I Don't Know What I'm Doing

Look, I'm not gonna lie to you, I don't know what this episode is. We're a little all over the place experimenting with some new segments. If nothing else, it's an audio file which you can listen to with your ears.

Key Topics: Property Brothers of Software Development, Project Management, One in One Out Hole Policy, Green River

Intro & Outro - "Golden Sunrise" by Josh Woodward (http://freemusicarchive.org/music/Josh_Woodward/The_Wake_1790/JoshWoodward-TheWake-NoVox-10-GoldenSunrise) provided under https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/

Current events weighing on you? Want to take a break and return to a simpler time when our biggest concern was a mobile app being sideloaded to serve the Iowa Democratic caucus? The I Don't Know What I'm Doing podcast and Paul's inability to edit things in a timely manner is here to serve you on that front and so many more.

Talking Points: Papa John's lawsuit, spelling of caucus, what to do on the bench for a year, design-thinking on the 5-star rating system, making slime

Intro & Outro - "Golden Sunrise" by Josh Woodward (http://freemusicarchive.org/music/Josh_Woodward/The_Wake_1790/JoshWoodward-TheWake-NoVox-10-GoldenSunrise) provided under https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/

Hopefully you don't look to this podcast for timely reporting of news and events, because that's not what you are going to find in this episode.  That aside we do give over a substantial portion of the podcast to talking about fish tacos and Taco Bell double deckers all getting us to the meat of the matter, a quandary on innovation at the workplace from Itching to Innovate in Austin TX. Hot Topics this episode: What's a Fish Taco?  #softtacoout.  Google closed door policy.  Top Marketing Trends for 2020!  Asked to Innovate at work.   Intro & Outro - "Golden Sunrise" by Josh Woodward (http://freemusicarchive.org/music/Josh_Woodward/The_Wake_1790/JoshWoodward-TheWake-NoVox-10-GoldenSunrise) provided under https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/

Happy New Years to all!  We open this episode talking about our Christmas List which would have been poignant if I had edited this in a reasonable amount of time.  I would love to have a new years resolution which was germane to that point, but I absolutely do not.  Listen in to hear about Pat's car's tail light, new rulings in the GDPR world, and whether free food is the greatest detriment to company culture.

Intro & Outro - "Golden Sunrise" by Josh Woodward (http://freemusicarchive.org/music/Josh_Woodward/The_Wake_1790/JoshWoodward-TheWake-NoVox-10-GoldenSunrise) provided under https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/

The consultants take on such tough subjects as nurturing entry level employees and whether pooping on the bathroom floor should be a firable offense.

Intro & Outro - "Golden Sunrise" by Josh Woodward (http://freemusicarchive.org/music/Josh_Woodward/The_Wake_1790/JoshWoodward-TheWake-NoVox-10-GoldenSunrise) provided under https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/

Pat was really messed up on NyQuil but that didn't stop us from coming to the table with our overtly valuable opinions on Fake Agile, the Domino's Pizza Accessibility case, and being over-allocated across multiple clients.

Intro & Outro - "Golden Sunrise" by Josh Woodward (http://freemusicarchive.org/music/Josh_Woodward/The_Wake_1790/JoshWoodward-TheWake-NoVox-10-GoldenSunrise) provided under https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/

Given the topic of this episode is on taking ownership - I will set an example by taking ownership of the incoherent and rambling nature of the dialog. We start off with Pat presenting a scathing assessment of the state of software delivery and end up with an exposition of our dearth of knowledge concerning cattle farming. In there somewhere a couple points get made, some pro-strats concerning success in taking ownership in all manner of delivery scenarios.

Intro & Outro - "Golden Sunrise" by Josh Woodward (http://freemusicarchive.org/music/Josh_Woodward/The_Wake_1790/JoshWoodward-TheWake-NoVox-10-GoldenSunrise) provided under https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/

This one gets real dark real fast. Heck, Pat outright refuses to play ball within the first 3 minutes of conversation.  Engagement is a tough subject to talk on to an extent, because it has garnered such a stigma from its overuse in HR propaganda, it's applications to systems which purport to increase engagement while ignoring that each employee is in fact a person. In my youth if I heard someone even use the word "engagement" I would immediately assume everything that they had to say or ever had said is was and will have always been a koolaid fuelled buzzword quilt with as much substance as a fart. Give me more money or give me less work, that was all I wanted to hear. 

We try our darndest to cut through that to get some meaning out of Engagement, looking at its value and its drivers.  If you or your team feels disengaged, or if you just want to hear what a bunch of developers thing about engagement, give us a listen.

Intro & Outro - "Golden Sunrise" by Josh Woodward (http://freemusicarchive.org/music/Josh_Woodward/The_Wake_1790/JoshWoodward-TheWake-NoVox-10-GoldenSunrise) provided under https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/

Pat, Nate, and Paul explore Bench Time and its proper application. If you're on the bench or might be going on the bench soon, this is mandatory listening. We arrive at a number of "problems" and a number of "solutions" but one tag line stands out - "Stay off the bench stay in the bullpen", which is representative of our assertion that you should turn your bench into your bullpen.

3:08 - Nates Bench Adventures - AKA, another Nate Performance Review 5:50 - Quest to transform the bench into the bullpen? 6:42 - Looking at the bench from the individuals perspective 7:24 - Pat's Introduction to the Bench 8:24 - Paul's Introduction to the Bench 9:45 - Nate's Introduction to the Bench & Paul's Time at Borders Books 11:01 - Being an Entrepreneur on the Bench 13:58 - Building the Business From the Bench 17:28 - The Value of Internal Projects 18:33 - Looking at the bench from the company's perspective 21:34 - Giving Your Leaders Time To Lead (ie, how do we get the right people on the bench?) 28:21 - Being Proactive and Valuing Proactivity on the Bench 36:30 - Getting to some "Takeaways" 38:01 - Finding The Main Theme - "Solve your own problem - align your efforts to bringing in new business" 41:13 - Closing it out

Intro & Outro - "Golden Sunrise" by Josh Woodward (http://freemusicarchive.org/music/Josh_Woodward/The_Wake_1790/JoshWoodward-TheWake-NoVox-10-GoldenSunrise) provided under https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/