Developer Tea
Developer Tea is a short podcast hosted by Jonathan Cutrell, an engineering leader with over 15 years of industry experience. The show aims to help driven developers connect to their ultimate purpose and excel at their work, positively impacting the people they influence. With over 17 million downloads, each episode offers concise insights for developers. Listeners are encouraged to continue the conversation online or in person.
Episodes
Using Substition to Make Decisions Simpler
There's a cognitive trick our brains play whenever we face a hard question or a difficult decision: we quietly swap the hard thing for something easier to answer. It's called substitution, and we do it constantly — usually without noticing, and sometimes to our detriment. In today's episode, I make the case that you can take this same shortcut your brain already runs automatically and start using
Your Single Most Important Tool for Managing the Uneven Downsides of Risk
The skills you build and the tools you master matter, but they aren't your most important asset when things go wrong — and something eventually will. In this episode, I work through why our careers and lives are governed more by avoiding catastrophic downside than by chasing upside, and why the single best tool for surviving a bad event isn't testing, insurance, or money — it's genuine trust with
Why Can't You Go Faster With AI? Focus on the Friction to Find Out
If you are a manager, a lead engineer, or anyone growing into more responsibility, this throwback episode is built for you. We keep hearing the same question, now louder than ever: "Why can't this go faster?" AI and agentic coding have made the literal coding step dramatically cheaper, so product leaders reasonably expect the whole pipeline to speed up. But it hasn't—and in today's short, focused
Software Engineering Principles That Still Hold Up in an Agentic World - Old Lessons Made New
The skills problem isn't going anywhere — it's just wearing new clothes. In this episode, I unpack how the lessons we learned decades ago (limiting work in progress, the theory of constraints, test-driven development) are coming roaring back as the fundamentals that will carry you through the agentic shift. The bottleneck has moved, and knowing where it went changes how you should work.
A lot of w
Principles Oriented Thinking as a Durable Skill in an AI First World
The skills that survive every industry shakeup aren't the ones you can Google — they're softer, harder to name, and far more durable. In this episode, Jonathan explores principle-oriented thinking: the practice of stripping away the labels we attach to tools, roles, and even ourselves to see what something actually does at its core. It's the difference between handing your coding off to an agent a
What the Science Actually Says About Effective Feedback
A lot of what we've been talking about lately is durable skills — the abilities that last regardless of how our tools and tech environment change. In today's episode, I want to step back from the AI conversation and focus on one of the most durable skills of all: feedback. We've all been on both the giving and receiving side, and we can probably count on one hand the times someone gave us feedback
Rebuilding Your Mental Models In the Midst Of an AI Tech Revolution
Right now, the questions we have about our careers feel existential. We keep coming back to the same theme: how do you prepare for an industry that's changing this fast, and what mindset actually works in this new reality? One skill keeps surfacing as the answer — your ability to update your own mental models. In today's episode, I want to push on that further and put some of software engineering'
Practice Isn't Enough for Senior Engineers - Adaptation Is a Key Skill in an AI-First Industry
If you're a software engineer right now, you likely feel like your world is changing overnight. We are writing half or less the amount of code that we wrote even a year ago, which represents a seismic, groundbreaking shift in our industry. For many of us, this career has always been engaging for deeply creative and intellectual reasons—and that excitement is still here. But our mental models of wh
Senior Skills to Maintain Employment Through the AI Wave
If you've heard that your job in the agentic coding era is to "become a manager of agents," you may have noticed something doesn't quite fit. Most of us never trained to be managers, and frankly, that's not the role most engineers want. In today's episode, I unpack what that shift _actually_ means — it's closer to a tech lead or architect mindset — and zoom in on a specific interviewing and on-the
You're Wrong All the Time, But All You Need Are Better Explanations
What happens when you discover that a book that fundamentally changed how you think is built on a shaky foundation? In today's episode, I share my own struggle with the replication crisis surrounding Daniel Kahneman's *Thinking Fast and Slow*, and I use it as a springboard to talk about a much bigger skill: knowing how to update your beliefs when reality shifts underneath you. This isn't about thr
AI-Proofing Your Skillset - High-Meaning, High-Specifity Vocabulary is the Path to Growth
Why I'm Not "Picking a Fight" on AI: A listener asked if I'm intentionally stoking a flame war by treating agentic coding as a foregone conclusion. The honest answer is that I've used it, the data points one direction, and a show built around pretending otherwise would slowly drift away from reality — and away from being useful to you.
Respecting the Misgivings, Without Getting Stuck in Them: E
Building Real Skills During the AI Boom - No, Not That Kind of Skill
The Coding-Is-My-Value Trap: For years, we've treated the ability to write code as the flagship skill of software engineering. It's concrete, it's teachable, it's the thing big box stores sell kits for. But conflating "what I enjoy about the job" with "what I'm actually valuable for" is dangerously reductive — and AI is now exposing that gap.
The Skills You've Been Discounting: Domain expertise
Chaos Doesn't Have to Win - Maintaining Order in the Midst of AI Change
If you're an engineering leader right now, everything around you feels like it's changing at once — new tools, new processes, new expectations. It's tempting to accept chaos as the new normal, but in today's episode, I make the case that your job is to go on the offense and *create* order. Not by clinging to old processes, but by becoming the groundskeeper of your team's ceremonies — the regular,
Mourning the Loss of Coding, Senior Tooling Mindset, and Shaping Your Environment
Your tool set isn't just a collection of utilities — it's the environment you live in every day, and it's shaping you whether you realize it or not. In today's episode, I explore two principles that senior engineers consistently apply to their workflows, regardless of which specific tools they're using. As our industry goes through one of the most rapid periods of change in the last 20 years, the
Useful Illusions and Exploiting Heuristics
When Good Thinking Becomes Overthinking: Discover why the pursuit of perfect analysis often undermines good decision-making. Loading every caveat, every exception, and every alternative into your working memory doesn't produce better outcomes — it produces paralysis.
Heuristics as a Feature, Not a Bug: Your brain is an efficiency machine that creates shortcuts — cached concepts, stored routines
Decision Making is Your New Core Skill, So it's Critical to Avoid These Two Traps of Collaborative Decision-Making
The Bottleneck Is Moving: Borrowing from traditional manufacturing theory, the coding step used to define your team's total throughput. AI tooling hasn't incrementally improved that bottleneck — it has drastically shrunk it, which means the constraint is now upstream in product decisions, specifications, and prioritization. Engineers who recognize this shift early will redirect their energy acco
What's Brewing, Edition 1 - What Jonathan is Learning, Using, and Thinking
The Power of Physical Checklists: Inspired by aviation, Atul Gawande's The Checklist Manifesto, and Daniel Kahneman's Noise, I've been experimenting with printed, physical checklists for repetitive tasks — from producing this show to running one-on-ones. The rigor of writing precise procedures carries over into clearer communication with both humans and AI agents.
Small Interventions, Big Retur
From Software Engineer to Agent Manager - How Work is Changing in A New Software Development Paradigm
If you're a software engineer right now, you likely feel like your world is changing overnight. We are writing half or less the amount of code that we wrote even a year ago, which represents a seismic, groundbreaking shift in our industry. However, the rapid introduction of new tools can slide quickly from exciting to purely chaotic, leaving you feeling like you are falling behind. In today's epis
AI Moves the Bottleneck - Are You Ready for What That Means For Your Career?
AI is bringing massive changes to our industry, but it's not just about how fast you can write code or use agentic flows. In this episode, I explore how AI is fundamentally shifting the economic bottleneck of software development, and how you can use your systems-thinking engineering mindset to adapt and thrive in this new era.
🎧 Episode Notes: The Engineering Bottleneck Shift
For years, the softw
Listener Question - Abdul Asks About How to Balance Career Strategy Between Money, Meaning, and Skill Transitions
Today, we are tackling the natural tension between the desire to make more money—getting a raise, finding financial stability—and the desire to have meaningful, purpose-driven work.
We are diving into a fantastic listener question from Abdul, a front-end engineer with 10 years of experience who has hit a salary ceiling. He is trying to figure out how to pivot into higher-paying domains like backen
AI-Era Employability and Job Security for Software Engineers - Mental Models for Finding a Competitive Advantage Without Selling Out
I've been delaying this episode for a long time because the topic is genuinely difficult and, for many of us, scary. AI is threatening not just to our livelihood, but to our sense of self-worth as creators.In this episode, I don't offer false guarantees about job security. Instead, I frame the problem through the lens of microeconomics and rational incentives to help you understand how to remain e
Why Getting Paid Stole Your Drive and How to Get Into the Flow Again (Career Growth Accelerator)
Do you remember the early days of your career? You likely spent hours coding late into the night, fueled not by a paycheck, but by the sheer joy of building. But somewhere along the way, that intrinsic fire faded, replaced by the extrinsic motivators of Jira tickets, performance reviews, and ultimately the almighty dollar.In this episode of the Career Growth Accelerator, I explore why this shift h
The Meta-Habit of High Performers: How Outer Loops Unlock Growth (Career Growth Accelerator)
🎧 Episode Notes: The Meta-Habit of High Performers: How Outer Loops Unlock GrowthIn today's episode, we are discussing one of the most common habits I see in high-performing managers and senior engineers. It isn't a single trick, a morning routine, or a specific productivity hack—it is a meta-habit. It is a specific way of thinking about how you spend your energy and time to avoid the burnout tha
Career Growth Accelerator - Promotion Roadblocks and Knocking it Out of the Park During Performance Review Season
It is review season, and you might be finding yourself confused: you received high ratings and "exceeded expectations," yet the promotion you expected didn't happen. In this episode of the Career Growth Accelerator, I break down exactly why high performance doesn't always lead to promotion, helping you identify the structural roadblocks and strategic shifts necessary to move from senior individual
Career Growth Roadmap - De-risking Your Career By Understanding Your Vulnerabilities
In this episode, we explore how to de-risk your career roadmap by identifying the hidden vulnerabilities that hold your decision-making hostage.🎧 Episode Notes: De-risking Your Career By Understanding Your VulnerabilitiesTrue career growth requires gaining autonomy over your choices. This episode provides a framework for performing a "pre-mortem" of career failure by identifying the sources of pow
Career Growth Accelerator - Assessing Yourself - Using a Nine-Block to Map Your Skill, Potential, and Energy Investment
🎧 Episode Notes: Using a Nine-Block for Skill, Potential, and Energy InvestmentMost career assessments try to paint a static picture of what you can do well with the least effort, but they often fail to provide a practical roadmap for your next career move. This episode provides a simplified, multidimensional version of a classic management tool to help you prioritise your growth:Understand the N
Career Growth Accelerator: Going from Autopilot to Purpose
This episode marks the 11th anniversary of the show, and I want to celebrate by continuing our Career Growth Accelerator series. Today, we’re moving beyond the "autopilot" mode that many engineers find themselves in and learning how to define goals that are uniquely yours so you can find the specific challenges that will actually move the needle.🎧 Episode Notes: Going from Autopilot to PurposeMany
Announcing - Career Growth Accelerator, Episode Zero - Getting Out of Your Own Way
This episode kicks off the Career Growth Accelerator series, focused on the specific hurdles faced by mid-to-senior level engineers, managers, and leaders who are looking to move to the next level. Before diving into specific strategies, I’m addressing the fundamental prerequisite for real growth: getting out of your own way. We often block our own progress because our ego conflates our self-worth
Announcing: The Career Growth Accelerator Series
Are you a mid-to-senior level engineer or leader who has hit a career roadblock or found yourself stagnated? I'm launching the new Career Growth Accelerator series, focused on the difficult, non-obvious hurdles that prevent you from moving to the next level.In this foundational Episode Zero, I cover the critical prerequisite for growth: Getting Out of Your Own Way. Our ego often protects our self-
Problem Definition As A Path for Career Growth
When you hit a career roadblock, the methods that worked for you before often stop working. Today, I’m diving into why that happens, and why the first and most critical step in progressing past stagnation isn't doubling down on skills, but clearly defining the problem standing in your way.Problem Definition As A Path for Career GrowthMy goal on the show is to help driven developers like you find c
You Know The Hard Thing You Need to Do Next - Here's Why It's Worth Doing Now
We often look for ways to reduce the load on our brains, seeking shortcuts and optimizations to get ahead. Sometimes this works, reinforcing the belief that we can hack our way around every problem. However, this episode addresses the truth that many fundamental aspects of your career require something difficult, messy, slow, or inefficient, demanding deep thought and repeated failure.This episode
Career Fundamentals - Avoid Career Traps by Focusing on Primary Paths of Improvement
If you're looking to accelerate your career growth, this episode gives you what may feel like hard truths about the path forward. So many engineers fall into traps of overthinking, chasing minor optimizations (like 5% or 10% productivity boosts), or playing the games of politics and networking. While these sideline activities aren't necessarily useless, I want to help you focus on the "big engines
Getting to Senior - Taking Ownership Without Leading Projects
If you're an engineer looking to move into a senior role, you have likely heard that you need to demonstrate "ownership". Unfortunately, this crucial term is often poorly defined and leads to a major misconception: that ownership means being assigned a full project or a Tech Lead role. I want to dispel that myth and explain why ownership is actually a necessary behavior and mindset shift, applicab
Part Two - Bryan McCann, CTO of You.com, on AI, Engineering, Art, and Everything In Between
Hey everyone, welcome to today's episode of Developer Tea. This is the second part of my interview with Bryan McCann, the CTO at you.com. If you haven't listened to Part One, I'd encourage you to go back, as it provides crucial context for our continued discussion. In this episode, we dive into how you can think about relating to and integrating the massive changes that AI is bringing to your job,
Part One - Bryan McCann, CTO of You.com, on AI, Engineering, Art, and Everything In Between
Hey everyone and welcome to today's episode of Developer Tea. It's been quite a while since I've had a guest on the show. Today, I'm joined by Bryan McCann, CTO at you.com. We dive into a wide-ranging discussion, exploring the philosophical origins of his career—from studying meaning and language to working in very early AI research. This discussion is less advice-heavy and more focused on kind of
Going to War with Burnout - Less Hours Isn't Your Only Option
I'm tackling a massive challenge today: burnout. While the standard advice usually involves working less, I want to show you a practical dimension of burnout you have more control over, focusing on increasing your agency and autonomy to manage chronic workplace stress more effectively. Burnout is classified by the ICD-11 as a syndrome resulting from chronic workplace stress that has not been succe
The Good and Bad of Choosing Measurements - Traps and Opportunities of Measuring What Matters
In this episode, I dive into the management mantra that "what is measured is managed" and explain why this simple assertion often leads to a complex trap. We discuss why the act of measuring team productivity is never neutral—it's an intervention that immediately changes behavior, often resulting in unintended consequences like gaming the metrics. We'll explore how to collaborate with your team to
Engage in Deliberate Practice to Level Up Your Engineering Leadership Skills
I want to dive into the concept of Deliberate Practice, which sets the greatest apart in fields ranging from sports to writing to engineering. I’ll explain why it’s much more than just repetition or experience, and why applying it to your career can lead to rapid improvement. Most importantly, I will provide concrete ways you can apply deliberate practice to level up your engineering and leadershi
Shift Your Locus of Control to Take Charge of Your Engineering Career
This episode explores the concept of Locus of Control and why developing a more internal locus of control is beneficial for your career and life. You'll learn the difference between internal and external perspectives, why one is more useful than the other, and practical exercises to shift your mindset to believe you have more influence over the outcomes you care about.Understand Locus of Control:
Resumé Driven Development - Your Career is In Your Hands
In this episode we'll discuss why "Résumé Driven Development" is a powerful mental model for building a thriving career. Instead of seeing your résumé as just a job-hunting tool, you'll learn to use it as a guide for setting measurable, impactful goals that benefit you, your manager, and your company.Focus on Impact, Not Just Tasks: Discover why a great résumé is built on proof of impact, not just
Forced and Unforced Errors
In this episode, we introduce a simple yet powerful mental model from the world of sports: forced vs. unforced errors. By understanding this concept, you can shift your focus from things outside your control to the simple, foundational behaviours that truly define a successful career.Understand the Difference: Learn the distinction between forced errors—mistakes caused by chance, situation, or ran
View Your Productivity Through the Lens of Values and Priorities
In this episode, we introduce two fundamental thought experiments to help you uncover your true priorities and core values. By exploring scenarios of scarcity and abundance, you'll learn to align your daily actions with what truly matters, leading to a more satisfied career and life.Uncover Your Priorities: Engage in a "5% exercise" where you imagine only being able to complete a tiny fraction of
This One Skill Signifies Seniority For Software Engineers
This episode explains what is arguably the best career advice you'll hear this week: the one skill that signifies seniority in software engineers is the ability to synthesise and optimise for multiple factors at once. Instead of focusing on a single factor, such as performance or maintainability, senior engineers identify and weigh the various trade-offs involved in any decision.Discover the key s
Backup Plans and Risk Reward Curves
This episode focuses on the critical importance of having a backup plan, not just for technical redundancies but especially for situations involving human error, which are highly prevalent in one's career. The core argument hinges on understanding risk and reward curves, highlighting the disproportionate impact of failures compared to incremental successes.Understanding Risk and Reward Curves:Succ
Second Order Consequences and Forcing Functions
Todays episode delves into understanding and leveraging second and third-order consequences – the ripple effects that occur after an initial action – and introduces forcing functions, which are an inverted way of thinking about these consequences, designed to drive desired outcomes by first determining "what must be true" for them to occur. The episode also connects these concepts to the importanc
Don't Try to Solve Hyperobject Problems Once
This episode delves into the philosophical concept of hyperobjects – problems so vast and complex they lack clear boundaries and cannot be "solved" once and for all. It explores why attempting to permanently fix issues like technical debt, user experience, or performance management is often ineffective. Instead, it offers a new perspective: how to interact with and manage these intractable problem
Behavior Change 101: Trigger, Incentive, and Ability
This episode delves into a powerful model for encouraging behaviour change, applicable to both managing others and self-improvement, by focusing on three critical factors: Trigger, Incentive, and Ability. It challenges common, ineffective management approaches and provides insights into fostering new habits and desired actions by making the 'right' thing the 'easy' thing.Uncover why naive manageme
Goal of the Goal - Using Goals As A Prioritization Clarifying Tool
This episode delves into the crucial role of well-positioned goals in a developer's career. It asserts that goals provide clarity, perspective, and purpose, particularly focusing on clarity as a primary benefit. The discussion challenges common struggles with goal setting, including the often-overlooked importance of relevance (the 'R' in SMART goals), suggesting that an irrelevant goal, no matter
Your Capacity for Growth Is Dependent on This Factor - Cognitive Load Theory
Today we explore Cognitive Load Theory. This concept can profoundly influence how you structure your workday, manage teams, and approach learning in your career. The episode highlights that much of professional work, particularly in knowledge-based roles like software engineering, is fundamentally about learning. You will discover that there is an optimal amount of information processing for effec
Investigating Your Invisible Systems
This episode focuses again on the fundamental principle that your systems are perfectly designed for the outcomes you are experiencing, regardless of whether those systems were intentionally or accidentally created.Here are the key takeaways from the episode:Uncover how your systems, whether intentionally or accidentally designed, are perfectly configured for the outcomes you experience. The impli
Perfection Is Fragile, and You Should Avoid It
This episode discusses why perfection is a dangerous and fragile goal, explaining how striving for 100% leads to unsustainable outlier states. It highlights how setting perfection as a bar can cause commitments to break and plans to fail due to a lack of slack, and offers strategies like building redundancy and planning with slack to achieve goals more effectively without relying on perfection.Unc
Your System is Perfectly Designed for Your Current Outcomes
This episode introduces the potentially controversial principle that your system is perfectly designed for its current outcomes, urging listeners to embrace greater responsibility for systemic issues. It explores how to redefine system boundaries to holistically integrate all influencing factors, like talent and organisational processes, ensuring that interventions are effective and targeted.Uncov
Using LLMs To Expand Your Working Vocabulary
This episode explores the fundamental mindset of building your vocabulary, extending beyond literal words to conceptual understanding and mental models, and how Large Language Models (LLMs) can be a powerful tool for expanding and refining this crucial skill for career growth, clarity, and navigating disruptions.Uncover why building your vocabulary is a fundamental skill that can help you navigate
Great Reviews and Terrible Tacos - Sharpening Substitute Questions with Counterfactuals
This episode delves into the use of substitute questions—simpler queries we use to answer more complex ones—and the crucial concept of cohesion between these substitutes and our true objectives. You'll learn how to leverage counterfactual thinking to scrutinize your assumptions and enhance the effectiveness of your decisions. Discover two powerful counterfactual techniques: asking "what else could
Why Maintenance Matters Now - Construal Level Theory, Marshmallows, and Hyperbolic Discounting
This episode explores why maintenance tasks, despite their fundamental importance, are often neglected or deprioritised in our daily lives and professional work. It delves into the psychological biases that make consistent maintenance challenging, such as hyperbolic discounting, where immediate gratification is valued over future gains, and the construal level theory, which highlights how psycholo
Follow This Principle - Establish Your Baselines
This episode introduces a profound yet simple principle: knowing your baselines. This concept is crucial for effectively detecting and measuring change in your life and career.Uncover the fundamental idea that to recognise when something has changed, you must first understand what things were like before the change occurred. Often, people haven't been measuring their lives, making it challenging t
Advice on Advice - Taking Everything with a Grain of Salt
This episode explores the complex landscape of receiving advice in your career, particularly during uncertain times. It offers insights on how to critically evaluate feedback and external information, prepare for potential negative outcomes outside of your control, and adapt your focus to thrive in a changing industry.Explore why the vast amount of advice you receive throughout your career, includ
Career Advice for Surviving AI Outsourcing
This episode addresses the fear surrounding industry changes, such as AI and potential outsourcing, and offers actionable advice for engineers, managers, and leaders to navigate these challenges. You'll learn why shifting your focus from just developing skills to embracing ownership and responsibility is crucial for long-term career resilience and agency.Understand the fear and concern that tradit
Take Back Your Time - Volatility, Pliability, and Agency and Your Obligations.mp3
This episode provides tactical ways to own your time, reduce meeting load and obligations, and regain agency, especially when feeling burnt out. You'll learn how to use a simple two-part model focusing on Pliability and Volatility to evaluate your tasks and meetings and make intentional choices about how you spend your time.Learn how owning your time is a critical first step in combating burnout,
Iteration or Target State Planning
This episode explores the dichotomy between iterative planning and target state planning in software development, discussing the benefits and drawbacks of each approach and providing decision factors to help you choose the most appropriate method for your situation.Understand the core difference between iterative planning, which emphasises agility and responding to change with short planning horiz
Three Principles of Preparedness - Mitigate Risks and Capitalize On Opportunities
This episode delves into practical principles for navigating the unexpected in your life and career. Rather than attempting to predict specific events, the focus is on cultivating resilience and optionality by identifying vulnerabilities in your systems and adopting a proactive mindset to transform potential challenges into strategic advantages.• Discover the three core principles of preparedness:
Did I Get That Right? - A High Leverage Habit that Requires Virtually Zero Skill
This episode introduces a simple yet highly effective communication habit that can be adopted by anyone to significantly reduce the risk of misunderstandings and enhance connection. It explores how this practice, which requires thoughtful communication but no special skills, can benefit individuals at all career levels.Discover why misunderstandings pose a significant risk to your career and how o
Meta Models - Logarithmic Returns
This episode introduces a valuable meta-tool for understanding the generic shapes of models, focusing specifically on the concept of logarithmic relationships and how they manifest as diminishing returns in various aspects of our lives and work. Understanding these patterns can help us make more informed decisions about where to invest our time and resources. Uncover a meta-tool for understanding
Dimensional Reframing - Think Along a New Axis
This episode introduces the concept of dimensional reframing as a tool to gain new perspectives on problems and facilitate decision-making by considering a new dimension.• Learn how adding a new dimension to a problem can overcome limited perception and lead to new insights.• Discover how applying the dimension of time to bug management can help prioritise and address a manageable number of bugs w
Chesterton's Fence - Why You Should Think Twice Before Rewriting That Project
This episode explores the concept of Chesterton's fence, a principle that advises against removing or altering something without first understanding its original purpose.• Understand the core message of Chesterton's fence: before getting rid of an existing system, process, or code, take the time to understand why it was put there in the first place.• Learn about the common thought process that lea
Reframing Areas of Growth to Your Manager
This episode discusses how to reframe areas of growth identified in performance reviews with your manager, turning potential weaknesses into strategic strengths. It emphasizes focusing on excelling in your existing strengths rather than spreading efforts thinly across all areas of improvement. Understand why it's misguided to immediately convert a list of growth areas into a to-do list and the im
Owning and Requesting Forward-Framed Feedback
This episode provides a tactical question to elicit useful feedback by taking responsibility for seeking it out and framing the request in a way that encourages advice rather than judgment. Understand that your manager giving you feedback is your responsibility, which means you should actively seek it out rather than waiting. Discover how a simple question can shift the dynamic with your manager
Work Modes Using Autonomy and Definition Clarity Quadrant - Manager Frameworks and Tools Series
This episode introduces a simple quadrant tool to visualise different working modes that a team or individual task might be in, based on levels of autonomy and definition. Understand how the quadrant is built using the X-axis of dependency (high to low) and the Y-axis of definition (high to low) to visualise different work modes. Explore how the bottom left quadrant represents work that is highl
Manager Frameworks and Models - Product Lifecycle Governance
This episode introduces product lifecycle governance, offering practical techniques for engineering managers to tackle challenges like backlog prioritisation and leadership misunderstandings, helping turn potential problems into strategic advantages. Uncover how to use product lifecycle governance to expose vulnerabilities in your product development process, by understanding where decisions are
Philosophical Frameworks that Inform Your Decisions (Without You Even Knowing It)
This episode explores philosophical frameworks—ontology, teleology, and dynamism—to inform decision-making in uncertain situations, providing practical advice for applying these concepts in your professional and personal life. Understand how ontology, teleology, and dynamism can help you navigate conversations about future actions for teams, companies, families, or yourself. Ontology focuses on a
How Can You Prepare for High-Impact Unknown Events?
This episode includes practical techniques to prepare for the unexpected by identifying vulnerabilities and building resilience, using the "curse question" and the "assumption audit" to help you turn potential problems into strategic advantages.• Uncover how to use a "curse question" to expose vulnerabilities you didn't know you had, by imagining realistic negative scenarios and what could go wron
Misconceptions about Exceptions and Cultural Shifts - Invisible Inertia
In this episode, we discuss how invisible inertia can cause us to misinterpret our reality in work scenarios.• Discover why common misconceptions about behaviour are so difficult to spot.• Explore why your "unique" situation might be a common trap, a "uniqueness bias".• Learn how exceptional states can become the norm and impact your life.• Uncover how people's values shape company culture, and ho
Action Orientation and Making Faster Decisions
Time-crunched and data-scarce? Learn how the RPD model can leverage expertise and intuition to speed up decision-making, and how the 'Rubicon' moment can make your team more action-oriented.Stop endless planning and start doing: Learn how understanding action phases can help your team move faster from discussion to delivery.• Is your team stuck in debate? Discover the "Rubicon" moment and how cros
Match your Action to Intention - Pairing Five Whats with Five Whys
Use "What" to get more specific. Align actions with intentions for better time management.• Stop wasting time on autopilot. Discover the power of the Five Whats and start being intentional with your time.• Tired of vague labels? Ask yourself, "What am I actually doing?" to gain clarity over your activities.• Learn how to move beyond "focus time" and define the specific actions you're taking.• See
Upgrade Your Resolutions
In today's episode, we're focusing on taking your resolutions and making them matter. I will give you two challenges in this episode to improve the quality and potential of success for your resolutions.🙏 Today's Episode is Brought To you by: Wix StudioDevs, if you think website builders mean limited control—think again.With Wix Studio’s developer-first ecosystem you can spend less time on tedious
Ten Years of Developer Tea
Today, we celebrate 10 years of Developer Tea. I wouldn't be doing this podcast without you listening. Especially if you have been listening for many years, thank you!📮 Ask a QuestionIf you enjoyed this episode and would like me to discuss a question that you have on the show, drop it over at: developertea.com.📮 Join the DiscordIf you want to be a part of a supportive community of engineers (non-e
Better Low-Information Estimates - Putting the "Scientific" in SWAG
How can you create better scientific wild a** guesses when the work is not well defined? We discuss a few strategies in this episode. We also talk a bit about what an estimate is in the first place, and how it differs from a commitment / deadline.🙏 Today's Episode is Brought To you by: Wix StudioDevs, if you think website builders mean limited control—think again.With Wix Studio’s developer-first
Agency - How The On Over In Model Can Help You Grow Your Career
Are you operating in the world, or are you working on a problem? This shift in agency can make all the difference in your career.🙏 Today's Episode is Brought To you by: Wix StudioDevs, if you think website builders mean limited control—think again.With Wix Studio’s developer-first ecosystem you can spend less time on tedious tasks andmore on the functionalities that matters most:● Develop online i
Using ChatGPT for Career Experience Simulations - LLMs and Direct Simulations for Faster Career Experience Gains
Can you use ChatGPT to become a better engineer? I'm not just talking about learning a language or fixing a bug with ChatGPT providing advice... I'm talking about career simulations. In this episode we discuss how the airline industry has fixed the problem of experience, and how we can learn from their insights to create low-stakes learning environments that boost our career and confidence through
Coaching Yourself: Career Coaching Personas for Everyday Engineers, Part Three - Shoulder Socrates
In today's episode we discuss the concept of adopting self-coaching personas, and discuss the third persona, "Shoulder Socrates."🙏 Today's Episode is Brought To you by: Wix StudioDevs, if you think website builders mean limited control—think again.With Wix Studio’s developer-first ecosystem you can spend less time on tedious tasks andmore on the functionalities that matters most:● Develop online i
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