DEV Community: Heshie Brody

The key to developer happiness and how to prevent coding from becoming just another job

Heshie Brody — Thu, 04 Nov 2021 00:31:08 +0000

This article first appeared here: https://www.zigi.ai/blog/the-key-to-developer-happiness-and-how-to-prevent-coding-from-becoming-just-another-job

Mid Sprint Gloom Day Tuesday

It was a week after sprint planning and I sat at my desk feeling lost and bored. Here I was in my third year in my software developer career feeling overwhelmed and uninspired.

All the pain that motivated me into focusing my career on software development and out of my boring e-commerce job was back but yet as a software developer.

I still remember the moment when at age 14 I double-clicked the Visual basic form editor button and coded my first MessageBox.Show("Hello world"). The invigoration and excitement of seeing a computer execute the code that I just wrote were second to none. Ask every software developer this and they will remember that exact moment as if it happened yesterday.

After experiencing the above I started questioning the creative work industry.

Is it impossible to experience that same feeling of joy when working creatively on my hobby as when doing it as a job?

Will a job always be a job?

Now, for us, as software developers to stay happy, we must stick close to our core motivation which is creation.

The birth of a software developer

As a human our greatest joy comes from creation, making something out of nothing. To many people buying creations built by others is enough to satisfy that need but for some of us who are desperate enough, unless we build something of our own we feel no joy.

This is how we as software developers are born.

Now, for us, as software developers to stay happy, we must stick close to our core motivation which is creation.

All the noise and pressure not related to creating or building stuff moves us further away from what made us join this creative industry in the first place.

To keep all the businessey side of things away from dampening the fun part which is building stuff, it must not feel like a burden to the creator aka the software developer.

As a software developer, when I had the following I was most calm and looked forward to my work:

Having my day prepared with a clear list of work assigned
Having ample and reasonable time for each task
Knowing when my work is considered complete
Having my manager in sync instead of pinging me all day in Slack with requests for progress updates.

The greatest pleasure as a software developer is when you are assigned work where you know exactly what the specifications are and what the result should look like.

Being able to knock something out to its completion allows us to no end.

Working off a vague idea or not knowing where to begin or end leads to burnout and boredom since to us as creators there we now have additional baggage around the creation process which turns it into a job and less like a hobby.

The non-manager, manager

Let's be honest, software development is chaotic much like business is chaotic.

For a team to be run efficiently some sort of separation must be placed between the software developers and the business side of things to bring it under control.

This necessary separation is the job of the team lead or engineering manager.

But even with a manager in place, the challenge is still there.

The manager must find the right balance of communication and goal setting with biz dev who wants everything yesterday and the development teams who are running a backlog.

Many times the pressure put on the manager finds its way down to the developers and before you know it your development team is pressured and micro-managed not knowing what to work on first in turn making what we find fun as a hobby the opposite as a job.

We as developers on the other side are too intimidated or shy to communicate our feelings back up and we just accept the workload and pressure as a given. And this is a huge problem since work overload and micromanagement are the greatest causes of burnout and indirection much like that Tuesday I described above.

Finding the perfect manager that can properly lead their team while keeping developer happiness levels high is difficult.
Humans are humans and we succumb to pressure and emotions. Even the greatest leaders sometimes break down and falter.

The key to developer happiness and how to prevent coding from becoming just another job

The great Lao Tzu put it best “A leader is best when people barely know he exists. When his work is done, his aim fulfilled, they will say: we did it ourselves.”

Now, what if I started my Tuesday morning a bit differently that day? As I get to my desk a curated checklist of exactly what I’ll be working on that day is in my inbox. I report to my manager the progress I have been making, and I put aside my timidness and discuss my progress and provide feedback if they assigned too much work to me.

In doing so I would’ve felt mentally at ease knowing that my manager has been updated with my progress and has been communicated with how I feel about the workload.

Also since my goals and expectations are set I now have a clear purpose and goal for that day feeling free to indulge in building in a way that makes me happy.

Now from my manager’s perspective, I have removed their morning overhead and already put them at ease since they now know exactly what I’m working on plus insight on the team progress and efficiency leading to a more relaxed atmosphere and greater developer happiness.

Finding the courage to do so is a game changer.

But do we find the courage?

Do we speak up when we disagree on how something should be done or do we just stay quiet to get done with ‘that’ meeting?

Do we communicate our feelings about the timeline or do we just nod along so as not to be called out as a “non-team player?

Here’s an exercise; now it might not be for everybody and if you’re great at communicating then kudos to you but for those who are not great at communicating [yet] next time you feel something during a meeting; a thought, an insight, a timeline expectation, speak up!

It’ll be tough at first, you’ll feel your body fighting many different forces but carry on, It’s worth it.

People hire you for more than just listening. They want your opinion and thoughts, they want that clarity and insight that your background brings that someone else may not have.

In doing so you will effectively get more comfortable communicating your thoughts and help keep your team in sync while also putting you at ease and giving you the needed clarity to focus on what you love best which is building product.

A win-win! But only if you have the courage.

May the courage be with us.

Heshie

"Zigi is your own AI-powered personal assistant, managing your entire dev workflow and handling all your mundane,
Non-programming tasks across multiple apps, so you can focus on code creation and innovation".

How I got my first job in tech.

Heshie Brody — Wed, 30 Jun 2021 00:33:37 +0000

As a bootcamp grad(Flatiron School) I constantly get asked how I landed my first job in tech.

Here's what i've learned from that experience.

Applying to jobs online.

As a recent grad applying to jobs online directly on the company website is almost always a waste of time. Unless you have years of experience or a top tier collage listed on your resume you’ll almost never get an interview, their resume system will almost always reject you.

I learned this the hard way after applying for almost 150 jobs online and rarely hearing back.

Networking, networking and networking.

Networking is what worked for me, after applying online with no results I turned to my community, friends and schoolmates.
My job at Sitepod came from a high school friend who was working there and they happened to be looking for a full stack Rails developer.
Meetups and job fairs are also really great for making these connections.

"It's not 'what' you know but rather 'who' you know"

Get work experience ASAP.

As a recent grad, unless you're applying for unpaid internships, recruiters need to really believe in you to give you that first shot since it’s their reputation on the line.
Try to get real world work experience on your resume/LinkedIn asap.
Volunteering for public projects or just building stuff for friends and family will give you that experience to put on your resume, plus you’ll have so much more to talk about when interviewing for that first job.
Make sure to put start and end dates on those freelance gigs and list them as experience on your resume, not projects (Resume Hack...).

Getting interviews from Linkedin

I’ve successfully gotten interviews by direct messaging developers, hiring managers and recruiters.
Try to find people that are close to your network or may have attended the same school etc.
Commenting on recruiter posts is also a great way to get their attention.
Make sure to message only those that have entry level positions listed on their company website or posts so not to waste your time.
Also ensure that those companies are looking for similar technologies to those that you have so as to eliminate any friction.
Many companies give employees the ability to refer people to their available positions which will almost always get you at least a phone call .

Here’s a template i’ve successfully used over time when messaging recruiters on LinkedIn:

Hi [name],
I saw that you're hiring for software engineering positions in NYC.
I’m currently a full stack web developer with experience in [technologies].
I’m looking for a position in a company like [company name] where I can grow and utilize my skills to the fullest.
I would love it if you can give me a few minutes of your time to get to know each other and see what value I can bring to [company name].
Thanks In Advance!

Hope this helps!

I was emailed after abandoning a registration form. I did not click Submit. This is not ok.

Heshie Brody — Mon, 01 Jun 2020 19:48:12 +0000

We had a baby recently and my wife and I were online shopping for breast pumps. Our health insurance company website redirected me to a website named aeroflowbreastpumps.com where they had a form that I could input my insurance details and this website would take care of the billing for me and have my insurance pay for it.
I filled out the form but did not submit the form yet since my wife wanted to get some more feedback on which model we were going to purchase.

Approximately 10 minutes later I got an email from "aeroflowbreastpumps.com" telling me how close I am to qualifying for a breast pump.

I was quite shocked since I knew I had never clicked submit and I still had the tab open in my browser with the information filled out.
So I decided to try it out with another email address of mine and see if it'll happen again.

Sure enough it did...!

I took some screenshots so you can see for yourself:

The Website Posting Form Data Before I Click Submit:
You Can See The Params Being Added To The Query String(The initial email is shown below)
Scripts Initiated By Input Change
The website will try to track any activity and save it with the email it took.

Who's Is Behind This Technology?

The company behind this is called AddShoppers.
AddShoppers has a program named "Email Retargeting® Co-op + SafeOpt® Consumer Rights Management Integrated Platform"

Let them explain it to you in their own words:

The Problem: Customers Don't Always Want To Give Their Email...

"Regardless of email acquisition..."

The Solution: Network many sites to a point where at least one knows who you are, once identified that website will share it with the rest of the network.

Now, let's think about how this would play out off-line with your physical presence.
Imagine if every store you visited would take a picture of you and then share and compare it with neighboring stores until they find one that you are a customer of and has your information.
If such an agreement was in place, that store would now share who you are with the store that you are not yet a customer of and then add you to their marketing list.
This is exactly what "AddShoppers" does.

Scary(and creepy)...!

I'm not accusing them if this is legal since this is way out of my realm and they probably have a legal team to back this kind of stuff but it's still not ok. It's not right.
If your going to take my email address then at least let me know before I type anything.
Spamming customers will make them lose trust in you more than anything.
Integrity, communication and honesty are not just for real life social interactions.

The internet is real. The people using it are real. Be real.

How To See If Your Resume Was Viewed When Applying For A Job

Heshie Brody — Wed, 06 May 2020 23:04:15 +0000

Being in the market for a new developer position I cold email recruiters, hiring managers and engineers all the time but I never know who to follow up with if they don't respond.

UPDATE: As one reader pointed out that a bitly in a cold email might get your email in the spam folder, my greatest success with this was actually on Linkedin. Guess now I know why :)

This what I came up with to see if my resume was viewed:

Put your resume on google docs and get a public link.
Use http://bitly.com to generate unique links for every outreach email etc.

Bitly will now show you if the link was clicked on!

P.S. I'm still looking for a position in NYC if you know of anything or if you'd like to hire me you hit me up at 4hbrody@gmail.com!

Update jsonb Columns Using The Rails Active Record Native Methods

Heshie Brody — Wed, 19 Feb 2020 01:36:44 +0000

While building a Rails API backend for a recent project I came across a challenge when updating jsonb columns.

You see as a pure Rail'ist (Is that a thing...?) I try to stay away from writing SQL strings in my app when I could use Active Record native methods, but since I had defined some columns as Jsonb it seemed like I would need to use SQL since all the tutorials were making use of jsonb_set SQL method as follows:

sql = 'UPDATE users SET preferences = jsonb_set(
options, \'{email_opt_in}\', \'false\', FALSE) WHERE id = 1;'

c.execute(sql)

But as a Rail'ist I was looking for something more like user.update(params).

So...
This is what I came up with:

First get the current column value which Active Record returns as a Ruby hash:
user = session_user
currentKeys = user.api_keys
Convert post params to a hash and extract the nested values which were nested under keys:
hashedParams = user_params.to_h[:keys]
Use the Ruby hash merge method to merge my post params and current user column data:
newKeys = currentKeys.merge(hashedParams)
I could now use the Rails object update method as usual:
user.update(api_keys: newKeys)

Here is the complete code:

    user = session_user
    currentKeys = user.api_keys
    hashedParams = user_params.to_h[:keys]
    newKeys = currentKeys.merge(hashedParams)

    if user.update(api_keys: newKeys)
        Bla, bla, bla...

Ok, now here's the thing: I need validation if the above is acceptable as a Rail'ist(you heard it here first) so please If I'm missing anything(method, convention, irk etc.) comment below :)

Thanks For Reading!

ERB To JS on a Rails API - jQuery Free

Heshie Brody — Wed, 06 Nov 2019 04:06:41 +0000

The Rails JS project really was something I looked forward to because it gave me the opportunity to finally pull all that I know together and build on what iv'e learned in the past year.

The project and my jQuery diet

The project goals were straight forward, take your Rails app and instead of rendering ERB in the views have them return JSON, create JS objects from the returned json and then use those to build out your page.

When I was first introduced to the world of JS lot's of it was all about learning jQuery and it's methods, but once JS matured and many new features and API's were introduced like js classes and the fetch api It didn't feel like jQuery was so much better and cleaner anymore, therefore I decided that a jQuery diet it is.

The process and why Rails is so great as an API

My rails app I built for my original rails project was called driven work and It was based around the idea of listing companies and ceos for their accomplishments and innovations.

Since my app was built in a typical rails fashion of MVC I knew I needed to do the following to convert it to a JSON api:

Create serializers to return the appropriate data required for my JSON responses.
Modify my controllers to handle and return the requested format/serialization.
Create JS classes to represent the model objects returned via JSON with class methods to return html objects.
Handle the JSON responses and use my JS classes to build out my page and display the response.

Rails makes it really easy to build api's with the following two features:

Serialization: It allows you to create serializers(a file named with you model object name) that will return the only model attributes specified in those files in the specified format when you call render in your controller.

Render JSON: Render is a rails method which allows you to specify the return format according the the user's request using a single route and controller method. So for instance if the browser requests the /companies page it'll return an html page but if the request specifies a type it'll return that type specified as long as you build out the method to support that. Aha, The simplicity of it all!

And that's really all it takes to get a rails app API up and ready.

Rendering your JSON with Java Script

Rendering the response was quite simple. The javascript fetch method makes it really simple to make requests and handle responses and is as elegant and simple as the jQuery method if not more intuitive. Once I got my response I use that to build JS objects and then called its class method I built to return html list objects and append it to the list on the page.

The class:

class Company {
  constructor(id, name, description, authorId,  authorName, numOfBreakthroughs) {
    this.id = id;
    this.name = name;
    this.description = description;
    this.authorId = authorId;
    this.authorName = authorName;
    this.numOfBreakthroughs = numOfBreakthroughs;
  }

  indexPageListItem () {
    let html = "";

     html += `<li> <a href=/companies/${this.id}>${this.name} - Major Breakthroughs: ${this.numOfBreakthroughs}</a></li>`
     if (this.authorId !== null) {
      html += `<p>by <a href=/users/${this.authorId}>${this.authorName}</a></p>`
     } else {
       html += "<p>by N/A</p>"
     }
    return html;
  }

  showPageListItem () {
    return `<li> <a href=/companies/${this.id}>${this.name}</a></li>`
  }
}

The page:

<h1>Companies</h1>
<p><%= display_errors(@companies) %></p>
<ol id="companies">

</ol>

<script type="text/javascript">
  document.addEventListener('DOMContentLoaded', () => {
    fetch('/companies.json')
    .then(response => response.json())
    .then(json => updateList(json));

    let updateList = (json) => {
      const list = document.getElementById("companies");

      json.forEach( company => {
        const companyObj = new Company(company.id, company.name, company.description, (company.user == null ? null : company.user.id), ((company.user == null ? null : company.user.name)), company.numOfBreakthroughs);
        list.innerHTML += (companyObj.indexPageListItem());
      });
    }
  })
</script>

Posting forms with JSON and JS

It's 1:27am and i'm fighting to stay awake so I guess I'll leave the posting forms with JSON with JS for another time.
Checkout the rest of the code here: driven-work with JS repo on Github

So Long,
Heshie

Originally posted Here On November 3, 2019.

My Conversation With The Founder of a 2 Billion Dollar Software Startup

Heshie Brody — Thu, 20 Jun 2019 06:18:18 +0000

I recently had the amazing opportunity to talk with the CEO and founder of a (valued @) 2 billion dollar company Based in NYC. I asked him some questions to open the taps and took some notes. In my writing of this conversation I tried to keep it raw in order to contain that sense of conversation. Sorry Grammar freaks.

Unfortunately due to the stature of this CEO’s position I cannot mention him or his company by name. Nevertheless. Hope you enjoy!

Your story, how did you get started?

I went to school for a CS degree and then got a job building web sites. For me the most exciting part was visual output and product design, eventually I started my own company, first coding on my own and then coming to the realization that there are many people out there that can code way better then me so I outsourced all the code and put all my focus at product design and that really differentiated my company from the competition.

Arrogant dissatisfaction, Honest curiosity

I always felt there was a better way, and what drove me most was: “having curiosity, getting opportunities, treating those opportunities as obligations”.
The key is to always be curious, finding a way to do it better, and constantly ask yourself “What is the best way to do this??”

Having curiosity, getting opportunities, treating those opportunities as obligations.

You gotta be the best in the world at whatever you do

Whatever you do, in life, in business, in order to succeed you gotta be the best in your given market.
For example a high school student selling ‘chocolate ice cream’ in school. For him to dominate is not enough to sell the best ‘chocolate ice cream’, he must ONLY sell chocolate ice cream! No vanilla, no pecan just focus on what he does best which is chocolate. The power to give-up on everything else and focus just on what you do best is where true genius lays.
A nut and a genius are very similar that both have this crazy obsession with one single thing, the difference that ultimately separates them is that the nut’s obsession serves no one where is the genius has a market for his obsession.

Not Waiting for the next thing to start being creative. Permission to shine

The biggest mistake I see people making is that they wait for their next big thing to give themselves the permission to be creative.
Real creativity is all about making the boring interesting. Working by day to pay the bills and studying in school at night? Make that job exciting, find a way to help your company in a creative way, learn to combine the two.
Try to get permission to shine, have an idea? ask your boss to give you a chance at it, as they say “The best way to make a million is by making someone else 2 million”

You can’t build to success. Success evolves unexpectedly

You never know where something will come from, our product was a natural process. It came to be by building tools that’ll helped our day to day in my software consulting business and it was totally unseen. It was an unexpected evolution.
It was again this honest curiosity and it came from something else, we we’re like, oh let’s build this and now let’s build that.

The cycle of dissatisfaction

Dissatisfaction
Curiosity
Relentless progress …reset cycle

To me it was all rascal hacking. I tried hard not to smirk at the VC’s…

When I had my first meting with vc’s, they offered me 1.2 mil…! I was in disbelief, my only reaction was ‘try hard not to laugh’, in my mind it was really just this fun project, fueled by the cycle of dissatisfaction, it was rascal hacking, fueled by curiosity, like a little chipmunk, furiously, fun, but with a focus on product design. Just organic.

Motivation is a muscle

Make boring exciting. True talent is finding a new way to look at something.
Never become cynical, look at all with a new lens, creativity is a challenge.
Motivation is a muscle, learn how to control it.

Mind over matter is so important. Every morning is a choice

Face it, a large part of your work will not be exciting or interesting.
The same is with marriage and relationships.
It’s our goal as human beings to stand up to the challenge and find new ways to look at things.

Employment and interviews. Don’t be flaky, people like people who commit

Try not to jump around too much, employers like people who commit for the long term. Leveling up is fine, just don’t be flaky.
Be interviewed and interview. Make sure to talk to at least 3 people who work at the company you're inquiring about.

What is the single most important skill to have as an engineer?(there are many…)

Ability to debug. Learn to how to trace and isolate problems.
Stay ahead with your language, follow and learn, geek out on it.
Avid curiosity, 9 to 5
User experience comes before everything
Team player, learn communication, restaurant kitchen analogy
Lots of stamina, rock out on something, be insensitive
Completely in control, either you control your mood or your mood control’s you

This conversation was very inspiring and helped me tons, hope it helps you to!

Heshie Brody

Originally posted Here On November 22, 2018.