First I want to say thank you and I really love the show and all your helpful advice. I think it has made be become a better developer.

I am a current junior in high school and the lead developer (intern) of the small non profit with approximately 10 college and graduate interns on it. School has recently started to push me away from the project (not enough time in the day) but I still want to be a source of help. I wrote a very significant portion of the code for the current application, however the founder wanted this to be shipped as quickly as possible and this led in a sense to a bit of a cobbled together mess of microservices and no documentation. My main problem is that although I feel I have the technical skills to lead the team, I really do not have much experience in terms of team management, especially in the case of leading a development team. During the main development of the application, it mainly consisted of me and this other developer writing the code. However now that they are gone, I am the only person (along with someone else who kind of has an understanding) with knowledge and familiarity of the code base. Sorry this is long, but I guess what I am asking is how can I (i) create a team structure that will not only prepare interns for real world development as well as making sure that the application remains after I move on and (ii) help build processes and structure that will allow people to meaningfully contribute to the code base.

Also, just for more information, I have not yet added unit tests or code reviews. Most of this just usually became just as me.

I work in AI startup and planning to change my job. My contract is full of NDAs about pretty much everything. How do I talk with companies and recruiters about things I do when I’m not allowed to disclose project details like technologies or libraries used, algorithms for data manipulation, or even where we take data from, bought or downloaded. I can’t say anything more than “I work on AI and we do music manipulation in a programming language”. What do I say?

Hey Dave & Jamison,

I have a problem with a more senior engineer in my project, I cannot really predict or follow his thought process.

They introduced best practices about organizing code, Git branching, software versioning, etc. to the project. Which is great, because I like well-defined processes. And I followed those processes happily.

Now, there are some occasions where the senior engineer violates one of the processes.

When they do that I ask why, then they give me the reason and I nod because I think that make sense.

Fast forward a little, and I also choose to violate the process the same way, for the same reasons. During the code review, the senior engineer rejects my approach because it “does not make sense”. SurprisedPikachu.jpg

I tried a few times to challenge them in these situations but more often than not they either stood their ground or gave the “agree-to-disagree” nod which demoralizes me. So now, I’m inclined to just follow what they say if this situation happens.

I understand that there is some nuance for a certain thing to go a certain way, but when this happens I am always left puzzled and spend time re-calibrating the idea/approach.

What is the best way(s) to deal with these kind of people?

Anyway, love the show and keep up with the good work!

Do you think that a job that helps you constantly grow is more important than a job that promises titles?

Taylor asks,

Is it frowned upon to not want to be promoted and get more responsibility? I want to keep a good work-life balance but feel that saying so will have my manager think less of me.

Hi Dave and Jamison, love your show! The time has come to quit my job and I am wondering if I should keep a copy of the scripts I wrote for the project?