Episode 434: Forgetful boss and nothing to say
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IT takes more than automating your jobs so well that your automation also, right buggy e code to be a great software engineer. This is episode four hundred and thirty four of the soft kills engineering podcast. I am your st. James and dance. I'm your house, dave Smith soft engineering, a weekly advice show that all the non technical things that go to the technical field of software development, like how do you apologize for the mistakes that you don't know that you made? Because you recreated a clone of yourself using automation, and the clone was so accurate that IT screws up in the same way that you would screw up.

How do you apologize? But I got to be some kind of automation. I guess maybe the column would also generate the apologies.

I think I think the automation would make its own automation also. Isn't that the fear of the infinite paper clip of yeah G A I takeover totally? Well, happy to do my part to contribute to that good work. Dave, do you want to thank your patrons? I do.

We want to give a big shout out to those who are contributing at the level where they get. The first one is a one time shout out to someone named Z Z. It's actually lower K, Z, lower K Z. I think just to make sure that clear, and I I could tell from .

how you pronounced, you could tell me the way I said, IT, yeah, good. yeah. You said at lower case, okay, good.

I were. Sometimes I worry that I came out the wrong way, but I think I got okay. And the big thanks to those that are contribute at such an in western word, what's a really fancy word for big EXO?

Yeah, exorbitance good. I was going to say predation. But, but is that .

before is good. And such a prodigious, exorbitant level that we say their names, or whatever they type into the patriot name, bucks, every single week. They are nick, Molly, pata, Peter, which, by the way, jams and I found that is a reference to a song, a modern pop song.

what? Yeah, IT came on my sort of life play old recently. Okay, we'll get you up later anyway.

The next name is attribute error. None type object has no attribute to underscore string. Hovey argos all is cheese.

Ted timbre, I found some cash and i'm back on the list, baby. Become a senior engineer dot com consulted. French fries are morally objectionable than from drone deploy.

Chase w. norton. Level up your type c group of type here at death. Never is not just a crater on mars forming mogi. I like chicken.

I like liver miami s omics please deliver trash and the can't see dodds neva is not just a plan at the volkan system je kim o en sharp v stolk tic period helicon on dot A I best observably tool for ai red panda is best panda type script as a microsoft conspiracy john thinking the I beautiful functional user documentation IT takes more than setting a funny name on patron to make David and jami's and laugh to be a great engineer the creator of a William Angel dot net lord regnar travel is britain gains john grant if you would like to join this last three crew to go to soft kilo and click they support some patch on button and a special shadow the code sale who has generously ven a large some in order to support the good work we do. Thank you. go.

And we'll never know what I would have said, cody, but that's a lot of assumptions to yeah I mean.

i'm not really to make that leap.

Thank you so much. We appreciate you. We feel your support. I feel that every day, as I bathe in my luxurious champagne pool purchase file, this.

I honestly don't know what I love more, the money, or they just amazing comedy that comes through the patron names OK.

I love the second one. I was going to go with money, but not enough. Okay, I can immediately hear people say, well, then why don't you just change the Price on patron so it's cheaper? And I think that means I actually love the money more. I'm going to do that.

Sometimes your actions speak louder than your words change.

Yeah, yeah. My revealed preferences. yeah. All right. I have you got me. Thank you.

Thank you, everyone. And that by the way, this does go to support the show. We have editing costs, server hosting costs and of course, Jason's champaign batta that has to be refilled every day. And he only likes a certain vintage debate then. So you know it's .

expensive cleaning fees on that or what really good because I think it's sticky. Actually, i've never touch that to know what campaign is besides pensive.

you have never had anything were celebrating or felt to crack up at the bottle.

Yeah i've got to read the first question. Yes, this is from an anonymous star who says my boss has been forgetting a lot of stuff lately. Decisions from team discussions, action items from meetings, their own decisions that they then go against later eeta are great overall. And this is definitely just a human thing. We're not perfect, but how can I help them remember or remain accountable without feeling like the snitch from recess?

H, what's the switch from? Why is this and air quality?

Randle.

that was A T. V show. Randol, where's recess? Vicky.

yeah, I think that was.

So research was a cartoon. Yeah.

I think you were probably a bit too old for IT. IT was like, right around this person is probably my age, because this was on T. V. When I was a kid.

Okay, is good. So I missed you by about thirty or forty years.

I've learned new things about you just now. The whole time you ve been a fraud. Passing yourself .

off as a you .

for all instead of an ancient times you did a good job. You had me fault. Yeah.

i'm very youthful looking. I mean, I I knew the pops on references that you didn't know today.

So yeah, yeah, that's true. That's like, okay, you know how you can, I don't know, harvest the blood in ana from Young people and obvious ly injected into yourself and then maintain your the empire like immortality yeah, I think you could do the same by keeping up on tiktok. Phy.

it's actually the fountain of youth is take.

yeah, that makes you Younger, which is why I spend all my time to unit, right, answering this question. Okay.

how can I help them remember.

remain accountable .

that I already forgot the questions?

I decided to never remind you what the question is, but I have been forgot. So i'm going to remind you what I was yeah I so I identify with the boss in this situation because I am very forgetful, and I will sometimes be consistent enough that if I end up in the situation where I try to make a decision and I forgot altima, I will make the same decision, but not always. Sometimes I don't know the weather is different and that how delicious the pancakes were that I ate this morning affects IT. So sometimes I come to a different conclusion that seems bad um but I really appreciate when someone says, hey, remember when we talked about this already and I I think aware of my fault in this regard so I don't get bothered by IT the last time I .

said that you use that, how dare you insitute that i'm a forgetful old man.

I forgot that I did that. so. It's a great way to live if your boss is great overall. Yeah unburdened by the past. If your boss is great overall, I I do feel like they ouldn't be too mad if you just said, hey, it's now. Here is the actual item. Yeah you don't have to say, have noticed a declining your cocoon native ability that makes me doubt your abilities is as a boss. You can just remember when we talk about this, yeah, you could actually .

ratify your company's constitution to introduce a fourth amendment like clause and allows you to depose your boss if they forget enough stuff.

Sorry, you forgot too many action items.

You have been disposed .

yeah i'm assuming that these things have been written down and that might not be true. So an easy thing you could do if that's not happening is make sure this stuff gets written down. You've make decisions in team discussions, write IT down in the agenda if you have IT or if you don't throw IT in slack or teams or discord, whatever you're using for your company, write down action items, make them tickets in your task tracking software.

I do this as a survival mechanism, because otherwise I will one hundred percent forget, and then I still forget. But then I am reminded of IT later when I go back and read the thing, or someone says, like, not just me on whatever. So that makes IT easier to be consistent.

I have also developed a almost almost unhealthy compulsion for writing down everything. I make a lot of notes. This is actually a technique I picked up at a big tech company because there was just so much information that I just, yeah, I couldn't stay on.

The fact actually, you know what I was IT wasn't that there was so much information, is that correct information was so hard to get so hard. And so once I got IT, I wrote IT down like a treasure chest. Because I just couldn't stand the fact, the idea of like spending two more weeks to hunt down that person who suffered.

Yes, I mean, i'm like, oh, I finally found the person that took me a week. Then he took me a week to have to get on their calendar. Then I got on their calender.

And now I am, I will, I will record this whole conversation audio and resulting down in my note taking out. So I I developed that and i've never let you go. And Frankly, i've probably only referenced about less than one percent of the stuff i've written. A boy, I tell you what, when you find that one percent, it's like Christmas morning.

Also, just the active writing IT helps you remember IT not me. So so I really, I think this is true for many people.

like if they take notes and during a lecture or something. But I have found that there is something about the act of writing copious notes. So I mean, we're talking like I like write a lot like I can.

I've written so many notes in my life that my typing speed has gone up and I can almost type as fast as most people can speak. I'm probably like twenty percent lower than speech. And ah what i've found is that when I do that, I don't actually for memories.

You're too busy transcribing just think about what is being said.

And yeah, I imagine the courts synod's her and then asking that course to augment like what was said in the court session maybe like I don't know, I just read, I just write down and was I don't actually remember everything that was said. That's me. I think I actually like psychologically partners my memory forming part of my brain where i'm like, look, step side. You don't need to work so hard right now because we're onna write all of this down, not a single day, this really mess and you don't have to work.

I could see that happening where you don't want have to worry about remember membership IT so you can just get IT all out of your head and .

so that's that's that's a too eh sore though because right because I I would actually prefer to just remember everything when that be amazing yeah and so i've opted to have a you tried.

maybe just haven't tried to remember everything.

You try remembering hard.

just try real hard.

I mean, you're not wrong. I mean, there is I can feel in my mind this like psychological. I'll use a muscle metaphor as I can actually feel anything inside my brain.

But I can feel the act of exerting myself to remember, you know, how sometimes you're put something down like you are holding like your keys in your hand, and you put them down thoughtlessly, and then you can find them later, right? But you know how sometimes, and you put them down, and you say yourself, I am putting my keys on the kitchen table, and then you could clink, I have put my keys on the kitchen, and then that memory is like permanently TCP. Like syn ac, ah, yeah, exactly like there was an necessary hands shake here.

The data was persisted in the long term storage. I got a two hundred back in the A P. I. Everything is good. There's something about that action that makes my mind form that memory.

yeah. So I i've been diagnosed with A D H D, which I feel like I literally everyone I talk to also has. So maybe just the way the world works now, but that experience of setting down keys are not knowing where they go is not like unique to A D.

H. D. But if I understand, right, certainly happens more often, and I think describes my default state of existing in the world. Is this things just disappear in three that way out of my perception. Yeah, yeah.

And I do I like the feeling of being able to work on a problem, can talk through something in a meeting, figure something out. And IT is freeing to know. And I don't have to just remember this like I can. I can work on IT. And I know it's gonna blasted away out of my brain by the million other things they're onna come in here but IT does feel freeing and lowers my stress to know and it's going somewhere so I um doesn't help with your boss yeah .

talk I could not live that way.

I couldn't live in like where I have to remember stuff I know.

right? I I want to get to the posting two, but I wanted done in this memory thing for just a minute more, because I think there are some techniques you can use. Here's one. For example, you ever see that doctor who episode? Do you watch doctor who?

James? No, I just think they know about IT. okay.

So this is the new in air quotes and the new series, which is now going back like fifty or twenty years. So maybe not so new, but it's not the black. Anyway, there's this one kind of alien.

And while you are looking at the alien, you cannot form memories. And then when you look away, you can resume forming memories. And so people adopt the technique where they grab a marker and they put like a mark on their ARM, while when they see the alien, they market so that they know what happened. And so the way they .

change and you just like, look ARM and like, holy crap, yes, exactly.

So you look down.

I've seen the alien. There's like three.

There was no Marks on your hand and then you look down and there's three you like, anyway. So I think that's how your keys feel to you.

Yeah, yeah. IT is. IT actually is. yeah. cool. That's all I wanted .

to say about memory. That was my psychological analysis of.

I like that because I I think that does describe like i'm just automatically going through the motions of moving stuff around physically but i'm definitely not forming any memories of where he goes yeah which is why I have to put my keys in the drawer or they are gone so .

if you are a forgetful old man who forget these keys, which you are, and forgets important business decisions, and forget whether or not you fired bob, your team member, last week, yeah, where's bob? You fired him. What anyway? How would you like to be approached by one of your, let's say, in this case, you are one of the people that report to you.

So I think there's a difference between dealing with IT in the moment, which if this is a great boss, I think you could just say, hey, remember we talked about this, remember we decided this. And often if you nudge somebody, they will remember IT just isn't on the top of their mind and addressing the wider problem.

And I assume you're talking about the wider problem of how do you not just deal with the instance of IT, but hopefully make IT happen less. And I think this is where you can if your boss doesn't remember, probably other people don't either. Part of the job your boss has is to get shared decisions and ideas and concepts into the brains of everybody on the team.

And you could pitch this as a we're actually helping an an effort to help the whole team guy. I want to make sure that everybody understands what we decide. So we're going to write these things down on and refer back to them.

So it's less focused on, hey, you forget stuff and change your mind all the time is more about when we make decisions, we want them to stick. And part of how they stick is everyone like knows about them and understands them. And that does not just happen if you say we decided this thing in a meeting, people come away with very different understandings, what happened or just forget or working attention, whatever. So I think you could you could pitch the says, I want to help the team stand top of things and do get things done. So help me like let's let's write stuff down and then we can share IT around.

Yeah that's a good point. I mean, if decisions are being like, yeah I really like that. Like if decisions are being made by your boss, presumably these impact the team and presumably would be good to have A A record of what that was. So you don't just have to go, we ask your boss, I like that smart.

I guess that depends on whether they're publicly shareable or not. I'm assuming ing the things like we want this kind of architecture and not like we will dock this person's pay by ten percent because they are much that I forgot something.

I yeah I think I you have to assume that the kind of a decision category we're talking about here is anything I really dislike at work. It's when we relitigate a rediscussed. Same question. And this happens a lot. actually.

I've got i've had he members who sometimes it's me, sometimes i'm the one reminding everyone but you know like most recently was me reminding everyone like, okay, here's why we're not using that feature of this thing because IT doesn't support x and we need x and so then people like, hey, why do we use this like this obviously to reach for like I remember that's because and it's like I think it's hardest for people to remember stuff that has dependencies where it's like. Well, there were actually three logical steps you have to make before we can say why we didn't use IT. We didn't use IT because he doesn't have x, and x is needed for y, and y was needed for Z. I okay. It's like hard, hard to remember all .

that's also i'm just thinking of people that seem like they they know are people that get very effective in an organ know know how to navigate stuff. I feel you've just articulated part of why they so good at IT is because they understand all the dependencies. They don't just know, hey, we don't use this feature. They know like ten years ago, someone pressed this button, which had this Carry on effect, which meant that we need to support this special use case, which means we can use these other features that aren't compatible with this use case.

And then legal decided this, but that person left in our predecessor, or their successor, this.

yeah, what do .

you do? It's plate. I think there's one possible outcome here that we need to address, which is one of the these chAllenging parts about forgetting things is that you don't remember that you forgot things a lot of the time. And if you go to your boss and say i've been noticing you've been forgetting a lot of stuff fully, they'll be one possible responses. I don't I didn't remember that.

Yeah yeah. I don't remember forgetting .

anything and and you say, I know you would say that so I prepared a list of seven important decisions that you forgot about that came from t meetings that we had to read.

discuss and good news, you'll get practice at this meeting because they'll probably forget that this happen. You get to try a few different approaches. Yes, last time we talked about this.

yeah. Do you remember the meeting we add where I talk to about forgetting stuff? No.

you know, this reminds me of, have you ever seen is that the the day after tomorrow.

the edge of tomorrow.

the edge of tomorrow? Yeah, time travel movie. Yeah, you you have to learn. It's a good vibe.

You have to IT happens in a lot of time travel of movies like or ground high day type movies like this, where someone just learns everything that's going to happen and they get to figure out how to speed run through like I I figured out how to get through this part of the day. five. yes.

So the next time you have of the meeting about forgetful ness, you'll be like, okay, listen.

before you say this.

you're going to say this, then i'm going to say this, then you're going to say .

your body is like going to throw punch and I will block with my left hand and then that will disorder at you. Yeah, IT doesn't help you, but I just love those parts .

of the movie where I go just mind perfectly .

navigate this tRicky situation rolling .

into the truck and just the right way.

because they died ten thousand. I would definitely .

go insane before I would get good at any of that stuff.

Have you seen the theories about ground hot day, where theories that he's in there for hundreds of years like a super long time?

No.

I think of a horror vie.

Yeah, at that point, well, how long you get there with a piano?

I I would never get that good at piano.

My father was a piano ver. That was one of the lines, I think my first lesson, right? yeah.

I really do think if you've got a good boss who's willing to confront things had on, I think this is an opportunity for you to give feedback to your boss that maybe no one else has given them and maybe they aren't aware of themselves and and you just got to put IT really gently like, hey, listen, i've noticed three examples of times when you seem to have forgotten about a decision we made as a team and we really discuss IT, and we came to either the same or different conclusion. But either way, we spend a bunch of extra time. And I just wonder if you are aware that this is happening. You know, that might be all you're gotta say.

And if they are good, I have feedback from somebody.

yeah, I would do now if they are a monster. This is not what you want to do.

I don't know dealing with .

monsters is a whole different level, but it's possibly this should .

be very easy to manipulate because they forget stuff all the time. Yeah, good news. You'll get another chance. yeah. alright. Will you read our next question.

David? Yes, I will. This comes from a listener, gill base, definitely your real name. Hey, I started working in a big tech company recently, and I feel like I am on a different planet, all of a sun before I did only work in start of, in small companies, I have joined as a senior developer, and I have a weekly one on one meeting with my manager, but also a by weekly won on one meeting with the skip level manager. The latter is where I am having problems.

I don't really know what to talk about in this meeting, and I fear that this is seen as this engagement. The first time I had the meeting, the skip lobby manager mention that he was sure I would have tons of questions, and in reality, I had none. I feel like in my senior role, I must come into this meeting with good questions.

But all questions I have, I am discussing with my peers or managers directly. So nothing left really for my skip level manager. I'm starting to prepare fake questions where I already know the answer just to see my games.

IT seems like a game. So please, David James son, and tell me how to play that one on one skip level manager game. Oh, my god.

is fake questions. I love a big tech company. No, that is surprising to me that you have no questions.

I don't think that's true. actually. I don't think you have no questions. I bet you're confused or baffled or unsure about a lot of things at a big tech company, but you just maybe don't have them off the top of your head or maybe you don't think they are the right questions for your skip level manager. But I would be very surprised if you join the big tech company after working at startups and your response was, oh yeah, that makes sense. I got IT no I got I got IT I think I have IT oh.

I got IT all you have nothing to .

offer me yeah I think I understand everything um yeah just bt .

everything I did I understand checks list everything .

I just remember this long but first this this fog of war, this feeling of I I see this tiny keyhole of the code that I work on and the people I work with directly. And I just am aware that the map is large. There's this all this stuff out there and this big sense of overtime pieces of a kind of getting filled in, which started, happens at every job. But I feel like the map is just so much bigger at a giant tech company. IT becomes a different type of thing even though IT is similar in some .

degree and that that's a great topic for discussion with your skip level manager is understanding the bigger map and ask them like, hey, how does our team fit into the broader organza?

Yeah like what what teams do do you work with but you probably know your team if there your skill level manager, you have some sibling teams, so maybe you kind of know about them. You could ask your skip table manager about those teams specifically, but then your argue probably works with other orgues and that probably get a little bit fuzzy.

I have some ideas for questions that will maybe be perceived as political, not mental sense, but in the network building .

suck .

up ah yeah and the question, uh, good questions for a skip mom manager are questions that cymbal taneytown ly give you valuable information about what's going on broadly in the company and also positions you as someone who is a valuable contributor to the success of something bigger than just your assigned work every day.

So things like, what can I help with in the broader organization? What is your number one concern right now for your organza? How do we, as an orange zone, reporting up to you get Better. Who should I get to know? In the org or peer organizations, these kinds of questions show an engagement and interest in contributing that will will create an image of you in the mind of your skippable manager, that you are someone who did truly cares about the success of your organization in the company and someone they can trust and count on.

Some of them might be tRicky for the skip level to answer directly. Also like if you ask, what do you worried about and they're worry that one of their .

teams is just crap. They might say they might though that's what's crazy. Know the kind of you never know. Sometimes I play at hard, but even if they hesitate or look and nervous when you ask that question, you ve still got information. You know, it's valuable .

yeah and I mean, they wouldn't say, I think this team is garbage. They might say, well, this project, this other team isn't going super greater, right?

Something like that and that gives you a chance to say, how can I help? Yeah, there's always a risk when you're dealing with someone who has a higher scope of responsibility than you that by offering to help, you'll end up signing yourself up for a bunch of work, but is also a good chance that you're signing yourself up for a lot of recognition and reward in the future. And job security.

Yeah, I mean, usually at the job. So like cool, you can find high value, high recognition work to do. That seems, that seems good.

Yeah, I had. I thought of another question. What do you think I could do to help my manager? Oh yeah, you can make your own manager that question and they have some thoughts in their own perspective, but your skip level will have a different perspective on IT too.

Totally, I love that. And in any question you ask your manager, I think you could also ask your skip vell manager and now you get to find out if they agree.

Ah, did you hear that outrageous rumor that my manager has been spreading about you?

What are your thoughts on the outrageous .

rumor that my manager has been spreading about?

You also remember that this is a these meetings tend to be set up for two purposes. One is to benefit you, to help you be successful, and that's great. And IT seems like you understand that.

That's why you want questions. But number two is for your skip level manager to extract information about the functioning of a team of the manager who reports to that skip level manager. You know, it's one thing to hear everything from the manager of a team and the managers like, look, everything's great.

I'm really good at my job. But then is another thing to hear from everyone loves me exactly and then it's a totally IT can be a totally different story to hear from the team members and hear them say actually everything's not great. And so i'm not saying that you should be the person to go and spread those.

Everything's not great information, but if there's valuable updates about the progress of things, this is a good chance for you to be a condo for that information. And undoubted years. Couple of a manager once these meetings.

at least in part for that purpose yeah depending on your relationship with your manager, that can get tRicky because if your manager is easily rattled, they might feel like you're going behind their back. You're making them look bad. Hopefully that's.

hopefully that's not the case. That is always .

on the risk kip level meetings, I can tell you what not to talk about, do not talk about the code, yeah, do not skip level. Managers are immune to complaints about code quality. Like I don't know, they don't care about your linking rules. Are you how how hard to work with this pic code?

Because everybody says that, everybody says that or enough people say at that, at that level, you sort of discounted a little bit, I guess, unless you have specific concerns that you can tie to business impact and some reasonable way to address that, that isn't like we got to just stop. We got to stop doing the thing that could make his money. Just really rewrite code.

Yes, that is that's not nope. The end that will nope, doesn't nope. And also now I am judging you for thinking that, that would be a good decision.

Yeah because the first question is gonna, have you talk to your manager about this? And if the answer is no, you look dumb. If the answer is yes, he's like, why are you talking to me about IT?

Yeah, I think IT. So depending on the manager, sometimes you get, uh, i'm kind of calling this person a director in my head. That's not necessarily the title, but I could be dead now. Depends on the company, but sometimes they're very technical and they like kind of started some of the systems at this org that this whole org grew up around or something like that.

So you could actually ask them about, depending on what they know, kind of tell me about this important system that the other team works on, like tell me, tell me the story about where I came from and sattled, yeah, not really. I think that stuff is interesting. That does sound like you're sucking up when I say this out law, but I I love the the like history of the system just as much as what we are doing right now.

I think it's fun to learn about that stuff. How came to be? So maybe that's a different question like how how did we get here? Where did this order come from?

Yes.

if you run out of questions, then I think you get to just engage in a power struggle waiting for the other person to speak first. You just stare at each other.

It's a game of one .

on one chicken yeah whoever blinks first now you're the skip level, right? manager.

You could also ask, hey, what do you think would be an effective use of our time in this meeting? What are some of the outcomes that you think we should achieve? And this is my first time doing skip level one on ones. And i'd love to hear your perspective. Yeah fair.

Like hey, I don't know what i'm supposed to do in this. I've never done them because i've worked at small startups. I think that not a dumb thing to say. I've only worked .

to companies where there was only one level, so I don't know how to scare them.

Yeah, if I skipped the level, I would be talking to our board. I guess I don't know. All right, have we answered the question? I think so.

Good luck. Good luck too. Good spot to be in, at least they care.

Yeah times you're o in place where you just never even see this person and no, no thinks good that they are willing to spend time with you. I agree. Alright, what can people do if they want their own questions answered?

Go to some skills, the audio, and click ask a question button. Thank you to everyone who does that, we love you. It's almost as nice as getting a weird patriot name in patriots count.

Uh, it's actually just as good. It's great. You keep the show going.

You are the life blood of the content of this show. Now, if only then you could just start reading answers. Then we could just read those.

That would be a lot here. Yeah, wait a minute. You so needy I do is ask questions. What do you answer questions seriously? At least you can do. We have had people answer questions and say, here's what I think would be good actually and we love that that's ah .

that's kind of the purpose for the sleep channel. So if you want to you know if you contribute anything on patrons will invite you to our slight community and you can go in and actually get real answering to real questions from real people. James is a larger robots, but if you want actual humans, you have to go in the .

slightest d space. They're payout.

The humans are payout.

All right. Thank you. We'll catch next week.