Soft Skills Engineering - Episode 211: Biorhythm and coworker roommate

Episode Date: May 25, 2020

In this episode, Dave and Jamison answer these questions: Hi there Dave and Jamison! I am a tech lead in a small team of 5 people. 4 of them start working at 10-11 AM and one of them likes to start working at 1-2 PM. This person is me. Due to my biorhythm I feel I am the most productive at this time, and I also like to do some of the non-work-related stuff in the morning. Nobody in my team has any objections but as a team lead I feel guilty because it often happens that I block someone with my work schedule. I’m trying to do as much as I can to unblock everyone - distributing tasks in the evening, making it clear everyone knows what to do - but that’s not always helpful so it usually turns out that I am stopping my morning tasks to have a call and explain something or have a text conversation. Tbh it irritates me very much :D Should I feel guilty? As a tech lead, am I responsible for working at the same time everyone does? Hey Dave and Jamison! I love the show, I’ve listened to every episode and your advice has helped me a TON! I started a new job in a different city a month ago and because of Covid-19 everyone went remote, so I didn’t physically move to that city then. Now there are talks of going back to the office, and one of the developers on my team is also looking for a place to live so we started talking about rooming together. It seemed fine to me but then I realized I’d be spending almost ALL of my time with this person who I have not even met in real life yet. Do you think this is a good idea with a lot of convenience or a recipe for disaster? Have you ever lived with a co-worker? Any advice would be great. Thanks!

it takes more than managing your stock portfolio with a yaml file to be a great engineer this is episode 211 of the soft skills engineering podcast i'm your host jamis a dance i'm your host and yaml portfolio manager dave smith there's a war between the yaml and the json portfolio managers for your business soft skills engineering is a weekly advice show where we answer all of your non-technical questions about the technical field of software engineering and give hot stock tips like make sure to quote your your your i don't even know what the company names are called trust me i give hot stock tip what's the name for like is it like a ticker name or something oh yeah the symbol the symbol yeah make sure you quote your symbols otherwise if

you invest in the wrong company yaml will convert it to a boolean and then sell all your stocks at a loss how did yaml become the config format like json has weaknesses why don't we use one that is way complicated and has all these weird edge cases i only use turing complete config formats yeah okay hang on we're messing this up soft skills dang it there there's a config language that is sort of programmable but is explicitly written to be not turing complete that one of my co-workers was pointing out before i gotta look it up what was it ironically it's called turing doll that's what it is a non-turing complete configuration language and it is of course implemented with haskell ah yes why don't we just do our config in haskell

we should do the thing dave do you want to thank our patrons i do thanks to those that are contributing on patreon they are braden canes dennis bogdanov evgeny sladkowski john grant luke bayliss microconfig.io nick hathaway nick cantar philip john basile ryan real mccoy agile ventures charity sean stanley tactical radio steven armand lee taras haruk travis and vin lock they are supporting us at the level where they get a shout out every single week you can support the show by going to softskills.audio and click on support us on patreon and if you do for any dollar amount we will send you an invitation to our slack community where there are a lot of really great conversations good humor good advice and there's even a hard skills channel where we

talk about actual hard skills just a little off brand but you know whatever it's it's been welcomed the soft skills community welcomes talking about hard skills too yeah please support us we would be very appreciative is that a word yeah i think so we'd give you a big thank you should i read our first question yeah hit it okay this is from an anonymous listener hey there dave and jameson i'm a tech lead in a small team of five people four of them start working at 10 to 11 a.m and one of them likes to start working at 1 to 2 p.m this person is me due to my biorhythm i feel i am the most productive at this time and i also like to do some of the non-work related stuff in the morning nobody in my team has any objections but

as a team lead i feel guilty because it often happens that i block someone with my work schedule i'm trying to do as much as i can to unblock everyone distributing tasks in the evening making it clear everyone knows what to do but that's not always helpful so it usually turns out that i am stopping my morning tasks to have a call and explain something or have a text conversation to be honest it irritates me very much and then smiley face which maybe i think means it irritates you even more than if you had said irritates me very much it's like worse the smiley face i don't know yeah for some reason it's like if someone tosses a brick through your window you'd feel bad but if they toss a brick through your window with like a winky smiley

face on it you'd be like oh i'm about to die should i feel guilty as a tech lead am i responsible for working at the same time everyone else does listen we'll let the courts decide guilt but if they do decide you are guilty then you should be prepared to i don't know break rocks in a chain gang or something oh yeah okay this is interesting it says here in the question it usually turns out that i stop my morning tasks to have a call and explain something or have a text conversation yeah to be honest it irritates me very much that i have to interrupt my non-work stuff to support my team is that did i interpret that right you know i bet it i bet it irritates the team very much that they have to interrupt your non-work stuff in the morning too yeah i think you got it

right okay that they're doing something i don't know maybe they're like exercising or doing errands or painting or something that isn't working painting doing their other job as a tech lead am i responsible for working at the same time everyone else does i feel like that question is facetious almost like like it kind of doesn't matter when you work it matters your your job is to make the team effective and when you work is maybe part of that but the end goal is that the team is effective and if they are blocked all the time because you're working these hours that differ drastically from them then you're not doing it like you're not making the team effective so i feel like this question is phrased so that i should say like no no you

don't have to work at the same time everyone else does but that's not the question it doesn't matter when you work it matters that it's not working well right now like you're mad because they're interrupting you in this time when you're not at work they're mad i guarantee you they're frustrated it they're like this is so dumb why do i have to call this person at like 11 30 in the morning and have them be upset at me because i interrupted their basket weaving time to do work during work time and it's good to try to unblock them but it hasn't worked you haven't done it yet if you're getting these calls that are interrupting you regularly i mean there is one way to fix this without anyone having to change anything

except for one small thing, which is the tech lead should move to a time zone that's about four hours ahead of the team. That'd be perfect. It'd be ideal. As funny as that sounds, I lived in a time zone that was three hours ahead of my company's headquarters.

And it was great because I basically got no calls or interruptions from headquarters until around 12 to one every day. and so if i was the kind of person who liked to weave my baskets in the morning until about one o'clock that arrangement would have worked quite nicely so there's i feel like there's two different things going on here one is if you work in a synchronous environment you have to overlap with other people and the other piece is kind of separate which is how do you make work async so that one person working at a different time can not block other people yeah and it feels like

right now it's pretty synchronous where it requires a lot of in the moment collaboration to solve problems or move things forward and if that's not going to change then you're not going to be able to make this work in a way that will make everybody happy yeah but if you do like your your mission isn't how can i make these people stop bugging me it's like how do we change how the team works as a whole so that everyone can work asynchronously and it just so happens that I like to do that a lot. I don't have an answer. That was a question that's supposed to make me sound smart.

Oh, right. I just ask the big questions, Dave. That's my role, and that's how I earn the big bucks. That's right. I just get conversation flowing, you know? Yeah. And then someone else does the thing. Someone else comes in at the early hours and does the work while I ask the questions.

While I paint my landscapes. Yeah. So I guess the question is, as a tech lead, how do you work yourself out of a job so that you are not needed for the team to be functional? It sounds like this particular tech lead maybe hasn't achieved that. But then again, if you really achieve that, what's the point of having a tech lead? Well, then you get to come in to work at 2pm and still leave at 5pm and you feel like you've been really effective. Another option is to not be a tech lead. I mean, if having this role means that there's a lot of coordination costs and responsibility for you kind of helping

other people get their work done maybe you can't do that and have this flexible super flexible schedule that differs so much from the rest of your team yeah i think i agree with you though that like even if it wasn't a schedule problem but you were the tech lead and people couldn't get their work done without talking to you that does seem to indicate a problem so maybe there's some ownership that needs to be more widely distributed here i was focusing more on the async workflow thing but that's kind of separate from can people do their work without you yeah maybe there's some training that you need to have people go through to help learn how to solve problems better by themselves so i feel like i've explored this in a couple different ways

when i felt like things depended too much on me one of the ways i've tried to solve this is by taking everything that's in my head and writing it down so it's like you don't have to talk to me because here's what i would say if you ask me all these questions i have anticipated each of these questions and they're documented exactly and that results in these very detailed specifications which is basically like do this thing and the other way i've tried to take myself out of a thing is by saying do whatever you want come to me for questions and i might check in sometime but like kind of go vastly the other direction and and step back quite a bit and i was i want to feel good and say like oh i always do the second one and provide a ton of ownership and that always

works well but honestly it's sometimes situations require more specification and sometimes things go better if i pass off a lot more ownership but both of those are better than the current state which is like people sort of know what they should be doing but they have to check in a lot because they think like i have some specific thing in my head that i haven't told them or some special knowledge that they need to unblock themselves the middle is the bad place yeah yeah all right so let me ask you a pointed question mr question asker if you were the tech lead for a team and everyone else on the team works during a certain time window each day would you be willing to shift your time off of that by about three or four hours off of when everyone else works by three

or four hours yes no no i would like bend over backwards to a fault probably i mean i'm not saying this is because i'm better it's just because i would i would feel like even if no one ever said anything i'd be like they all hate me because i'm working these separate hours and i would just immediately switch to overlap more with them i think i know what you would do which is you would start work as early as the earliest person starts and end work as late as the latest person ends i hope not there are people all over the world on my team okay if you were like in an in-office situation though you would feel bad oh yeah yeah probably yeah yeah i've never been able to just say like i'm most effective at three so i'll work from three to midnight or whatever like

i don't know i don't know why i'm also really ineffective at 3 p.m that is my least effective time by the way so if i came in at three i would just stare at the wall for an hour and a half until i got out of the bad times okay interesting yeah i i'm in the same boat like if i were a tech lead on this team i would definitely shift my time to work with them and it's not super unreasonable like this team works pretty cushy hours already you know starting to work at 10 a.m 11 a.m is not like this horrible time to start work that's a good point yeah so if i were in your so let's i'm going to answer this point of question should i feel guilty yes as a tech lead am i responsible for working at the same time everyone else does yes that's pretty clear cut for me so you're

saying like sidestep all this stuff about like unblocking people and just like part of your responsibility to the team is to make things convenient for them not for you yep like it's kind of a hard position to take but like you want to be successful i don't know you just did it how hard could it be you're right that was pretty easy see i did it yeah i think that makes sense i mean i don't know what this person means by my biorhythm like maybe there's some medical condition going on there or something but maybe i mean most people work nine-ish to five-ish and it seems to do okay maybe it's different now because of remote work i don't know if this was in the a question from the before times right but especially in offices i found that flexible

hours work less well in offices there's kind of an assumption that you work flexible hours and people are more willing to work around it when everybody's remote but it is a little when when you have when you have everybody in the office you're counting on like the pain of commuting and synchronizing schedules being worth it because of all this in-person collaboration and you're sort of just saying like hey you enjoy that in-person collaboration i'm gonna do my bird watching and noon is actually the peak time to find the spotted goldfinch in flight nice so i really can't flex on that obviously i i guess i'm i'm being a little maybe harsher because they said i like to work it's not like i have to take care of my child or like yeah yeah

i have this illness it really seems like you know i just kind of like to not start work until 2 p.m and that feels a little selfish yeah i think so well we weren't very positive on this we weren't very supportive of their idea i think we basically told them do it differently yeah you're welcome i guess yeah question has been answered sorry bud yeah better luck next time next question yeah i'll read our next one now okay this comes from a person named developer dan hey dave and jameson i love the show i've listened to every episode and your advice has helped me a ton. Can I just say I'm amazed when people say they listen to every episode, there's more than

200. I mean, that is like, that is a lot. Yeah, I couldn't stand to have that much of my voice in my head. You have a whole life of it in your head. I try not to talk to myself very much. It's I don't like I don't like the sound. Okay. Okay, I started a new job in a different city a month ago. And because of COVID-19, everyone went remote. So I didn't physically move to that city then. Now there are talks of going back to the office. And one of the developers on my team is also looking for a place to live so we started talking about rooming together it seemed fine to me but then i realized i'd be spending almost all of my time with this person who i have not met in real life do you think this is a good idea with a lot of convenience or a recipe for disaster

have you ever lived with a co-worker any advice would be great thanks this sounds like a sitcom honestly yeah two developers one of them hates people the other one hates the roommate wait didn't they actually make a show about this i've never watched it but isn't isn't the show silicon valley like this kind of situation i guess sometimes they're roommates for part of that show yeah it's funny it would be a funny show if it was like silicon valley if that's the sitcom you're going for yeah it's usually only funny to an audience though not to the to the people not to the people in it yeah that's true it would be miserable to live through it'll be funny later when you tell your friends about it so i got married when i was pretty young so i i had roommates

but i got married while i was still in college so i didn't have like a working professional career and have roommates while i was single or not living with a significant other so i haven't had this exact experience but i did have a co-worker live with me once there was i was working at a startup we hired somebody who i kind of helped recruit who i knew through the internet and lives in a different state and they were moving to come work at this company they did not have a place to stay and i said oh you can come stay with me for a couple weeks while you get your feet under you and kind of find your own place and they moved in and they brought their pet parakeet which was a free range parakeet because it did not stay in a cage so this is

when i learned a lot about what parakeet poop smells like and looks like when it's all over every surface of a room oh no and the bird was cute at first and the bird was the same except the poop resentment built up in me and it offset any cuteness the bird had oh no so that was rough the other rough thing was that the co-worker slash roommate was was not very motivated to go find a different place to live oh no they were living rent-free in this i mean it wasn't like a great situation but they would it worked they had a place to lay their head and a place for their bird to poop yeah a place for the bird to poop which was everywhere i think i actually have some i have to go look through my pictures i think i have some pictures of pair programming with the

bird where it was perched on my laptop and then it did actually poop on my laptop screen once and then i stopped doing that oh i'm remembering more stuff also so we lived in a basement apartment then this is my wife and i and our upstairs neighbors had some little kids and this co-worker would go out to smoke and the little kids would come out and say like you're gonna die smoking's bad for you like try to shame them into not smoking with their little child eyes and innocent questions about my mommy told me not to smoke why do you do it i love that yeah but eventually all of my very subtle hints of like hey this will be for a couple weeks and then complete avoidance of any confrontation after that turned out not to work and i think what happened was my wife

stepped in and like was like hey you have to be out by this date here are a list of apartments oh wow enjoy yourself way to go yeah yeah way to she's great and i'm a huge wuss and she saved us basically but like they moved out it was fine it didn't actually make things weird between us at work because there wasn't like a huge fight they were just like okay but i would do it differently if i were doing it again well yeah but you've just revealed a key to this whole arrangement which is you need a bad guy who can deliver the news to say you're out of the apartment who's not you yeah can you have like a significant other or a parent or get your boss involved in it what your boss really wants to be involved in is domestic disputes between their employees

yeah that's that's really perfect that'll help them climb the management ladder yeah that's like part of their training i think yeah okay i know how to resolve conflicts about cleanliness in an apartment between two co-workers yeah that spill over into code review comments oh you like oh you like clean code oh clean code is really important to you huh how about a clean bathroom clean pots i love it glad to see you care so much about cleanliness i mean i think we just made an assumption that the bad guy i was referring to was a human being but the other option is you could just buy a parakeet and that guy will leave eventually and harass them out of the

apartment yeah it depends on whose name the lease is in though i guess yeah because if it's in their name then you're leaving but if it's in your name then you you can drive them out i would be terrified of this i don't know yeah i haven't lived with people well that's not true i have lived with people that i didn't know before and sometimes it was great and sometimes it was horrible and i wouldn't wouldn't do it again by choice was it ever just like neutral yeah sometimes it was fine but like i i think on average it was better than horrible but the horrible times were real horrible oh man roommates that you don't get along with there's like like love makes a house a home and roommates that you don't get along with make a home into a hovel that's the flip side of

that expression oh so true and i didn't work with any of those people wait i lied i totally did and it sucked to work with them it was awful wait is this parakeet person no this no no no no working with them was fine oh okay no this is people so i lived in brazil for a couple years and oh right worked with some of those people got it and it turns out if you don't get along at home when you don't get along at work too you have nowhere to escape to that's right that makes sense so yeah like this this is a risky proposition i think and if i were going into this i would like sign a prenuptial agreement equivalent for roommates yeah and say we're gonna do this for let's say three months and in three months we'll reevaluate and if either one of us says we'd

rather not continue here's what we'll do you know and just kind of make that make that agreement in fact jameson as i recall that's kind of how we started this podcast it was i don't think we signed anything but yeah we had that conversation of like yeah we'll just try it out yeah and then I think we basically said, if either one of us wants to bail at any moment, then it's over. We just do it. We'll have a no-fault podcast divorce. That's right.

After a couple of months, I think you said, like, Dave, we need to talk about the podcast. And I was like, oh, crap. He wants to pull out. I don't remember this. We sat down and you said, I want to keep doing it. And I was like, oh, oh, me too. This is great. Oh.

I thought you were going to say you wanted out. I probably should have led with that when I said I want to talk about the podcast. No way. It's so much better drama. That's like when your boss just messages you and is like, hey, I need to talk to you. We need to talk. Yeah. And then you freak out.

And then later on, they're like, hey, I had a question about like, I don't know, this line of code you wrote. Why didn't you just say that? I know. I know. Please come to my office. Yeah. Right away.

Yeah. Hey, listen, what brand is your backpack? because I like it a lot right and I was hoping to pick one up so true oh man yeah so like this could go really really terrible or it could be fine I like that idea and you could make a great friend maybe maybe you will be friends with him so I mean yeah I think you should probably write down a list of what your requirements are in a roommate and just ask the person rate yourself on these various scales like do you go to bed early or late do you like to party with really loud music at 1am how clean are you do you prefer to keep your apartment clean or dirty you know

like and i think you could just go this is like roommate 101 though right and i think all that applies but yeah it's even more important that you're aligned in this case because your work life and your personal life will both suffer if they're not yeah this is a lot like the perils of dating a co-worker or having a romantic relationship with a co-worker which is roommate relationships end and go wrong and if those are tied to work things then it's real bad yeah exactly it's like this is the opposite of a hedge where you're basically saying i'm going all in yeah i mean maybe there's financial reasons maybe maybe you're moving to san francisco and you're not a millionaire so you have to have roommates and then i don't know i guess it makes sense but you could

probably find roommates at a different tech startup yeah you probably could that's true but just just for the convenience of saying like i don't really want to look for an apartment you just do it because we're both moving to the same place yeah that feels pretty risky to me me too i would default to no on this decision and yeah i would say default to no unless there is a strong compelling reason or maybe four or five strong compelling reasons and then i would i could be i could be pushed to yes and record it all and i want to watch the show right hire a film crew and turn it into reality tv it'll be great yeah have we answered the question i think so well you didn't give an opinion though i mean you didn't come down and say no or yes oh well

like i said my perspective is so skewed because i haven't had roommates in such a long time and never almost never while i was like a working professional so i'm terrified about the idea of living with anybody besides my wife like right right so just know but that's because my my life has shaped me into this pattern so but yeah i i'd be nervous yeah i would be nervous too i would also say that it makes a big difference if it's just two of you rooming together or if it's like four or six sharing a you know a different kind of dwelling with a lot of rooms it'll diversify your risk yeah yeah just the upside doesn't seem that up right yeah yeah but also i would spend a lot of money to have no roommates well the upside is that you get to carpool every day it's kind of

cool or sit next to each other on the train yeah or like ride in a scooter conga line share a lime scooter yeah the most romantic way to commute do they have baskets you can sit in for lime scooters you can have somebody sit up front that would be awesome well i think i think we've answered it very clearly yep good luck let us know good luck i think our answers to both of the questions this week were like no yeah it's kind of mean yeah we'll say yes to everything next week yeah what can people do if they want their own question said yes to go to soft skills.audio and click ask a question where you can fill out our form thanks so much to everyone who has done that we get a lot of questions and we're very

grateful you are the lifeblood of the show keep them coming and share the show if you enjoy it and if you think other people would enjoy it too we really appreciate that as well all right we'll catch you next week