Shows / Developer Tea
Developer Tea
Developer Tea exists to help driven developers connect to their ultimate purpose and excel at their work so that they can positively impact the people they influence. With over 17 million downloads to date, Developer Tea is a short podcast hosted by Jonathan Cutrell, engineering leader with over 15 years of industry experience. We hope you'll take the topics from this podcast and continue the conversation, either online or in person with your peers. Email: developertea@gmail.com
Episodes
- Developer Tea
Complexity As A Depreciating Asset
Complexity is an asset, but often it depreciates in value over time. Simplification strategies should evaluate what kind of value complexity is providing, and…
- Developer Tea
Your Biggest Opportunity is In Your Daily Influence
Opportunity is in front of you every day. But, you may not recognize it at first, because you by default will likely imagine yourself to be an external…
- Developer Tea
Get Acquainted With What Holds You Back
What will hold you back from achieving what you want to achieve in your future? How do you imagine your future, and what do you assume will keep you from going…
- Developer Tea
How Ordering Your Events in A Day Can Matter
Practical application of psychology can help us understand how to order our days more consciously. In this episode, we talk about priming and regression to the…
- Developer Tea
Don't Fear AI Taking the Coding Jobs (Fixed Audio)
AI will change your work... But it's time for us to find the path forward. 🙏 Today's Episode is Brought To you by: Square Square has APIs for almost every…
- Developer Tea
Don't Fear AI Taking the Coding Jobs
AI will change your work... But it's time for us to find the path forward. 🙏 Today's Episode is Brought To you by: Square Square has APIs for almost every…
- Developer Tea
Focus On Activities With Asymmetrical Upside
Focus on things that provide asymmetrical upside. This is a personalized ROI evaluation. This is how you invest your time wisely. 🙏 Today's Episode is Brought…
- Developer Tea
Misjudging Others Attention On Us
We imagine others are more interested in our mistakes or self-conscious areas than they are. We also imagine they pay little to no attention to us at most…
- Developer Tea
An Outsider Exercise in Gratitude
We adapt to our circumstances. This dampens our capacity for gratitude, as we become less aware of what we are experiencing the longer we have the same…
- Developer Tea
You Know The Right Decision, Now Reduce The Friction
You know how to determine what would be a good decision. You have the tools and the reasoning; if you find yourself still not making the right decision, you…
- Developer Tea
Using Observational Techniques to Find Your Personal Values
Determining your values isn't just about fluff. This is what you personally care about. In this episode, we talk about two ways to use direct observation as a…
- Developer Tea
Avoid Defining Success Outside Your Locus of Control
Focus on what you can control. Create incentives and language and internal narrative that produces the right actions within your locus of control. Avoid…
- Developer Tea
The Toxic Laziness of Overwork Culture
Don't buy in to the lie that you have to overwork to succeed. Not only is it not true, it's also dangerous - and the opposite is more accurate. ## 📮 Ask a…
- Developer Tea
Start With Precise Communication
In today's episode, I provide a simple coaching tip on improved communication for software engineers. It's simple: always make precision explicit, and layer…
- Developer Tea
The Error of Discounting the Unexpected
We don't think about the unexpected as a category of possible outcomes. This leads us to assign overestimated probabilities to things that are front of mind…
- Developer Tea
Looking at What Wasn't Done
Look closer at the things that don't happen. Evaluate the options you never considered. When you are looking back, don't just judge based on actions and…
- Developer Tea
Success is Born From Luck and Action
You can't wait for luck to strike, but you also won't always get what you deserve. Both of these are true - so, go make luck happen for you! ## 📮 Ask a…
- Developer Tea
Build Environments That Produce Habits
Habits aren't built on their own. They are the result of environments. Reduce friction and create a positive reinforcement loop, and the habits will follow. 📮…
- Developer Tea
Design Your Low Stakes Environment As A Mirror of Your High Stakes Environment
What happens in high-stakes environments? Is the learning you do in your low-stakes environment actually helping you when you have skin in the game? ## 🙏…
- Developer Tea
Better Goals - Deriving Values from Personal Investment and Risk Tolerance
Having trouble setting goals? Take a look at a different angle with the guided exercise in today's episode. 🙏 Today's Episode is Brought To you by: Square…
- Developer Tea
Better Goals - Finding Cohesion Between Your Long and Short Term Goals
Our goals usually take two forms: what we want to accomplish, and who we want to be. When we can align these things, we find cohesion in our goals, giving us…
- Developer Tea
Better Goals - Two Guidelines for Better Outcomes
Two guidelines for better goal setting. First, goals don't stand alone. Second, ranges often beat arbitrary points. 📮 Ask a Question If you enjoyed this…
- Developer Tea
5 Powerful Questions To Design Your Time More Effectively
Stop and think about how you are spending your time. Time is constantly moving, whether we stop to recognize it or not. How will you spend it? These five…
- Developer Tea
Short Term Tactics, Long Term Principles
A short term mindset will focus on different things than a long term mindset. Neither is right or wrong, but what are you optimizing for? Once you answer this…
- Developer Tea
Revolutionize Your Most Important Meetings with Powerful Questions
Your best tool is your next question. 🙏 Today's Episode is Brought To you by: Square Square has APIs for almost every aspect of running a business from…
- Developer Tea
Diffuse and Focused Thinking
Diffuse thinking produces options and draws connections. Focused thinking narrows things down to a specific path. Use them both, and watch for when they…
- Developer Tea
Why It's Hard to Do Nothing
Doing nothing seems like it would be easy... But it seems that action is often easier than doing nothing. Sometimes, perhaps often, action is the right choice…
- Developer Tea
Demystifying Decision-Making - Success is Not Just About Making Good Decisions
You are not the sum of your decisions. Making better decisions often relies on having a long list of mistakes to learn from. 📮 Ask a Question If you enjoyed…
- Developer Tea
What You Have In Common With the Smartest Person In the World
How does the smartest person in the world solve the most complex problems that most mathemeticians can't even understand? The same way you write code and build…
- Developer Tea
A Way Out of Overwhelm
Choose one thing. Only one important thing. Do that over and over. That's your way out of overwhelm. 📮 Ask a Question If you enjoyed this episode and would…
- Developer Tea
Understand Position and Interest To Make Better Collaborative Decisions
What people ask for is not the same as why they ask for it. What people want isn't as simple as what they say they want. Understanding the why is critical -…
- Developer Tea
Future Thinking Is Not Planning For A Single Course of Events
People often erroneously plan for specific futures. This leads down a pathway to failure most times. This is because the future is rarely what we expect it to…
- Developer Tea
Balancing Decision Frames
Making good decisions is about tuning context. If you can't determine the context that matters, the decision itself is impossible to measure against. All…
- Developer Tea
Copy of How Feedback Loops Shape Our World (Fixed Audio)
Feedback loops shape everything around us. We make a change or adjustment, watch for what happens, and repeat. This happens with people in the most unexpected…
- Developer Tea
Reframing Every Decision As A Tradeoff
Every decision is a tradeoff. If you are looking for the "right" decision, you can reframe this to the "optimal decision based on my desired outcome." This…
- Developer Tea
Judging Quality of Decisions Instead of Outcomes in Performance Reviews
Is your performance review judging the luck or random events of a person's career? What about the times they made the right decision in a bad situation? The…
- Developer Tea
How Feedback Loops Shape Our World
Feedback loops shape everything around us. We make a change or adjustment, watch for what happens, and repeat. This happens with people in the most unexpected…
- Developer Tea
Solve Specific Problems by Composing General Solutions
Almost every complex problem can be broken down and solved. Thinking from the other side - learning general solutions and how to compose those will give you…
- Developer Tea
Common Excuses for Not Setting Goals
Today, we'll dismantle a few common excuses often provided for not setting goals. We also briefly discuss the SMART goal-setting framework. 📮 Ask a Question If…
- Developer Tea
Better Process to Match Intentions to Actions
Your time is full of intent, but if you reflect back - how often do you do what you intend? Our actions are usually trying to reach some outcome, but are…
- Developer Tea
Change Through the Lens of Adjustment and Maintenance
Change is inevitable, but it's not always what we think it will be. Our framework for change should be ready for change we don't expect as much or more than…
- Developer Tea
Built to Change
The flow of change is inevitable. Are you building with it, or ignoring it in vane? 📮 Ask a Question If you enjoyed this episode and would like me to discuss a…
- Developer Tea
Deconstructing Status Meetings
What if status meant something different? Your status meeting overload is probably a symptom of a more important problem: you're not sure what you're measuring…
- Developer Tea
Lower Cognitive Load - Pick Your Tools, Then Do Your Work
Lower cognitive load by picking your tools, and then using them. Avoid the constant evaluation of tooling; it's an intuitive response to the amazing leverage…
- Developer Tea
Lower Cognitive Load - Primary Activities, Modes, and Cues
Lower cognitive load by looking at your primary activities and modes, and creating cues that help you shortcut to those modes. This importantly gives you a…
- Developer Tea
Lower Cognitive Load - Limit Everything In Progress
Cognitive load will destroy your productivity. In this mini-series, we talk about ways to reduce your cognitive load. In this episode we talk about limiting…
- Developer Tea
Lower Cognitive Load - Principle of Least Surprise
Cognitive load will destroy your productivity. In this mini-series, we talk about ways to reduce your cognitive load. In this episode we talk about the…
- Developer Tea
Applying Systems Thinking for Better Thoughts
The systems that play a role in producing your thoughts are a huge leverage opportunity in your work and life. If you pause and examine those systems through a…
- Developer Tea
Outside View or Anecdote? The Right Answer is Both
If you only look at your experience, you fall prey to anecdotal evidence and a whole host of other biases. But, we should be learning through iteration and…
- Developer Tea
Protect Transparency On Your Team
Your organizational efficiency is directly related to how you manage information, and information is lost when your organization is chronically lacking…
- Developer Tea
Meeting Red Flags - Problems In Your Meetings That Signal Issues In Your Culture
Once you have the right meetings with the right people, it's time to look at the content of the meeting itself. In this episode we discuss possible red flags…
- Developer Tea
Better Meetings: Who Is the Audience?
Defining your audience is critical to a good meeting. If you haven't defined your audience... who is the meeting even for? 📮 Ask a Question If you enjoyed this…
- Developer Tea
Better Meetings - What Kind of Meeting, What Kind of Goal?
Better meetings are not a myth, but it starts with deconstructing how you got to where you are today. A hectic calendar and meetings showing up like popcorn…
- Developer Tea
Your Career Growth Doesn't Just Depend On Your Competency
Competency is not the only way you can grow your career. If that was the case, then every engineering manager would be technically more proficient than their…
- Developer Tea
Two Questions Focused On Unearthing Hidden Information In Yourself
Sometimes a small question can change the course of your career. It doesn't have to be complicated, and it doesn't have to be detailed. A well placed question…
- Developer Tea
Asking a Taboo Question
In today's episode, I give you one question that is considered taboo (for some unknown reason) often in the workplace: What Do You Want? Amazingly, this…
- Developer Tea
Reframe Play as a Principle
Play isn't just for kids. In today's episode we'll reframe what play means, and why it's a principle for great work and lifelong learning. 🙏 Today's Episode is…
- Developer Tea
Interrogating Beliefs and Treasuring Those Who Disagree With You
When you find something that is counterintuitive, it's possible that it will create immense value to whatever problem you are trying to solve. Seek to…
- Developer Tea
Two Forks in the Road On the Path Towards Optimization and Productivity
Productivity is about working towards your goals, and optimization is about sharpening those efforts more directly. We talk about two forks in the road when…
- Developer Tea
Techniques for People Struggling to Define Their Values
Determining your values doesn't have to be an extremely serious or permanent exercise. Start at the simplest place you can, and iterate. Your values are as…