DEV Community: Metadevelopment

How to be a Star Engineer - A summary

Stepan Kuzmin — Mon, 21 Oct 2019 09:17:05 +0000

This is a summary of the How to be a Star Engineer paper by Robert E. Kelley. It’s a roundup of the research committed at Xerox PARC more than 30 years ago with the goal to figure out what really makes software engineers effective and top-performing.

This paper is a must-read on communications for the members of the MTDV community. It presents nine basic strategies in order to increase your efficiency and performance as a software engineer. I highly recommend this paper if you want to grow and strive to become a STAR engineer.

The path to stardom

Most people have preconceptions about what causes star productivity, and most of their notions are as wrong as can be.

Workers and their bosses tend to disagree on who the star performers are.

There were no quantifiable differences between star performers and other workers based on 45 factors (cognitive, psychological, social, and organizational characteristics) that managers and star performers close to the action believed led to outstanding performance.

Most engineers come to the workplace with more than enough potential to succeed splendidly, but most end up as run-of-the-mill. The stars were not standouts because of what they had in their heads but because of how they used what they had. The productivity mystery lay in learning how to transform their talents into high productivity — much like turning potential energy into kinetic energy. Stars, we saw, are made, not born.

Nine work strategies

The authors found that you need to change how you do your work and how you work with others. Star performers in fact do their work quite differently from the pack. They weave their starring strategies into a consistent pattern of day-to-day behavior. But any engineer with the necessary smarts and motivation can acquire their power.

Stellar performance is based on a set of nine interlocking work strategies. They are ranked in order of importance and synthesized into an expert model.

1. Blazing trails

Average performers, imagine initiative is coming up with ideas for doing their job better or volunteering for little extras in the workplace, like planning the annual picnic or recruiting people for the blood drive.

Star-quality initiative means:

Seeking out responsibility above and beyond job description, while still completing your core assignment.
Undertaking extra efforts for the benefit of co-workers or the larger group.
Stepping willingly into the gaps between job descriptions where important work often pops up, grabbing your share of it, and doing a bang-up job on it.
Sticking tenaciously to an idea or project and following it through to successful implementation.

Average performers suppose that only big initiatives worth the effort, while star performers always looking for day-to-day efforts, that had the same impact over time.

Star performers also believe that initiatives will increase their experience.

Any newcomer in a unit of professionally skilled, competitive workers must demonstrate initiative. Such behavior impresses managers, but more importantly, it impresses your co-workers and customers. Co-workers look for people who do not lock themselves within a rigid job description. They want colleagues, who are willing to step into the gaps between jobs because they know that if the new worker does less than her or his share, the rest of them will have to carry more of the load. They need people who extend themselves — whether it be to their colleagues, to the customers, or to the changing needs of the marketplace.

2. Knowing who knows

Average performers think networking just means building a grapevine for learning the latest office gossip, or socializing with people in their field and with executive head hunters who can help them in future job hunting.

A star knows it is vital to develop ahead of time dependable two -way streets to the experts, who will help each other complete the tasks critical to the bottom line. The goal is to minimize the knowledge deficit that every engineer discovers as she or he measures up to a new job.

Stars' networks differ from typical workers' networks in two important respects. They have the right people in them, and they are faster.

3. Proactive self-management

Average performers believe self-management means managing time and projects better. If their work is done within schedule, budget, and specifications, then they must be good self-managers.

Star producers know that much more than time or project management is at stake. These requirements you are expected and paid to meet. Their work strategy helps them proactively create opportunities, direct work choices, perform extra well on the job, and carve out a career path. It enables them to develop a portfolio of talents and work experiences that increases their value to the company.

4. Getting the big picture

Average performers suffer from tunnel vision. They see the world from their viewpoint only and keep pushing the same points over and over again.

Stars, in contrast, step outside their own viewpoint and adopt a variety of perspectives: "How do my customers think about this? What do my competitors think? How about my colleagues? What about top management or the shareholders?" Because they can evaluate the relative importance of a variety of viewpoints, they are able to improve on the product or develop better solutions to problems.

5. The right kind of followership

Average performers believe that followership — that is, the relationship with people having organizational authority and power over them — means showing managers and co-workers that they know how to toe the line, take orders without question, and not threaten the leader.

Star producers learn very early the importance of a more positive form of followership, of being a good No. 2 — that it is often more important to make the assist than the score. They are actively engaged in helping the organization (and usually the leader) succeed, while exercising independent, critical judgment about what needs to be done and how to do it. Star followers work cooperatively with a leader to accomplish the organization's goals even when there are personality or workplace differences.

6. Teamwork as joint ownership of a project

Average performers think teamwork means working cooperatively with others on a project or problem and doing your part on the team.

Star producers take it to a higher level. They see it as a complex series of skills that involve taking joint "ownership" of goal-setting, group commitments, work activities, schedules, and group accomplishments. It also means being a positive contributor to the group's dynamics — helping everyone feel part of the team, dealing with conflict, and assisting others in solving problems.

7. Small-l leadership

Average performers are fascinated by leadership with a big L: Big Vision, Big Charisma, Big Success. To them, leadership seems an in-born trait whose owners can flaunt their egos by being in charge, having the power to make most key decisions, and delegating whatever does not interest them.

Star performers, on the other hand, view leadership as a work strategy that builds on expertise and influence to convince a group of people to unite on a substantial task. The undertaking can involve a range of efforts — helping the group create a clear vision of where they want to go along with the high commitment and trust necessary to get there; finding the resources to accomplish the task; and shepherding the project to successful completion.

8. Street smarts

Average performers focus overly on ingratiating themselves as the surest way to get ahead in the workplace. They also pay obsessive attention to office politics or patronizingly ignore it.

Star producers know that any large organization has legitimate competing interests. Organizational savvy enables them to steer their way amid these clashes, to promote cooperation, address conflicts, and get things done. It can involve expertise in managing individual or group dynamics, understanding when to avoid conflicts and when to meet them head on, and knowing how to make allies out of potential enemies.

9. Show and tell

Average performers think Show-and-Tell means getting noticed by upper management through slick presentations, long-winded memos, and public displays of affection for their own work. They focus primarily on their image and their message, not on the audience.

Star producers use a series of skills involving selecting which information to pass on to which others and developing the most effective, user- friendly format for reaching and persuading a specific audience. At its highest level, Show-and-Tell involves selecting either the right message for a particular audience or the right audience for the particular message.

Becoming a star

Becoming highly productive does not require magic. When engineers produce at undistinguished levels, it is seldom because they are less capable — it is because they never learned the work strategies that lead to high productivity. Once these engineers are given access to the star strategies, their productivity takes off.

Star Performer productivity is not the result of innate traits — like IQ, personality, or character. Productivity depends on how they do their jobs. The everyday work strategies of the star performers, not gimmicky products or working long hours, make the difference. When certain star performer strategies are systematically integrated into everyday work routines, then productivity improvement rates can double. For those groups excluded from the "old boys" network, like minorities and women, productivity improvement rates can increase 400 percent.

Efficient Learning Strategy

Alexey Migutsky — Mon, 16 Sep 2019 09:15:18 +0000

Originally published at our Metadevelopment blog.
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Two phases

There are two basic modes of learning, which are quite different in their essence. We call those “Discovery” and “Acquisition”. Both of them require a bit different approaches and environment to enhance and speed up your learning.

If you do not know exactly what you should learn, or you don’t have a specific goal, you are in a discovery mode.

If you know exactly what you need to learn, you are in an acquisition mode.

These two modes are similar in nature to diffused and focused thinking.

Discovery is a less intense and slower process than acquisition. Acquisition requires more deep work and deliberate practice than discovery.

Discovery

Discovery mode is driven by curiosity. The main goal of this mode is to enhance your outlook and broaden your understanding.

In this mode, you should get as many diverse options, opinions and ideas as possible.

The main tools for this mode are experimentation and variety of examples. Here is a great video "Making Badass Developers", highlighting the essence of experimentation and high-quality examples.

To increase diversity, it’s great to have an access to a community or environment, which facilitates knowledge sharing and expressing opinions freely. This is exactly why we have #share- and #discuss channels, as well as Skills matrix and MTDV Mindset resources.

An efficient strategy for discovery mode boils down to the following:

Surround yourself by different and diverse opinions and outlooks. Meeting and talking to different people is a good tactics here.
Spend time overviewing different mental models. Skim-read books, articles and opinions on the topic. You don’t need to dive deeper yet.
Experiment with things which look fun or interesting. Proactively try applying what you are learning and conduct thought experiments.
Seek as many examples of the topic you are interested in as possible. Look for opposing opinions and pay attention to differences in mental models.
Look into what experts on the topic say. Read bestseller books, watch talks and social media discussions.

Acquisition

Acquisition mode is driven by result orientation. The main goal of this mode is to acquire a skill or a mental model.

Feedback is crucial for progress and efficient learning. Be proactive and ask for feedback, do not wait for it. Design fast feedback loops to assess your results and progress faster. One of the best ways to create a feedback loop is to find a mentor - someone knowledgeable in the area who can lead you through complexity of the topic.

If you can, try not to learn alone. Join a group, find an accountability partner or a learning partner, find a mentor. All of these will improve your motivation, commitment and feedback loops.

An efficient strategy for acquisition mode boils down to the following:

Find a mentor, knowledgeable in the topic/skill you want to acquire. If you have an exact goal in your mind, you can find a coach. If you know just a broader topic of interest, you can find a teacher/mentor who will guide your through.
Create a routine for deep work. You will need to focus and actively apply the skill you are acquiring. You will need a time and environment for that. Plan accordingly.
Work through different high-quality examples and exercises.
Seek feedback after every unit of progress. Try not to take this feedback personally. Even if you are not succeeding as fast as you would want, it does not mean you are incapable!
Reflect on your process and progress. It’s a good idea to have some kind of metrics or measurable results which you can use to assess your progress.

At Metadevelopment, we are designing our trainings with this strategy in mind. Our methodology includes mentoring and learning routine based on commitment and accountability partnership.

Crucial Differences

There is one crucial thing you should know: you cannot be in two different modes simultaneously. If you will switch between two modes, your efficiency will drop.

On the other hand, sometimes you should switch between modes to rest. Acquisition requires a lot of resources and focus and may be quite exhaustive.

If you are in discovery mode, your goal is to figure out an exact topic/model/skill you want to acquire. This is when you can switch to acquisition mode and learn the stuff fast and efficient.

The general strategy is similar to BFS algo: first, cover the breadth of topics shallowly and then go deeper into the one you think you need to learn in details.

Do you want to grow differently? Join Metadevelopment and get new superpowers!

Increasing Your Impact

Alexey Migutsky — Wed, 28 Aug 2019 07:49:57 +0000

Originally published at our Metadevelopment blog.
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One major thing which is required for your career growth is your ability to create value.

Let's talk about your impact - an amount of value created per unit of work.

I think you can easily find the relationship between impact and efficiency: the more impact you have, the higher is your efficiency.

The first principle of having a bigger impact is to focus on high-leverage activities. Remember the Pareto principle? This is exactly what you need to utilize.

Few examples of what you can do as a software developer to easily increase your impact:

Mentoring new people in your company.
There is a known fact that new employees take from 3 to 6 months to reach their normal level of productivity. In some cases it can take 2 years for an employee to reach an optimal performance.
If you can spend 1 hour a day for the first month of new hire (around 20 hours), you will spend around 1% of your annual work time (around 2000 hours) as an investment in your colleague's boosted performance. This can have a significant influence on their performance - hence providing a huge return of your time investment.
Taking part in interviewing process.
Improving the process, introducing new candidates to the company and conducting interviews are direct investments in your team and your product.
Getting great people onboard will have a huge return in a long run.
Stop reinventing the wheel and use other people's expertise.
It's better to invest your time into creating unique value rather than reinventing something which is already available. Open-source modules and components, 3rd party software, your colleagues experience and even outsourcing and freelance services are all viable options to get existing solutions faster.
Automating and optimizing the processes.
Some people say that manual repetition of work is the biggest sin of every programmer. You should not do what a machine can do for you.
A simple automation script can save several hours of team work in the long run.
If you optimize a build system and save 30 mins per day of waiting time, you will create 14 days of free time per year for a single developer. In a small team of 6 people it results in 3 man-months of additional time.
Learning and continuous self-improvement.
I will put this in bold: you should have a dedicated time at work for learning and self-improvement.
Nothing gives you the bigger impact and creates bigger leverage than investing into your abilities and available opportunities.

As you can see, the main topic (and principle) above is multiplying your efficiency by focusing on other people around you. And this is one of the major reasons why some software developers prefer to transition into management role - you can get the increased leverage faster.

Management is not the only possibility, though. The main idea is that if you want to grow past your glass ceiling you need to focus on increasing your impact.

Also, remember the second vital principle: your efforts should be visible. For example, if your boss does not know that you have mentored your colleagues and automated some mundane tasks, you won't be promoted sooner. You need to highlight your small wins and achievements and communicate the value your create.

As you can see, at some level relationships and communications become vitally important for your growth. Do not neglect those aspects and invest your time into mastering some soft skills.

Do you want to grow differently? Join Metadevelopment and get new superpowers!

DEMO Model: A Surprising Way To Be a Better Software Developer

Alexey Migutsky — Mon, 12 Aug 2019 07:22:50 +0000

Originally published at our Metadevelopment blog.
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You have probably seen some anonymous salary stats where there are people who earn twice and three times more than you, being at the same level as you. You may even know some people like that in your community.

Have you ever asked a question "What are they doing differently from me?" or "Why would anyone pay THAT amount of money for Javascript (Java/Go/PHP)!?"

Here is the truth: they are not doing something crazily different.

Most probably, their coding skills are quite the same you have! They just have some in-demand skills which accompany their coding skills and which they are known for.

So, what can we learn from those people and how can we level up our game?

DEMO Model

DEMO model is a handy abbreviation for a high-level set of skills:

💼 Domain Knowledge
🔧 Engineering
📢 Marketing,
👑 being Outstanding.

💼 Domain Knowledge

Domain Knowledge is very straightforward in its essence: knowing the rules of the business you are in.
You should understand how processes tick, how the rules are made, what viable strategies for your domain exist.

You should have the perspective (getting a big picture) of the business you are in.

Knowing the domain is beneficial in several ways:

It makes communications easier.
It helps to understand decision being made by "business people".
It helps to predict how the system may scale and change.

Business is a system. All things your create as a Developer exist withing this system and therefore are affected by it's rules.

If you have never thought about business as a system, there is a great book to introduce you to this concept: "E-Myth Revisited".

🔧 Engineering

In general, Engineering is creating systems with predictable systematic effects. Those effects are what people eventually pay for.

In our context, Engineering consists of:

Code construction.
System design.
Maintenance and Operation.
Security.
Usability.
and more...

Most programmers focus too much on code construction. New frameworks, best practices, OOP vs Functional languages - those topics do not matter as much.

If you find yourself focusing on code, you are missing a bigger picture:
We are paid not for producing well-crafted code. We are paid for solving problems with technologies.

Engineering is the most obvious part of DEMO model. Nevertheless, developers too often ignore "unrelated" part of the craft. Do not do that - expand your fundamental knowledge.

📢 Marketing

Marketing is the most negligible part of DEMO model. But marketing is the activity which multiply value your create.

Marketing is making people who need your app or service know that this solution exists.

Knowing marketing will help you to answer these questions:

How and Why people are buying your product or service?
Who are those people?
How do you get in touch with them?
Why do we need to ship some feature before specified deadline?
Why most people focus on features?

If you need an introduction to marketing, start with "Crossing the Chasm". This book is a bible of high-tech marketing.

👑 Being Outstanding

How can you be outstanding?
Ther are a lot of ways to do that, but most important things are that:

You work results should be visible. You need to learn how to talk about your results and surface hard-to-evaluate things. Teaching other people to solve the same problems is a very good way too.
You should be recognizable among your colleagues. Lending a helping hand often helps with that. As well as proactively taking responsibilities for cross-cutting things on the project.
You should be known outside your work for your specialization. Ideally, you want to be known among decision-makers (CEO/CTO/Hiring Managers/Business Owners) for your ability to solve problems with technologies. At the very least you need to be publicly recognizablein your professional community. This is where public speaking and networking help a lot.

All in all, being Outstanding boils down to Communication skills. One profound read that has completely changed my vision of being an effective engineer is this study from Bell Labs. It is considered an essential reading for Metadevelopment members.

How to Put This Knowledge Into Practice?

First, it's a good idea to make a basic self-assessment to understand how do you fit into the model. Answer this questions:

How much do I know about the business I am in?
What aspects of Engineering am I familiar with? Which aspects do I consciously use in my day-to-day work?
Do I really understand why people buy the product/service we are building?
Do people around know that I have that knowledge? Is it visible and understandable from my CV?

Second, make a plan on how to improve in the areas where you do not have much knowledge.
Start with the essential reading mentioned above. Find people who know more than you and learn from them.

Third and most important - put your new knowledge in practice!

Do you want to grow differently? Join Metadevelopment and get new superpowers!

One Simple Model To Help You Measure Your Growth

Alexey Migutsky — Sat, 03 Aug 2019 07:43:37 +0000

Originally published at our Patreon blog.
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There is one thing people are always missing when they start engineering their life. This thing is a good metric system. How do you measure and estimate your progress? What values do you need to optimize when you are making decisions?

For this exact case we suggest using TEMS model.

TEMS is an abbreviation for a group of resources:

Time ⏱
Energy ⚡️
Money 💰
Social Connectedness 👨‍👩‍👧‍👦

Time

Time is the most precious resource in your life, just because you cannot get more personal time. You can, though, exchange other resources for other people's time.

Your personal time has very peculiar properties:

It feels like there is never enough time
Time resource is depleting naturally
Sense of time is very unique between different people and cultures
Time and attention are two things your closest people will always value more than anything else.

Energy

Energy characterises your will-power, internal motivation, attention, ability to focus and general well-being. Also, you can think of Energy as a measure for health and stress recovery capacity.

Energy and Time comprises your basic resources for personal efficiency. Throughout your life you will convert your Energy and Time into other things and experiences. Energy and Time defines how many interests you can pursue and how many joys you can get from life.

Money

Money is the easiest to measure and easiest to convert resource. Money has a direct physical representation - you can see it and touch it.

This is why money is often used as a substitute measure to all other things: happiness (rich == happy), influence (rich == influential), well-being (rich == has more free time).

This is a very misleading frame of reference, though. Money can not buy all of those things.

Social Connectedness

Social Connectedness is the most underestimated and valuable resource. As human beings, we are born social. Our happiness depends on socialising and feeling love and acceptance.

Your Social Connectedness comprises of two main categories: friends & relatives and people you can benefit from (colleagues, employees, professional contacts). Both categories require your attention and time so that you can benefit from them.

A Secret of Success

All four resources are convertible: you can convert, for example, Time and Energy into Money and Social Connectedness.

If you are using TEMS model, then success will look like balancing and increasing all resources at once, as opposed to exchanging one resource for another.

Here is an example.

Imagine, you've got a great opportunity to work in an industry-leading startup. You know that they are eager to give a good value of options and their exit is kinda obvious for you.
The problem is that they will demand overtimes and a lot of mental activity from you - pushing the boundaries and learning cutting-edge stuff.

You tried to estimate the TEMS balance:

You can totally see that this opportunity will give you a lot of Money in 5 years, but will deplete your Time and Energy. Hopefully, you will be able to retain your Social Connectedness (meeting friends and relatives, keeping in touch with colleagues and industry pros).

Would you take this opportunity?

Would you take an opportunity to join a company where you will get less Money, but more free Time and freedom to meet people and network?

How does your latest job-related or home-related decisions map to this model?

Do you want to grow differently? Join Metadevelopment and get new superpowers!

How To Improve Your Thinking In One Step

Alexey Migutsky — Wed, 24 Jul 2019 17:02:01 +0000

Originally published at our Metadevelopment blog.
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Models are simplifications and abstractions of some patterns in the world or some parts of the system.We all think in models, be it consciously or unconsciously.

A better way of thinking is to transform your implicit models into explicit models and being able to control them. By controlling, I mean the ability to change the model and to apply the model in the fitting context.

To highlight the importance of models, we usually highlight these ideas:

Mental models are the essence of human thinking process. We all have some "thought structures" and "fundamental rules" in our heads that define our world view and mindset.
The essence of efficient communications is your ability to identify and peruse the mental models of your communication partner.
The most efficient learning happens when you can grasp and learn the superior mental models of your mentor.

A better way of thinking is to transform your implicit models into explicit models and being able to control them.

Why do we use models?

Our brain can not effectively hold and manipulate a big number of details. But we want to be able to understand, explain and predict the world around us.

There is one problem with all models: they are all wrong. Simple models can be useful without being "right," in an engineering sense.

The thing is: you do not need to have a perfect model to be able to use it (to make decisions or take actions based on the model).

The manifestation of models in Software Engineering is architecture and, obviously, business modelling. Those are two essential modelling skills you will need to acquire to grow over the level of mediocrity of our craft.

What is the difference between models and why you may choose one over another?

I would say that the best model for you is one that you can understand and use for making decisions and taking actions. Learning a new or a different model will enhance your resolution - your ability to see world in meaningful details.

An example of such differences in models is ShuHaRi and Dreyfus Model of Skill Acquisition. Both models describe how people learn new skills. ShuHaRi is older and more simplistic, but it still captures the essence of getting skills: a novice needs a set of rules to follow to get results, while a master needs a deeper philosophy and principles to enhance his mastery.

If you want to dive deeper in mental models, I would recommend taking this basics course. There is also a course on Coursera introducing you to some math-backed models. And here is a huge list of useful mental models.

If you want to see some mental models which are closer to our career, check this article.

Why are we talking about models at all?

At Metadevelopment we will learn and introduce several models which will help you to become a better software engineer and a better lifestyle engineer.

Internally, we are using ShuHaRi and Dreyfus models to design the courses and make your learning simpler. The whole idea of Metadevelopment is based on crowdsourcing and helping each other to learn more efficiently.

We will talk about models a lot. You should understand that most of those models are not profound objective truth. They are just tools, applicable in various contexts and situations. But learning those ideas and seeing them from various sides will develop your critical and analytical thinking. Practicing and experimenting will open up new possibilities and better understanding of yourself.

Do you want to grow differently? Join Metadevelopment and get new superpowers!

A Hidden Side of Procrastination

Alexey Migutsky — Thu, 18 Jul 2019 13:54:19 +0000

Originally published at our Metadevelopment blog.
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Very often, the essence of laziness, procrastination and lack of determination are our fears and limiting beliefs. The chance that your are not really lazy is quite high.

The biggest blocker in achieving things we want is not that we are lazy or having low willpower or having no time. The biggest blockers are our fears and our limiting beliefs.

Beliefs

Our beliefs seems to influence a lot of things:

Beliefs affect motivation.
Beliefs affect stress.
Beliefs affect our self-control.
Beliefs affect our potential to learn and change (Growth Mindset).

A self-limiting belief is something that you assume to be true that is limiting your progress. It can be manifested in a negative self-talk or pessimistic views on the world. Some examples are: “I can not earn more, because this number is a glass ceiling in our industry”, “people like me can not be entrepreneurs”, “I was always told I am bad at math, and hence I am bad programmer”.

Most of our beliefs are things we hold to be facts without any active verification from our side.
The good thing is that beliefs can be changed. A nice explanation of changing the attitude by reframing your beliefs can be found in a book called Learned Optimism. One more great source is a book called Feeling Good: The New Mood Therapy, which is the best first step to start with cognitive behavior therapy on your own.

Fears

Our fears do similar things: they prevent us from doing things we want.
The problem with fears is that they lie and that they are evasive.

A fear can be very subtle and can result in seemingly unrelated behavior - you watch a series instead of writing an article you've been thinking about the whole day. Why? Because you are afraid that this article won't be perfect. People won't like it. It's not good enough. It was not even written yet, but it is already not good enough!

Our brains is very bad as estimating possibilities and probabilities, especially the adversary conditions - when something can go wrongs.
Fears are what make us risk-averse and make us skip opportunities we are totally can harness.

Addressing the fears can help not just you, but also a bigger entity - a team.

What can you do about that?

First, there is a huge, but controversial idea: believe not what's true, but what's helpful. Even superstitions can be helpful.
Second, deliberately take small non-ideal steps instead of jumping into huge ambitious projects. Change does not happen instantly and in big amounts. It’s actually quite opposite: the more efforts you put into change, the bigger is the resistance.

Third, face your fears by stepping out of comfort zone. For example, take on rejection challenge to face your fear of rejection and see how it feels.

In general, start questioning your beliefs by conducting experiments to verify them.

A good starting point for working with beliefs and self-knowledge is Mark Manson’s Self-Knowledge guide.

Do you want to grow differently? Join Metadevelopment and get new superpowers!

How to Balance Your Work and Your Life

Alexey Migutsky — Thu, 11 Jul 2019 17:22:32 +0000

Originally published at our Metadevelopment blog.
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At Metadevelopment, we put a big focus on your personal life and sustainability of work-life balance. We do not think that your career and life are separate entities.

You work is influencing your happiness and well-being the same way as your general lifestyle.

We are focusing on mindset and actions. There are several things you can do to start balancing your life.

1️⃣ Start working with your wishes and wants.
You need a reference point to measure importance of various life aspects. The questions is: what problems do you want to solve yourself and what problems are not essential?

2️⃣ Start figuring out your values, purpose or mission.
At the very least, thinking about your mission and experimenting with your lifestyle and work to find your purpose will give you a general direction and motivation in your life. Start by reading a book called “The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People”.

3️⃣ Learn some basics about happiness.
Taking this course is highly recommended! It is evidence-based and contemporary and won’t take you much time. If you want to dive deeper, read “Solving for Happy”.

4️⃣ Figure out your relationships with control and lack of control.
You can’t control much things in life: environment, weather, other people thoughts.
You can't even control your emotions, but you can control your behaviors - your response to emotions.
Stoicism philosophy is a great example of long-lasting mindset based around lack of control and constant change of the world. “A Guide To The Good Life” is a great book to have an overview of stoic principles and ways to apply then in the modern life.

5️⃣ Take responsibility for your own Balance.
As soon as you realize that you are ultimately responsible for everything that happens to you, your life will start changing. It is very important to take care of yourself.

If you do not prioritise your life, someone else will.
- Essentialism. Greg McKeown

Essentialism is a good mindset to start taking control and responsibility of your life and figure out right priorities. Taking responsibility is based around making choices and being OK with the consequences.

6️⃣ Start doing some experiments and challenges to figure out your fears and limiting beliefs.
Your procrastination and idealism are heavily tied to your fears. Your subconscious brain hides some information from you based on your fears. You are missing opportunities around you because of your fears.

7️⃣ Start consciously choosing actions and non-actions.
You need to commit to doing something as well as to commit to not doing something.
The thing is - you have already chosen non-action in some aspects of your life, you just have done it unconsciously.

8️⃣ Start designing your personal unique lifestyle based on your values, commitments and wishes.
Consciously choosing your ambitions and setting right expectations from the surrounding reality is a key for a sustainable life. Probing the reality and enhancing your mental models is the only pragmatic attitude to growth and self-actualization.

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Pursuit of Productivity

Alexey Migutsky — Fri, 05 Jul 2019 17:33:12 +0000

Originally published at our Metadevelopment blog.
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Our world has gone crazy about Productivity. There are thousands of to-do apps in app stores and everyone wanna be as much productive as possible. I bet you know what I am talking exactly. The roots of this issue can be found in protestant work ethics.

We misinterpret and simplify productivity: we think it is measured by how much do you produce or how busy you are with several projects in parallel.

Also, people resort to being busy when they lack clarity and purpose of their work (you can read about this effect in a great book called "Essentialism").

Historically, a studying of productivity was bounded to factories producing physical goods. This analogy is very tempting. But we are knowledge workers and not factory workers. We do not produce the same way as factories does, though on a high level the work flow can be managed in a similar way. Our motivation is different from other types of work.

At Metadevelopment, we prefer a definition of productivity given in Trello productivity guide : "making sure you’re getting the right things done, in the right timeframe, in a successful and effective way".

This definition incorporates priorities, efficiency and timeliness of your projects.

Here is the crux: optimizing for productivity can be harmful! Here is a good example of an over-productive system. And here is a good explanation of how boredom can make you more creative.

Productivity and Software Engineering

It is very easy to get into the trap of optimizing for productivity when you treat yourself as a production unit or misinterpret "high performance".
Also, it's very easy to become a productivity junky if your only job is to just write code without questions asked.

Along with out intuition to pursue productivity, we are neglecting other effects and factors we need to be aware of as engineers:

Network effect (the more people are using your product - the more valuable it is)
Sustainability (enhancing the current situation without doing harm for the future situation)
Human Factors (taking in account safety, comfort, human error)
Social Influence (affecting a person’s emotions, opinions and behaviors)
Cognitive Biases (systematic pattern of deviation from norm or rationality in judgment)
Applied Ethics (the analysis of particular moral issues in private and public life)

Software Engineering is an application of systematic, disciplined, quantifiable approach to development, operation and maintenance of software (IEEE90 definition).

As an engineer, you can have an impact in every area of product development cycle. Why would you care only about being productive coder if you can be an efficient engineer?

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Work Misperception

Alexey Migutsky — Fri, 28 Jun 2019 15:22:10 +0000

Originally published at our Metadevelopment blog.
This is the first article from our Introduction series.
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The basics

Many Software Developers have a strange perception of their work, formed under the influence of their employers, colleagues and industry culture, treating their work as a competition with their colleagues.

Many managers have an even stranger perception, treating people as machines on an assembly line, trying to optimize the performance of the business system without understanding the human factor, fundamentals of knowledge work and software product development in general.

Many people are wondering, whether software development is an art, craft or engineering. Or a combination of all those aspects.

Also, there is a tendency to ban the word “career”, as if it is something dirty, political and unethical. Building your career is not the way to make more money. It is a way to empower you so that you can make what you really want.

At Metadevelopment, we try not to differentiate between work and life. Our work is an essential part of life. We came into Software Development because we want to create, build and enhance the world around us. Some people indeed have come to this industry just for money. Most of them have discovered that Software Development is a creative and empowering endeavor.

First and foremost, Software Engineering is a knowledge work. Our main capital is knowledge. We spend substantial time searching for information and learning new things. We use critical and creative thinking to solve problems. We experience the state of flow. We require mastery, autonomy, and purpose for day-to-day motivation.

Second, Software Engineering is a cross-disciplinary subject, including at least technologies, science, psychology, sociology and ethics.

Third, Software Engineering is tightly coupled to business and business systems. We work within businesses and with business systems, but we often neglect these relationships.

Software Engineering and Business

There is a huge, but barely noticeable misfit between business and software development. Business wants to identify and solve real-world problems for real people. Most developers want to solve hard challenges using cool technologies.

Those two worlds do not always overlap.

There are a lot of resources and studies to figure out success, efficiency, and impact of software projects. Individual efficiency is always linked to project success and team performance. It's not enough to be productive and single-handedly produce high-quality solutions for problems. It's also necessary to solve the right problems and enable others (including your future-self) to easily change the solution in the future.

If you want to become an expert in your field and help other people you need to learn how to identify and solve real-world problems using technologies and collaborating with other people.

It means you need to understand both engineering and business at the end of the day.

Focus on Development

Many developers think that it’s enough to be able to just build software from scratch. What they are missing is a bigger picture.

There is a definition of Software Engineering from IEEE90: “Software Engineering is an application of the systematic, disciplined, quantifiable approach to development, operation and maintenance of software.”

Notice the highlighted words: development, operation and maintenance. This is what you are expected to do as a software engineer.

At Metadevelopment, we differentiate four levels of professional maturity: programmer, developer, engineer and entrepreneur. We have a model of required skills for all those levels.

Programmer is a solo creator capable of delivering a working app. Developer is a team player, capable of working in an enterprise environment and building parts of the bigger system. Engineer is a systems maintainer, capable of analyzing complex environments and non-technical factors to make systems sustainable. Entrepreneur is an opportunity identifier, working with business systems on a high strategical level.

Focus on Hard Skills

At the beginning of our careers, we spend the most time and focus on getting hard skills: debugging, code construction, systems design, requirements analysis, etc.

It’s only natural that we start thinking that there is nothing more important in our industry than hard skills.

But this is not quite true! There are studies showing that “Star Performers” are differentiated from normal workers on criteria different from hard skills!

Here is an interesting test for you. It will show your attitude towards the performance of software engineers. It has just 12 questions. You can easily answer those in 5 minutes.

How many statements out of this 12 are true:

Star performers are born, not made.
Star performers are smarter than average performers (have higher IQs, are better problem solvers, or are more creative).
Star performers are more driven and ambitious than others.
Star performers have more leadership skills than others.
Clean desk people are more likely to be star performers than messy desk people.
Detailed time management and organizational systems are the keys to high productivity.
Star performers work longer hours and harder than average performers.
Star performers are more satisfied with their jobs than average performers.
Star performers are successful primarily because they play organizational politics and give slick presentations to upper management.
Minorities and women can seldom be as productive as people who are part of the "old boy" network.
People cannot sustain a doubled rate of productivity improvement for long time periods.
I would rather have a team with one star performer supported by four average performers than a team with five performers who are all in the top 5 percent.

Ok, so what is your answer?

Now, the revelation: neither of those statements are true!
We can totally understand your skepticism on that.

This is why we suggest you to read a research-based brochure called “STAR Engineer”. Over a thousand engineers from Bell Laboratories, 3M, and Hewlett-Packard contributed to the original research as both collaborators and subjects.
There is a similar study for managers called “Project Oxygen”.

This two studies may totally change your perception of Software Engineering. It totally has changed our mindset, and now we want to spread those ideas. Stay tuned and we will share our thoughts on productivity, career, lifestyle, work-life balance and personal growth.

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