(Originally posted on Leadership Garden) The problem with burnout is that we don’t know how to recognize it. This post helps with quantifying the symptoms and seeing where you land. The definition of burnout is physical, mental, and emotional exhaustion caused by chronic, unmanaged stress. It’s when you feel exhausted…

(originally posted on Leadership Garden) Learn how to onboard engineers with an empathetic and structured approach. Includes a 30–60–90-day check-in template. It’s Monday. You’re back at work after a nice weekend, feeling excited as the new engineer is joining your team today! She arrives, gets her laptop and first coffee…

Active listening is the ability to focus completely on a speaker, understand their message, comprehend the information and respond thoughtfully, in a relevant way. Compared to passive listening this highly valued interpersonal communication skill ensures you’re able to engage with your peer and later recall specific details without needing information…

Management tends to get bad rap and unfortunately many times rightfully so. Having a bad manager can make one’s life miserable and hinder their growth. Managers can seem like politicians who don’t know anything about our trade yet they give us directions. On the other hand having a good manager…

Raw coding skills are only a fraction of what your future dream company is looking for. There are also the so-called “soft skills” — I personally don’t like this term — let’s simply call them skills, too. Both are crucial to your job. …

We are all prone to biases. We cannot help but evaluate and assess people and situations through the lens of our own prejudices. When it comes to performance reviews this can have a huge unwanted impact as it influences compensation, promotion decisions, and even firing. When you give a performance…

Even though interviewing for a software engineering job can be intimidating and frustrating (with whiteboard exercises, remote coding challenges, and even full days of onsite interviews), it’s a lot easier when you know what to expect and are well-prepared. I’ve interviewed a few hundred software engineering candidates in the past…

There are tons of interview myths floating around about the technical hiring process, mostly because it’s usually a black box to candidates. The inherent stress, inexperienced interviewers, tiring challenges, and unresponsive companies are valid reasons for candidates to have a negative view of hiring. …

“We tell ourselves stories in order to live…We look for the sermon in the suicide, for the social or moral lesson in the murder of five. We interpret what we see, select the most workable of the multiple choices. We live entirely, especially if we are writers, by the imposition…