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Coaching Corner Volume 5

Welcome to Cameron's Coaching Corner, where we answer questions from readers about leadership, career, and software engineering.

In this post, we'll look at a question from TheRefsAlwaysWin about how to get a new engineer on their team to open up and get comfortable asking for help.

I've got a newish member to the team and they're still early in their career. They've got a good head on their shoulders, however, they tend to go down rabbit holes when problem solving and they don't speak up or ask for help.

They've asked me a few times about "how did I know ....", and a lot of the times, it's experience (I've been doing this for a few decades now).

How do I help them open up and ask more questions to the team and group?

Coaching Corner Volume 4

Welcome to Cameron's Coaching Corner, where we answer questions from readers about leadership, career, and software engineering.

In this post, we'll look at a question posed by Bastien in the Engineering Manager's Slack Group on how to praise your team.

Context: New to Engineering Manager, managing 5 people and working in a 5 person team. My managees are not 100% on my team.

Details: OK, so I've quickly learnt how to spot mistakes and follow up improvements to both teams (one I manage and one I work on). I'm confident taking actions and communicating on all of that. But there is the other side -> congratulation and following up on behavior/action.

Example: The current team has low velocity. They recently finished the specs and review. It didn't happen for months (always late on that), but it's their "normal" velocity. I congratulated them, but I'm wondering if I should have since they "just did their job".

How do you congratulate your coworkers? Specifically

  • Do you? Why or Why Not?
  • How?
  • On trivial/exceptional stuff?
  • When and Where?

Coaching Corner Volume 3

Welcome to Cameron's Coaching Corner, where we answer questions from readers about leadership, career, and software engineering.

In this week's post, we look at how Alan can help their engineer figure out what they want to be when they grow up.

Hey Cameron!

I have a front-end engineer who's sharp, but they're not sure what their career growth looks like. I get the sense that they're interested in other roles outside of software development. How do you navigate this and help them grow?

Cameron's Coaching Corner Volume 2

Welcome to Cameron's Coaching Corner, where we answer questions from readers about leadership, career, and software engineering.

In this week's post, we look at how Chase can balance writing the perfect code and shipping something.

My question: As a young developer, I notice that sometimes I get paralyzed by options. I want to write the perfect piece of code. This helps me in writing good code but usually at the cost of efficiency. Especially when I am faced with multiple good options. Sometimes I want to KNOW I’m gonna write the right thing before I’m writing it when I my be better off with some trial and error

  1. Are these common problems that you see people face?
  2. What rules of thumb or other pieces of advice do you have to avoid writing nothing instead of something as a result of seeking the ideal?
  3. How important is planning vs trial and error ("failing fast" as they say) to good software development flow?

Cameron's Coaching Corner - Mentoring an Intern

Welcome to Cameron's Coaching Corner, where we answer questions from readers about leadership, career, and software engineering.

In this week's post, we look at how test123 can improve the mentoring experience for their new intern.

I recently had an intern join my time and I’m going to be his mentor. I’ve had interns in the past, but this one doesn’t understand any fundamentals and struggles with everything.

My question to you is this, how can I help him? He doesn’t know HTML/CSS/JS, so I’m trying to teach him those, but it’s taking away a lot of time. I suggested for him to watch some videos and then we can sync twice a day to go over the topics and discuss them further.

My issue: I don’t want to just say “go watch videos.” Bc, that’s not the best way to learn - I want him to dive into the code and try things and break, that’s how I learned at least.

How do you think I should handle this? I wanna be a good mentor and I want him to learn and grow. I don’t wanna fail the kid bc I don’t know the proper way to mentor.

My Interviewing Strategy

I’ve found that interviewing for a new job can be super stressful and it reminds me of speed dating, “Let’s get to know each other over the next few hours to see if this relationship can work”. With such a short time window, there’s not much time to ask “fluff” questions like “if you were a tree, what kind of tree would you be”. Instead, I’m more likely to ask some of the following questions to get a better understanding of what I’m about to step into. If the company can’t answer some of these questions, it’s not a deal breaker, but can be a red flag about this place.

With that being said, I hope these questions help you during your interviewing process!

Business Strategy

  • What is your biggest concern for ?
  • What was a major success for over the past year?
  • What was a stumbling block for over the past year?
  • What does your ideal customer look like?
  • What is your business model (i.e. how does make its money)?
  • Any thoughts of expanding to other markets (such as, if the company sells a particular type of medical device, are there any thoughts of making other devices or add-ons for the main device)? If not, why?
  • Who would you say are your biggest competitors? What differentiates you from them?

Software Development

  • What is the current architecture of the software?
  • What is the direction that is moving to?
  • What is your current tech stack?
  • What development methodologies (TDD, Pairing, Mobbing, XP, etc…) are you using?
  • How do you maintain quality?
  • What is one quality you appreciate it a teammate?
  • What is one quality that gets on your nerves? How much work is new (greenfield) vs maintenance (brownfield)?

General

  • What would you consider to be a big success over the past year?
  • What would you consider a failure or stumbling block over the past year?
  • What is the best thing about working at ?
  • What is one thing that be improved about working at ?
  • What determines “success” for this role? How would you measure / know it?
  • What does a typical day look like for this role?

Benefits

  • How many vacation days? How many sick days? Are they from the same bucket (i.e PTO) or different buckets?
  • Is there a 401(K)? If so, what’s the vesting period (i.e. how long until the employer contributions become yours)? What’s the employer contribution?
  • Is there a training budget? If so, is it per person, per team, per department? What do you typical training expenses look like (books, videos, conferences, or in person training)?
  • When does open enrollment begin for insurance? Am I covered on day one or is there a waiting period?