DEV Community: Nia McCash

Do as I Say, not as I Do

Nia McCash — Tue, 05 Jan 2021 17:25:14 +0000

One fallacy I've learned recently as a senior developer is that I can always advise others to do as I have done.

That is a myth because it does NOT always lead to success!

When faced with a decision, my natural tendency is to go with what's worked for me in the past. But, when advising others I have to remember that what's worked for me may not work for someone else.

As a senior developer, I can take more risks with my work. If I mess up, I have earned enough credit, trust, and goodwill with my coworkers/management that they know my mistake is not a reflection of shoddy workmanship or unprofessionalism. It's not because I don't care about my work or my team or the organization. There is less room for bad assumptions. But the same can't always be said for someone else, particularly if it's someone junior or perhaps new to the organization.

Sometimes, there is a valid reason to say: Do as I say, not as I do.

What Multiple Choice Tests Taught Me About Time Management

Nia McCash — Mon, 23 Nov 2020 17:34:56 +0000

[Photo by Green Chameleon on Unsplash]

In my 2nd year at university, I took a mandatory course called “Principles of Programming Languages” in which I was taught functional programming languages (like Lisp and ML). As part of this course, the professor gave us an impossible midterm. It was all multiple choice questions, but there were far more questions than could be completed in the 1 hour time limit.

The students didn’t know this at the time. The class average for the test was abysmal. Some of the students who usually got top grades received poor grades on that test. I did surprisingly well.

After the test was graded, the professor explained that he purposefully added a lot of questions for the allotted time frame. He wanted us to learn better test-taking strategies, which includes not getting stuck for too long on a question that you aren’t sure of. The class groaned and complained, of course. We weren’t supposed to be tested on our ability to take a test. We were supposed to be tested on our knowledge of Lisp and ML.

To be honest, I don’t remember if the professor ended up adjusting the marks, but I did learn something unexpected.

I did well on the test because I knew the optimal strategy for taking a multiple choice exam - don’t get stuck wasting your time on a question you are unsure of. When stuck on a question, I answer with my best guess, make a note of the question number, and move on. I come back to these questions at the end of the test, if I have time.

Prior to that particular test, I hadn’t really thought about this strategy. It was just something that made sense to me, something I did by default. My professor and his impossible test made me realize that I had a strategy for multiple choice tests and it was one that works well!

Today, I know I learned a number of things from that experience including:

The importance of having a plan before setting out to complete a task, especially more complex ones - knowing the best strategy to take for a multiple choice can result in an improved grade.
Don’t lose sight of the big picture - it’s not as important to work out the one question that I’m stuck on, as it is to complete the test successfully.
The importance of self-awareness/self-reflection - I now know how my approach to a multiple choice exam type situation and can mindfully choose to continue with my strategy.

15+ years later...

I run into a similar situation in the work place. Instead of a multiple choice test, we had a number automated tests to run and only a short period of time in which to complete all test runs.

We were preparing for a major upgrade and we were not always very disciplined with updating our automated tests. So, we needed to run them prior to the upgrade to see if any fail, so we could note that any tests which fail prior to the upgrade are likely not failures that are caused by the upgrade.

There were 3 possible reasons for a test to fail:

We forgot to update the test when we updated a feature.
A timing issue - unfortunately some tests would fail due to a timing issue and would usually pass if run again.
A feature is genuinely broken, even prior to the upgrade.

(If you’re cringing at how broken/immature our development and testing processes are - I hear you, but stay with me. That’s not the point of this particular story...)

Our junior developer had one day to run all the tests and to determine which of the 3 reasons each failing test fell under. If the test failed because we forgot to update it, then we could quickly update the test. If the test failed due to a timing issue, then we would need to run the test again. If the test failed due to a genuinely broken feature, then we would need to make a note of it.

The problem was that with each failing test, the junior developer had to troubleshoot to determine which of the 3 types of failures he had in order to take appropriate actions. When I checked in with him a little past halfway through the work day to see how he was progressing, he had completed less than half of the tests. Rather than letting me know he was behind schedule, he brought to my attention one of the failing test, presumably the one he was currently looking at to get my help with diagnosing it.

It seemed to me that he had gotten stuck in the multiple choice test trap and was not going to be able to complete all the tests before the end of the day. I asked him to focus on running all of the tests at least once first. The testing framework was such that each failure would have some information as to why the test had failed. In a pinch, senior developers can usually discern from these logs which of the 3 reasons caused the test to fail.

Having been given an important task, and being eager to learn and to work, our junior developer dove right into the task without first planning - figuring out what his strategy would be.

In our professional and personal lives...

Many of us have more tasks than there are hours in the day. While the multiple choice test situation is not a perfect analogy for everything in life, and I’m not suggesting that you can skip the unsure or difficult parts of life and come back to it later, I still think it’s important to be self-aware (to know what your defaults are and whether or not they need improvement),, to not lose sight of the big picture, and often, it’s helpful to have a plan.

Turns out... the ability to plan, to be able to see the big picture, and to be self-aware are a kind of professional super power.

Handy Git Commands for Working with Git/GitHub - Learned via Hacktoberfest

Nia McCash — Thu, 15 Oct 2020 18:43:07 +0000

Here are 2 handy git commands I learned, thanks to Hacktoberfest 2020, and am bookmarking for myself via this post. Perhaps these will also be helpful to some of you.

How to configure an individual repository to use a specific user/email address

For example, you may want to do this if you are working on a corporate laptop or on a computer where the global configurations are for your company's account, and you want to use a personal account for your Hacktoberfest participation.

How to update a forked GitHub repository

If you forked a repository (repo), made some changes, submitted your pull request (PR), had your PR accepted and merged (congratulations!🎉), then your forked repo may now be out-of-date. If you want to continue to contribute to the same project over time, you will want to update your forked copy of the repo.

When Work-Life Balance Goes Out the Window

Nia McCash — Fri, 07 Aug 2020 00:05:17 +0000

Work-Life Balance While Working from Home

Earlier this year, many people went into quarantine, abruptly transitioning to working from home. For me it started in mid-March.

In working from home, especially to those of us new to it, there was a danger that the lines between work and life blurred. It became even more important to have boundaries in order to have balance. I started to notice (perhaps because I was paying more attention to them) more articles and comments about work-life balance and preventing burnout on my Twitter feed.

Since I landed a more senior role last year and especially since the lockdown, I had been articles and advice on leadership, many of which encouraged people to model work-life balance behaviours for their team

by taking their lunch breaks,
taking vacation and time off,
allowing kids to show up in video conference meetings.

These felt even more important and emphasized with so many folks suddenly working from home.

So, for a while, I tried to follow the advice, to model good work-life balance for my team. I encouraged my colleagues to wrap up their work at the end of the work day and take their evenings off as they would have if they had been working in the office. I avoided booking meetings during the lunch hours. I refrained from sending emails after hours as much as possible.

For the rare occasion that I did send after-hours emails, I added a new line to my regular email signature which said “My working hours may not be your working hours. Please do not feel obligated to reply outside of your normal work schedule” -- full credit to Chloe Condon for the idea

Chloe Condon 🎀

@chloecondon

Took inspo from some folks at @Microsoft & added "My working hours may not be your working hours. Please do not feel obligated to reply outside of your normal work schedule." to my email signature & now I feel like less of a bad person when I send a late-night email. 🙌

18:10 PM - 13 Aug 2019

For a while, I was doing well. Then, the second half of July hit.

Working at a higher education institution, the demands of the September start of the new academic term started to rush in, demands which became greater and more pressing given the unpredictable pandemic. The delicate work-life balance that I’d crafted and meticulously modeled started to fall apart.

Coincidentally, at the same time that my work load started to increase drastically, I came across this Harvard Business Review article - parts of which resonated with me.

I learned that it is ok to have my work-life balance thrown out of whack, at least temporarily.

The article starts:

You’re an accountant deep in tax season, a junior doctor in residency, or an entrepreneur juggling a startup and an actual baby. Many of us go through seasons of life when we have very little personal time.

It reminded me that my crazy work load is seasonal and temporary.

The article continues:

While this kind of overwork is not ideal, there are undoubtedly situations in which it becomes a necessity or makes personal sense… At times like this, when having full weekend off seems like a distant dream, advice on the importance of maintaining work-life balance, reducing the stress, and getting enough sleep can feel like a slap in the face.

I read that and realized that it wasn’t healthy for me to give myself a hard time for not maintaining the ‘ideal’ work-life balance.

I shouldn’t feel bad for working the extra hours that I’ve had to put in. I shouldn’t take the continuous feed of work-life balance posts on social media as a criticism or scolding on my life. That kind of thinking wasn’t helping.

I am fortunate enough to be in a position where I have a job that I really like. So following another Twitter advice, I reframed my thinking.

pat wadors

@wadors

I get to! #findingtheopportunity

23:20 PM - 15 Mar 2019

I get to be busy. And it’s ok because I can handle it. And it will be temporary.