Soft Skills Engineering - Episode 55: Ng-Conf Live Episode

Episode Date: April 11, 2017

It’s a special ng-conf live episode! Dave and Jamison answer these questions in front of a live audience: When you go freelancing, do your coding skills atrophy? What is something you wish you knew about freelancing before you started? I met all my aggressive career goals. What next? Here is the Khan Academy Engineering Ladder Jamison mentioned towards the end of the show.

It takes more than great code to be a great engineer. This is episode 55 of the Soft Skills Engineering Podcast. I'm your host, Jameson Dance. I'm your host, Dave Smith. And we are here for a special live episode at ng-conf. Yay! The crowds are wild! There's dozens of them.

There's literally dozens of hundreds of people in this tiny room. Yeah, so we want to start off with a comment from a listener about firing. So I'll just read it. I just wanted to say thank you for doing the show today. I was part of a decision to fire someone, and I felt really bad about it. But remembering your advice from episode 44, I decided to keep any explanation to a minimum. Luckily, I wasn't the one informing them that they were fired. They did come over and vent to me a little bit afterwards.

I was tempted to justify myself. But then I remembered Dave saying that this is already an awful day, and nothing I could say at that point could help anything. Your show helped me not make a bad situation worse. A ringing endorsement. Not making bad situations worse. what is since 2016 oh man sorry you had to go through that and i'm really sorry for the person getting fired but i'm glad that you were able to find some kind of solace in in that advice

in dave's advice i hope it worked let us know like if that was the right thing yeah yeah i guess you're saying it was at least at the moment let us know again though because we're really self-conscious about that uh okay i think we have our first question who is also live here live Yes, this is a Soft Skills Engineering first ever, where the question asker is actually here in person. Sergio, step right up here, why don't you, and let's hear the question that you have for us. Absolutely. I have a question. That's why we asked you here, actually. I have a very good question.

Yeah, that's the second reason we asked you here. As it turns out, I actually have two questions. Oh, gosh. But we're only going to charge you for one. Perfect. Thank you. True for one. I like it. Okay, so my first question is when you go into freelancing, is there ever a risk of having your technical skills deteriorate a little bit? Because you're so worried about just getting things done. Get in, get paid, get out. Right, kind of thing. Is that a thing?

Okay. And what's your second question? Good question. No, that's your job. oh yeah um what are some things about like going into business that expect you know as a freelancer and whatnot or that you didn't expect or you know just one of those unforeseen things that maybe you wish you knew now it's you know you've done it for a while and now you know kind of thing great thanks Sergio why don't we give Sergio a round of applause for that great job so the first question is do your skills deteriorate as a freelancer

so i've gotten so much worse at mario kart and ping pong nerf and like all those programmer things that all of these happened around the office i just don't do those anymore because we i don't know the ping pong table so that's a resounding yes yeah some of your skills skills they will deteriorate yeah they're real bad on the other hand your tax skills will improve dramatically and if they don't improve you'll just go to jail so that's and then you learn like shiv skills yeah that's true i think i think my skills have improved since becoming a freelancer i'm also like which skills are you talking about now like technical skills okay so your question is specifically about technical skills right oh so you mean all the other stuff we said was just

crap well yeah but that's always true all right um yeah it's not i feel like my job is to deliver value to the client and that doesn't always mean just get in and like crank out the worst crappiest code as fast as possible uh that's still a thing that takes a lot of effort and that i improve on um the i'm not like focused on a specific niche or technology either so i'm still doing a lot of exploration i don't know that that part of it doesn't feel that much different than when i was a full-time employee okay the the focus on technical skills and improving those so you recently transitioned from full-time employment to freelancing right yeah within the last year yeah and it feels like the technical problems

are in some ways more challenging because the scope is smaller so it's not it's uh there's less long-term ownership of a problem where it's like i will shepherd the system through five years of existence but it's more like in six months what's like the most i can get done that will cause the most impact throughout so it's like a little bit more like concentrated yeah yeah so it's a different problem it's not like easier it's not it's not like i learn less doing it so you have kind of a what i think is a little bit of a different freelancing experience than some people which is you have one client one at a time one at a time yeah um and that's a pretty long-term client right yeah it's it's pretty broad too it's it's it's not like do this small project

for us they have more i don't know larger problems that need a little more ownership i guess i don't know how it'd be if it was like if i was like a wordpress developer yeah where you're doing like one new website a week yeah yeah never going too deep and always delivering as fast as you can and and bouncing on to the next thing. I could see that certain skills could deteriorate in that environment. You'll get really good at starting new projects, but maybe your ability to design maintainable code that can last for a couple of years might deteriorate.

But just having said that out loud, I realized that every time I've tried to develop maintainable code that will last a couple of years, I've failed just miserably. Have you ever seen a system where you're like, this gigantic code base is so maintainable. it's like the number one thing about it don't kill my dreams um but by not working like on a team do you think that affects you too i'm working on a team really yeah yeah if i was by myself uh i do worse work when i'm alone so

i think that would affect me but i still work with other people you're like the doctor from doctor who i've never seen an episode of doctor he goes kind of borderline crazy when he's alone it's like why he always travels with people yeah that's and yoda right yeah that's the one right i know you're thinking of star trek oh okay i so sergio you talked about your tech skills atrophying i feel like i mean one thing that happens in freelancing is you do a lot more you bounce around a lot more um so you get exposed to more stuff but that also happens in your normal job too like your responsibilities change your projects change or even if you're on the same project the feature

that you work on changes so there's still it feels kind of like there's opportunities for growth and for improving your skills no matter what the other thing is once you're a freelancer you have a lot more control over the kinds of projects that you'll choose to work on instead of just waiting for your company to have the right opportunity for you which means if you want to develop your skills in a certain technology or area you are you will have more opportunities to go do that whereas in your main job it's very unlikely that you'll be building a big product and they'll then be like you know what we want to try a new technology

let's just throw all that out and we can try this new technology that doesn't happen very often but as a freelancer you can do that because every time you choose a new client you can choose what basically you'll have more opportunities to choose clients I think

so on that front I think it could be very good for your technical skills to learn new things the other thing that i think you'll your skills will develop in is something you maybe haven't thought of which is relationship building as an engineer or sorry as a full-time engineer working for a company you will definitely have chances to build relationships with other engineers as co-workers and friendships too but as a freelancer you're going to have to learn how to build relationships with people who see the world differently than from engineers sales people

marketing people accounting and finance people and those skills i think will be very valuable maybe even more valuable than your ability to write really good code in terms of like dollars yeah in terms of like one thousand percent yeah yeah those you can write really bad code and make money if you have good good relationship building skills that is the truth yep on that shining what was your second question though i forgot like unexpected things oh yeah unexpected stuff uh just like all these people that want my autograph all the time no what has been unexpected i know one for you what health insurance was a big pain in the butt oh yeah but that's was that expected yeah it was just i could expect it but i didn't feel the pain

yeah yeah now you it's like visceral now yeah i mean you can you'll hear all this stuff like you have to pay way more taxes because you're paying self-employment taxes and you don't have benefits you're paying all those yourself so if you just take like hourly rate times 40 hours a week times 50 weeks a year then that number can look eye-popping large and then you just like chop it by 40 percent or something for time you take off or for taxes or benefits and what about the feeling you get when you take a vacation and you stop getting paid oh yeah that's great or yeah it it definitely puts a very concrete price on like the break to play a video game in the middle of the day yeah there's like a dollar amount that cost me 100 to get

yelled at by 12 year olds on the internet was it worth it i don't know yes could you really put a price tag on getting yelled at on the internet. That's true. There's been good stuff too. I think the ability to respond to just like random fun stuff like the flexibility to do that has been good. Like that time you made a

website and went skiing? Yeah. I wanted to go snowboarding. What was the name of the website? ShredJS. Website. Did you know there's a top level domain called website? Unlike all the other websites, this is a website. Yeah, it took me an embarrassingly long amount of time to make.

Which you can measure in dollars now. Yeah, I can. But I could also make that trade-off. That's right. Yeah, that's fun. Whereas before, you could have just done that on your employer's time and not had to get. I would never recommend that. Yeah.

Yeah, then the cost isn't in dollars. It's in your teammates thinking you're a scumbag. Only if they know. Yeah. All right. Did we answer your question, Sergio? Yes. And you have to say yes.

That's right. all right that was a great question so question answered we did it okay the next one yeah this comes from a listener named nick duggar nick writes in he says i have a very non-traditional background having dropped out of school i made some very unrealistic goals when i was 20 that i wanted to meet by the age of 25 i'm 24 now and by the way when i was reading this question this is where i thought i knew what he was going to say and i was totally wrong i'm 24 now and i have just met all of my career goals now that i don't have the looming unrealistic goals to strive for i'm no longer running myself into the ground every day working extremely hard to get where i want

i now feel very lost and confused do i still want to be a programmer am i just burned out is this a common issue to get everything you wanted only to feel depressed about it i think we owe nick a collective sigh poor nick isn't there a pokemon named duggar that sounds like i don't know we've talked about this before where i'm too old to have been into pokemon but i'm not too old to make fun of it you never are uh this is an interesting question it's like yeah this is a good problem to have i guess like i achieved everything i've wanted to in my life by age 24 what's next no like that's like the gist of what he's saying right i think you die right like i wouldn't recommend that new

goals yeah like like i was thinking if that didn't give you the satisfaction that you wanted you could set a goal to go relocate to san francisco and work for a really elite startup up and then maybe you'll feel satisfied that sounds accurate uh i think you need to get a tattoo buy a motorcycle and get like a mistress or a boyfriend or whatever like go through the midlife crisis thing just at 24 midlife at 24 yeah it's clearly on an accelerated schedule that's true get a convertible yep um go buy like a house you can't afford in a neighborhood you don't belong in yeah those are classics any other midlife crisis things um golf isn't golf golf yeah that's actually that's a good idea set a goal to get really good at golf i've never seen

anyone ever meet that yeah that's true so that'll keep you busy for the rest of your life yeah um i imagine these goals were probably pretty concrete like get this promotion at work or like make a certain amount of money this much money or like i don't know something with numbers that you can measure like get an open source project with this many stars or something like that speak at a conference yeah yeah and and those you just check off and they're done like you you have checked them off um but longer term goals to me feel like maybe this is just how i cheat myself i just make them vague so i can never say if i've achieved them or not like be the kind of person dave thinks i should be and then i just strive

forever because i never know if i am or not um is that why you ask me every week like how am i instead of how are you no that's just because i'm bad at small talk okay uh yeah so i feel like if you set i mean someone in the back said just set more goals and i think that's one approach to it but the risk you run there is like you're just on this hedonic treadmill of goals yeah do you know the hedonic treadmill is that uh yes where everything's great but you you re-baseline your expectations yeah just based on how awesome things are and that becomes normal and now you want something better yep yep so if you just say like well i'm a senior engineer i want to be a lead engineer super senior engineer yeah or super saiyan engineer or whatever the next level is

super sane i don't know what that is yeah oh see that's another thing that i'm a little too old to have gone through but i'm not too old to make fun of it okay well that and power rangers also I never got into Power Rangers. Oh, that's too bad. I think, well, I tried to. I actually remember this. My mom would make fun of me when I watched it when I was a little kid. That's why you never got into it.

Because I'd, like, punch fight on the couch when I saw their fights, and then she'd laugh and it made me feel bad, so I never watched it. They're making a movie now. It's out. Oh. Dang. Anyways. Maybe we can go see it tonight.

Yeah, maybe. Maybe. so a suggestion from the audience is to make a goal about self-care instead of like these external motivating things like titles and stuff i think that's a smarter way of what i was trying to say yeah like less externally focused goals and more inwardly focused goals so like like the exercise yeah mental state health relationships relationships yeah this is there's an industry of business self-help books ready and willing to give you ready to take your money yeah they are um has this happened to you before i where you've hit some goal and then

you wake up and you're still just dave smith i humble genius oh man um i have never sought i don't think i've ever set a goal for myself that was related to my career really but i have received accolades at work and i think everyone has you know to varying degrees everyone has gotten the promotion or the raise or whatever and like i get on the hedonic treadmill so fast i mean it's like boom got the raise before i even walk back to my office i'm already like no that sucks i don't know like i remember when i got a promotion maybe my first promotion I ever received I was at this company they had levels and I was a software engineer level one and I got promoted the software engineer level two and I went back

to my desk and I was I opened up the same editor and I opened up the same files and I continued working on the same features that I had been working on as a software engineer level one and I think at that moment I realized that I will never get for myself lasting fulfillment from a promotion you know um have you had that experience lasting fulfillment or either one yeah i have i it makes sense though that that nick would feel like there's this stuff i want and when i get it like i'll have made it i've achieved it and then i'm done uh and i think it's smart that you're realizing that that's not how life works.

It's more about the journey. That's exactly what I was just thinking. You have to learn to enjoy the journey of engineering instead of thinking of it as a destination. Is that the title of your self-help book? Yeah, that'll be available in bookstores next week. Yeah, any other, so someone had a, you had a good suggestion. Any other suggestions or feedback for Nick from the audience?

What does he do? He's made it. Enjoy it. Enjoy it now that you've made it? Yeah. Quit your job. Quit your job. Yeah.

Like, I'm sure there was a reason why you had that goal to begin with, right? Was the goal just to achieve the goal? Well, maybe. So the comment is there must have been a reason for the goal to have been born in the first place. Maybe there wasn't, and maybe that's why Nick is feeling unfulfilled. is like the the shallowness of these goals is manifest in achieving them um perhaps or maybe it was he did mention that he had a non-traditional path into engineering dropped out of school so maybe it was like prove that i can hack oh yeah question comment i definitely wouldn't put down

like making new goals but i think making your goals should be done in light of this is the kind of journey that i want to have rather than i'm going to get these goals i'm going to be happy I'm going to set these goals because this is the kind of life I want to have. I'm going to reach them eventually and set new goals. So you're saying that the goals are like a means to an end, not the end themselves? So I'll tell you what. In my life, like I said at that promotion, it wasn't the most fulfilling day. When I really think back and look on what really fulfills me,

it's the relationships that I've made with people. And I don't really think I could make a goal for that. Somehow that would feel like it would take away from the meaning. to be like i'm gonna make three bffs this year you know like i don't know maybe you could do that maybe maybe that would actually be a good thing but when i look back at the people that i really love and who when i spend time with them i feel great and i think this is wonderful um i have a hard time imagining myself putting in place a plan with goals to get there maybe maybe i think the right person could but i could see how it'd feel artificial and like i haven't met my quarterly

goal for friends and you start like knocking on doors and a cost i gotta hit this number yeah so be a romantic comedy from the late 90s where it's like you have a bet to take out the unpopular person yeah and then you actually like the unpopular yeah yeah yeah now later that it was all because of this external thing and then you have to like backpedal and yeah you have to sing on the football field. As one does. So I think this is a pretty hard situation, and

I think that it's going to take a mindset shift to get out of the funk. I would say don't quit being an engineer just because you achieved some goal and it wasn't as fulfilling as you had hoped. But instead, try to recalibrate your goals to things

that maybe will be worthwhile. I don't know. You could also look at so maybe maybe you've been really focused on these goals and you haven't taken a look back at what was fulfilling throughout this time so if you were really focused on getting a promotion or i don't know some some external thing uh but there was a project you really liked or like shipping this thing or helping these customers or yeah examine that and see if there's something that you enjoyed that you can focus more on instead of just checking stuff off that sounds

really good thanks oh comment yes yeah excellent comment yeah that's really good all right question answered question answered what more could possibly be said about that question nothing do we have time for one more yeah we do okay so okay uh do you want to read this one jameson yes you talked in an earlier podcast about interviewing for practice or as a matter of course how do you turn down companies you don't want to work for without burning bridges how much time do you let them invest before you say actually i have no interest working here i just wanted to see what interviewing with you was like a three-day interview only to realize i didn't want the job and i felt pretty bad about walking away so in the previous episode i've said

this actually I think a few times but I'm a serial hobbyist interviewer where I go to companies and do interviews and it's mostly just because it's a heck of a lot easier to interview when you're not desperate for a job and once in a while they turn into great jobs and you can take them but in the meantime you get to learn all these great things about how other companies work and how other engineers do interviewing yeah which I'm just like inherently interested in and so the question is what do you do when you get too far down this path and you feel you feel bad for ejecting and like they've invested all this time in you and you're like i'm out of here suckers i was never interested in you uh have you heard of negging negging yeah no this is it's weird and

gross it's like this thing in uh like this gross dating culture where you like say mean things about people to make them like you okay and it seems like this could feel like that like you go interview somewhere like yeah i'm not that interested in the company and then uh this happened to my my ceo once we interviewed this engineer we really liked they were really smart we really wanted to work there we really wanted them to work with us they said no and then it drove my ceo crazy and he would like call them all the time and go out to dinner with them to try and convince them and it was kind of like uh it was i don't know it made me feel sad because they clearly didn't want did they take the dinner appointments yeah they wanted the dinner sounds

like it worked out pretty well yeah maybe that was the plan all along but we'll interview for food the ceo felt bad because it was like a rejection of oh yeah it's like this person doesn't think this is a good opportunity how is a good opportunity how could you reject this i'll show them this amazing company yeah exactly so it got to him personally but i don't think most people are like that uh most most places that are interviewing people are interviewing a lot of people and like you saying no to them will not be that big of a deal so it's not it's not gonna like crush them i don't know so you're saying that like the default is saying no will be no big deal yeah so what do you need to say to make it a big deal so you get that free dinner

if you say yes first and then you say no uh yeah i don't know i agree with james and i think you're putting too much burden on yourself to um to uphold some social norm that actually is uh inflated in your mind um i think companies go through a lot of candidates and even on day three like this is a three-day interview process apparently um maybe not three back-to-back days even after three days of interviewing it's fine to say no even if you said things in the interview like i really want to work here and that's when you start to feel like a little two-faced where you're like i'll say anything to get this job yes i'd love to work with you and then later you're like i don't really want to work with you um well i mean imagine what would happen if you didn't do

that if because you went to an interview you had to take the job just out of politeness you just got a new job you're like well i really don't want this job but you did ask me how to sort a link list so i'm taking it you did put a lot also i was too polite to quit my old job so i'm just gonna work too because i just can't stand to burn any bridges sounds great uh i mean i i really don't think you have to reveal anything super um embarrassing when you go through this process other than a very simple statement that's clear and cannot be misconstrued to mean anything besides

I'm no longer interested in the position. And you can dress it up a little bit with you've built a great company. You've got a lot of good things going. I think you'll be successful and I'm impressed with what you've got. At this point, I've decided it's not the right time for me to join your company.

And the end. You've got a hand. I have a suggestion. In order to not feel bad, that person could help them find another person. Like maybe they themselves are not a good fit for that role or aren't interested in it, but they could recommend other people. Ah, so the suggestion is to deflect the interview process to someone else. To say, I'm not going to work for you, but there might be someone else who could. And that's actually a very polite thing to do. um and i think that would be above and beyond the like generally accepted social norm but

certainly would help and it might distract them with going after someone else so they don't keep bugging you i would be like shocked and in awe and overjoyed if someone did that yeah it actually would be really nice yeah it'd be super nice uh yeah did you have your hand up too yeah um i'm I'm pretty pragmatic about these things because I feel like towards the end of those three interviews, if the company didn't like them, they wouldn't be hiring that person anyway. So it's kind of like a two-way street. They have no problems shutting you down after having you come out. That's right. They could have wasted three days of your time and said no.

So why do you have to show them all this over-the-top politeness just to say no to them? That's a really good point. I mean, what's like the most outrageous way you could say no? I think you could say, I have weighed your company, and I have found it wanting. This place is doomed, and not even I could save it. Yes. And then you just walk away. I watched metaphorical rats swimming away from this sinking ship as I came in, and I will not be part of it.

Or you just leave them like inscrutable poetry that's vaguely negative, and that's your no or something. What? A haiku. just an empty email with a haiku or just an empty email you send an empty email and then you send a follow up email that says my previous email represents

the emptiness that you will feel because I'm rejecting you or I mean yeah you could you could just keep doing the empty email thing everything they send you just reply with an empty email and then when they ask why you sent an empty email

It's empty emails all the way down But it's like active ghosting It's not ignoring them And if you see them in person You say like, no, I sent all those characters Send them a bill For the three days of your time That'll make them go away real quick

You could also tell them an outrageous salary Yeah, that's true That's a good point, outrageous salary yeah wait a minute so a day this this could be an opportunity if you know you're gonna say no you could just like try to negotiate as hard as possible and practice yeah because there probably is a number where you would say yes yeah find that number and then go for it yeah i mean then the worst thing you get the worst case scenario is you don't you don't have the job you didn't want yeah and the best case scenario is you have this enormous number yeah which also going back

to life goals will leave you feeling empty and just an empty email from yourself to yourself yeah i mean that negotiation thing could backfire though yeah if you get a black mark really hard then you could burn some bridges as like the jerk who just toyed around yeah that could stop you from getting interviews in the future absolutely but i hope it was clear that we were joking about no no i think i think there is if you're like on the fence then you should negotiate really hard if you really do want to say no sorry yes then maybe i don't know yeah i you would learn about negotiation you might burn some bridges so you have to weigh those two things yeah if you string them along and it ends up being bad that could that could definitely affect you in the future

if you're outrageous yeah like you wear a clown suit to the interviewer no and ask for four hundred thousand dollars a day yeah then you could be construed as outrageous that's okay the clown suit those the clown suit too much yeah that that's what put it over the edge yeah um anything else we want to say it sounds like you're a nice person you're thinking about the company and how they would feel. Let me, let me add one more thing. Companies have hiring budgets and in those hiring budgets are all the time and expenses that they make interviewing candidates. They fully expect a rejection rate from candidates. It's just, it's budgeted in. Like you're not hurting anyone's business. You're not going to make them go bankrupt or something. And, and, and so don't

worry about that one bit the only thing i think that this person is is worried about and probably should be worried about is are they going to be coming across as a jerk you know and and i would say generally no no i think you there's not a very high bar for not for all the stuff you have to do to get out of an interview have you have you ever been rejected by a candidate and felt bad about it i'm trying to think if i've ever experienced that and i like your ceo who couldn't let it go yeah I've had one and you were like really down and wished they had rejected you in a different way

no no no I just wished they had said yes and I went out I met them I brought the offer up to a higher salary and then they still said no I was just baffled like why they wouldn't take the job because it was a great job

but I was never mad and I never thought oh this person strung me along like i offered to buy them lunch you know it wasn't like they were like well if you buy me lunch i might say yes yeah there's none of that so i don't think i've ever experienced this from people saying no either and none of them have done anything particular it was just like nope no thanks yeah move on commute didn't wanted more remote wanted this different job so or empty set like you don't have to they don't necessarily give reasons yeah or that blank email

yeah so you'll you'll do fine yeah and what a good problem to have right like the fact that you can ask a question about how do i say no job yeah low as me life is so hard i'm really struggling with how to reject these people who want to give me money that's a great situation to be in that is fantastic enjoy that yeah cool question question answered question answered cool how can people find out more about the show and ask their own questions they can be here in the live audience at ng anyone wants to hear more we have a website it's soft skills.audio um but you didn't know audio is a top level domain yeah yeah we can also be found on twitter we're at soft skills eng if you want to ask a question there's a google form

on the websites that you can just submit as much as little details you want you can send us a tweet or a direct message also and then you can subscribe on iTunes Stitcher all the other podcast things yes all the things yeah great thanks for being here today yeah thank you see you next week

except the people that are here we'll see you some other time bye bye