Soft Skills Engineering - Episode 289: Sharing wisdom nicely and too many raises?

Episode Date: January 31, 2022

In this episode, Dave and Jamison answer these questions: Hey guys, a long time listener here, I love the show. I’ve recently joined an early-stage startup with a tiny engineering team. It’s like most startups at this stage, there’s some chaos and a lot to figure out. It’s exactly what I like about startups. In the past years, I’ve been working on the very same kind of software we’re building now. I have a ready answer for many questions we might have, I’ve seen some things go badly and others work great. I’m eager to help the team deliver. But I also don’t want to be seen as the know-it-all jerk that tells everyone how to do their job. I have respect for my team and want to contribute. How do I use my experience without annoying my colleagues? Thanks for sharing your wisdom (I hope for 101% of it). Listener Andy asks, I moved to company A and it’s been 6 months I am constantly getting interview requests, Gave an interview and got a 30% rise moved to Company B, Now within 6 months the same thing happened, Gave an interview at Company C and got the job with 30% raise. what should I do? will it affect my long term career growth

it takes more than giving lgtm with a thumbs up emoji as 360 feedback to your peers to be a great engineer this this is soft skills engineering episode 289 i'm your host dave smith i'm your host jamison dance soft skills engineering is a weekly advice podcast for software developers about how to give feedback to your peers with a combination of code review comments and emojis Do you just have a single ship it squirrel emoji in your review from your manager? Ship it. Or sometimes if you want to be witty, you can split that out into ship and then the Italian flag. Oh.

Ship IT. A boat with the Italian flag? Yes, exactly. Ship it. That's pretty good. It is the season, right, for reviews and feedback. I don't know. is it is january a common time for that that's not i think it is yeah okay fine

should i thank our wonderful patrons please do thank you to these people or entities that are contributing to the show such that we shout them out every single week thank you to andrew pollock the yeet your job podcast avery sturtzel ian walter aaron duna kashokton ohio Cameron Hall, Ira Chan, Monkey Face Emoji, Jonathan King, TestingIsDocumenting.org, Fizbuzz Influencer, Oladapo Fadje, Karen Sveinsen, Will Angel, Ragnar Harrison, Nick Hathaway, Travis Sanders, Dennis Bogdanoff, Brayden Keynes, John Grant, Ibot Winrar, Nick Kantar, and Philip John Basile. Thank you so much to all of you, and thank you for contributing with the currency of your attention, which is worth $5 to $20 a year if you are a giant social

network selling it for hats but it's priceless to us that's right we would never put a dollar amount on it actually we would if you want to contribute to the show you can go to softskills.audio click support us on patreon and then earn the fabulous prize of us saying words that you get to pick sometime words or symbols yeah we can try and figure out how to pronounce the unicode live on the air oh yeah yeah if you do that you get an invite to our slack team which is great any contribution level you get that invite and and we want to see you there we do you want to read our first question dave sure thing this comes from an anonymous listener who says hey guys long-time listener here i love the show i've recently joined an early stage startup with a tiny engineering

team it's like most startups at this stage there's some chaos and a lot to figure out it's exactly what i like about startups in the past years i've been working on the very same kind of software we're building now i have a ready answer for many questions we might have I've seen some things go badly and others work great, and I'm eager to help the team deliver. But I also don't want to be seen as the know-it-all jerk that tells everyone how to do their job. I have respect for my team and want to contribute. How do I use my experience without annoying my colleagues? Thanks for sharing your wisdom. I hope for 101% of it. We'll deliver. Okay, I've got it. If you just give this advice, it's you giving the advice, right? You're valuable.

you're a known quantity people have seen your code they know the truth behind your ideas sometimes they're good sometimes they're bad but if you seed stack overflow with your advice as answers to questions then you just tell your team to google it they google it your answer pops up on stack overflow and then there's a pathway from stack overflow to production code that's well worn in every engineer's right it's the command c command v buttons yeah exactly yeah i mean you'll need some sock puppet accounts and upvote rings and stuff but i'm sure that's doable like wow i can't believe we're the only company working on this kind of a medical device in the world and yet stack overflow still has the answers how did this happen wisdom of crowds

one thing that the listener did not state is kind of how senior they are if they're in any kind of leadership role i mean i assume it's pretty flat if it's a tiny engineering team on a very early stage startup but is there like a founding i don't know technical co-founder or someone or or is the authority about technical decisions very evenly distributed because if you have the authority then it's pretty easy to just tell people what to do and be the know-it-all jerk but be expected to be the know-it-all jerk right yeah if they expect it although don't you think jameson that even if you do have the authority you still have to influence politely yes i mean i think it goes without saying you're not going to be the jerk and i didn't mean to suggest that

you were saying but but even still it's hard even when you're in a position of authority it's hard to just tell people what to do yeah you that currency runs out pretty quick if if that's your default way of making technical decisions with a group is telling them i've decided good news here's what we're doing i don't want to seem as know-it-all jerk tells everyone how to do their job so there's also another i'm gonna dance around the question again by not answering it but perfect it's possible that you have a lot of experience and not all of your experience has taught you the exact right thing to do right maybe maybe you messed something up and and so missed out on why a solution would work in this context where it didn't when you were building that software in

another context or something in other words it might not be 100 transferable yeah yeah like your your experience is definitely useful and informative but you might not be able to just copy and paste the things you did or didn't do into this new company and if you frame it that might be a useful way to influence too if you frame it as here's some things i saw in my experience here's why i think they apply here then that you can have a discussion about instead of saying oh I've seen this problem before. It's easy. We just do X, Y, Z. Yeah. Now get back to your desk and type it. In fact, I can type it faster than you can.

Move over. I agree with that. And I also think that coming at it from a place of humility can help. And one way to make it really explicit how humble you are is I'm reading into this one sentence in the question that says, I've seen some things go badly and others work great. I would say lead with the bad stuff talk about the mistakes you've made talk about the stories that of the problems that were caused by decisions you made in the past because i think that will disarm people so that they don't feel defensive because they let they know like you are your biggest critic you know so it's really easy for them to go oh wow this person knows when they're wrong and so that

means that when they tell me something that they think is right i am more likely to believe them and want to go along with it. Yeah. I seem like the note alter tells everyone how to do their job. I mean, just don't do that. Don't tell everyone how to do their job, right? If you have design sessions

or if you have venues for feedback or if you're working on something, then that's a really good opportunity to use your experience. If someone is just like happily cranking away on something and you feel like it's not, your experience has taught you

that tabs are better than spaces in this kind of field, then it's it's probably fine to just ignore look i i get it that you guys want to use spaces and and that works fine in crappy you know maybe crappy low-grade software but look this is a chat application and chat applications only work with tabs so keep that in mind i mean in my experience yeah well i just tried to build one with spaces and i failed really badly so So I don't want us to repeat my same mistake. There's another opportunity here, I think, since you're new to the team, to sit down and have an expectations management conversation.

Sometimes people call this level setting, where you sit down with a team and say, hey, team, look, I am so excited to be here, and I want to help as much as I can. But I don't want to come across as a know-it-all jerk. And it turns out my experience in this domain is super relevant. I did a lot of the same stuff at a previous company, and I would love to share as much of my learning with you all as I can, but can you help me know what would be the best way to do that with you? And then let them voice how they want to be engaged so that they might say something like, yeah, look, while we have these design sessions, that's the best time to do it. Or, hey, when we're pair programming, that's not the time. We need to focus on just getting the code done. We don't want to devolve into philosophical discussions about the right way to do this.

You know, and maybe they'll say that, but whatever it is, pay close attention to it and they'll give you the clues. They'll tell you how they want to work with you. And then when you do follow what you all established as ground rules, it will feel less awkward, I think. Yeah, I like that. Assuming they're honest, I mean, or they even know what would be annoying or not annoying to them and can articulate it. That's what I was thinking is like, I don't know what's going to be annoying to me, but I know it when I see it and I'll tell you. Yeah, exactly. give them a code word they can say when you're being a know-it-all jerk

ah yeah okay sarsaparilla yeah it's going to be really hard to figure out when sarsaparilla on soda pop becomes like the new framework du jour that's all the rage yes you'll have a hard time telling what context that word is being used in exactly okay do we answer the question i think so yeah all righty good luck shall i read our next question you shall this is from a listener named andy who asks i have moved to company a and it's been six months i am constantly getting interview requests i gave an interview and i got a 30 raise by moving to company b now within six months the same thing happened i gave an interview at company c and got the job with a 30 percent raise what should i do

will it affect my long-term career growth so started at a company wasn't there that long interviewed got a 30 percent raise left and has been there six months at the new company and also interviewed and got an offer for 30 percent raise has not left yet that's my interpretation yeah this would be like a 70 raise because of compounding effects actually i did the math at 68 don't don't hate me that's a lot of money 70 raise but you have to have a six two six month stints on your resume is it worth it oh that's a good way to think about it you're you're like selling chunks of your resume for that much money you're selling real estate on your linkedin profile yeah but it's like slumlord real estate you know it's like i mean that's the worry here

is that it will be perceived as bad and then at some point in the future that money will be reclaimed by the linkedin real estate moguls those high interest loans that sounded so good when the due date was long in the future balloon payment time to pay the piper sucker yeah so i think if you just have two stints and especially if it's now during these unprecedented times of covid and the job market and everything i think you get a little bit more leeway there's also i feel like if if you see a resume with a bunch of short hops at places there's some subset of companies that will think oh they just haven't found the right place and we are the right place like we can fix them so i don't think it will ruin your career growth uh i think you definitely

need to at some point stick around for a while both for resume building and for seeing your own mistakes develop instead of fleeing them but i mean that's that's a lot of money assuming that all the other stuff about the job is relatively similar is it i don't know as interesting-ish as good-ish of people technology is not horrible to you i don't know man i have a hard time telling someone not to do that not to take that money i mean that this is like like let's just say you were at, I don't know, let's pick a number. You were at 80,000. You got a 30% raise to 104 and another 30% raise would be 135. So you're going from 80 to $135,000 a year in what, 12 months. That's pretty good. That's pretty good. That's pretty good. It's going to be tough

to pull off within a single company. Oh yeah. In that timeframe, this would be like seven years of growth in one company yeah that's tough i would say that jameson your analysis is spot on i think when when all the dust settles on the great resignation and the pandemic and all the economic shifts that have happened over the last two years when we look back three four or five years from now and we're gonna see everybody had some stints on their resumes some short stints at companies on their resumes so i think it'll be easy to explain yeah i yeah hmm i think it might depend on the position a little bit as well probably the the more of a leadership role you're coming into the more reluctant companies would be to hire someone i mean if you're coming

in as a manager or director or some kind of highfalutin principal grand vizier senior your ultimate ic role then i think people generally expect those folks to stick around longer as part of the the deal like yeah you you have a lot of influence kind of takes a long time to exert the timelines are longer so so you just you need to stick around longer but i agree and then you do have to be prepared for the interview question that's inevitably going to come because you're now on your third six months well your third job in the last 12 months they're gonna say oh i see you changed jobs twice in the last six months uh what what is your plan for the next six months you know see if someone will offer me a 30 percent raise

yeah exactly oh man yeah well if that's your answer they might still hire you in this crazy industry anyway yeah i don't know i'd rather have you for six months than zero months so let's do it sign here please or it kind of depends on how they feel like they are positioned in the in the salary distribution yeah exactly there's some companies that that think they pay really well some that think they just pay okay some that know that they're just ripping people off and they're often the first company in this story that is their company a a previous a dot prev yeah in the linked list of your resume that's right and and i think it all every company you switch to has a higher and higher chance of being the one that gets longevity out of you

because eventually you're going to hit the ceiling on what companies can pay. So you could tell them that. You could say, look, I ran a Monte Carlo simulation on my career and I conclude that you have a 50% higher chance than the previous company to hold me for more than six months. We're sold. There's your answer. We'll take it.

Have we answered the question as well as the fake interview question? There's a 50%. I did not run a Monte Carlo simulation on this question, though, on our answers, that is. Through the magic of editing, we can just leave. We can go off and do that and then slice it in. Hey, editors, editors, will you please run the Monte Carlo simulation? That's right in the wheelhouse for audio editing is Monte Carlo simulations.

So I think to summarize, we're saying the more junior you are, the more this is okay. In other words, the less impact it will have on your career at all, if at anything. Like if these are your first three jobs in the industry, this will have, I think, no bearing whatsoever on your long-term prospects. I don't know if you agree with that, James. I do agree with it. And we say this periodically, but because the career and salary trajectory is so steep at the beginning of the career, it's really easy for employers to just anchor based on the experience and pay that junior folks have when they come into the company. And that's why it's so easy for junior people to get a giant raise by leaving their job. So if you are an employer, it's useful to make sure that you are kind of periodically, realistically evaluating folks who came on very junior as like, what could I give this person if I were trying to hire them today? That kind of thought.

That's right. As an employer, what you need to be doing is re-evaluating the risk levels that you took on when you hired a junior person. Now that you've got time under your belt, six months, 12 months, 24 months, you know a lot more about the risk of this hire and that should be reflected in their pay or else some other company will be happy to reflect that in their pay. Yeah. Yeah. Oh, thanks company A for taking on all that risk for us. Yeah. Yoink. Yep. Exactly. So anyway, I think, where's the cutoff though? I mean, probably our advice extends into the five-year mark. If you've been in the industry for five years, you're probably still okay to

make a jump like this three times. Ten-year mark, maybe? That's where I think it starts to be fuzzy depending on the role you're coming into. If you're in formal management, this starts to hurt, I think, because if you were a manager and you jumped three companies six months each, that can leave a bunch of teams and broader organizations in a lurch. You could be leaving a lot of pain behind. And so I think companies will laser focus on that and say, ooh, this is a leader that I'm signing up for pain if I hire. So that's definitely true. But even as an IC, like Jameson, you were saying, probably around the 10-year mark is where you want to stop this and start getting a little more longevity under your belt or else it's going to be perceived badly.

Yeah. Very experienced engineer careers are a mystery to me and a lot of folks because the industry is so young especially very experienced i see careers i feel like this is maybe a case where listeners might have more info too is is do you still job hop if you've been an engineer for like 25 years right yeah or do you kind of settle down by then i think my stereotype is is you get more comfortable in in one place and maybe a little more risk averse so you kind of settle down but maybe that's not true i don't know i think that's generally true people's personal lives tend to be less risk tolerant at that seniority yeah it's tough to go back to ramen right when you have you have like college funds to pay for exactly it's like i i loved eating

ramen when i was a college kid but now that i'm paying the tuition for my own college kid it's not great so it's their turn to eat ramen right not my turn i already ate the ramen so yeah i think that's my that's what my gut says and and i've you know i've known a fair number of ics with 20 plus years of experience i think it's very rare for them to hop after six months at a company i've seen it i have seen it even in management but it's probably like the 10 case not the 90 case interesting okay now we've answered the question right i think so let's call it answered it's answered what should people do if they want their own questions answered go over to softskills.audio and click our ask a question button. Thank you so much to everybody who has

submitted questions. They are fantastic. If this podcast didn't exist, but the questions still kept flowing in, I would be happy. That's all. Just reading these questions is so great. Just to read them. Yeah, that's true. All right. We will catch you next week.