure if you make if you if you make a commit or a pull request it'll sometimes pop open your default editor to fill in the text and this pull request on github had like a bunch of gibberish and like a control c character and an x and then finally at
Starting point is 00:01:29 the end it was like colon q and then it ended so i'm pretty sure someone got stuck in vim and smashed a bunch of keys and then threw that up on github and it was just it was adorable it was like i don't know just made my heart feel happy yeah like a glimpse into someone's experience yeah it's like when you see a kid learn how to ride a bike you're like oh that's cute like when you see them fall down a few times and get back up yeah like you're learning yeah i hope people feel that way about when i do stupid things they don't we just stand around and talk about like when i pronounce it internoot instead of internet or something they're like oh that's still learning about computers everyone knows it's onternet anyways we should talk about our our wonderful
Starting point is 00:02:16 patrons thank you so much to sebastian sandoval silma um who is a brand new donator thank you thank you also to david jackson dustin coats ken howard matthew wodewicks nick cantar sean clayton and zach grannon you all are fantastic thank you so much for supporting the show um if you well it'll be too late by now but if you were in utah at the utah js conference a couple weeks ago you would have gotten to see dave and get stickers yep and but you weren't well if you were you knew and you have them if not tweet us and we'll send you some stickers yep please do do you want to read our first question dave you betcha all right this comes from an anonymous listener they said i joined a new team that has a different way of working which has exposed a lot of my shortcomings
Starting point is 00:03:05 on my previous team collaboration was limited to discussion around architecture and strategy After reaching consensus, we would implement the components independently. I was very comfortable with this, because I don't have good intuition for how to interact with others. On my new team, we pair program. Teammates have pointed out mistakes I've made while pairing, such as trying to control the mouse when they are in the middle of doing something, or investigating something on my own computer without communicating what I'm doing. On this team, we are also expected to be much more engaged in group decision making.
Starting point is 00:03:35 As a result, I've made tons of mistakes in how or when I pose questions. Each time I make a mistake, it increases my self-loathing. I tried telling myself that I didn't have bad intent when I made the mistakes, and the only way to grow is to make mistakes. I also told myself that this self-loathing doesn't do anything for the team. I also do a personal post-mortem on each of my mistakes because I thought that would help me move on. These approaches didn't work, and my confidence has dropped substantially.
Starting point is 00:04:01 i know it's essential for me to learn how to work effectively with others instead of staying in my comfort zone of heads down coding do you have suggestions for how to get through the learning process without letting effect letting it affect my self-esteem and motivation wow what a great question yeah very introspective yeah i i there's so many interesting things here i don't have a dumb joke to make yet they'll come but um because it seems like this person's being so open and honest and kind of vulnerable too and so i appreciate that it's it's an interesting problem i don't know what do you think dave i do well i i had a funny joke all right but now take it away i feel like i can't do it you crushed me you know that what i thought of when i heard this story
Starting point is 00:04:49 uh this question was every person every like super hyped up excited pair programming proponent needs to needs to hear this story yeah yeah everyone who's who's just pair programming is a pure force of absolute good in the world that anyone who doesn't get it is stupid and yeah there's there's some rhetoric around pair programming yeah definitely it's it i've i've heard that a lot and i've always thought i've always kind of felt reserved about it a little bit and and to be honest i've never really participated in a serious pair programming culture but when i listen to this story i think okay this is it this these are the people that are marginalized by pair programming yeah i hear about places like pivotal where they pair
Starting point is 00:05:34 every day all day and just know i will never work there because i i like doing it sometimes but it definitely has a cost there's also there's pair programming etiquette and the question asker mentioned things, mentions things like grabbing the mouse or looking stuff up on their computer without saying what they're doing. And the thing that I've found is some people are very strict about these rules that I find out about when I break them about, um, absolute 100% focused attention without looking down at your computer or no touching the keyboard. Or there, there are a lot of rules that are house rules. I guess, you know, you play a card game and someone says actually aces are bazookas in this game i don't know like every game of uno ever yeah yeah you
Starting point is 00:06:24 can quadruple reverse and it it it's it goes up exponentially each time so by the end you need more cards than there are atoms in the universe to fill your hand um yeah but so i've i've found some places are just like work on this problem together on one computer and that's the extent to the guidance and it's up to people to figure out what that means and some some people i've participated in pair programming with i feel like i'm i'm breaking the law because i don't know or understand or follow the rules very well so some of that could be the context in which you're practicing it too or or just kind of picking up what the house rules are at the place that you work by bumping into them yeah exactly which is yeah i could see that being unpleasant definitely
Starting point is 00:07:10 i i don't think i think that explains a small part of this problem though i don't think it's a big part of it if it was just a matter of etiquette i think you know you bump into the etiquette you of course correct and then you're good to go but i don't yeah i don't think that's happened here yeah yeah the the self-loathing the self-loathing part seems like it sticks out quite a bit yeah that's concerning to me yeah that is concerning to me too you shouldn't loathe yourself you're great well now you're just gonna you're a soft skills engineering listener feel worse don't do that well jamison i have a self-loathing problem well stop it what a garbage person to have this problem is that what you're saying i'm communicating yes you should feel terrible for having this
Starting point is 00:07:59 problem what i'm saying is uh i i feel like what i'm getting from the question is a little bit of I have failed by making mistakes and I think I understand that feeling I feel like often when I make mistakes it's not just I've made a mistake it's like this this has uncovered a fundamental flaw in me that I have to correct or or or like the universe has advanced past this fork in the road and it went down the bad fork because I did this wrong thing and like everything will be different forever i i feel like making mistakes is failure or weakness sometimes and so any amount of mistakes is unacceptable and that means mistakes are distressing to me so i wonder if there's something like that going on or if i'm just projecting that's possible too no i i think
Starting point is 00:08:50 when i read this question i thought about you a little bit too because wait i know someone who makes mistakes um i just thought about that i mean you you are very sensitive to that you're very introspective and thoughtful. And I think this person has a bit of a superpower where they have a heightened sensitivity to their own actions. And I think that there are a lot of people in the world who make mistakes like this and they're completely oblivious to it. I look at those people and I think they have a superpower. What would it be like to not even notice that you made mistakes and just not even just not care and i think i think a lot of the
Starting point is 00:09:35 time i do sometimes i the introspection is valuable and it helps me correct behavior or change or grow or improve but sometimes it's paralyzing and i just care so much about like i don't know maybe you grabbed the mouse and it was like oh don't do that and then they immediately forgot about it right and to you this was a personal failure in in your interacting with people and that extra pressure is not super valuable or productive and and not caring about it is it's kind of the other end of the spectrum that comes with its own benefits and costs yeah you also the question asker also mentions i don't have good intuition for how to interact with others and i feel like the fact that they're so thoughtful and introspective about what they
Starting point is 00:10:20 identify as their own problem gives me hope that it's not this innate quality of them right they're clearly thinking about this and concerned about it and and that's automatically a pretty big step over some people who just don't even care about their interactions with other people so i think i think you've got some great stuff here yeah i do too i think um like we were saying earlier i think most people don't have the ability to recognize this level of mistake making but you know i think like all superpowers like i don't know if you remember one of the new superman movies where he's a young kid and and some of his superpowers are starting to come to him and like his super hearing comes out and he like can't cope with it it's like super loud right i do i do remember that
Starting point is 00:11:05 one i kind of feel like this situation is like that you know it's like okay now you have to learn how to manage the signal that's coming from your mind that's telling you you've made all these mistakes and determine which signals are okay to attenuate and which ones need to be heated and that's hard to do right like because they all feel equally paralyzing and important you know yeah yeah and you know the other thing could be that maybe this just isn't the right culture for you to thrive in and you know usually when we say quit your job and find a new one we're kind of half joking but this is a case where i think you might be able to be more successful in an environment that doesn't do real-time face-to-face communication so much and i've worked with a lot
Starting point is 00:11:48 of engineers who you know i could probably reel off four or five names right now who when i put them down in like a one-on-one setting like this and i pressure them to produce information or to banter back and forth with me like on a design or to write code together or even in a meeting setting with four or five people they just kind of lock up and sometimes they even say dumb things you know yeah but i know they're not dumb and then later when they have a time to go to go offline and think about it they put together brilliant stuff right they come back with great insights that i never would have thought of and they come out with great products and they're able to write code with the best of them but they just don't operate in that environment and so maybe you need
Starting point is 00:12:29 to find an environment where you can operate and maybe you could do that in your in your same company but maybe not i think there are essential characteristics of people's personalities that you're probably not going to change if you're more introverted i'm kind of assuming this person's more introverted reading between the lines a little bit it's unlikely you'll just transform and suddenly become this gregarious person like the the person in that how to win friends and influence people book but i think you can change your behaviors without necessarily changing who you are underneath so i think it's possible to improve this i think you have to decide do i want to change enough so that i can be comfortable here or is this too far removed
Starting point is 00:13:11 are the behaviors i'm going to have to implement to be comfortable here too hard or too taxing to do i don't know i mean if if you self-loathe enough you might turn into an extrovert you know is that underflowing yeah personality underflowing if i watch enough netflix in my room by myself yeah i just transport to the club and enjoy myself hey everyone it's me oh people great i i do think no matter what ends up happening i think this sounds like a stretching and growing experience for you and that's valuable even if you don't end up staying comfortable and becoming an expert at this kind of thing i think it is valuable to to get more experience and
Starting point is 00:14:05 get step get forced out of your comfort zone a little bit i still feel like we haven't really talked about what this person can do right yeah they have this self-loathing problem feel horrible about mistakes their confidence is shot what can they do i have one one piece of advice when i when i make mistakes especially when i uh do something that causes frustration at work i like to talk through it with a trusted confidant somebody else when i talk to myself about it it's just this spiral of doom you know like yeah just goes darker and darker but when i force myself to verbalize it to someone else, someone I trust and someone who just wants to listen and has no stake in the outcome, you know, and isn't, isn't my coworker. Yeah. I, it really helps me process this kind of
Starting point is 00:14:50 stuff a lot. Yeah. Yeah. That makes sense. I think, what do you think about the post-mortem thing on every mistake? Oh, I don't know. I don't know. I'm just amazed this person has the fortitude to do that i mean that's like that's willpower you must not make very many mistakes because that would take a long time yeah maybe you should do a maybe maybe you should do a meta post-mortem and evaluate kind of well you're laughing dave this is serious i know well i just sorry i was just thinking of what what you could name that it's like a post-mortem post post-mortem mortem yeah okay yeah do a post post-mortem mortem on your practice and say is the frequency with which i'm doing these valuable are the mistakes which i'm doing it for worth this much stress and effort
Starting point is 00:15:44 because man it's so easy to just say this to you but my impression is lots of them you can probably just let slip by and not and not worry about as much and things will be fine there are probably still some things that would be beneficial for it. But my gut feeling is if you just kind of take each mistake a little bit less hard and maybe focus on some of the ones that have bigger effects or that are easier to correct, then that might be less damaging. The post-mortem sounds like you're just sitting down and worrying and feeling like you're a horrible person or horrible employee for having made this mistake. Yeah. And one other thing you could try that works for me and so take this with a grain of salt because i think you and i are probably quite
Starting point is 00:16:30 different in this regard is i like to um vocally call out my own mistakes after i make them so like if i say something that turns out not to be true i like to make a kind of a i don't know it's i want to say like a grand gesture but i like to point it out in a way people can't mistake that i acknowledge that i made that mistake and then i feel like i clear the air that way and then people can be like oh okay dave acknowledged that i don't have to worry about correcting him on that because he's taken that on and figured it out and this helps me feel better but i don't know if it'll help you feel better that that kind of thing does help me as well actually because a big portion of the stress of making a mistake is what if this leads to everyone finding out this truth about
Starting point is 00:17:13 how incapable i am and if i just say like oops i accidentally leave the server then then we get to fix it and everybody knows and i don't worry like someone's gonna run across the logs later and then they'll find out it was me and then they'll say you led to this bad outcome and it kind of short circuits the blame that may or may not ever actually be coming but but it also sometimes mistakes flare up my imposter syndrome and just kind of bringing it out into the open seems like it helps with that a little bit just saying like oh i goofed this up sorry maybe that's a benefit of the post-mortem too is hopefully it results in things you can do to correct it so you say uh in the mouse grabbing issue you could just say oh sorry i didn't know about that i've learned
Starting point is 00:18:00 more about pairing now and i'll try not to do it next time yeah if other people are coming down super hard on you for making these mistakes i think it's fair to push back a little bit too if if you got yelled at for grabbing the mouse that seems oh yeah not super appropriate and and you should say hey i'm learning how this works it'll it'll be easier for me to learn if it's in a supportive environment or whatever you want to phrase it but definitely people shouldn't be actively making you feel bad if you already feel this bad yourself how dare you touch my mouse how dare you slap your hand away i think i think for me the big takeaway is you are a valuable engineer and you are one of the most introspective thoughtful people that i have ever
Starting point is 00:18:45 encountered in questions that i've read and we've had quite a few but this one might take the cake like you are so careful and methodical about chronicling these things that you've done and how you've dealt with them and i'm very impressed by it and i dare say that those skills might be beneficial in a management role where you can think about not only your actions but you can think about how others might be feeling in response to their own mistakes and actions and then you can help coach them through it so i would say uh keep an eye out for that and maybe that's something you could look into sure yeah thanks for sending this in i hope i hope things work out well question sort of answered yeah good luck all right i'm gonna read the next question
Starting point is 00:19:29 hey soft skills engineering love the podcast you've helped me understand so much more about the software engineering career field that i probably would have otherwise learned the hard way i have been working at my current job for almost four years the pay is very much below market because it's a non-profit the work is too easy i can finish any task in a couple of hours but we are given an automatic one week plus one week or more deadline to finish anything i'm a little bit more technical oh i'm much more technical than any of my co-workers to the point where i can't even have nerdy conversations with anyone at work oh man Who's going to understand your Superman movie references?
Starting point is 00:20:10 If this question ended right here, we could have just a good time with it. But there's more. Yeah. However, I've stuck around because the job is pretty much stress-free. I don't even have to think about work at all outside of work hours. And all the free time allows me to take on side projects and learn new technologies, including every level of software development. With all this free time, I've started a company.
Starting point is 00:20:30 In the last few months, I have managed developers, designed a system using blockchain tech, designed and implemented a database learned the ins and outs of aws management and serverless built a rest api from scratch developed a full front end in react and redux and a ton of other things since i'm in the prototype phase my startup hasn't gotten any revenue and i'm aware it might take a while to get any revenue if it ever does i need to pay bills and i need to start thinking about my financial stability so i think it's time to get a new job even if it means not having as much freedom to work on this startup i'm not sure how to approach my next step i want to continue working on the startup after I get a new job, but I'm aware that employers might not be fond of CEO
Starting point is 00:21:07 on my resume when there's no end date on the position because I might leave at any time if my company grows. If I don't put anything about my company on my resume, then it seems like I have nothing to show for all the technical skills I claim I have since all the learning management and implementation has all been for my company. Do I put anything about the startup I'm working on in my resume? If not, how would I showcase all the experience and skills I've gained by beginning this startup should i just keep getting by paycheck to paycheck while i build the company thanks okay there's like 12 questions in there my first question is how do you not have any revenue if you built it on blockchain tech oh no he said no revenue but there's probably millions
Starting point is 00:21:48 of vc investment okay that's true i guess that isn't revenue yeah i'm assuming you can just ico and then boom financial stability solved financial stability yeah this is an interesting question so kind of a low-key not very challenging job fun exciting stuff happening in free time when they say financial stability i can't tell if that means they're paying for startup stuff or just like their job doesn't pay as much as they would like well they said that they were managing developers so i'm like yeah yeah either they're working for free or you're paying them somehow in cryptocurrency yeah which you invented maybe maybe there's some kind of mining protocol based on doing work for your startup oh it's like a stock option plan where the employees have to mine the options
Starting point is 00:22:38 yeah that's what i mean yeah you're mining them i don't understand cryptocurrency so um clearly you do that sounds plausible so should so a should you quit your low-paying job which allows you to do all this cool stuff on the side b should i hide the fact that i've been doing all this cool stuff on the side when i go to my next job and c what do i do with all my millions of dollars that i made from icoing yeah well we'll make a new patreon level for you i listened to an episode of the indie hackers podcast about the guy behind coder pad which is a really good it's a really good episode he's fascinating and i really like listening to him um he kind of worked on this startup while working full-time and i don't know if i just
Starting point is 00:23:28 don't remember or if he kind of glossed over but he definitely had this conflict of like i have this potential company and i'm kind of working on it and i also have this job how do I manage these two things? I'm pretty sure it started out as something that would be helpful for the company. And then he just kind of like made it his own thing. I don't know how all that worked out, but, but he, he quit and started working on the startup full-time once it got revenue. Um, and that was a signal that it's okay to bail on your current job and focus more on this thing. It doesn't sound like you're in that case, but that could be a signal, like wait until you get some amount of revenue and then quit your cushy job to to bet more on this hmm are you
Starting point is 00:24:12 assuming that what does that mean i don't know if you'll ever get revenue no i was thinking more like maybe he's already at the breaking point where you know that the low-paying non-profit isn't enough to string along the startup anymore and he's got to make a hard decision you know but how how will a more demanding job be easier to string along the startup my impression is it's not limited by money right yeah maybe i feel like having less time will mean your startup progresses slower yeah i don't know it could be there definitely is the tension also of like i'm joining this company so that i can work on this other thing as soon as it starts i'm gone to take off i'm gone yeah so how do you how do you communicate that to a prospective employer
Starting point is 00:24:59 that you know i've got this side thing going on i love it it's awesome i learned a lot of cool stuff and i'm also a hundred percent committed to you yeah yeah please go all through all the effort of bringing me on and onboarding me and integrating me into your team only to have me pitch your engineers to quit their jobs and come join my startup i promise to give you a really strong seven and a half months. So here's one thing I know. I've interviewed with a lot of companies. I've worked for a lot of companies and many, many, many of the CTOs that I've worked for have side hustles going on. So if you find the right company that's small enough to have a CTO that you actually interview with and is a part of the decision chain, there's a good bet that
Starting point is 00:25:47 they've got something going on on the side. And so that can be good and bad. It's good because they'll sympathize and say oh yeah i do that too but it's bad also because they know exactly how demanding these side jobs can be and so they might see right through it and just say oh nope not interested i'm gonna find someone with less going on you know it depends on how you phrase it though because every not everybody lots of people have side projects i am slowly working on a javascript minifier that turns all your code into rhyming verse but it's not my side hustle i'm not gonna make a an llc and or well a different kind of corp i'm not gonna go raise funding to like build an app store infrastructure on top of this and take a cut of people's money like
Starting point is 00:26:35 just a thing i do so do you just say like i've got this side project i'm working on or what's what's your responsibility to say this could be a real business and i i you're my backup if it doesn't work out like can you just say do you think it's it's ethical to just say oh i've got i've got some side projects that taught me all this cool stuff i think no i think if i were you i would say i have a side business and i'm committed to making sure that it does not interfere with my work with you and of course pitch all the benefits like hey i picked up all the skills that i know that you find so valuable, I self-trained on that. You didn't have to pay to ramp me up. So I'm bringing all that to bear for this company. And I make a commitment that I'll be valuable to
Starting point is 00:27:18 you, even though I've got a side thing going on. And, you know, you might want to actually put some boundaries around your business to make sure that you can actually say that with a straight face. You know, whether it's like a limited number of hours per week or something that you can communicate to the cto or to the hiring manager that makes it pretty clear to them in a concrete way that this thing isn't going to take over your work life there's also some complex legal things that i am in no way qualified to talk about around who owns what and and like mentioning prior arts and inventions and i don't know some employment agreements have really broad things in them about we own everything you do no matter what time it's done and on whose equipment
Starting point is 00:28:00 and stuff and so you might have to consider that like kind of that that's that's maybe an argument for stating it more clearly when you join of like this is the thing i already work on and it's not didn't start on your time yeah but that might backfire i don't know well i mean either it's it's either going to backfire before you start or after you start so like if it's going to backfire it would be better that that happens before you start so this might even be a situation where you want to hire a lawyer to read the employment contract and then explain your situation and see if the lawyer finds any issues with it pay your lawyer in cryptocurrency that you might know of course listen when shakespearify takes off i want to make sure there are no issues with this
Starting point is 00:28:44 employment contract but i think if i were in your shoes i'd put it on there i think it looks good I think the skills you gained are valuable and will show well, and you will have to make it clear to prospective employers that you have found a way to make this side business work along with their employment. It's also maybe helpful to talk about some kind of timeline. If you feel like this is months away from you going all in on it, that seems a little sketchier, but if you think there's probably, I don't know, a couple of years left, that's that's an average relatively average tech tenure at a company so i don't have a sentence after that
Starting point is 00:29:25 just seems like it should be important right if you that that's another thing you could use in your commitment of like i'm committed to this and then my my side business is kind of a longer term background thing yeah and i would say quantify it say look i think there's a you know a very small chance this will take off in the next two years but i'm looking more at like a three or four year horizon for it and frankly if it if it kind of fizzles out i'm cool with that you pitch them that's the start of a pitch dave and you have an opportunity to invest right now what if instead of me coming to work for you you just gave me money to work on my startup nice yeah okay so we've kind of arrived at mention it be upfront about it that helps you explain the experience
Starting point is 00:30:17 thing make sure you're being clear about how much time it will take away from your day job i think the what feels like the scummiest thing you can do is just like get a job and slack off as much as possible and put all your other time into your startup do the bare minimum to not get fired and i don't know maybe that's okay i don't know anything why do we even do this show i like talking to you yeah i think we both established that that's why i think i would feel scummy doing that of just doing the bare minimum to get by and then using it as as funding but i you know i've seen several people leave companies that i'm working with to go pursue a business opportunity that they had been working on on the side and in most cases the the manager
Starting point is 00:31:03 or cto would say oh yeah you know we knew this was a possibility when we hired them and now they're leaving to go run after that and i think that's the narrative you want to see unfold when you go after this company in a bigger way and have to leave your employer so i would say work back work backwards from that outcome and whatever actions you think you need to take in order to increase the likelihood that it sounds like that as opposed to this scumbag's been milking our company to get his side hustle going you know i think yeah that's kind of like your north star guidepost sure that makes sense all right question answered good luck i want in what should people do if they want their own questions answered go over to softskills.audio
Starting point is 00:31:50 and click on ask a question you can fill out a form there with your question you can put contact info in if you like or you can leave it blank to be anonymous and we will get to it as soon as we can thank you so much to everyone who has asked questions there are just too many for us to get to each week, but we will eventually get to all of them. And we appreciate the questions coming in in the meantime. Yeah. Thank you so much. Thanks for listening. We'll catch you next week.

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