Three Rubyists having conversations and interviewing others about Ruby and web development.
The Case For NOT Taking A Management Path
In today’s episode, Jason, Chris, and Andrew kick it off with a discussion about their work environments, seating options, and Andrew’s hilarious story about going to IKEA, pencil behind his ear, tape measure, and his Mustang, to buy a new couch. We shift gears (see what we just did there) to the recent buzz surrounding the Rails World event and some speculations about Rails 7.1 features, and Chris tells us about Rails Hackathon that’s coming up in July. From there, we move into a more personal space as Jason shares his experience of shifting from coding to manager and the associated challenges, the productivity debate, and how we handle our time allocation between coding and managerial tasks. We wrap up with reflections on career progression, with Jason’s return to coding from management acting as an inspiration for others. Hit download now for an episode filled with humor, technical talk, and personal journeys in the world of coding.
[00:00:58] Chris reveals he has acquired a new chair that belonged to his wife, leading to a discussion about comfortable seating options available on Amazon. Then the conversation turns towards their cars, as Andrew shares a funny story about his Mustang, which turns into a debate about the Mustang Mach-E.
[00:04:42] There’s a conversation about the recent excitement surrounding the Rails World event which sold out very quickly. If you missed out getting tickets, you can sign up for RubyConf in San Diego.
[00:07:15] Andrew wonders why it sold out so fast, and Chris and Jason believe it’s the first official Ruby on Rails event, the size of the event, and the involvement of the creator of Rails as contributing factors to the excitement. They also speculate about the release of Rails 7.1 and other upcoming features in the Rails ecosystem.
[00:11:00] Andrew shares a trick he stole from Ben that invalidates the bundle cache and re-downloads every gem on the system from scratch whenever Bundler is run. Chris brings up a Tweet that humorously tells Linux users to remove the French language pack, which is a trick to delete all files on the system.
[00:11:56] Chris brings up another Tweet at GoRails about Homebrew issues related to using backups from an Intel Mac on an Apple silicon Mac.
[00:12:54] Chris tells us they launched their new updated version of the Rails Hackathon site which will be going on July 28-30, 2023.
[00:16:56] Jason shares that he’s been more focused on project management than coding recently. Chris expresses that he still measures his productivity by how much code he wrote even though he does more management tasks now, and Andrew confesses to having backfilled his GitHub commit history.
[00:21:01] Jason shares his experience of shifting from being a coder to a manager, and Chris questions Jason about the division of his time between coding and managing.
[00:22:52] Chis shares how his productivity is also affected by various distractions and struggles of getting back into the zone after being interrupted.
[00:24:04] Jason explains that Podia was very supportive of his transition to management and understood that his output would be different. He found it challenging to adjust and decided that he wasn’t interested in management at that point in his career and prefers problem-solving with code. Andrew shares his greatest output comes from working with other people.
[00:27:04] Jason shares how he thought the only way to advance in his career was to move to management, but after reading the book, Build: An Unorthodox Guide to Making Things Worth Making by Tony Fadell, he realized this was not necessarily true.
[00:31:32] Andrew expresses how Jason’s transition back to coding from management inspired him.
[00:32:20] Jason appreciates the ability to work on complex problems and help others get unstuck, emphasizing the pleasure he finds in thinking through technical problems.
[00:33:00] Chris highlights the recent trend of companies figuring out ways to give to senior engineer’s progression opportunities without pushing them into managerial roles.
Panelists:
Jason Charnes
Chris Oliver
Andrew Mason
Sponsor:
Links:
Rails Hackathon July-28-30, 2023
Build: An Unorthodox Guide to Making Things Worth Making by Tony Fadell