When Engineering, Product, and Design (EPD) come together to create the first version of a given piece of software, it feels like everyone is on the same page and has the same priorities. But, once that initial implementation ships to users, the Product and Design departments tend to move on, leaving engineers to maintain the software. This creates an uncomfortable tension between the existing user experience (UX) and the underlying technical details. On today's show, we talk about that EPD tension and how we might work to mitigate it.

Follow the show and be sure to join the discussion on Discord! Our website is workingcode.dev and we're @WorkingCodePod on Twitter and Instagram. New episodes drop weekly on Wednesday.

And, if you're feeling the love, support us on Patreon.

With audio editing and engineering by ZCross Media.

This week on the show, we discuss a variety of web and web-adjacent topics. Adam is feeling dubious about recommending a career in web development to his children (is it still worth it)? Ben legitimately wants to understand why we - the web development community - don't approach Testing with a YAGNI (You Ain't Gonna Need It) mindset. And, Tim wants to consider different ways to handle errors in a RESTful API.

Follow the show and be sure to join the discussion on Discord! Our website is workingcode.dev and we're @WorkingCodePod on Twitter and Instagram. New episodes drop weekly on Wednesday.

And, if you're feeling the love, support us on Patreon.

With audio editing and engineering by ZCross Media.

On today's show, we talk to Sean Corfield about his take on the "Tech Interview" process. With over 40 years of experience at companies like Macromedia, Adobe, and World Singles, Sean has been on both sides of the interview table; and, has been personally responsible for hiring countless engineers. His perspective that most tech interviews are "broken" might be taken with some apprehension if it weren't for the fact that, in 30-years of hiring, Sean has never once had to fire an engineer for lack of ability. So, he's clearly figured out how to hire the right people using a proven and repeatable process.

Follow the show and be sure to join the discussion on Discord! Our website is workingcode.dev and we're @WorkingCodePod on Twitter and Instagram. New episodes drop weekly on Wednesday.

And, if you're feeling the love, support us on Patreon.

With audio editing and engineering by ZCross Media.

This week on the show, we talk about documentation. And not just the "how" of software, but the "why" - the decisions that we've reached, as a team, regarding the technologies that we use and the architectures that glues everything together. Of course, writing the documentation is only part of the challenge; keeping the documentation up-to-date is a whole other source of friction for most teams.

Follow the show and be sure to join the discussion on Discord! Our website is workingcode.dev and we're @WorkingCodePod on Twitter and Instagram. New episodes drop weekly on Wednesday.

And, if you're feeling the love, support us on Patreon.

With audio editing and engineering by ZCross Media.

On today's show, the crew discusses a variety of topics. By which, I mean, Ben waxes philosophical on the subjective nature of everything; and, how he wants to live in a world where those who choose to indent code with 2-spaces may peacefully coexist alongside those who choose to indent code with tabs. Also, Adam body-slams his younger brother into a concrete floor. And then, gets in trouble because he let blood get on the carpet. Be sure to listen for Adam's pro-tips for removing blood stains.

Follow the show and be sure to join the discussion on Discord! Our website is workingcode.dev and we're @WorkingCodePod on Twitter and Instagram. New episodes drop weekly on Wednesday.

And, if you're feeling the love, support us on Patreon.

With audio editing and engineering by ZCross Media.

On today's show, we reflect on the YouTube video, 15 Years of Dev in a Nutshell. A few years ago, people were complaining about "JavaScript Fatigue" - this sense that there was a new JavaScript library or framework coming out every day; and, that the race to stay up-to-date in the industry was simply overwhelming. Now, take that feeling, and expand it to include everything in a web development career, from front-end frameworks to databases to server-side rendering to edge-computing. It's a lot! And, it's easy to feel that we engineers are "Juniors for Life": always learning, always evolving, and — perhaps — never really mastering anything?

Follow the show and be sure to join the discussion on Discord! Our website is workingcode.dev and we're @WorkingCodePod on Twitter and Instagram. New episodes drop weekly on Wednesday.

And, if you're feeling the love, support us on Patreon.

With audio editing and engineering by ZCross Media.

In episode 58, we weighed-in on whether or not 10x engineers actually exist. On today's episode, we go hard in the other direction, talking about the much less mythical -10x engineer: those engineers that seem to actively work in opposition to the greater good, holding unnecessary meetings and flooding the team with a massive amount of documentation. This discussion was directly inspired by the post, How to be a -10x engineer.

Follow the show and be sure to join the discussion on Discord! Our website is workingcode.dev and we're @WorkingCodePod on Twitter and Instagram. New episodes drop weekly on Wednesday.

And, if you're feeling the love, support us on Patreon.

With audio editing and engineering by ZCross Media.

This week on the show, we talk about stuff we've been working on or thinking about lately. Adam dazzles us with his use of 1Password's Secrets Automation feature to drive key rotation in his production app. Ben misses the beautiful agony of having to support IE11 (and how it make the web more predictable). And, Carol shares her frustration with React and, especially, with JSX. It turns out, not everyone loves JSX or - clutches pearls - the idea of single-file components!

Follow the show and be sure to join the discussion on Discord! Our website is workingcode.dev and we're @WorkingCodePod on Twitter and Instagram. New episodes drop weekly on Wednesday.

And, if you're feeling the love, support us on Patreon.

With audio editing and engineering by ZCross Media.

Ben was recently tasked with removing an old feature from one of his services. As he did this, he kept breaking tests that were tightly coupled to the rendering of user interface (UI). In his mind, these tests were unnecessarily "brittle" and appeared to be testing the underlying front-end framework more so than the underlying business logic. When he brought this up in the podcast's Discord server, people disagreed. As such, we decided to dig into the topic of "what to test" more closely.

Follow the show and be sure to join the discussion on Discord! Our website is workingcode.dev and we're @WorkingCodePod on Twitter and Instagram. New episodes drop weekly on Wednesday.

And, if you're feeling the love, support us on Patreon.

With audio editing and engineering by ZCross Media.

As Carol launches her Freelancing career, we thought it would be valuable to interview Nolan Erck, Owner and Director at South of Shasta. For the past 15-years, Nolan has been a Freelance web developer, a mobile developer, and a polyglot technology trainer. He knows the ins-and-outs of attracting clients, setting up a business, and sub-contracting work in order to keep the coffers flush. If there's anyone who can guide Carol into the pit of success, it will be Nolan.

Links discussed on the show:

• Book: The Business Side of Creativity
• Video: Mike Monteiro: F*ck You, Pay Me

Follow the show and be sure to join the discussion on Discord! Our website is workingcode.dev and we're @WorkingCodePod on Twitter and Instagram. New episodes drop weekly on Wednesday.

And, if you're feeling the love, support us on Patreon.

With audio editing and engineering by ZCross Media.

On today's show, we all bring something juicy to consider. Carol kicks things off with some trepidation about becoming an independent contractor; Tim shares an article on Technical Debt and digs into the subtle differences between tech debt and bad code; Ben is befuddled by the fact that "common sense" is apparently wildly subjective; and, Admin introduces us to Bloom Filters.

Follow the show and be sure to join the discussion on Discord! Our website is workingcode.dev and we're @WorkingCodePod on Twitter and Instagram. New episodes drop weekly on Wednesday.

And, if you're feeling the love, support us on Patreon.

With audio editing and engineering by ZCross Media.

As web developers, we're all high-functioning, motivated people. And, we certainly have a good sense of what we should be doing with our time (both personally and professionally). But, theory rarely survives contact with reality. And, on today's show, we talk about all that sweet, sweet stuff we ought to be doing and why we can't quite motivate to get any of it done! Topics including backing up computers; creating reproducible systems; reading educational books; upgrading all the things; learning analytics; and, meeting other hoomans!

Follow the show and be sure to join the discussion on Discord! Our website is workingcode.dev and we're @WorkingCodePod on Twitter and Instagram. New episodes drop weekly on Wednesday.

And, if you're feeling the love, support us on Patreon.

With audio editing and engineering by ZCross Media.

On episode 114 of the show, in effort to balance out the somber tone of Carol's unfortunate layoff, we decided to have a little fun and play Two Truths and a Lie. On today's episode we review the listener submissions and crown the one winner who correctly selected all of our lies. And the prize goes to.... listen to the show!

Follow the show and be sure to join the discussion on Discord! Our website is workingcode.dev and we're @WorkingCodePod on Twitter and Instagram. New episodes drop weekly on Wednesday.

And, if you're feeling the love, support us on Patreon.

With audio editing and engineering by ZCross Media.

Brian Rinaldi, Developer Experience Engineer at LaunchDarkly and long time friend of the show, recently wrote a blog post that was picked up in the TL;DR newsletter. His post, titled The State of Developer Conferences, shares a theory as to why both online and IRL (In Real Life) conferences are struggling to reach pre-pandemic attendance. Brian, who's been running conferences for 15-years, has a keen understanding of who attends events; and, why the demographics of attendees might be shifting. Conference organizers around the world are reading Brian's post and are nodding in strong agreement.

Follow the show and be sure to join the discussion on Discord! Our website is workingcode.dev and we're @WorkingCodePod on Twitter and Instagram. New episodes drop weekly on Wednesday.

And, if you're feeling the love, support us on Patreon.

With audio editing and engineering by ZCross Media.

After drinking close to 12 Mountain Dews in a single day, Adam started to wonder if — just maybe — he was using caffeine as a way to self-medicate. Upon discussing this with his doctor, Adam was diagnosed with ADHD (Attention-Deficit / Hyperactivity Disorder) - a condition very common in the world of programming (a fact that we inspect on the show). In light of these findings, we thought it would be nice to reflect on how we've all changed during the pandemic; and, share the little things that we do in order to keep our wits about us.

Follow the show and be sure to join the discussion on Discord! Our website is workingcode.dev and we're @WorkingCodePod on Twitter and Instagram. New episodes drop weekly on Wednesday.

And, if you're feeling the love, support us on Patreon.

With audio editing and engineering by ZCross Media.

Amid the frenzy of industry lay-offs, we here at the Working Code podcast were devastated to hear that our very own Carol Weiler has been affected by a down-turning real estate market. A few weeks ago, while attending a virtual All Hands meeting, her Slack account was suddenly locked, momentarily followed by her computer. It turns out that she, along with a majority of her engineers, were part of an unexpected reduction in force (RIF). On today's show, Carol graciously and courageously joins us to talk about her experience, the ensuing emotional roller coaster, and some of the fascinating steps that she's taken to help improve her outcome.

We love you Carol! You continue to inspire us - and our listeners - every week!

To help lighten the mood of the episode, we close out by playing Two Truths and a Lie. If you can guess who's lying about what, Tim might just send you some free podcast merch! Submit your guesses over on Google Forms.

Also, Adam finally finds a ToDo list that he loves; and - wait for it - it comes from Microsoft!

Follow the show and be sure to join the discussion on Discord! Our website is workingcode.dev and we're @WorkingCodePod on Twitter and Instagram. New episodes drop weekly on Wednesday.

And, if you're feeling the love, support us on Patreon.

With audio editing and engineering by ZCross Media.

Lay-offs are trending in the technology world. And, it's not just the scrappy start-ups being hit - goliaths such as Amazon, Apple, Google, Facebook, and Microsoft have all recently announced large reductions in force (RIF). Getting laid-off can pose a serious financial burden on an individual; but, there's also the psychological burden of self-doubt: Why did this happen to me? Did I deserve this? Will I ever find another tech job? On today's show, we talk about the state of the industry, share tips on becoming more resilient in uncertain time, and talk about what do if and when the pink slip commeth.

ASIDE: In this episode, Adam makes a few comments about what it means to take responsibility as a leader (See comic by Threddy). And, accidentally misspoke about a few CEOs not taking a pay-cut (which apparently they did).

Follow the show and be sure to join the discussion on Discord! Our website is workingcode.dev and we're @WorkingCodePod on Twitter and Instagram. New episodes drop weekly on Wednesday.

And, if you're feeling the love, support us on Patreon.

With audio editing and engineering by ZCross Media.

This week, we reach into our bag of Listener Questions and pontificate on such curiosities as: Who would we want to be and what skills would we want to learn if we could step into an alternate reality? Would Danny DeVito make an intriguing Wolverine? Which are the best programming-related movies and shows? And, we all laugh a little nervously as Tim shares just how much time he's clearly spent figuring out how to get rid of a dead body.

Follow the show and be sure to join the discussion on Discord! Our website is workingcode.dev and we're @WorkingCodePod on Twitter and Instagram. New episodes drop weekly on Wednesday.

And, if you're feeling the love, support us on Patreon.

With audio editing and engineering by ZCross Media.

Learning something new - whether it be a language, framework, or library - can be challenging. And, if you're already an expert in some ways, it can be both humbling and frustrating to suddenly feel like a novice in other ways. On top of that, our expectations are often distorted by time; and, we forget how long it took us to amass the understanding that we have today. This can lead to unrealistic expectations when it comes to learning something new. Not to mention that our strategies for learning might change in relation to our experience. On today's show, we share our respective approaches to learning from the ground up, including reading the manual, building applications from scratch, and everything in between.

Follow the show and be sure to join the discussion on Discord! Our website is workingcode.dev and we're @WorkingCodePod on Twitter and Instagram. New episodes drop weekly on Wednesday.

And, if you're feeling the love, support us on Patreon.

With audio editing and engineering by ZCross Media.

Not all days are created equal. Some days, you show up and just crush it non-stop. Other days, it can feel challenging to even type good. On today's show, we look at what goes into making those good days "good" and those bad days "bad". Getting into the zone, meetings, switching modes, interfacing with customers, responding to incidents (and other interruptions) - every little thing has the power to push the needle one way or the other.

Follow the show and be sure to join the discussion on Discord! Our website is workingcode.dev and we're @WorkingCodePod on Twitter and Instagram. New episodes drop weekly on Wednesday.

And, if you're feeling the love, support us on Patreon.

With audio editing and engineering by ZCross Media.