seancoleman

Feedback: I found a bug. I signed up with email/password, and then accidentally closed the tab (after creating my account). When I tried to sign in, it's asking for a code sent "to my phone" — I never provided my phone number, and therefore can't sign in.

There's a lot of good advice here around how to approach technical improvements. Just as important is how your approach managing the situation in the organization.

One tip — don't complain to management about how "awful the codebase is" or "how you need to start over" (100% agree this is usually a terrible idea). Managers have been hearing this over their entire career as a technical manager (over time they can lose empathy being out of the weeds). It becomes an overused trope and management will start to see you as being problem-oriented.

I'm not saying don't surface the issues — management absolutely should have an accurate understanding. Instead, try and balance the good with the bad (and there will always be some good). Don't catastrophize — approach is as a manageable problem with quantified risk e.g. responding to estimation with "typically this is a straightforward problem to solve, but I've explored this area of the codebase and there are some challenges we'll need to overcome — the estimate will be larger and less precise then we want to see, and we'll benefit from prototyping/research/spikes to reduce risk of introducing serious bugs and come to a more accurate estimate".

You'll build trust by consistently delivering on the expectations you set around concrete features/task (including the negative expectations) then management will reach the conclusion themselves and will trust your assessment with any new project. Plus, management will ultimately see you as an incredible asset to help bridge the gap of the technical black box and their purvey.

SEEKING WORK | Remote (Phoenix, AZ) | Fractional CTO / Full-Stack Web Dev (15+ years XP)

I have 15+ years experience leading teams (and personally as an IC) building full-stack web apps from MVP to Enterprise. I get the business side (founded multiple startups — cvtrack.com most recently), I understand good UI/UX design (5 years Director for design/development agency), and run efficient teams as a PM / technical lead or fractional CTO (5+ years as PM and fractional CTO).

My specialty is coming into existing startup (< 50 people) dev/product teams as a hands-on leader and swiftly rebuilding morale, aligning/managing priorities, managing expectations, and bridging technical/product gaps with leadership. I'm told that when I join a team, product development velocity skyrockets, sometimes by an order of magnitude. For less hands-on engagements, I consult around technical hiring, architecture (Senior Developer bandwidth where it doesn't exist), product advising, and technical strategy.

Because I'm so hands-on, as a full-stack developer I will also build web apps (solo or as part of a team) in a variety of languages and frameworks (PHP/Laravel, Ruby/Rails, Elixir/Phoenix, Python/Django) — and I merge it with good design understanding, product sense, and business value.

Previous client engagements: First Solar, Sophos, General Dynamics, among many, many amazing startups Previous positions: Tuft & Needle (head of engineering), GoDaddy (product management)

[email protected]

I'm a fractional CTO consultant and have turned into a major shill for Linear — I always recommend it to teams of the right profile (3-4+ developer teams open to change and eager to improve efficiency). It's such a refined product, that a lot of process and communication issues tend to dissolve after switching (from say Jira) to Linear.

Tools don't solve everything with any team, but bad tools can encumber a team and hamstrung potential.

Moral of the story: no engineer worth their salt wants to work on a "codebase" like this, so as an independent contractor, you can virtually name your price if you're willing to wade through the mess and solve acute problems.

I just set up Basedash yesterday (think Airtable over real SQL databases) and plan to use it for updating a production database.

Drawbackwards | Remote-First (Phoenix, AZ) | Front-End/UI Developer (React) | Part-Time/Full-Time Contractor

Drawbackwards is a UX design & development agency in Tempe, AZ.

We're looking for a React/Typescript & UI developer to join our 5-person development team building a new large-scale, greenfield product. Our design team provides thoughtful, comprehensive and high-fidelity mockups in Figma for pixel-perfect implementation. The team follows async-first communication/development practices, is highly supportive and egoless, focusing on the work and results first.

Please feel free to email [email protected] with a little background on yourself.

Drawbackwards | Remote-First (Phoenix, AZ) | Front-End/UI Developer (Angular/TypeScript) | Part-Time/Full-Time Contractor

Drawbackwards is a UX design & development agency in Tempe, AZ.

We're looking for an Angular/TypeScript & UI developer to join our 5-person development team building a new large-scale, greenfield product. Our design team provides thoughtful, comprehensive and high-fidelity mockups in Figma for pixel-perfect implementation. The team follows async-first communication/development practices, is highly supportive and egoless, focusing on the work and results first.

Please feel free to email [email protected] with a little background on yourself.

10 years ago in my mid 20s, I was a product manager at a tech BigCo (not FAANG). Just after starting, I was in a casual in-person meeting with my boss, my boss's boss, and a couple other executives (closer to a meet 'n greet than formal meeting). I don't remember much of what happened in the meeting, but I distinctly remember the feedback my boss gave me shortly after the meeting: "I think it'd help you if you don't ask obvious questions because it makes you look dumb" (I remember it being delivered more compassionately, but that was the essence).

At the time, I was young, insecure, and fraught with imposter syndrome (viewing virtually everyone as smarter than me) so I took it personally. That feedback gave me a visceral "that has got to be the worst feedback ever" reaction.

Fast forward 10 years, I've reached the point where I don't think twice about asking questions in any setting. I'm secure and confident in what I know, understand the vastness of what I don't know, and try to be vulnerable about this truth. I'm no longer worried about looking dumb. Maybe some people still think "well that's a dumb question, he should know that" but I'd rather have this experience, while retaining my adaptability "superpower" of being able to dig to the root of a problem, quickly learn context, and rapidly provide solutions.

I think about that feedback a lot.