In this episode, Dave and Jamison answer these questions:

1. What is the right balance between asking for help and figuring things out on my own? How do I know when it’s time to ask questions or when it’s time to spend more time drilling down into the code?

2. Been at my first job for a couple of years now, and I am very quiet in the workplace and still find it hard to open up, be assertive, and speak up in meetings.

   When I try to go out of my comfort zone (arguing about technical decisions, setting up and driving meetings), I don’t think my manager appreciates my efforts. I am told that I need to voice my opinions more and have more of a two-way conversation. I feel I’m not given concrete chances to improve, and it’s very demotivating. How should I deal in situations like this?

Job pitch time! Are you interested in working at Walmart Labs? Email Jamison at [email protected]!

In this episode, Dave and Jamison answer these questions:

1. Will working as a defense contractor hurt my future employability in private industry?

   I work as a full stack engineer for a small defense contractor with a security clearance. My company is awesome; All of my coworkers are super talented/motivated. On top of that we get to work with modern tech stacks (React, Elm, Go, Rust, Kafka, you name it, we can use it). I have heard rumors that it’s hard to move back to private industry after working in this world due to working with old/legacy tech and the view that defense contractors generally have less than stellar engineers. Is this true? I feel I’m in a bit of a unique situation due to how good I have it at my company and feel I could demonstrate that my technical chops are up to par with industry standards.

2. We we just did a 360 performance evaluation where we provided “strong points” and “improvement suggestions” for two colleagues assigned by management. The completed reviews were sent to management and management forwarded it to the people under review.

   One of the reviews I received was very positive but the other one, from a senior teammate I work closely with, had a very harsh and exaggerated “improvement suggestions” section and very short and unconvincing “strong points” section.

   I’m not sure if he really considers me incompetent or he just wrote the suggestions, which do have some truth in them, without bothering to put things in perspective and without considering the impact it can have on my career and motivation. I feel a bit resentful towards the reviewer and am worried about the potential negative consequences of this review (I am relatively new to the company, joined 7 months ago).

   For now, I am trying to act as if nothing happened.

   I am hesitating whether I should talk to this person. On one hand, he can write what he wants in the way he wants. On the other hand, I feel the review is unfair and too negative.

   I would appreciate your input on this.

In this episode, Dave and Jamison answer these questions:

1. I work at a growing start up, and while I was hired as a web dev, I have started working on unrelated but cutting-edge tech for the company during off hours. My boss has encouraged me to do this with monetary and office life bonuses, and he has reworked our business model to focus on it. The only problem is that our CEO overpromises and pushes me to my mental and physical limits for very short turnarounds. I still have to do my regular job. While I love the challenge, and love the company, I feel set up to fail. And the 40 hour coding sprints over the weekend are killing me. I feel like I’m setting a horrible precedent because somehow, defying all logic, I’ve met the deadline each time. How far is too far? Should I keep killing myself, or take the agony of defeat on a project.

2. I’m currently working as a Senior Solutions Architect after a career progression that looks like this: Junior Developer, Intermediate Developer, Senior Developer, Junior Architect, Intermediate Architect, Senior Architect.

   In a recent one-on-one with my boss, we were discussing my future career options and concluded that the next step for me would be one of the following three positions: VP of Engineering, Chief Architect, or CTO. According to him, all three have similar levels of prestige, pay and influence, but vary in the nature of the job.

   Reflecting on this conversation, it dawned on me that I’m close to the final stage of my career. I’m currently 39 years old, so I’m now thinking to myself: Is that really it? One more promotion and I’ve successfully climbed the corporate ladder? End of the line. Time to retire. Nothing more to strive for (other than working on the most interesting projects).

   So, could you please talk about the software career progression, what to aspire to and how to measure one’s own progress once one has reached the top of the ladder?