Episode 328: Fear of sudden firing and reducing the lottery factor

Published: Oct. 31, 2022, noon

In this episode, Dave and Jamison answer these questions:

\n\n
    \n
  1. \n

    I\u2019ve joined a team at a small startup and our team lead has mentioned in passing a few times about a developer they used to have but had to let go. Not in a malicious way but just as a matter of fact when it\u2019s come up organically. Now it\u2019s eating at me because I\u2019m not sure if I\u2019ll ever go down that path and I want to know what they did so I can avoid the same fate. I\u2019ve always been a top performer at other companies but now I\u2019m wondering if this would be the one place where standards are higher than what I\u2019m used to. I really like it here and don\u2019t want to lose my spot. Realistically my fear isn\u2019t that I\u2019d get fired in my first six months but more that I would fail to respond to constructive feedback over the course of a year and end up getting let go in the same manner. Do you have any advice?

    \n
  2. \n
  3. \n

    Hello! Long time lurker, first time question server.

    \n\n

    I am an intermediate software engineer and I work on a team that has a really tenured senior engineer. His attention is often required for a lot of things and the team can sometimes get blocked by him being pulled into many different directions.

    \n\n

    As someone that is trying to grow into a senior engineer myself, what are some ways to take some of the load off of him and improve the bus factor?

    \n
  4. \n