We Should Be Working

Caroline is a Software Architect at Phase2, a biology nerd, and one of the most fascinating conversationalists I know. We chatted about the poison of convenience, the power of hobbies, the "I am owed" mindset, and the glorification of being a victim.

Here are the links she mentioned:

Gratitude journaling studies:

Nina is a Manager, Agile Delivery Lead at Capital One and she worked with Critter and Jace for a long time back in the day. She came on to chat about the commercialism of surrogacy in the US, parenting woes, and work as self care. Lovely chat, thanks Nina!

Jace is a hopeless romantic and we talked a lot about his romantic history. Plus, we debated whether you need to lead meetings in order to progress as an engineer.

Critter thinks he needs to be more honest, but Erik thinks he needs to be more selfish, and Jace thinks he needs to stop whining. Erik shows off his new p-bone and somehow doesn't know what the word "dookie" means.

Critter discovers paleo and thinks the word "else" has a T in the middle. Jace tries to blame audio delays on Critter but everyone knows that's some BS. They both don't enjoy learning other languages.

CJ is the VP of Engineering at Phase2 technology and he has a truly dope website (http://tekante.com/). We talked about a bunch of random stuff. It's hard to boil it down to a description, so just listen to it. Any conversation with CJ is a good one.

And lots of other sci-fi-ish questions about death and immortality. Plus much giggling.

Critter wants to make 2022 his year of adventures, but his definition of "adventure" makes Jace grumpers. Jace talks more about his multi-year long habit of waking up every day and having to convince himself not to kill himself.

Jace is a scrooge, which surprises no one. Critter gets excited about Crossfit randomly without ever trying it. We both have trouble deciding what exactly counts as "work". 

Erik's been on the show a few times and deserves no introduction. As usual, Erik takes the opposite side from the rest of the world and still ends up winning the argument. We also got into the topic of being passionate about the process vs. about the problem space. Interesting discussion as it always is when Erik's around.

Thomas crashes the party for the first 15 minutes or so, then takes off when mom gets home. After that, Jace and Critter get into depression, videogame addiction, and Jace's morning routine. Rollercoaster of an episode.

Frank is CTO of Phase2 Technology and an ultramarathon runner. We chatted mostly about fitness - how he's prepping for his upcoming 100km race, what it's like to run a Spartan race, scary animals he's seen while trail running, all that. 

Jace isn't interested in your garbage rewards for doing his job. Critter finds another opportunity to ramble about how team retros are everything. Also: high school reunions, team parties, why we decided to start exercising, and why teachers hated Jace.

Critter is convinced that THIS TIME he has figured out the key to building the perfect male body. Jace has his doubts. They both spend an annoying amount of time talking about macros and different types of martial arts. 

Critter realizes that honesty is good, Jace realizes Critter is stupid, and we both try to understand what adults are.

Critter's in a thousand island phase, Jace had a super messed up childhood, and they both agree the world needs more practical jokes.

John Cartier is a fiction author who writes under the name J.B. Kish. He also happens to be a top notch project manager who's had the misfortune of working with the two of us. 

We got into his writing routine, different lengths (books vs. flash fiction vs. short stories), lessons learned, and niche communities that circle around weird things. Super fun episode with a seriously cool cat.

Critter is annoyed at internal company docs that are too long for anyone to read them. Jace is unimpressed with The Sopranos and doesn't want to be excited enough about any band to wear a diaper to their concert. We both debate intelligently about the finer points of modern day rap. 

Michael is currently COO at Entrepreneur Media, and he has a long and storied history of CTO and SVP roles. He's kind of a big deal. 

He joined us to chat about how agencies are like foster parents, why short running teams feel like studio musicians instead of bands, why resourcing in agencies is so hard, how to initiate cultural change, and his experience with mindfulness meditation. 

Lots of meat in this one. Check it!

Jace only has like one meeting per week and he still multitasks during it. Critter thinks DMX sucks but Yung Lean is pretty good. We both don't get the hype about potatoes and we try to figure out how to get some podcast guests that aren't our friends.

Good old Erik joins us to chat about why he thinks we're living in a simulation and why that doesn't matter. We also talked about his 15 musical instruments, argued about whether "on your deathbed" is a useful framing device, and discussed whether misery in the moment leads to happy memories later in life.

Critter realizes that he doesn't like challenging tech problems, Jace starts playing crypto games for stupid reasons, and they both discuss the complex strategies involved with the morning poo.

Wight Mike joins us again to talk about his brilliant startup ideas, why work travel has lost its luster, the timeless phrase "on and poppin," and why/how we should interview a proctologist.

Critter tries to grow a mustache and get into rap, both of which go as well as you'd expect. Jace achieves his dream of being left alone at work. They both argue about what's a "puzzle" and what's just work.

Critter thinks it would be really awful if someone else came up and started eating him, yet that happens all the time in the animal kingdom. Jace hates people who live on the bright side, which surprises exactly no one. We both try and fail to figure out Jace's enneagram type, and debate if there's a difference between liking things vs. liking being a person who likes them.

Jace is drinking stupid energy drinks again. Critter wants to learn to be more "unreasonable." We both whine about how much of our lives depends on random chance. Despite this terrible description, it was actually a pretty solid episode.

Robbie is an engineering leader who has done a heck of a lot of government work, and has had the good fortune of managing Critter in the past. He hops on to chat about tattoos, working on your passion, getting fulfillment out of making other people happy, and what it means that government work is done by real people. Bonus money quote: "imposter syndrome is the honey badger of privilege."

When's the last time you got full on furious? What would you do in a lifelike simulation of your life with zero risk? What do horses with closed lips look like? What's the stupidest thing you've lost a friend over? All this AND MORE in this week's pointless episode!

Joe Still is a friend and former coworker of ours, and he's impressively nerdy about peopleware, process, and infraops. And Erik's been on the poddy too many times for another introduction here. 

After 11 minutes of inside jokes and nonsense, we got into a debate about the mantra "hire slow, fire fast." Erik disagrees with it, of course, which led to some tweaks and gotchas. Where do PIPs fit in? What does "hire slow" even mean? Should you fight to keep someone from leaving? What's the manager's responsibility vs. the employee's responsibility? Lots of meat in this one!

Critter's freaking out because books are written by people and people are often wrong. Jace started a new job that doesn't involve Drupal, so that's a win. Then we get into a chat about exercise during working hours.

(Note that Critter's stupid computer was being stupid so the first half is Critter-less.)

You may know Bloom from such episodes as #26! He's a Principal Frontend Engineer at Knapsack (https://www.knapsack.cloud/). He joins us to chat about frontend interviews, junior devs, and dev tools he's excited about.

Critter feels guilty when he makes people feel sad, but Jace is a sociopath so he's not too worried about that. Jace ripped a door-curtain-thing off that his mom worked on for him, because he's a sociopath. Critter fakes excitement for even the most terrible of gifts, but when Jace (a sociopath) was younger, he threw wrapped presents back at the people who gave them to him. But at least we can all agree that surprise parties are the worst.

Erik Summerfield's been on here before (#3, #24). This time, after he was super late and unprofessional, he joined us to talk about how we choose to identify ourselves vs. how other people identify us. Erik has no pronoun preference, and the implications of that are fascinating.

- Critter's life is changed from creating a list of stressful things and blocking time for Slack.
- Jace is bored by both of those things, and whines about it like a stupid baby.
- Critter is sheltered from always living in the same place his whole life.
- Jace thinks strong women are awesome.
- They both think social networks are dangerous because losing touch with people is actually healthy.

Critter struggles with detaching his emotions from results, Jace struggles with detaching his emotions from his bad, and they both rant about how schools only teach the skills they don't mean to teach.

Nadia is a UX Designer and a prolific 3D printer enthusiast. We chatted about the day to day tasks of UX and IA work, how hard it is to assume best intent, finding other rewards for bad days besides being grumpy, and all our favorite childhood treats.

LINK AS PROMISED TO USERINYERFACE: https://userinyerface.com/game.html

All over the place with this one: psychadelics, rebel leadership, arbitrary deadlines, authority figures at school vs. work, clients as problems, and shortcutting the "getting comfortable" process for new hires so that they can get right to the good stuff.

Brian is an Engineering Leader currently at 21Shares, formerly VPE at Voice.com and Senior DoE at Major League Soccer (which is where he was lucky enough to work with Jace and Critter). He's kind of a big deal. We chatted about scaling an engineering team through a hypergrowth period, finding purpose in your work, and what the heck blockchain even is. 

Jace's mom happened to be hanging out in his house when we recorded so Critter gave her a half hour minute impromptu interview. She had some A+ insight on the resiliency of nature, the importance of social media, the harm of coddling, and a bunch of other stuff. After she left, we chatted about processing things by writing them out and whether or not personality types are valuable.

Terry is a family man, a Managing Director at Phase2 Technology, and an overall okay dude. We chatted about dealing with nerves before public speaking/presentations, scheduling your friendships, companies that have it together vs. companies that don't, and teachable skills vs. ingrained talents (thanks for having my back on this one Terry).

After a discussion about mental resets and the urge to always be productive, Critter whines for a long time about how work is stressful. Womp womp.

Lauren is a Solutions Architect at Contentful who has had the misfortune of being Jace's former manager. We talked about moving on from coding, creating goals vs. habits, why clients are or aren't the worst, and lots more. 

Jace has decided to go full caveman and eat only chicken, rice, and broccoli. Critter talks about coming back from vacation and the related stress imbalance. And finally, Critter picks Jace's brain about about Magic: The Gathering for the last 20 minutes. 

Nancy is a mom of four boys and she's way too good for Critter. This episode is mostly giggling and inside jokes, plus Jace probing for embarrassing Critter stories. Also, the audio sucks at some points due to putting two people on one mic.

We try to figure out what to put in our brag books, which is tough, because what are we even good at? Also, Critter questions the value in self evaluations and Jace keeps stubbing his toe because wearing shoes inside is disrespectful.

Alex Reece is a friend and manager at Streamlit (https://streamlit.io/). He joins us to talk about work politics and how much someone in the IC career path has to care about either of them. We also got into the path people take into management vs. staying in engineering forever, and Critter takes every opportunity to whine about imposter syndrome along the way.

Critter tries to think of a funny name for the bully inside his head, Jace did stupid stuff with fireworks when he was a kid, and we both argue about whether we should prep for our guests, because that's a conversation that our listeners definitely care about. 

Clove is a nerdy, trans, blue-haired product manager who has worked with both of us dinguses in the past. They joined us to talk to us about coming out as trans, gotchas with QA teams, where we want our careers to go long term, and other stuffs.

Critter whines about how apparently exposure therapy doesn't work with public speaking, and being a tech lead has made Jace anxious due to his annoying trust issues. 

We're not losing, we're just winning at things we don't realize we're aiming for. Plus: what are our love langauges, and why is the average birthday present so terrible?

Mark Boyd is a Cloud Engineer at Development Seed with a long and storied history of ruthlessly berating Critter. 

Titling this episode was tough because we talked about a lot of stuff. Topics include: what is a tech lead, can talents be taught, how and when to assume best intent in the dumb crap people do, hero culture, multipliers vs. diminishers, and finding the right spot for people instead of firing them.

Jace feels uncomfortable with being a tech lead and whines about it. Critter gets uppity that anyone would think anything is more important than fixing Scrum process. All that PLUS an argument about the difference between a cupcake and a tiny cake! Wow!

Mike Wight is a project manager at Goldbelly and a top shelf human being. After trying to figure out what cultural appropriation means and whether salsa dancing is problematic, we talked about his first couple months at his new gig and what it's like to work at a product company vs. an agency. Then we got into nature vs. nurture and skills vs. talents, and things got confusing and aggressive.

Critter and Jace yell at each other about whether or not talents are teachable. Jace yells that everything can be learned and taught. Critter yells that people should grow the talents they have instead of trying to cram in talents they don't have. Lots of yelling. 

Also a fun little discussion at the beginning about "breadcrumbing" people, i.e., leading them along without ever turning it into a real relationship.

Frank is the CTO of Phase2 Technology, an ultra runner, and a family man. He joins us to chat about the pain of running a really long way, punishing yourself to teach yourself to appreciate the highs of live, what the "tech lead" role actually means, and how to get people to use and read docs instead of immediately asking questions in Slack.

Jake is a musician, a software engineer (Solutions Engineer at Knapsack), and a super lovable dude. We chatted about being the only person alive when the aliens land, what Thanos could have improved about his development process, and whether or not Jake performs music shirtless.

Critter finally understands what mindfulness means. Jace is trying to be impeccable with his word but talking crap is so much fun. We both whine about how agility is still so hard to find and then talk through the four agreements from the book The Four Agreements.

Everyone's best friend Bloom joins us to talk about how developers these days spend so much time doing everything else that development feels like a reward rather than the job itself. 

We debate whether Slack or meetings are more harmful to our productivity, and whether being a specialist or a generalist makes it more likely to have both continual career growth and lots of time to write code.

We rant about bad meeting ice breakers and people who say "wow, quiet crew today!" Then we ponder why we'd pay thousands to save a kid drowning in front of us but not to save a theoretical kid across the world from dying of malaria. 

Erik makes a reappearance (he was our first ever guest on episode 3) and successfully does the impossible - he gets Jace and Critter to agree on something. We talked about spreadsheets that should be apps, how to know when technological progress goes too far, and how much one's life experience changes who they are.

Critter whines about having too many meetings and not enough work friends. Jace moved around a bunch as a kid and that's part of why he is such a huge butthead as an adult.

Jace loses his crap for 20 straight minutes and Critter can't stop laughing. And then Critter stresses out about being a good manager but a bad leader. 

Our buddy Mike Wight (aka: Mikey Dub) comes to visit on his last day at the agency we all worked at together. After failing hard at putting together a coherent intro, we talk about the time Mike got punched in college and some highs and lows from his past few years.

Critter still loses sleep over the memory of his pubescent Eleanor Roosevelt impression from 7th grade. Jace is against corporate managers and thinks Critter's job is a joke. They both think the word "expert" should be banned.  

Critter thinks the idea of a manager wearing different hats is hot water trash, Jace wants to float from project to project without ever taking on any responsibility, and we both want a "I'm being serious right now" button so that people know if they can ignore our ramblings or not.

Critter runs through a few social anxiety challenges and Jace has no problem with any of them. Jace wants to build a career around never having another meeting. They both want to pay someone to yell insults at them if they aren't productive.

Another random episode. We eventually made our way to talking about social anxiety, after talking about how long we could keep a job without doing any work and other such nonsense.

Jace and Critter chat without a set topic to see if that ends up being a disaster or not. Spoiler: it went okay. 

Lots of topics in this one, such as meetings that go on too long, estimates vs. appetites, Critter's 12 week goals, and purposely being uncomfortable.

How do we define ourselves in a few sentences?

Jace has a thing for septum piercings and identifies as a Pacific Islander. Critter thinks finding a significant other should be more like job interviews, or vise versa, or something. 

The guys pick a few tips from this fantastic blog post and talk through them: https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/7hFeMWC6Y5eaSixbD/100-tips-for-a-better-life

Jace reveals that he'd definitely pay well over $100 for ice cream. Critter admits to being a "quarantine rocks!" douchebag in 2020. They both get  excited about the fact that they're dying.

Critter has convinced himself that he has a fear of being included, but really he's suffering from FOMO just like everyone else. 

Jace slowly goes downhill over the course of the episode due to a crippling migraine until he finally leaves with no warning to find a dark room.

Jace whines over and over about the unsolvable problem of people who whine over and over about unsolvable problems.

Critter does some good old fashioned angry ranting about how most teams have bad retros because they're not talking about the real problems. 

They both are frustrated at how the threshold between being seen as a productive complainer vs. a whiner is lower for women than men.

Jace talks through why he's overhauled his life multiple times. Critter whines about imposter syndrome. They both don't understand how they could possibly grow at the same rate they've been growing.

Jace's lifelong BFF Richard joins the guys to pick their brains about stuff from previous episodes.

Jace just wants to be jacked and tan and for everyone to leave him alone. Critter finds a way to compare Nazi Germany to the emptiness of achieving goals. They both have dumb, boring uses for a magic wand.

Jace sees no problem with letting someone fall in love with him even if he only had 10 years to live. Critter would gladly live 500 years if he could keep that bangin' hot bod. For some reason the one thing they agree on is that losing a person you love is similar to losing a job you love.

Critter gives the advice that giving advice is bad, and doesn't see the irony in that. Jace presents a short history of himself, most of which Critter never knew about. 

Jace claims that Critter's best friends are actually just Facebook acquaintances. Critter tries and fails to convince Jace that friendship level is inversely proportional to potential for embarrassment. They both get very confused about many things.

Critter rambles about the big pile of trash in his garage for some unknown reason. Jace isn't an actual adult, as far as we can tell. We both need therapists still.

Jace reveals that he actually does care about something (programming). Critter decides that work is just a proxy for making friends who can't leave him. We both need therapists.

Our guest today is Erik Summerfield, Critter's former manager and Jace's current coworker. 

He joins us to talk about when it's appropriate to be polite vs. blunt, and where honesty and authenticity fit in. We dig into giving feedback in the way that is most likely to be well received and whether to tell someone their hat is ugly. 

Also, Jace and Erik team up against Critter which is rude and unfair.

We each name 5 mantras/guidelines that we base our decisions around and dig into them. 

Also:

How many people do we need on Earth to be satisfied? Whales are mind blowing. Monks are just looking for status and approval. Jace thinks he'd want to see the Northern Lights alone but he's wrong.