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Performance reviews have traditionally been viewed as a formal assessment of an employee’s job performance, often associated with anxiety and stress. However, a paradigm shift is occurring in organizations, recognizing performance reviews as powerful tools...
The post How Performance Reviews Fuel Career Development and Goal Setting appeared first on 85ideas.com.
Career in education is one of the most important and difficult ones. But at the same time teachers around the world are overworked and underpaid. There are many factors that affect teachers’ income. In this...
The post 5 Steps to Make More Money as a Teacher appeared first on 85ideas.com.
For decades Artificial Intelligence has been a focus of best-selling science fiction authors and an antagonist for blockbuster Hollywood movies. But AI is no longer relegated to the realm of science fiction, it inhabits the world around us. From the biggest enterprise companies to plucky startups, businesses everywhere are building and deploying AI at incredible speed.
In fact, open source allows anyone with a laptop to build impressively good AI models in a day.
Data junkies rejoice, this is the episode for you.
On this week’s episode of Dev Interrupted, Einat Orr, co-founder and CEO of Treeverse, sits down with us to talk about the state of data… where it’s been, where it’s going and why having bad data might be worse than having no data at all.
Software engineering is one of the most talked-about and sought-after career paths in the current world.
During my journey as a software engineer, I have worked with some wonderful people, the latest technologies, and great projects. As I reflect on my humble beginnings and the gradual progression to my current role as an engineering manager, I wish I knew some key aspects of the craft of software engineering back then.
Anyone who’s been in a rapidly scaling company with an ever-expanding engineering team knows that communication is never as simple as it seems.
That’s why we were so excited when Shankar Ramaswamy decided to sit down with Dev Interrupted.
If you are looking to fill a position for a Product Owner in your organization, you may find the following 82 interview questions useful to identify the right candidate. This 8th set of Product Owner interview questions addresses the product mindset.
The questions are derived from my sixteen years of practical experience with XP and Scrum, serving both as Product Owner and Scrum Master, and interviewing dozens of Product Owner candidates on behalf of my clients. So far, this Product Owner interview guide has been downloaded more than 10,000 times.
You want to become an SRE. You’ve read the right books, taken the right classes, and earned the right certifications. You’re part of the way toward landing an SRE job.
But, you’ll also need the right SRE resume. And, while there are no universal rules to follow about creating the ideal SRE resume, following some key best practices will help you build a resume that sets you apart from other SRE job applicants.
My software development career began about 17 years ago. But only in about the last seven years did I really start to see a large boost in my software development career.
In this post, I'll share some of the things I wish I had known when I got started in the software development industry — things that would have made me more successful, much earlier, if I would have known them.
When we think of giving feedback, we promptly think about correcting others. But giving feedback is as much about telling others what they are doing right as it is about telling them what they are doing wrong. It’s as much about reinforcing good behaviors as it is about eliminating bad ones. It’s as much about singing praise that comes off easily as it’s about giving constructive criticism that makes you uncomfortable.
If you are a manager or a leader, telling people what they ought to hear is not your job, it’s your responsibility. You are the person standing in the way of hundreds and thousands of employees who count on you every day to grow. Not making an effort to tell your people how they are doing and what they can do better, only because it makes you uncomfortable is an act of irresponsibility.
When we were small, we asked for help all the time. Dependent on our parents, friends, teachers, and siblings to help us navigate the complexities of life, asking for help seemed like the most natural thing to do. As a child, I don’t remember dealing with any painful emotion while asking for help, worrying about what it would do to my self-esteem or the damaging effect it can have on the image I have built for myself. I was simply happy to learn from everyone around me, knowing I could rely on people to give me useful advice when I needed one. Indeed, the best feeling in the world.
Yet, somewhere along the way, the meaning of help changed. I had caught on to the bug of independence and individualism. Asking for help became less about learning and more about my identity. It made me question my own abilities. Will it make me look weak or incompetent? Will others think less of me if they find me dependent? Will people question my intelligence and smartness? I would much rather struggle through a task and waste countless hours without accomplishing anything than approach someone. I was hungry for information but ready to stay foolish.
Every developer lead has been there. You’re mid-phone call with a client who is experiencing an outage or chaos in the system. She’s stressed out, balancing feedback from stakeholders across her organization, weighing the potential impacts of the issue, and relying on you for advice and solutions.
In these pivotal moments, I’m often hit with a sudden sense of déjà vu from when I was 16, working as a hairdresser in my first full-time job, facing a customer whose hair color was left on too long and oxidizing, causing the microscopic outer layer of hair follicles to peel back and release green color pigments.
The title of this article is misleading. It’s not actually very important for an Engineering Manager to use career laddering, per se, or my process. It is, however, very important that an Engineering Manager is clear with their employees about what their expectations and direction, not to mention where they are in terms of a raise and promotion.
I’ve personally found that career laddering can help with this, but is only one small supportive piece of a whole. You can have formalized career laddering in place and still mislead your staff, so it’s critical that career laddering docs are just one tool embedded in a deeper process.
Before we dive any further, let’s clarify first what we mean by a career ladder. Career laddering is typically a system used to show what expectations are at different levels of a role, a purpose of which is defining how one might be promoted. This can have different forms, but tends to be an internal document that states the expectations of a staff member at any given stage of their career.
Here is a microsite I set up where I open sourced all of my career ladders >
As you can see in the site, it outlines each of the different levels of the job, as well as the roles and responsibilities expected at that level. In this particular example, there is a basic concept that ties the whole thing together:
What I like about this system is that the job of the most advanced folks becomes helping support and grow other people or system in such a way that benefits everyone. Principal-level folks don’t lord knowledge over others; they work to put the knowledge into practice in a way that’s truly helpful.
Again, it’s not important that you use my exact system, but I want to show that having clarity about the roles and expectations of each team member can really go a long way. Why? Let’s dive in.
“You can’t call yourself a leader by coming into a situation that is by nature uncertain, ambiguous — and create confusion. You have to create clarity where none exists.”
— Satya Nadella
I have never seen employees more demoralized than when they’re unsure where their career is headed and whether their title/compensation is fair. It’s frustrating, exhausting, and can lead to burnout. It’s also incredibly distracting — who can get their job done when they have no clue if what they’re doing is valued?
Some may ask about intrinsic motivation. You can have an employee that cares intrinsically about their work and still feels misaligned with the overall impact that the company sees in it. That’s often when the disconnect feels the most hurtful. If you have an employee who is working extremely hard and doing absolutely everything they can, the feeling of being undervalued can be heartbreaking.
Clarity with people about their level and being explicit about what they should be working on is critical. Transparency around timing for such a promotion cycle if you know it can help as well.
There’s a bit about trust in here, too. If you are working with someone on their growth path and trust that you will honor it, you enter into a sort of partnership.
Personally, I love it when the qualities you’re working on are things that would serve them anywhere, not just the company. These should be things that expand their skill set. These types of tasks typically take some long term work, but it can be very rewarding to work together on because there’s a larger purpose.
One thing is critical: if you guide employees on this journey, you need to give them the promotion at the end. The promotion is a change in title and compensation, of course, you break the bond of that partnership if you don’t follow through. Always give the promotion if that person has earned it on their end.
I mentioned that a career laddering document alone will not help drive a team, and I also mentioned the importance of clarity. So, let’s tie this all together and talk through how to use this in practice.
I am one of those annoying managers who asks people where they’d like to be in five years. I call it “annoying” because it’s a lot to think about. But I still ask it, not because I’m not looking for a perfect answer, but because it gives them an opportunity to consider their future and, usually, they tell me something I should know.
Here are some examples:
Notice that these are not a formal outline for the next five years. But you can already get a sense of people’s values, their boundaries, and what we may want to incorporate as part of their working environment.
If you don’t know where you are going, you might wind up someplace else.
— Yogi Berra
In this step, we go through the career laddering doc. What I typically do is have an employee read out every list item in their current role to me, then self-assess the progress they’ve made on each item. I sound off a bit on it. We generally align; people tend to be fair and honest. I personally think it’s important that they read their list to me instead of the other way around, there’s a sense of ownership that way.
We also go over the next stage in their career and the list items for it. At the end of the process, we break down any common themes. For example:
“You’re solidly a Senior, and doing quite well in your role. To get to Staff, you need to be helping others a bit more. Let’s make sure you have the time to be available for more PR reviews and pairing in the next few weeks. Let’s also talk about getting that internal tool you were building over the line, that would likely help the team move faster
“
The next step I do is called a 30/60/90. The concept is that you break down the work you want to be doing in 30, 60, and 90 days.
I tend to do this with a bit of a twist: We start with 90 days and ask: what would you like to accomplish here within the next three months?
Since the career laddering is fresh in their minds, there’s already some guidance on what their focus should include. It’s safe at this point to let them drive, and tell you what they should be doing instead of the other way around.
Sometimes this can be quantifiable:
I would like to close five issues each week, ideally with at least two PRs.
I would like to address content gaps on two features.
I would like to pair with at least two people.
It can be expressed as a metric:
I would like to help increase adoption of our npm package by 10%.
Or it can be less measurable:
I would like to try to understand our component library a little more as a newcomer.
I would like to try to interrupt other people less in meetings.
All of these are valid.
Now that we’ve taken the time to define the 90 day plan, we figure out what’s doable in a 30-day period. Again, it’s up to them what they think they can accomplish in this time. I only chime in if I think they’re being too ambitious, or they are missing something that the company needs.
It can also be helpful to state that things change, and nothing in this plan is set in stone — other things may come up that need attention. We’ll adjust, it’s no big deal. I honestly don’t find the 60-day piece to be very useful because a lot changes in a month. I usually skip it, but you can absolutely use it if you find it helpful!
We also get to talk through what they shouldn’t be doing. If you find that something they are spending time on is not useful for the employee or the company, you may be able to remove the task and clarify this to other stakeholders. The employees themselves may not be able to have that conversation.
This can be incredibly useful for someone who may be an over-performer, but are burning out. It helps us align on the tasks that are overextending them so that they can properly prioritize and focus. It’s tempting to think that over-performers need less guidance but I’ve found that they tend to need more clarity, not less, so that we can define scope and help them set a good direction.
I’ve also seen under-performers turn around after the career laddering process. What one might see as a lazy quality in that person might actually be a symptom of being misaligned with the purpose of the tasks. A career ladder helps them recognize what, when, why and how the things they’re working on fit into the bigger picture.
From here, it’s probably pretty clear what you do — keep revisiting the list! I try to set a reminder in our one-on-one doc to revisit the 30/90 plan in about a month. When we check in, we see how far they’ve come on each task, putting little checkmarks next to what’s done. I’ll sometimes put a celebration emoji on something they did particularly well — I believe it’s important to celebrate those as successes, even if it makes me sound like Mr. Rogers. Show folks that you appreciate their work and how far they’ve come.
From there, you can carve out another block for the 90, so they have direction for the next 30 days. If they didn’t finish something, carry it over to the next month.
Every few months, we’ll go back and do the career laddering exercise again, but this time denoting the progress that’s been made in every area. When they’ve filled their end of the deal of the things you asked them to work on, it’s time to promote them! 🎉 Don’t forget to celebrate that as well!
This is not the only way to provide direction and clarity in a person’s work — the sky’s the limit. Anything that provides clarity for your staff can be helpful.
What I’ve liked about the career laddering process is that there are no surprises: people know where they are, and what it will take to get to the next level. There are no surprises in 360 reviews as far as what stage they’re at and what they should be working on between now and the next check in. The progress is a tangible thing that becomes a partnership between the both of you, and the work is just a unit within something measurable on that path.
It can be clarifying for everyone around: they know the system — there should be no surprises why a person is getting promoted at a given time. Hopefully that alleviates any tension in the process.
Our collective aim as managers should be taking the careers of our employees as seriously as we do the team’s technical processes. Promotions ideally come exactly when and how everyone thinks it will. The goal is to set your team up for success: everyone has a good path forward and they can focus on doing work that is both impactful and rewarding.
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There exists a “basic blueprint” that represents probably the most difficult (and worst way) to land the job you want! It goes a little something like this:
You might get the attention of one or two hiring managers, but this can never be the path towards great jobs responsible for crafting long-lasting careers. Why?
I want to focus on resources you all can use to improve your technical skills and even more specifically resources to get your first job in the field. Because that’s the hardest part — getting your first job. Once you have that, you’ll learn the skills you need so fast that you won’t need people like me giving you advice.
It’s really hard to learn data science and actually be good at it because there’s a long laundry list of things you need to know to be a good data scientist. Some of those topics are:
Ever wondered how the richest of the rich manage to scale up their profit and welcome the very new year with the same zest and confidence? The answer is they live their life with perseverance and passion. Nothing’s too easy unless you work hard for it. Many of the billionaires seem to have accepted this as their motto early in their life and are reaping the benefits of the same now.
Want to be successful and achieve all those resolutions you have on your bucket lists? Here’s a list of the seven most famous billionaires and their habits that help them tick-off all their new year resolutions.
You started your coding journey, multiple roads ahead, wondering which road to take, which map to follow, wondering how I am gonna walk the next step and many more questions would have arrived. Feeling nostalgic, seniors? I bet you do. But as a human we are bound to do mistakes, aren't we? So, let us talk about the mistakes a rookie or a newbie programmer makes, as I did, and later learns the lesson the hard way. If you are just starting your journey, I think the place and the timing couldn't have been more perfect. I hope this will show you the hurdles or the potholes you need to avoid to march ahead in your journey.
Someone said, start with C language, now you are learning C, next minute you heard about C++, now you are on to it. Very next day you read somewhere Java is popular then again you jumped to it. Someone whispered python, and here you go. It happened to me while I was in college. I was jumping to one another every semester (not like I was learning a language the whole sem). And seriously, I didn't even know what I have tried my hands on. In the last sem struggling to prepare for the job I came to my senses somehow and stuck to Java.