DEV Community: Martin Cartledge

Building My First AI Agent

Martin Cartledge — Wed, 11 Feb 2026 21:44:03 +0000

AI agents have never been more prominent in today's technology sector, and I think their momentum will not be slowing down anytime soon. They have become an integral piece in the workflow of technology knowledge workers across the globe, and they have done so in a matter of several months.

But how do these work? If you have used any of the leading agents today, you might have come to the conclusion that they share strengths and pitfalls alike.

I recently came across an article by Thorsten Ball, a long-time favorite writer of mine, that provides a roadmap for building your own AI agent.

I jumped at this tutorial for many reasons: I want to expand my knowledge of these tools, I don't get to use Go in my 9-5 but love the language mechanics, and I knew Thorsten is a source I can trust. He has a great way of explaining dense, archaic concepts simply.

I opened up the webpage and off I went. Here is my journey.

Immediate Takeaway

By looking at the length of the post, I felt, there has to be more to this, right? Surely a coding agent was much more involved than what I was seeing. I soon discovered that was not the case.

In the following sections I will go over my experience at a high level - do not expect a mirco view of this process, Thorsten does a great job of that! This post is mainly meant to serve as my overall experience and takeaways after building an agent.

Building GoldenEye

The bedrock

After creating project files and the backbone of any Go project, main.go, I used the Anthropic SDK to create an Agent type and a NewAgent function that accepts a few parameters: an Anthropic Client and a getUserMessage function. This new type and function are wired up in the main.go file.

Next, after adding my Anthropic API key, I created a run function that accepted a few parameters: context and a conversation array.

Once my key was wired up along with the run function, I was able to run Claude in my terminal—so cool! It greeted me with: "Chat with Boris, slug head" (a nod to the James Bond film GoldenEye, namely the N64 game, IYKYK).

Reading, viewing, and editing

Simply creating a wrapper application that can run a LLM locally is cool on its own, but to create a proper coding agent, this application needed to do a few standard things: reading files within a working directory, listing files within that directory, and possibly the most important, editing files within a working directory.

This phase of the tutorial melted my brain a little bit, but after adding the respective types and executable functions, I found that these actions followed similar paths: they needed a strict schema to delare the precise input and output, they needed to marshal and unmarshal JSON (essentially packing and unpacking JSON in the application), and they needed to register their tool's namespace (read, write, list) in the main executable function in the go program.

Listing and reading

Editing

I am invincible!

With these three action pillars integrated, GoldenEye could perform similarly to the agent I use at work and at home!

I still feel like I need to process this piece a bit more. There is so much happening, but at the same time, little happening?

I give full credit to Thorsten due to this feeling. He showcases a simple path to getting an agent to work, showcases the patterns when integrating actions within an agent, and presents the final product in a no-nonsense manner.

What I Learned

This experience reinforced something crucial: context is KING. The tool continually showed that being as clear as possible with actions—like read_file({path: "main.go"})—only galvanized the emphasis on providing context to increase the chances the agent acts the way you want it to.

More importantly, it demystified what agents actually are. The act of wiring up a model and running it against your code on a local machine is straightforward. What separates companies in this space isn't some secret sauce in the agent architecture—it's the presentation and the model itself.

It's how context is handled throughout an ecosystem. It's keeping input and output performance at the tip of high-end for the user.

Companies can shine if they provide a sleek, intuitive UI and a performative, relevant, and dense model pool for their consumers. The agent loop? That's almost a solved problem. The real differentiator is the experience and the intelligence of the underlying model.

What's Next

Now that I understand how agents work at this level, I want to go deeper. The next layer of abstraction—the models that power these agents—is rich in mystery and vast in expansive knowledge. That's where I want to dive next.

Building GoldenEye showed me what's possible with relatively little code. Now I want to understand what makes the intelligence behind it tick.

Resources

How to Build an Agent by Thorsten Ball - The tutorial that inspired this
Anthropic API Documentation
GoldenEye repository - My implementation

The Push and Pull of AI

Martin Cartledge — Tue, 10 Feb 2026 19:58:11 +0000

As a software engineer, I would be lying if I said AI hasn’t affected my job. Over the past year, I’ve seen more changes in my professional landscape than I have in the first 9 years of my career. And that all has to do with technology’s poster child acronym: AI.

It started in 2022 when GitHub released Copilot. An IDE integration whose primary focus was inline assistance: auto-complete, micro refactors, naming suggestions, and even spell check. This was pretty cool; however, I wasn’t fully aware of what would be coming next. If Copilot was a wave of developer productivity, then the next changes and tools were a tsunami.

In early 2025, I discovered Claude, an agent created by Anthropic. At first, I used this to automate tasks in my personal life: updating my monthly budget, task list, or getting grocery trip ideas. This offered a big boost in my personal productivity sphere. Mundane tasks were now quickly outsourced and completed with a fraction of the brainpower and time. What could possibly be wrong with that?

By the middle of 2025, I started to use AI tools at my job, and my experience was very similar to my personal productivity findings. The mundane became swift, and my output increased. It was after a few months that I started to look a bit closer at my relationship with these tools.

The appeal of AI tools in software is their apparent ability to automate your workflow. To solve problems and deliver streamlined output. Does that all sound familiar to you? It should, that is what you used to get paid to do!

Of course, software engineers still do this, but in a different way. We no longer spend the same amount of time physically writing lines of code. Toiling over a failing test or tricky business logic. Those layers are abstracted away from the flow now.

Does this feel unnerving to you? In some ways it should. Ask anyone who writes software what they enjoy about it and you will probably get a mix of things, but I suspect they will overlap with a common theme: To build things that folks use. That feeling of solving a hard problem. Seeing all of the tests pass.

AI agents help with this, but in a way, it diminishes this feeling. This is why I started to think of my relationship with an AI agent in terms of pushing and pulling.

Agents are biased. Plain and simple. If you give a prompt with a hint of uncertainty, it will tell you you are correct to feel that way. You prompt the agent with the utmost confidence that you have the correct path forward, and it will proudly march you towards that end, regardless of whether it is true or not. This is dangerous for software engineers. This is where we should push.

Give these tools pushback. Give it context. Be direct and give it guidelines. A lot of these tools have a plan or read-only mode; use those first.

Okay, but you are not writing complex algorithms or tricky business logic, now is the time to pull the agent. The agent is your ally in this case. It can free up brain power and save time in your day. Set clean parameters and expectations, offer similar patterns to follow, and let it get you there. It won’t always get you 100%, but it will get you close.

Like anything, these things take time. There are iterations. Feedback loops.

We need to uphold a sense of pride and ownership in our code. In a way, it is an extension of who we are as people. It’s how we offer direct value to the company we work for. We should be proud of that. Not just for the company’s sake, but for our own craftsmanship.

So next time you use an AI tool, remember, you are ultimately in control of your work and the outcome you present. Know when to push and when to pull.

Improvements in communication have made understanding more difficult

Martin Cartledge — Mon, 09 Feb 2026 21:32:33 +0000

What we create with our words, before all else, is ourselves. The voice of consciousness that’s forever talking inside our head - that weird hybrid of monologue and dialogue that makes speaker and listener one - is the sculptor of the self. - Nicholas Carr

With every generation, there are overlaps in experiences that form bonds within that generation or age group. I was born in 1990. I remember having a “home” phone, I remember not having internet, and I remember having to wait until the next school day to ask my friends about the latest Nintendo 64 game. It’s funny, when you are in the midst of a technological age, you rarely look around and notice what you take for granted, and what you might not.

My relationship with technology really started to change when we got dial-up internet around 1998.

All of a sudden, I could watch music videos, look up Star Wars trivia, chat with friends online, and send emails to my relatives with a click of a button. My relationship with media, technology, and communication was subtly changing, and I did not realize it until much later.

As I got older, cell phones started to enter my social circles, and by the time I was 16, phone calls were replaced with 180-character text conversations. These started out as check-ins with my mom, but quickly transformed into a sun-up-to-sun-down activity with my friends. It was now possible to be reachable anywhere you went. You did not need a home phone, nor did you need to be sitting at a computer.

When smartphones entered the mix the next year, 2007, things seemed to gain even more momentum in the technology and communication realm. Now, you could call, text, email, and even browse the internet anywhere with cell coverage.

I think this is where technology’s relationship with our personal and work lives really started to get murky.

You no longer needed to wait for a fax, or wait to check your email at your desk. You could do a quick “check” of the email that would immediately put you into the work context, agnostic of your physical location.

As the 2010s spun madly on, social media moguls took over the minds of hundreds of millions of people. Most with a smartphone would honestly assess that they probably spent too much time on it. It was knee-jerk. A “bad” habit. But what is bad about this? The phone itself? I don’t think so. It’s what the phone now represents. It’s a mobile escape.

Humans are hard-coded to be conflict, pain, and danger averse. It’s how we survived throughout the earlier ages of humanity. We see a lion, we run. Fight-or-flight. We seek protection, shelter, safety. Our phone has become our saftey, our escape. And it seems like it’s getting easier to escape every year.

I don’t just mean physically escaping either, while you can pick up a phone and meander around your home, I feel the real escape, the more potentially harmful escape is what is happening in our minds.

Now, if you feel bored, you can pick up your phone and be jet-set away to a faraway land with millions of catered media served on a platter just for you. You don’t need to experience real life if you don’t want to. You can bury your head in your phone and tell yourself you are checking something for work, sending a quick text, or taking a few moments to just unwind.

These can be valid; however, I feel we have lost sight of what is most important in life.

Relationships. Human relationships. Forming them, working on them, seeking them.

Technology can certainly have a role in relationships, but it should be in a tool capacity. For example, phones can be a great way to check in on a friend or family member who lives hours or even days away.

A face-to-face conversation over FaceTime can be a powerful and rejuvenating thing.

My point here is not to replace technology, but to think about the role it plays in your life. Is it enhancing your life and happiness, or is it a tempting obstacle that hinders your fulfillment and causes anxiety?

This is a paradox. Technology has now advanced to a point that the convenience of communication has never been easier, and it will probably continue to get even easier. However, some friction is good.

It shows that you care, that another person is worth your full attention.

Now, you can talk on the phone while answering emails or organizing your taxes.

It’s harder to slow down. Harder than ever.

What were normal social norms in the 1990s and 2000s have become archaic and difficult. When was the last time you sat and spoke with someone in person for 15 minutes without a phone interrupting it? Have you tried having a conversation on the phone while sitting or even standing in the same place the entire time? With no media interruptions?

This discipline and restraint is healthy. It keeps us focused. Keeps our minds contextually in line with the person we are communicating with. This is how relationships are formed, maintained, and how they flourish.

Technology is a wonderful thing, and I am so grateful I have it. But I feel a great responsibility to be a healthy consumer of it.

My Free Half Marathon Plan for Working Parents

Martin Cartledge — Mon, 01 Dec 2025 17:13:01 +0000

Happy Monday! For the sake of preparing for New Year resolutions, I am making my half-marathon prep guide free for the entire month. 🏃

If you end up getting this and trying it, please let me know what you think 🧠

I will be releasing a 5k and 10k plan throughout the month as well.

Happy running!

Download here

I built something for busy parents who want to run

Martin Cartledge — Wed, 12 Nov 2025 22:37:28 +0000

I just launched a half marathon training plan designed for parents with actual jobs and kids.

Not for elite runners. For regular people who want to build a habit and cross a finish line.

3 goal options:

3:00 (just finish)
2:30 (getting stronger)
2:00 (pushing yourself)

12 weeks. Built-in flexibility. Real life.

Check it out

Martin

P.S. I also put together a page of running gear I actually use.

How To Stop Procrastinating and Do Hard Things

Martin Cartledge — Mon, 26 Feb 2024 18:32:09 +0000

It only takes 25 minutes.

This is not just another pomodoro blog post, but rather a simple way that I have been trying to break down development tasks and make better use of my time.

There are times when I start development on a ticket, only to find that there can be several potential ways to achieve the desired result. Add in email, Slack, and your brain's neurological desire to escape hard (and admittedly sometimes boring) things, and you might find yourself rearranging your bookmarks, vigorously re-checking email and Slack for new messages, anything to delay the task of taking the first step. Or maybe the step before the first step. The plan.

Now, of course, this does not have to be a formal, extensive, in-depth plan. Most of the time, you have the context and the desired outcome documented in plain English.

But what happens from the time you are assigned a task to actually starting that task? Mental friction.

Fortunately, this does not happen too often for me, but when it does, it can feel crippling.

So what do I do to combat this? I open a new Markdown file on my Desktop, and just start typing out a list of the steps I need to take to accomplish this task.

I do not try to be polished or to try and make it perfectly presentable. This document is for me and my eyes only.

This might sound a bit robust, rigid, or simply a waste of time, and for some tasks, it might be!

I have found that this exercise really helps me clear out my mental fog and clarify the precise steps I need to take to finish this work.

If you feel the pull of procrastination or the desire to flee a difficult or mentally taxing task, you are not alone. Your brain is literally doing its job to protect you from pain.

You can counteract this feeling of dopamine chasing, however, by simply acting.

I do not want to sound too simplistic here, but neurology tells us that the same receptors that fire when we are anxious about starting something for any reason can be silenced when we just start doing something to get started on that very thing.

The first step is most often the hardest, but it does get easier.

So, 25 minutes, what is that about?

For me, I have found that 25 minutes is a good amount of time to get a reasonable amount of cognitively demanding work done. Of course, if I reach 25 minutes and I am still in the zone, I keep going!

25 minutes can help you start because it is not too much of a time commitment, but it is also not a trivial amount of time either.

TL;DR

Open a blank file
Start a timer for 25 minutes
Write!

Don't believe this will work? Ironically, this started as a 25-minute session! Here are the notes I took for a task I have been dreading to work on; even after 5 minutes, I feel much better about this work.

After I wrote these, I thought it would be a good idea to write up my thoughts on this and share it with you! I hope this helps.

I am always curious about how folks plan, manage, and execute their work, so if you are any sort of productivity nerd at all, I would love to hear from you!

Intro to Distributed Systems

Martin Cartledge — Fri, 21 Apr 2023 16:30:00 +0000

🪴 This is a living post, and will likely be updated periodically

Hello! It's been a while, so first and foremost, thank you for being here and for taking the time to read this!

I have recently been interested in distributed systems, and decided to put together a roadmap of an open sourced MIT class, 6.824: Distributed Systems Engineering. As I navigate this roadmap, I will collect my thoughts, notes, and learnings and convert them into the series you are reading now.

🚨 Disclaimer: I am in no way, shape, or form an expert on distributed systems. The content published here is purely my interpretation of the material I have consumed.

Series roadmap

Moving forward, I will provide a snapshot into the future of the series I am writing. This helps me pace my content while informing the reader of what to expect upfront. For the distributed systems series you can expect the following:

Week 1: Intro to Distributed Systems
Week 2: A deep dive of MapReduce
Week 3: RPC and Threads
Week 4: GFS: Google File System
Week 5: Replication: Primary-backup
Week 6: Fault Tolerance: Raft
Week 7: Replication: Zookeeper and CRAQ
Week 8: Cache Consistency: Frangipani
Week 9: Distributed Transactions
Week 10: Spanner
Week 11: Optimistic Concurrent Control
Week 12: Big Data: Spark

So what is a Distributed System?

A set of cooperating computers used to perform a task

A question you might ask is: Why would you need more than one machine? How are distributed systems used today?

Great question, here are some examples of common applications of distributed systems and how they are used:

Storage for websites (Gmail, YouTube)
Data-intensive operations (MapReduce)
Peer to peer file sharing (Dropbox)

Why use them?

Let's dig into the weeds a bit more on the value of distributed systems.

What do they offer? What problems do they solve?

Performance

When more computers are at your disposal, your processing power goes up. When leveraged properly, this can give you highly-tuned performance.

Parallelism

When you have more machines available, you can conduct more operations at the same time, or in parallel. Having the ability to use parallelism in your systems can also give you high throughput and performance.

Fault Tolerance

One certainty of systems and technology is that they will fail. What happens when one of your machines fails? Does your data corrupt and vanish into thin air? This is where Fault Tolerance comes in.

Fault Tolerance allows you the flexibility for your systems to respond in a productive manner when a machine fails in your system. Continuous operation is its bread and butter. 🍞

Physical locations

If two systems crash in a forest, does anyone hear it? 🌲🌲

The short answer is, yes. Another common tactic in building insulated distributed systems is to think deeply about the physical locations of the machines you use.

Why does this matter? Let me share a scenario with you.

Your machines are co-located in a datacenter on the east coast; a tropical storm hits that location and wipes power from the entire datacenter.

What happens now? Your system does not have anywhere to fail over to, and you are out of luck.

A better approach might be to split your machines on each coast, West and East, respectively. When one fails, the other can still operate.

Split computations

For more delicate systems, think financial, it makes sense to dedicate pieces of computations throughout your system.

By splitting up computation that a system performs, you can insulate yourself from malicious attacks. When highly impactful systems share the load of a process, it makes attacking a single point much less successful.

Challenges:

Concurrency

Simply put: The more machines you have in a system, the more complicated it can get.

Remember when I mentioned a strength of distributed systems was the ability to perform several computations at once? That can also lead to some head scratching moments.

As an example:

You have two processes that are performing computations and writing to a database. If you query your database too soon, your processes might not be complete.

Partial failures

A certainty of computing is failure. A partial failure is certainly more favorable than a complete failure, however, they can produce just a large headache.

Performance

Remember when I alluded to more computers = more performance?

That was not completely true. It takes a critical eye and sound strategy to properly tune a distributed system and reap the performance benefits.

As an example: let's talk about consistency.

In our Concurrency example, I painted a picture of two separate processes performing computations and updating a single datastore.

To expand on this example: let's say that we really want to ensure that our datastore always has the latest values present. We do not want to run the risk of returning out-of-date data.

This comes at a cost, and is commonly referred to as Strong Consistency.

Of course, you should strive to have the most complete data available as often as possible, but remember, this does come at a cost.

In Summary

Distributed Systems is a vast topic, and one I could spend months writing about. I hope this introduction post was helpful to you in understanding:

What a Distributed System is
When using a Distributed System makes sense
What benefits Distributed Systems offer
What challenges you might face when working with a Distributed System

In my next post, I will dive into a pioneering technology within the Distributed Systems world: MapReduce.

Thanks for reading!

My Top 10 Albums of 2021

Martin Cartledge — Thu, 16 Dec 2021 19:20:47 +0000

Every year I tell myself, "I hope there are ten (new) albums I enjoy enough to reflect on at the end of the year".

And at the end of every year, I tell myself, "There were so many albums that brought so many memories and emotions, I am not sure I can slim down ten of them for a Top 10 Albums of This Year list".

A good problem to have! Let's rip the band-aid off, nice and early.

My top 10 albums of 2021 are:

Genghis Tron, Dream Weapon

I was not too familiar with Genghis Tron when this album fell in my lap early on in the year. I want to say that I had watched the original Tron movie around the time I found this album, and I felt it was a continuation of how the movie made me feel. Like I was pulled from Earth and plopped into a foreign planet. I fell in love with the duality of the subdued instrumentals and the aggressive wave of sound that filled my headphones. This album is a journey and I was ready for it, every time.

The Armed, Ultrapop

A friend of mine (hey Sean!) told me about this band sometime around April or May. All I knew about them was the guitarist (and architect) of Converge, Kurt Ballou was somehow involved with this project and you could tell he was. That, along with the endorsement of my buddy Sean was all I needed to dive headfirst into Ultrapop. To put it as concisely as I can: this album was like the kind of deep breath you take when you are in complete isolation and reach the top of a mountain in a deeply forested area. Every time I thought I could pin down what they were going for, they would surprise me. It is a heavy, chaotic, catchy, synthy, and poppy masterpiece and I am so glad it came into my life this year.

Porter Robinson, Nurture

This was a total no-brainer for me. Porter's debut album, Worlds, was highly revered in my friend group; therefore, I developed an admiration of his production and style pretty quickly. I will admit, during his hiatus (between 2016-2019?) I did forget about his music from time-to-time. The cave I was living in must have been really off of the grid because it took me far too long to realize that he released Nurture this year. I think I saw a single on a Spotify playlist and uncontrollably uttered holy shit. That holy shit held up. This album felt like an escape for me, while simultaneously bringing me into the present in a magnified way. Everything wrapped up in this album is magic, the hooks, the production, the lyrics, everything. What are you still doing here? Go listen!

Vince Staples, Self-titled

This was long overdue, right? I will admit, up until this year I was mere a causal listener of Vince's. This year completely blew the roof off of that. You may say, what could a 22 minute album offer? To be completely honest, this album takes you by the hand from the very beginning. Time is secondary when you are listening to it. The production of this album paired with Vince's lyrical caliber and delivery stand alone on the top of a mountain, let's call it Mt Vince. Also - the storytelling in these songs ya'll. In a genre filled to the brim with material gloating, and clout chasing Vince brings a refreshing authenticity into frame. Try to stop yourself after listening to this album once through.

Deafheaven, Infinite Granite

Real quick, let's get the that one hipster black metal poser band that went new wave haters filtered out. Often times, when a band really takes a step outside of the norm creatively they are met with a lot of hate and entitlement and that is a bummer. Not only did Deafheaven take a chance here, they did what they wanted to do as artists and I admire the shit out of that. Deafheaven kept the traits that make their music so special and amplified it on this release.

Fiddlehead, Between the Richness

Another album with a short runtime; however, Fiddlehead make every measure count. How did they make each song so heartfelt while also making it so catchy and easy to sing-along with? I am not sure but I love it. It is hard to listen to this one and not feel refreshed in an unexplainable way. Also, the singer was the front man of Have Heart in the 2000s? That is super cool that he is still releasing music. You have to admire staying true to what you want to produce.

Mogwai, As the Love Continues

Let's face it. Soundscapes and moody instrumentals are Mogwai's bread and butter. If you are familiar with Mogwai's catalog, it should not surprise you that this album oozes traditional Mogwai while exhibiting their trait of continuing to push the walls around their creative bubble. I listened to this one a lot more in the fall, who can blame me? Fall in Colorado is beautiful, dreary at times, and most importantly, colorful. That is the best way I can sum up this album, colorful.

Knocked Loose, A Tear in the Fabric of Life

I turned 31 this year, so I will admit it does feel a little strange singing along to angsty music. But you know what? Knocked Loose has always made me not care about that. They have their unique characteristics that are stitched into every release, and in a genre that is full of copy-cats and unoriginal execution, Knocked Loose not only continually raises the bar, but surpasses it and sets new heights for other artists. This album was also the first concept album for the band, how cool is that? Gotta love those.

Portrayal of Guilt, Christfucker

I discovered this band a few years ago thanks to the YouTube algorithm. I think the first video I saw of theirs was an Audiotree performance and holy shit. I still don't know what gripped me first: the intensity, the chaos, the delivery, or the fact that they pulled all of these elements off as a three piece. I have come to expect every Portrayal of Guilt release to feel like the fastest, scariest ride at an amusement park. There are no delusions of what you are in for, and you can not help but walk towards it to experience it. Once you are done, you can't help but go back for more.

Gatecreeper, An Unexpected Reality

Of all genres of music I listen to on a regular basis, black metal is the one I am least familiar with. I was introduced to Gatecreeper a few years ago by a friend (hey Mike!) and was immediately hooked. What struck me first was the lack of gimmicks the band had. For them, it felt like they just genuinely cared about releasing music that they liked themselves. I love that honesty. Ironically I think that is the best way for people to enjoy music you release, to be stripped of flash, glam, and gimmicks. If the music can carry the weight, that is what most people care about. So whether you want to go on a scorpion smashing spree in the Arizona desert, hit up the local skate park, or take your kid to school, this is the soundtrack for you, metal-dad fans (like myself).

My new podcast Atomic Jolt

Martin Cartledge — Wed, 24 Nov 2021 22:11:03 +0000

I started a podcast, Atomic Jolt!

What?

Atomic: a small component (or unit) in a larger system⠀
⠀

Jolt: an unexpected force that prompts an action, feeling, or change

Why?

We often underestimate how small experiences affect us.

The conduits of these experiences come in many forms: movies, books, games, hobbies, and more.

These small moments of inspiration, enlightenment, or happiness tend to have a ripple effect that follows us throughout our lives.

These experiences are often sparked from a single moment, a small powerful change.⠀
⠀
Atomic Jolt discusses these moments from their origin. The stories are unique; however, moments of small powerful change is something we all share.

Where?

You can find the Atomic Jolt podcast anywhere you listen to podcasts. Click here to listen now!

It's Okay to Say "No"

Martin Cartledge — Sat, 09 Jan 2021 22:40:32 +0000

Picture this. Your manager comes to you and asks, can you squeeze in some extra work before the big deadline?

You want to be a team player, and impress upper management, but you are not sure you can actually pull it off.

You tell your manager Sure thing, I can get that done no problem!

Of course, what you are doing is not wrong, however, you can be establishing a new expectation without even realizing it.

The next time a last-minute ask or change in requirements surfaces, your manager will assume you can rise to the occasion because you did previously.

Before I continue, let me reiterate. There is nothing wrong with going above and beyond at your job.

With that being said, I think this can quickly turn into an issue if you do not feel comfortable with saying No.

Telling someone No is not a way to upset them or hurt their feelings. It is an honest answer that reflects how you feel.

If you do not feel confident about the new changes or added work before that big deadline, be honest about it!

You might think that your boss will be upset and take it out on you, but in reality, they will more than likely respect you more for being 100% honest and realistic.

Occasionally telling someone No is not only a healthy way to be fair to yourself, it also can help build trust amongst relationships of your peers or your boss.

When you trust someone, you feel happier to work with them, right? It is a no-brainer. Everyone can benefit from open communication and honesty.

It will not always be easy to say, but it will pay off in the end.

Be fair to yourself, say No more often.

Am I Smart Enough to Be a Software Developer?

Martin Cartledge — Fri, 08 Jan 2021 22:40:32 +0000

The tech industry is great at a lot of things, but instilling confidence is not always one of them.

If you are struggling with feeling comfortable in your place in the software industry, let me tell you this: You are smart enough.

Do you like coding? You are smart enough.

Do you enjoy CSS? You are smart enough.

Do you write bugs? You are smart enough.

Do you make mistakes? You are smart enough.

The software industry is not like what you see on NCIS.

There are so many different niches in this industry and it is not possible for one person to know it all.

If you are currently employed as a software developer, let me take a moment to tell you this: You are smart enough to be where you are.

Looking to break into the industry? Feel like you do not have what it takes? If you work hard at it, you will land a job, You are smart enough.

At the end of the day, we are all human beings.

No one has it all figured out.

It is okay not to know everything, no one ever will.

Being yourself is the best thing you can do.

Be comfortable in the things you know, and content with the things you do not know.

Your strengths are someone’s weaknesses.

We all need each other.

How to Track Your Job Search

Martin Cartledge — Thu, 07 Jan 2021 22:40:32 +0000

Okay, you have decided to start looking for a new job.

Admittedly, this is a process that people are not too fond of, generally speaking.

While I am pretty certain that I can not convince you to thoroughly enjoy the job searching process, I can share a method I have used multiple times in my previous job searches that has made the process feel much more organized and productive.

It all starts with a spreadsheet.

Create a ledger of your progress

First, create a new spreadsheet and title it My Job Search Journey.

Next, I suggest you create six-column headers:

Company Name

A pretty obvious one, but a pretty important piece of information to capture.

No one wants to start an interview and completely space the name of the company they are interviewing for.

Position

If you are applying to multiple companies and positions, things can get jumbled up pretty easily.

There are so many different titles in the modern tech landscape.

You want to make sure that you remain mindful of each position you are applying for now, so you can easily recall this prior to an interview at this company.

Link to Job

Eventually, you are going to attract interest from a company you apply to, awesome!

At first, you are excited, and then suddenly a wave of anxiety falls over you.

You do not recall applying for this position and are completely spacing the pertinent details for the role.

This is why inserting a direct link to the job posting is a prudent move.

Not only does this allow you to quickly recall important details of the company and its mission, but it also gives you great references for talking points during your interview with them.

These references can range from company ethos that you can speak to from personal experience or technology they use that you have also worked with.

Date Applied

At first, this data point might not seem too relevant but, I think it can serve (at least) two purposes.

It helps serve as a metric of how many applications you have submitted in a day, week, month

This can serve as a huge confidence boost, especially on days that you feel that the job search is never-ending. With date data captured, you can look back and reflect on all of the hard work you have put into the search, even before you get interviews.

That alone is hard work and you should be proud of that!

It can offer insight into how long a standard interview process can go

In my post, How to Prepare for a Software Developer Interview, I explain the steps of the interview process.

This process can vary depending on the position and company, but being able to look back at an initial date through where you are currently at with a company can be another rewarding metric.

The interview process can be long and taxing, however, as each day moves past your initial application you can use this metric to give yourself another internal confidence boost. Wherever you are at today is farther than where you were yesterday.

Be proud of that!

Application Status

After several applications paired with several interviews all at different stages, things can get really difficult to keep straight in between the ears.

This is where the Application Status column can really help.

If a company reaches out to you to schedule an interview, start keeping track of the date, time, and type of interview each step along the way.

This can help keep awareness high for your immediate priorities, as well as a good way to avoid double-booking interviews for yourself.

I also suggest keeping track of applications that you were rejected from in this column.

By keeping track of your successes as well as your failures in the job search, you make it easier to examine your success rate.

If you find that out of one hundred companies, you are only getting five replies, it might be time to examine the things you have control over, your resume and, if you have one, your cover letter.

All-in-all, having these data points really helps you solidify the cause of why you are or are not getting the results you want in your job search.

Notes

Even if you are applying to jobs full-time, it can be really difficult to keep details of each job you have an interest in straight.

The last column, Notes, is essentially a placeholder for miscellaneous thoughts that you have about the company, position, or interview process.

This is also a great place to write reminders for whichever step of the interview you are in.

i.e. Company ethos: Think of the end-user at all costs. Mention user acceptance meeting experience!

If you spend a little bit of time to jot down a few notes that you think would be helpful during an interview process for a company, they usually go a long way for you and help you stand out more as a candidate.

More thorough preparation and thoughtful questions or experiences you discuss will always bode more favorable to the interviewer, it shows you have a genuine interest in the position/company.

The Final Product

Next step: crush the interview!

If you have spent time on the job search and tracked your journey, I can not promise you that you will get an interview at each company you apply for, however, I can promise you will feel more prepared and organized at each step along the way.

If you have put in the time and landed interviews, congrats! I wish you all the best on your journey.

If you are just beginning the job search process, good luck! You got this.

New to software development and trying to land an interview? Take a look at my post on Getting an Interview as a Software Developer.