Building Relationships Q&A and Videos

My current conversations look like:

• Conversation about our current roles/background/goals
• Learning about each other

However, I feel like a lot of conversation tends to be more surface-level and conversation tends to die down in the later half of the meeting. I'm not sure about how to

1. have deeper conversations

2. what kinds of questions I should be thinking about, and

3. what mindset should I keep to have deeper/meaningful conversations

Some hurdles I find:

• There might be a big difference in our roles (for eg. system eng and product manager)
• There might be differences in seniority where I feel like I feel like I'm not able to provide enough value to my match (I might not be able to provide any value/insight into any challenges/goals of my match)

Whether that be a formal mentor within the company or you have found a mentor outside the company.

e.g. I want to level up as an engineer, have sought out a mentor(s) to help me do so, what are some of the things I should make sure happen that I get the most benefit out of the relationship.

I'm new to the team, and I want to make an impact quickly. How can I quickly gain respect of people on the team? Are there certain things I should do as I act/react to other people?

I am usually very competitive and while I love my friends, I have this internal push to always do better than people around me. I got promoted to SWE II within a year in 2021 and I was so proud of that. However, this year my manager changed and without really knowing or understanding me, he gave me the feedback of "didn't meet expectations" in our annual performance review in Feb. I had full plans to change my company soon since I didn't feel supported by my manager. However, my father fell incredibly ill in May (still is) which canceled all my plans as I moved back home to support my family.

I have a feeling my friend who is on a different team than I am (but reports to the same manager) might get promoted to senior. She deserves it. She got different opportunities than I did but I can't help but feel a pang of jealousy knowing that all I want this coming Feb is "meets expectation" rating while my friend might get promoted. Another friend of mine switched to a company that seems incredible but I somehow feel "behind" in my career despite knowing that I will meet the career goals I have next year. I am already a million times a better software dev than I was beginning of the year. I have close relationships with my colleagues but how do I focus on my own lane and not compare myself to others?

I want to build a stronger relationship with my manager, but I'm unsure where the boundary should be when it comes to opening up to them. For example, I have some confidence issues which affect my work performance a bit: Is that something that's okay to share with them or is it possible that they'll hold it against me? I haven't interacted too much with my manager as I'm fairly new to the team, but so far, the signal has been positive.

I am a mid-level developer. I am attending a tech event for the first time. Could you provide some tips on how to network effectively in the event? I feel like I don't have anything to talk about. Mostly my mind goes blank.

I see many experienced developers finding flaws in the existing architecture and also refactoring them to make it much better. I don't think I have yet gained the ability to identify loop holes in complex projects. However, I am able to fix issues if someone else calls them out pretty quickly.

How can I improve on this? What are some good resources to develop this skill?

My current manager comes from a very different background compared to me and my team, which has lead to some misalignment in terms of what the team should do and how it should do it. I feel like there's a fundamental difference in working styles here.

This mis-sync has shown in our 1 on 1 meetings as well. They're less about my career growth and my goals and more about them and their way of doing things.

Any ideas on how to remedy this situation?

I moved to the Bay Area to be within a denser network. However, everyone is working within their own silos, and it's hard to break them out so you can develop a deeper relationship with them.

Can you recommend some good platforms to network with other engineers in the Bay Area? I would like to meet other engineers at a similar level and working within a similar space.

I've already tried some basic things which I didn’t find much value from:

• Went to some public meetups from online sites like Meetup.com which claimed that there will be a lot of great engineers there. Once I went to these, the level of engineers didn’t match my expectations. The conversations were more generic and centered around TC.
• Get in touch with as many alumni from my college as possible.

Here's the experience I have so far with leadership:

• I schedule meetings between teammates to clarify things for everyone when people seem to be lost or start asking a lot of questions in a trend. This usually helps unblock them.
• Most of my success comes from cross-team communications in terms of knowing and finding the right people for local tasks. I also jump on opportunities myself which usually end with good results. But I haven't yet been able to make a significant impact within my own team.

And here's more details about my current team:

• My team is myself, a PM, one full-time developer, and two other developers/Solution Architects that juggle other responsibilities part-time.
• I've had issues with a particular person who leans too aggressively sometimes questioning the impact of the work items I'm proposing. I'm able to work it out with them, but this relationship could probably be improved further.

The leadership principle is as follows:

Leaders are obligated to respectfully challenge decisions when they disagree, even when doing so is uncomfortable or exhausting. Leaders have conviction and are tenacious. They do not compromise for the sake of social cohesion. Once a decision is determined, they commit wholly.

I have a hard time with this, e.g. my team is debating between two JavaScript frameworks. How do I stay firm in the decision while keeping others positive?