We Should Be Working

Critter struggles with detaching his emotions from results, Jace struggles with detaching his emotions from his bad, and they both rant about how schools only teach the skills they don't mean to teach. Leave us a review on Apple Podcasts! https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/we-should-be-working/id1545522072 Homepage of the poddy: https://anchor.fm/jace-and-critter/ Critter's email: mikecrittende...

Nadia is a UX Designer and a prolific 3D printer enthusiast. We chatted about the day to day tasks of UX and IA work, how hard it is to assume best intent, finding other rewards for bad days besides being grumpy, and all our favorite childhood treats. LINK AS PROMISED TO USERINYERFACE: https://userinyerface.com/game.html Leave us a review on Apple Podcasts! https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/we...

All over the place with this one: psychadelics, rebel leadership, arbitrary deadlines, authority figures at school vs. work, clients as problems, and shortcutting the "getting comfortable" process for new hires so that they can get right to the good stuff. Leave us a review on Apple Podcasts! https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/we-should-be-working/id1545522072 Homepage of the poddy: https://anc...

Brian is an Engineering Leader currently at 21Shares, formerly VPE at Voice.com and Senior DoE at Major League Soccer (which is where he was lucky enough to work with Jace and Critter). He's kind of a big deal. We chatted about scaling an engineering team through a hypergrowth period, finding purpose in your work, and what the heck blockchain even is.  Leave us a review on Apple Podcasts! htt...

Jace's mom happened to be hanging out in his house when we recorded so Critter gave her a half hour minute impromptu interview. She had some A+ insight on the resiliency of nature, the importance of social media, the harm of coddling, and a bunch of other stuff. After she left, we chatted about processing things by writing them out and whether or not personality types are valuable. Leave us a revi...

Terry is a family man, a Managing Director at Phase2 Technology, and an overall okay dude. We chatted about dealing with nerves before public speaking/presentations, scheduling your friendships, companies that have it together vs. companies that don't, and teachable skills vs. ingrained talents (thanks for having my back on this one Terry). Leave us a review on Apple Podcasts! https://podcasts.app...

After a discussion about mental resets and the urge to always be productive, Critter whines for a long time about how work is stressful. Womp womp. Leave us a review on Apple Podcasts! https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/we-should-be-working/id1545522072 Homepage of the poddy: https://anchor.fm/jace-and-critter/ Critter's email: mikecrittenden@gmail.com Critter's Twitter: https://twitter.com/mcr...

Lauren is a Solutions Architect at Contentful who has had the misfortune of being Jace's former manager. We talked about moving on from coding, creating goals vs. habits, why clients are or aren't the worst, and lots more.  Leave us a review on Apple Podcasts! https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/we-should-be-working/id1545522072 Homepage of the poddy: https://anchor.fm/jace-and-critter/ Cri...

Jace has decided to go full caveman and eat only chicken, rice, and broccoli. Critter talks about coming back from vacation and the related stress imbalance. And finally, Critter picks Jace's brain about about Magic: The Gathering for the last 20 minutes.  Leave us a review on Apple Podcasts! https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/we-should-be-working/id1545522072 Homepage of the poddy: https:...

Nancy is a mom of four boys and she's way too good for Critter. This episode is mostly giggling and inside jokes, plus Jace probing for embarrassing Critter stories. Also, the audio sucks at some points due to putting two people on one mic. Leave us a review on Apple Podcasts! https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/we-should-be-working/id1545522072 Homepage of the poddy: https://anchor.fm/jace-and-...

We try to figure out what to put in our brag books, which is tough, because what are we even good at? Also, Critter questions the value in self evaluations and Jace keeps stubbing his toe because wearing shoes inside is disrespectful. Leave us a review on Apple Podcasts! https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/we-should-be-working/id1545522072 Homepage of the poddy: https://anchor.fm/jace-and-critte...

Alex Reece is a friend and manager at Streamlit (https://streamlit.io/). He joins us to talk about work politics and how much someone in the IC career path has to care about either of them. We also got into the path people take into management vs. staying in engineering forever, and Critter takes every opportunity to whine about imposter syndrome along the way. Leave us a review on Apple Podcasts!...

Critter tries to think of a funny name for the bully inside his head, Jace did stupid stuff with fireworks when he was a kid, and we both argue about whether we should prep for our guests, because that's a conversation that our listeners definitely care about.  Leave us a review on Apple Podcasts! https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/we-should-be-working/id1545522072 Homepage of the poddy: h...

Clove is a nerdy, trans, blue-haired product manager who has worked with both of us dinguses in the past. They joined us to talk to us about coming out as trans, gotchas with QA teams, where we want our careers to go long term, and other stuffs. Leave us a review on Apple Podcasts! https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/we-should-be-working/id1545522072 Homepage of the poddy: https://anchor.fm/jace...

Critter whines about how apparently exposure therapy doesn't work with public speaking, and being a tech lead has made Jace anxious due to his annoying trust issues.  Leave us a review on Apple Podcasts! https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/we-should-be-working/id1545522072 Homepage of the poddy: https://anchor.fm/jace-and-critter/ Critter's email: mikecrittenden@gmail.com Critter's Twitter:...

We're not losing, we're just winning at things we don't realize we're aiming for. Plus: what are our love langauges, and why is the average birthday present so terrible? Leave us a review on Apple Podcasts! https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/we-should-be-working/id1545522072 Homepage of the poddy: https://anchor.fm/jace-and-critter/ Critter's email: mikecrittenden@gmail.com Critter's Twitter: h...

Mark Boyd is a Cloud Engineer at Development Seed with a long and storied history of ruthlessly berating Critter.  Titling this episode was tough because we talked about a lot of stuff. Topics include: what is a tech lead, can talents be taught, how and when to assume best intent in the dumb crap people do, hero culture, multipliers vs. diminishers, and finding the right spot for people inste...

Jace feels uncomfortable with being a tech lead and whines about it. Critter gets uppity that anyone would think anything is more important than fixing Scrum process. All that PLUS an argument about the difference between a cupcake and a tiny cake! Wow! Leave us a review on Apple Podcasts! https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/we-should-be-working/id1545522072 Homepage of the poddy: https://anchor...

Mike Wight is a project manager at Goldbelly and a top shelf human being. After trying to figure out what cultural appropriation means and whether salsa dancing is problematic, we talked about his first couple months at his new gig and what it's like to work at a product company vs. an agency. Then we got into nature vs. nurture and skills vs. talents, and things got confusing and aggressive. Leav...

Critter and Jace yell at each other about whether or not talents are teachable. Jace yells that everything can be learned and taught. Critter yells that people should grow the talents they have instead of trying to cram in talents they don't have. Lots of yelling.  Also a fun little discussion at the beginning about "breadcrumbing" people, i.e., leading them along without ever turning it into...

Frank is the CTO of Phase2 Technology, an ultra runner, and a family man. He joins us to chat about the pain of running a really long way, punishing yourself to teach yourself to appreciate the highs of live, what the "tech lead" role actually means, and how to get people to use and read docs instead of immediately asking questions in Slack. Leave us a review on Apple Podcasts! https://podcasts.ap...

Jake is a musician, a software engineer (Solutions Engineer at Knapsack), and a super lovable dude. We chatted about being the only person alive when the aliens land, what Thanos could have improved about his development process, and whether or not Jake performs music shirtless. Leave us a review on Apple Podcasts! https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/we-should-be-working/id1545522072 Homepa...

Critter finally understands what mindfulness means. Jace is trying to be impeccable with his word but talking crap is so much fun. We both whine about how agility is still so hard to find and then talk through the four agreements from the book The Four Agreements. Leave us a review on Apple Podcasts! https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/we-should-be-working/id1545522072 Homepage of the poddy: htt...

Everyone's best friend Bloom joins us to talk about how developers these days spend so much time doing everything else that development feels like a reward rather than the job itself.  We debate whether Slack or meetings are more harmful to our productivity, and whether being a specialist or a generalist makes it more likely to have both continual career growth and lots of time to write code....

We rant about bad meeting ice breakers and people who say "wow, quiet crew today!" Then we ponder why we'd pay thousands to save a kid drowning in front of us but not to save a theoretical kid across the world from dying of malaria.  Leave us a review on Apple Podcasts! https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/we-should-be-working/id1545522072 Homepage of the poddy: https://anchor.fm/jace-and-cr...