FAILING to meet expectations of a self-starter software developer

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Hey folks, I'm just leaving CrossFit. We're going to experience devs subreddit. This one is a topic about how to navigate a role that the expectation is to be a selfarter. And so kind of skimming through the post. Again, I get I like talking about these things generally sometimes and in other situations someone has like a very specific set of circumstances, but I think this one's good to talk about like a general sense, but what they describe in their post is really like they're they're coming from an environment where they used to have like all even though it was more call like you know agile quote unquote um there's a lot more structure so more like sprint ceremony style stuff like retrospectives, you know, say what you want about about whatever sort of software development methodology you're following or trying to stick to. But basically, they have some structure around that, right?

Regardless of whether or not you agree with it, there's some structure. And it sounds like in their new setup, they're kind of describing it uh it doesn't sound like they're complaining about it, by the way, but they're describing it as like there's just no structure. Um and it seems like everyone's motivated to be or encouraged, I guess, incentivized to be selfarters, autonomous. Uh they're saying that a lot of people that they work with really do value the fact that they have a ton of autonomy. Um, but this person's kind of struggling with it and they're saying like, "Hey, look, like I just had my performance review and um kind of seems like I got to I got to get things changed up here because like I am being told I'm not moving fast enough. Like don't really know how to navigate this." And um I thought this would be cool to talk through because it's just like a I feel like it's a good example of just like different places operate differently.

And um you know on this idea of like you know this might sound like kind of a cliche setup where it's like oh you know this person took a job at a small company you got to be selfarter you got to be motivated you got to you know you're probably in your mind if you're thinking about some of the cliche things inventing the rest of the statements that go along with that right like got to work your you know 60 to 80 hours a week got to you know like it's just sometimes we we think about these things um based on I don't know stereotypes and generalizations we've heard and I I feel like for me personally I hear a lot of um you know oh we're a startup we're a family we're everyone's got to be a selfarter like again fits into this this

stereotype this person doesn't seem to be like anchoring to that and so what I was thinking about in this case was Like I I do think there are places and maybe this is one of those places where like they they do create an environment where like you can be successful as a more autonomous self-starter kind of person. And there are also places that say this kind of and literally you cannot operate this way. Oh come on people. Why are we going such weird speeds? Um, so you know, they'll say like, "Oh, you need to be selfarter, blah, blah, blah, because like they they're just dropping it in their their job postings. They think it sounds sexy or something." And then you start working there and then it's like, you know, your manager or leadership or whatever. Um, even just the your teammates like there is not a autonomous selfarter kind of environment.

So you're like, "Okay, I'm being told I have to be, you know, take on, you know, have initiative, take on things, be a selfarter, and like anytime I try to do this, people just shut down everything I do." And you're like, "Okay, well, what the hell, man? Like, what am I supposed to do to be successful here?" So, I think we get a mix of this kind of stuff. And um my understanding from reading this particular post at least is that this person doesn't seem to be indicating they're in such an environment where it's um they're getting mixed signals like this, right? Especially because they say, look, I have colleagues that, you know, people seem to appreciate this kind of uh autonomy, right? I think it would be different if they were making a comment saying like, you know, no one has this kind of autonomy, like everything's falling apart.

Um, you know, mixed signals, this kind of stuff. It just doesn't sound like that. So, you know, I think one of the comments that I read at least, someone was saying kind of like some people thrive in this kind of situation, others don't, right? And I and I do think that this is true and I don't think that that makes you better or worse, but I do think that there are people and maybe this is based on where they're at in their career, this kind of thing that like you need structure and you need tons of it, right? Like you can be effective, but like someone's got to put up the, you know, the guard rails for you and they say go down this path and you're like, "No problem. I got this." And and you do an excellent job. And I think that there are other people who like hate that, right?

Like I'll give you an example. For me, early in my career, I had no I didn't even think about this kind of stuff, right? I don't I don't know a lot of people that necessarily do like do this kind of reflection and introspection, but like I certainly did not just complete transparency. I don't talk about this stuff like this is what I this is how I always thought about things. Like a lot of this stuff is just like me reflecting over, you know, years and years of of doing this kind of thing. But, uh, in the beginning, no, I had no idea, right? I wanted to I found a startup that I wanted to work at. Seemed really interesting. It was early stage. We didn't have to worry about like going paycheck to paycheck and not getting paid kind of thing. Did I Did I think that it was, oh, because I'm going to have so much autonomy here?

Like, no. I had literally no idea about how I work effectively. And something I like realized in hindsight is that I feel like I had a really good environment to to have autonomy. I was given a lot of trust to have said autonomy, right? Because it's one thing for someone to say, "Hey, we want you to go do this kind of thing, you know, take initiative, uh, find opportunities." It's one thing for them to say that. It's another thing for them to to give you that kind of room to do that. And I certainly I had both. And um, you know, I I don't I probably didn't realize it at the time, especially in the early days, but like I I certainly had both.

And uh for me personally that worked really well right if I think about my career professionally since then even in internships right I had I had internships where I was given full trust I remember I went one place to work on uh operating room AV equipment and how to integrate that into like a control panel starting from scratch as the only developer an intern and I went back there for a second internship. And why did I do that? It's because they gave me full autonomy. They said like here's the devices we want to integrate. Here's the direction we need to head, but like go do it. Like go have fun. And again, reflecting on that job, the the parts that were, you know, the worst parts about that job were when I would get asked to do kind of silly things like, "We need you to print out all the source code." And I'm like, I can I can do that, but that seems like there is literally zero benefit, right?

Um, I remember being told by my my manager who um I don't mean this in a condescending way, so I apologize, but like zero zero software development background at all. And I remember he said like, I need you to to put together like an architectural diagram. And I remember being like, okay, no problem, but like like what what do you need captured? Like at what level are we talk? And I'm an intern, right? like I don't and I don't I'm not working with other developers. Like what what do you actually need this for so that I can give you what you need? And I just remember there were some asks like this where I'm like this doesn't make sense to me and the person asking for it also can't explain it. So it puts me in this spot where I'm like you're asking me to do something that I don't really agree with or believe in.

and say, "You're setting me now. You're trying to put me on this path and I don't align with it." Right? That was probably the worst part about that. Right? If I think about other parts of my career where it's been crappy, it's when like when I'm most disengaged, right? Is when people take away autonomy. Especially if they have the expectation that you have it. Okay? Like in my career so far, like most of my career like professionally has been managing engineering teams and I have been in multiple situations where people will say like hey you're you know you're the one leading this team like you're supposed to be setting the direction for this stuff. Okay, no problem. And like here's your charter. Here's the mission of the team. Okay, no problem. And then I start to do that and it's like oh yeah but no we're not doing that.

Oh we're no like that's not a good idea. We shouldn't. And it's like well or someone else coming in to like to try doing that. Uh and this happens in many different ways, right? Whether that's leadership, whether that's uh call them like air quotes like a peer and essentially taking away the autonomy. Could be different roles like product managers. I've had this happen before. Uh where it's not a collaborative effort. It's like kind of taking away input. So it's like, okay, you need me to have autonomy. That's my that's the expectation. I cannot do that because you've taken away my autonomy. That feels bad. So I learned this about myself that I need autonomy. I need a direction to be put in. Right? Tell me what direction to go in and give me autonomy and I will go. So if I were to imagine myself now going into a environment like this person's describing where it's like need to be a selfarter, need to be able to thrive in an environment like this.

What like what does that mean for me? Well, first of all, I better feel like I'm aligned to what we're doing because that would be a deal breaker for me and for multiple reasons. But in order for me, knowing what I know now about myself, if you I need Sorry, my my throat's so dry. Um, in order for me to be effective in a role that where I need to be a selfarter, I need to be interested in it. If I don't feel like passionate about what's going on and like interested in what we're building or trying to solve problems for it, that's going to be it's going to make it really difficult for me to be a selfarter. And then the other ingredient is like they need to prove through action that um and not just like saying it, right? They need to be able to prove that the environment is conducive to that.

If it's not, even if I am passionate about it, it's going to feel like it's falling apart, right? I will not thrive in that environment. And I know this about myself now. So, I need those two ingredients. I need um to be interested in the topic and I need to be given the environment where I can do that. And that's that's mostly it, right? So, if I don't have those things, I won't thrive that way. Now, what does that what does that mean for other people though, right? Like say you get those ingredients or uh for yourself it looks slightly different, right? You're not me. That's fine. Uh maybe you're like pays I'm just making this up, right? Pays got to be really good cuz that's your your primary incentive. Like pay is really good and um I don't know like maybe same thing like environmentally like you need to be given that that space to be able to operate that way.

Cool. Okay, now you're off going to do your thing. Like what does that what does that actually look like? I think when I think about this kind of stuff, I like collaboration comes to mind. And I say that because if you have a whole team of people being told you need to be a selfarter, what you don't want to have happen is that everyone's like, "Okay, I was told like go in a, you know, start moving and I picked a direction. Now I'm moving in that direction and everyone is going in completely different directions, right? You you can't have that because that's going to be chaos. So there needs to be some mechanism to point people generally in the right direction. This is going to look different at different places. But I think sort of what's a requirement is there needs to be some level of collaboration whether that's with um you know the other developers on on the team to make sure that as developers everyone's moving in the right direction.

uh whether that's with other roles like product owners or whatever. Sorry, I need to move over lanes and this big truck is not uh not doing it for me. Two big trucks, one that I just passed and one that was not giving me space. Um sorry, one more lane here. Okay. So, yeah, I think the collaboration part needs to happen. That also means like if you're getting stuck, this is a a tricky spot. You need to be able to like find the sweet spot and this I I feel like there isn't an exact science behind this between like getting stuck and knowing when to ask for help. Okay? Like you cannot you can't be in an environment like this and like anytime you are like I don't know the answer to this immediately you're like okay someone help someone help someone help because now you're you're taking away the autonomy from other people like they're getting disrupted.

So there's that balanced with the idea that like you can't just get stuck and try to go problem solve on your own for like 2 months when it's like oh you just have a a you know local compilation issue with your checked out code like did you try doing this and like solves the problem instantly. So, you got to you got to find that right balance, right, of like time boxing things, making sure that you can do a little bit of your own investigation, knowing when to ask for help, um, knowing when what types of problems to spend more time on, right? So, I like the example of like talking about, you know, local compilation errors. If you were to go spend a month investigating this, do you actually like and not a facicious question, sorry.

Um, do you believe that that coming back to the team and being like, "Hey, I learned this about solving this problem after a month, do you feel like that's a benefit to the team?" Um, if not, I would say like you probably want to minimize the amount of time you spend on that. Whereas if you were investigating um you know uh deep dive performance analysis of something and like you don't have the answer right away and that's going to take you a couple weeks to go do experiments and learn about something like yeah sure maybe maybe someone else on the team maybe there's an expert and you didn't know and they could have given you a hint and put you in the right direction sooner maybe. Um but the reality is if you spent time going to do this investigation, you might have a lot of interesting learnings to bring back to the entire team.

So like there's this benefit of doing that, this benefit of spending more time. So I think knowing that balance and trying to like navigate that is really important. And um again like depending on what your colleagues are like and what your environment's like you may find that it's frustrating for you if like if it's not fitting in that way. So this just this reminder from the beginning of this talk it's not to say that you are better or worse depending on how you fit in these environments. It's like it might not truly be a great fit for you and it might not mean like oh the company's terrible or that this is the best kind of company to work for. It's just different and that's okay, right? So, if I just, you know, to this person, if you're trying these things out and you're like, "This is really hard to work this way.

I need more structure and like you're feeling this pressure and then, you know, unfortunately it gets to the point where they're like, look, like it's not working out for us. We got to let you go." I would just want to let this person know like, "Hey, man, that doesn't mean that like you're a developer. It might mean that like you don't have maybe you don't have the right experience for an environment like this. Maybe that type of uh working style just truly doesn't fit how you like to work right now or how you're effective at working right now. It doesn't mean that you can't work on that in the future. Doesn't mean that if you get a role somewhere else that like it's because you failed like you know nothing like that. It's just that this is some a different way of working, right?

The the self-starter kind of take on initiative thing is tricky because I think probably some people will struggle with this if they're like, "Okay, well, what direction do I head in? There's a million things we could do." And it starts feeling overwhelming. Yeah. What is the right answer? Right? This is where coming back to collaboration like well what you know what's the mission of your team what's the team's charter you don't know okay like well there there probably is one right maybe it's not written down maybe it's not formalized but like who who would know right like does your manager know if they don't know then like who does know because probably someone in the company should know, right? Depending on how many teams there are, blah blah blah. Um, you know, I'm assuming in this case, you know, small company, maybe it's only one team.

Um, someone should know and it should be your goal to go find that person to get the clarity on that because ultimately, I'm just making this up. If uh if one of the most important things that your team is responsible for is like performance and like you don't know this not and I'm not saying it's your fault but like it just has never come up. No one said this. It's not in the team name or anything but like that's the you know that is the number one goal of your team. If you're like cool I need to be a selfarter. you need to be uh you know take on you have autonomy and no one has told you the focus you might go cool I'm going to move in this direction and then you're getting push back or it looks like the work you're doing

is not valuable and you might be like well what the hell do you mean like you told me to be a selfarter and like this is clearly beneficial and someone would say look man like um we don't care I'm just again making up random examples like we don't care about minim optimizing our storage footprint. Like, you know, that's the least of our concerns. We could 10x that and we don't care. But like, if you can save us 2% on our on our, you know, our throughput or on our latency or whatever, like that's a huge deal. And you might go, oh, like again, how how could you have avoided that? Like I think collaboration, right? Like finding the right people to talk to, getting alignment. So, I think that's a really big part of it and it will continue to show up in many different areas um if you're operating in an environment like that.

So, I think getting clarity on what the team's charter is is important. I don't think that should be a one-time thing. I think that should especially if you have this many people moving in potentially different directions like finding ways to to constantly get alignment I think is helpful. Um things may evolve at this place right they said there's no ceremonies. Sorry. Okay. There's no retro there's no you know sprint end or sprint start whatever. Cool. Um, so what is the mechanism used to get alignment on the team? I'm not saying like um it needs to be a retro, it needs to be whatever. It doesn't have to be anything but like uh sorry any any specific ceremony, but there need there should be a mechanism, right?

There there should be some kind of mechanism that keeps people uh generally aligned cuz if things are moving in different directions with that many people being autonomous like what happens if the team or the product or whatever if the direction of things starts to move like people should know. So you need some mechanism to keep people in sync. uh that could be communication from you know someone leading the team that could be a ceremony that could be a whatever but finding something to get alignment I think will help um so something to consider there right but overall yeah so I'm just getting close to home here overall I think there are absolutely environments where people can thrive this way um like I said I think early in my career here. I didn't realize but probably was in a situation mostly like this. And um the growing pains is that company was getting more and more people brought in.

We were like we we needed to add more and more structure and we had a lot of missteps, right? Like we had no idea what the hell we were doing. When I started there was like employee 7 or eight and then it grew to like 250 people. Like we literally don't know what we're doing. But the one thing that I think we did really right was that we would try things. Oh my lord, lady. Come on. Woman's walking a dog and then like her dog's on this leash and just lets it run onto the street like as I'm about to pass. Oh, that dog was almost at its end. Um the thing that we did right I think was that we constantly tried things and we would say if it's not working right I remember we I and this isn't picking on him at all

like one of my best friends to this day I remember we were talking about like you know um sprint boards and stuff like that and we had sticky notes literally on a whiteboard and then we were talking about using Jira. I know everyone hates Jira. I actually really liked Jira, but we were trying to, you know, migrate to being more digital and there was this period of time where it was like we needed on on the sticky notes and on the Jira board and it was like why why are we doing this? And it was just like part of this transition and like figuring things out and like ultimately um you I think at the time that was just like comfort and tooling if uh other people needed to like submit tickets for ideas. We didn't have the right mechanism for them to go into Jira and like go add like a new feature request kind of thing that we would triage.

We just like we weren't there yet. So it was like we needed the whiteboard for that and then like the you know organizing priorities in Jira at the time was a pain in the butt cuz we didn't know what we were doing. So like if you had the sticky notes you could literally physically reorder them and uh everyone could see the it just like it was a weird time but like we would try things and we would see what worked and what didn't and I think ultimately that kind of process was something that just worked really well for us. So again, in this person's case, if you're in an environment like that, um I I think what would really help is finding opportunities to reflect on what is and is not working. I think retrospectives can be really good for that. I think that you can also waste a lot of time in retros if you're not focusing on the right things.

And maybe these people don't want more ceremony. So again, if you don't want a ceremony to do it, that's fine. I'm not telling you that you need it. I'm just saying that try to find a mechanism, whatever that is, that lets you get the same kind of a thing out of it. So, yeah. Anyway, I think that was probably more thoughts on environments like this and maybe not advice for like how to be successful in them, but um hopefully that still helps. So, anyway, if you don't want me talking about Reddit topics, submit questions, leave them below in the comments. Go to codecommute.com. You can submit questions anonymously. You can send me messages on social media. It's Nick Cosantino on LinkedIn. My profile is premium, so you can send requests. Should work. Um, you can send messages on Twitter, which seems to be quite delayed because Twitter is uh terrible.

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So, we'll see you in the next one. Take care.