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Hi Often Wrong Club,
மாலை வணக்கம் (maalai vaNakkam), Buenas Noches, and Good Evening from New York City
I’ll be sharing a thing I did, a thought-provoking email, and a thought I had.
A Thing ✍🏾
I published an essay titled Kill Your Culture.
I used to think I could tack on culture to my life. I was wrong. Culture is something that is living.
Said another way - what we choose to spend our time on is our culture.
I’m glad I realized before it was too late.
An Email ✉️
I signed up for CopyThinking newsletters from GrammarHippy on Twitter.
People buy when their pain is too much to bear. It’s critical to highlight this in the copy. People look for themselves in the copy.
That’s who buys the product.
A Thought 💭
I offered free mentor sessions to anyone who purchased my video course.
Last week, I had a session with one of these humans.
This engineer was joining a new company. The tech stack was new. And due to some recent reorgs, they didn’t have a direct manager.
They temporarily reported to their skip-level* manager.
They had a heap of questions. As any curious, engaged engineer would.
They wanted to know what questions would be appropriate to ask their Product Manager (PM), Tech Lead (TL) or skip-level manager.
A mistake many engineers make is directing all their questions to their manager.
I know because I used to do this.
I told them to ask anything about prioritization to their product manager (PM). I chose the PM because it lets the PM know that they are steering the ship. Reinforcing this can reduce the stress PMs sometimes feel about not having agency for their products.
I told them anything about the tech stack should be directed to their Tech Lead. They’ll know the details of which books, tutorial, and idiosyncrasies are most helpful for the production systems. They’ll tell you what’s not worth spending time learning. The other folks would be quick to answer this, but without the requisite experience.
It can be tempting to ask prioritization and tech-stack questions to your skip-level manager. And most will happily answer, but unsatisfactorily. In reality, your skip-level management is neck-deep in the inefficiencies of your company. All day people are asking them for things.
I told them to flip the script on their skip-level management. Ask them what they see the vision for the products are in the next 12 months. Ask them what they need help with. Be the person who lightens their load, not adds to it.
It also lets them know you are someone that can jump levels of abstraction. That you realize tech isn’t everything.
Asking the right question to the right person is such an underrated skill.
It lets them know you understand them and respect their role.
The soft skills that pay hard money.
With Love,
Janahan
skip-level* = your manager’s manager
Whenever you're ready, there are 2 ways I can help you:
1. If you’re looking to break past the senior software engineer glass ceiling, I’d recommend starting with this affordable course. These are the secrets I’ve learned from going from a mid-level to a Distinguished Engineer in less than 4 years. Join 86+ students from over 16 countries.
2. If you want to grab coffee in New York City, hit reply to let me know when you’re in town ☕
Dig the video course product, Jay. Might try something similar. Cool idea! And kudos for signing up for copywriting tips. My main two areas of development for the rest of the year are video and copywriting. Let's acquire some new skills.
Appreciate the share, Louie 😎