The Rabbit Hole: The Definitive Developer's Podcast

In today's episode, we dive into the subject of estimations and pointing. For most teams, there needs to be a way to communicate the size, complexity, and difficulty of any task or project, and the different frameworks that have gained popularity have degrees of utility, strength, and weakness. To get to grips with these, we discuss, planning poker, t-shirt sizes, dog breeds, board games, and the interesting case of gummi bears! So to hear all about some ideas that you may find useful, or completely useless, tune into the Rabbit Hole, today!

Financial security, building working relationships, having a positive impact on the people around you; which of these examples resonates with the way you find meaning in your work? It could be one of them, or all or them, or you may have completely different sources of meaning. In today’s episode, my guest, Sophie Creutz, and I, share how we personally find meaning in the work that we do, and why we believe this to be a very important topic. Google recently did some research on the subject too, so we also share some of those findings. Tune in today to hear it all!

Leading up to today’s discussion, we have talked about the psychological safety, and dependability of the Aristotle Project. Today, we tackle structure and clarity. We discuss a statement that lists understanding of job expectations, the process for fulfilling them, and knowing the consequences of one’s performance as important pillars for team effectiveness. We unpack OKR goal setting, how this enables individuals flexibility in choosing how to reach a predetermined goal, how OKRs can add structure and clarity around roles and responsibilities, and how setting team OKRs can create a danger of ‘bike shedding’, which isn’t a problem in individual OKR setting. We close with the suggestion that each person writes their own OKRs in order to create even more structure and clarity around their job expectations. We hope you join us today! 

Today we continue our exploration of the Aristotle Project, and we are joined by Sophie Creutz to discuss dependability. Dependability is one of the factors that Google found to be most impactful on the success of a team and to kick things off we run through this list again, as well as some of the surprising things that are not correlated to a team's success. With Sophie's help, we look at the efficacy of a Scrum of Scrums, how to balance informative communication with remaining concise enough, prioritizing the team mentality, avoiding the bystander effect, and a whole lot more. We believe that the measures you take for your team or set of teams are essentially there to foster dependability in light of the fallibility of humans and that a lack of ownership and a negative herd mentality are the biggest enemies to your team's success. So for this brief yet enlightening chat on how to sure up your projects and the teams that work on them, join us down The Rabbit Hole!

Safety in an office environment might not be something most people think about. Unlike working in a job that requires manual labor, dangers in an office are less visible. That does not make them more serious. In today’s episode, we discuss psychological safety and what this entails. There is a range of definitions for the concept, but it should be underpinned by mutual respect and acceptance. We discuss what happens when this is lacking in the workplace and then also delve into what you can do to foster it. Being open, vulnerable, and willing to show that you do not know everything goes a long way. Tune in to hear it all!

Are premortems as morbid as their name suggests or are they difficult but necessary measures to take for identifying possible future threats? This is the topic we explore today and we have our guest extraordinaire Sophie Creutz back on the show to help us tackle it. Our discussion is filled with strong arguments from both sides of the table. On the one hand, premortems could be seen as pointless for the most part because they take up precious time focussing on threats everybody is already aware of. On the other hand, they allow teams to get the challenges that lie ahead into the open which builds the psychological safety that is so vital to the development process. We also explore the most appropriate times to run premortems and how they should be structured so that threats can be placed in three buckets, tigers, paper tigers, and elephants. Tune in and dive down the rabbit hole of premortems with us today!

Today we have a really fun episode in which we are joined by our friend Sophie Creutz to discuss the parallels between Dungeons & Dragons and the world of software development! There are clear links and common threads that seem to run between these two worlds and we start off this conversation considering why the game of D&D might immediately appeal to developers. A lot of this might have to do with rules and the concept of a journey or quest, but we also consider further counterparts from the two spaces. Sophie shares some of her deep knowledge from the role-playing game, and we even have time to think about the character attributes that make a good developer! So from product managers to DMs, to quests and careers, be sure to listen in as we explore what we as developers can learn from the amazing game of D&D!

Welcome back to The Rabbit Hole podcast! This week we’re diving into the subject of deep practice and how to become a better developer. Dave and Michael reflect on how learning to play a musical instrument taught them important lessons about intentional practice and how they’ve applied those lessons to coding. Hear how test-driven development and pair programming can be effective methods for intentional practice, and how you can pick up valuable lessons by actively observing peers and reading code. There are also opportunities for small, everyday exercises that can improve your coding on programs like LeetCode and Exercism. Tune in today as we discuss deep practice, The Matrix, mindful learning, and plenty more!

The transition to remote work in early 2020 was abrupt for everyone, but some found themselves thriving more than others, in many cases, thanks to their personality type. With work-from-home setups becoming the new norm in the age of COVID, many might assume that remote working environments are ideal for introverts, while extroverts are rearing to return to the office but, as you’ll learn from this episode, this isn’t necessarily the case! Today, Michael Nunez, Dave Anderson, and William Jeffries speak about introversion and remote work, sharing their personal experiences and elaborating on how they believe it relates to their individual personality types. We also touch on introversion versus social anxiety, the value of flexibility and creative thinking, and what Michael has in common with Spiderman, so make sure to tune in today to learn more!

As the world slowly reopens after more than a year of COVID-19 shutdowns, coming together is more important than ever. Today’s episode takes a human-centered approach to how to create more meaningful gathering spaces and some simple tips you can follow to do so. From committing to a clear purpose to asking how your gathering impacts the wider world, we share some of the rules outlined in Priya Parker’s fascinating book, The Art of Gathering: How We Meet and Why It Matters, and we discuss the benefits of Jefferson Dinners, where there is only one topic of conversation. Tune in today for some insight into the art of gathering!