Name: Software Engineers - Don't Forget These 2 Things When Considering A Team
Uploaded: 2022-11-10T02:40:46+00:00
Duration: 5 min 51 s
Description: These 2 more tactical aspects are often forgotten by software engineers when evaluating a team, even though they are hug

Software Engineers - Don't Forget These 2 Things When Considering A Team

These 2 more tactical aspects are often forgotten by software engineers when evaluating a team, even though they are huge influencers on your work-life balance and career growth on a team:
- **Oncall** - You want to make sure that the team has a healthy system there where you aren't oncall too often, and the system is stable (so you don't need to wake up in the middle of the night constantly to fight fires). For more information on how to evaluate the health of an oncall rotation, check out the linked discussion below from an Atlassian Software Engineer.
- **Code review speed** - It is easy for slow iteration here to stack up. If your team takes 3 days on average to review your PR and you need 3 revisions to finalize your commit, that means it will take you 2 entire weeks to land code (which is abysmal). A good team will turnaround code reviews in <1 day.

This clip was taken from our [masterclass on finding the best company/team for you - Click here to watch the full thing](https://link.jointaro.com/F4DDyKfuo3hMhj868).

Related resources:
- ["How do I factor in oncall into my team selection?"](https://link.jointaro.com/3LHQz46Ft1c7ZoXo6) - Question from a Junior Software Engineer at Atlassian
- [Code Review MUST Be Fast, Otherwise The Team Is Unhealthy](https://link.jointaro.com/oxK55E1bkX8nMeNGA)

These 2 more tactical aspects are often forgotten by software engineers when evaluating a team, even though they are hug

Code review is one of the most common and powerful ways for software engineers to learn. On top of increasing code quality, it builds engineering culture within a team.

Code review can catch coding mistakes and design flaws before the code reaches production

A good code review process is needed to catch bugs, increase maintainability, and guarantee a high velocity future contributors.

Code review ensures high quality software that is maintainable for the lifetime of the code

The first step to career growth is to choose a good team that works for you and your goals. The career advice here teaches you how to do just that.

[Masterclass] How To Choose A Good Company And Team As A Software Engineer

Choosing the right company (or team) is one of the highest leverage decisions you'll make in your career, so it's worth doing some reflection!

It’s all about your priorities

- Figure out what’s important to you and what’s not. Create a stack-ranked list of all of these and work backwards from the top 2-3 to figure out the best opportunities for you
- People don’t realize how many angles there are to this. Here’s all the ones from the presentation: *Compensation, work-life balance, company prestige, supportiveness of team, growth opportunities, stability, maximum outcome (risk), remote work, product space, company ethics, technical space, level/title, benefits, location*

Supportiveness and overall quality of the team are often underrated

- It’s really hard to grow and have a healthy work life without this
- If you like your manager/teammates and you feel like you’re regularly learning/being challenged by them, deeply cherish that. People underestimate how hard it is to find an environment like this. Even in a prestigious company like Big Tech, this is difficult to find.

Big Tech vs. Startups

- At the end of the day, it’s all about your risk tolerance - Startups can have insane monetary/promotion outcomes, but they also might collapse the next year.
- In a vacuum: Start off at a Big Tech company to build a good foundation and then switch into smaller companies to have more scope/ownership

Some things you should NOT spend time on:

❌ Don't focus on how much you liked (or did not like) the people in the interview process. The recruiter/interviewer is NOT representative of your life at the company. Instead, focus on trends of the people joining the company, rather than individual data points.

❌ Don't spend time looking at the financials of the company. Even if you do decide to dig into the numbers, there's a good chance you'll screw up the interpretation -- humans have a really hard time with exponential growth.

Learning the quality of a team

- Talk to engineers/ICs if you can - The manager will inherently be biased towards their own team as they are often goaled on hiring
- Make sure that the team has a healthy oncall process and fast code review iteration

Related resources:

- [\[Masterclass\] What Software Engineers Should Look For In Their Engineering Manager](https://www.jointaro.com/lesson/oeY7ncZhzJ5NO6dij5e7/masterclass-what-software-engineers-should-look-for-in-their-engineering-manager/)
- [“How can you tell if a large public company is going in the right direction?”](https://www.jointaro.com/question/TrlweQQ7DveTnYBP9VUH/how-can-you-tell-if-a-large-public-company-is-going-in-the-right-direction/)
- [“What does it mean to not have enough scope to be promoted?”](https://www.jointaro.com/question/bJuagPwOEEy5vkcXKkqh/what-does-it-mean-to-not-have-enough-scope-to-be-promoted/)
- [“What should I look for in a new team in terms of growth?”](https://www.jointaro.com/question/i2bOMPrqaRc0NUZ7918F/what-should-i-look-for-in-a-new-team-in-terms-of-growth/)
- [Presentation Slides](https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1S_kULq5zzVLkcoKy0bKJ2IHSrjL3s2VbOLe8p1TQJ7s/edit?usp=sharing)