Vox

Leitura de 14 min

Digging Up Your Job Description

Summary

In this episode of Developer Tea, host Jonathan Cottrell challenges listeners to rethink their job descriptions beyond mere tasks and responsibilities. He argues that a true job description should focus on the value you provide and the reason your role exists, rather than listing specific skills or duties.

Cottrell uses the analogy of a local grocer to illustrate this distinction. While a grocer’s tasks might include stocking shelves and checking out customers, their real job description is “to help people get the groceries they need.” This shift from task-oriented thinking to purpose-oriented thinking is crucial for developers who often define themselves by the languages they write or the specific technical tasks they perform.

The episode emphasizes that understanding the “why” behind your work is essential for performing tasks to the highest standard of excellence. Cottrell provides concrete examples, such as building a registration process where knowing the ultimate goal (acquiring phone numbers for text updates) would completely change the implementation strategy, or optimization work where understanding whether you’re optimizing for actual speed versus perceived speed would dictate different approaches.

Cottrell recommends that developers write a daily purpose statement at the top of their to-do lists, focusing on the effect they want to achieve rather than specific tasks. He notes that while specific skills and techniques will inevitably change over time, the underlying goals and values of your work are more likely to remain constant. This mindset shift is presented as key to cultivating the mindset of a great developer and enabling meaningful career growth.

Recommendations

Podcasts

  • Developer Tea — The podcast itself is referenced as part of the Great Developer Mindset series, with previous episodes like ‘Getting Fast First’ mentioned in relation to optimization concepts discussed in this episode.

Tools

  • RefactorU — A 10-week JavaScript bootcamp mentioned as the episode’s sponsor, designed to help people reinvent themselves as developers. It’s GI Bill approved and offers diversity scholarships.

Topic Timeline

  • 00:00:00 — Introduction to digging up your job description — Jonathan Cottrell introduces the episode’s topic about uncovering your true job description. He explains this is part of the Great Developer Mindset series and asks listeners to pause and write down two sentences describing their current job description before continuing. The episode is interactive, encouraging participation from the audience.
  • 00:02:07 — Analyzing task-oriented job descriptions — Cottrell asks listeners to examine their written job descriptions for task-oriented phrases like “writing Python code” or “building web interfaces.” He explains that if these phrases appear, the episode is specifically for them. The discussion sets up the distinction between task-based descriptions and value-based descriptions that will be explored throughout the episode.
  • 00:02:44 — The grocer analogy for job descriptions — Cottrell uses the example of a local grocer to illustrate the difference between tasks and true job descriptions. While a grocer’s tasks include stocking and selling groceries, their real job is “to help people get the groceries they need.” This analogy demonstrates how job descriptions should focus on the value provided rather than specific responsibilities.
  • 00:04:01 — Applying the concept to developers — The discussion shifts to how developers typically think about their jobs in terms of programming languages or specific technical tasks. Cottrell explains that for developers working in agencies or on applications, their job description might change frequently, but the underlying value they provide remains constant. He uses optimization as an example, where the job isn’t just making an application fast but understanding why it needs to be fast.
  • 00:06:31 — Why understanding your job description matters — Cottrell focuses on one primary reason for understanding your true job description: having context for why tasks are performed is essential for performing them to the highest standard. He provides examples of building registration processes and optimization work, showing how knowing the ultimate goal changes implementation strategies and priorities.
  • 00:08:33 — Practical application and daily purpose statements — Cottrell offers practical advice for implementing this mindset shift. He suggests writing a daily purpose statement at the top of your to-do list that focuses on the effect you want to achieve rather than specific tasks. Using his own work at Whiteboard as an example, he shows how this approach provides guardrails and values without prescribing exact steps.
  • 00:09:18 — The fluid nature of skills and constant nature of goals — The episode concludes with the insight that specific skills and techniques will inevitably change over time, but the goals and values behind your work are more likely to remain constant. Cottrell argues that career growth comes from internalizing that the effect and value of what you do are more important than the specific steps you take to accomplish it.

Episode Info

  • Podcast: Developer Tea
  • Author: Jonathan Cutrell
  • Category: Technology Business Careers Society & Culture
  • Published: 2016-08-24T07:00:00Z
  • Duration: 00:11:14

References

Podcast Info

Transcript

[00:00:00] Hey, everyone, and welcome to Developer Tea.

[00:00:06] My name is Jonathan Cottrell, and in today’s episode, we’re going to be talking about digging

[00:00:10] up your job description.

[00:00:13] This episode is a part of the Great Developer Mindset episodes of Developer Tea.

[00:00:19] This series is dedicated to guiding you, the listener, towards the mindset of the great

[00:00:24] developer.

[00:00:24] However, my job on this podcast is to help provide you with the tools, the insights,

[00:00:30] and the inspiration you need to shape your career as a developer and become truly great

[00:00:35] at what you do.

[00:00:36] In today’s episode, we talk about digging up your real, true job description.

[00:00:42] This is an interactive episode, so before I dive in, I want you to pause this episode,

[00:00:49] not yet, but before we dive in, you’re going to pause the episode, and if you’re listening

[00:00:53] in the car or…

[00:00:54] You’re running or something, you can do this in your head, otherwise, I’d like for you

[00:00:57] to take out a piece of paper and just pause the episode, take a moment to think about

[00:01:02] your job description.

[00:01:04] I want you to come up with two sentences, just two, don’t go beyond that, at least two,

[00:01:11] that represent your job description.

[00:01:13] Don’t move ahead with this episode until you’ve done that.

[00:01:17] And by the way, once this episode is over with, if you want to share this exercise with

[00:01:23] other people, I’d love to get…

[00:01:24] Pictures or maybe just the sentences themselves on Twitter.

[00:01:28] You can always tweet at me at at developer T.

[00:01:31] I think this will be enlightening to you, so hopefully you will write down your job

[00:01:37] description before you continue listening.

[00:01:40] Today’s episode is sponsored by RefactorU, the 10-week JavaScript bootcamp designed to

[00:01:46] help you reinvent yourself.

[00:01:48] We’ll talk about the many things that RefactorU has to offer you as students later in today’s

[00:01:54] episode, because we’re all students, aren’t we?

[00:01:57] We’re always learning.

[00:01:58] Of course, the good developer is always learning, so remember that as you go throughout your

[00:02:04] career.

[00:02:04] But now you should have your job description in your head.

[00:02:07] Those two sentences I asked you to write down or think about, memorize in your head, you

[00:02:12] should have that in front of you or in your mind.

[00:02:15] What I want you to do is think about those two sentences and look for points where your

[00:02:19] job description says something along the lines of writing Python code.

[00:02:24] Or building web interfaces.

[00:02:27] If you have written those phrases in your job description, this episode is for you.

[00:02:32] If you’re a user tester, then perhaps conducting user tests would be another one of these kind

[00:02:39] of task-oriented responses.

[00:02:42] Let’s talk for a second about job descriptions.

[00:02:44] What is the job description of a local grocer?

[00:02:48] At first, it’s easy to think that the grocer’s job is to stock and sell the groceries.

[00:02:54] But really, these are tasks or responsibilities to move new produce in and move the old produce

[00:03:02] out and to check people out at the counter.

[00:03:05] These are all responsibilities or tasks that the grocer has to accomplish.

[00:03:09] But a better job description for a grocer is to help people get the groceries they need.

[00:03:16] That’s the ultimate goal, the reason that grocer exists, right?

[00:03:20] Of course, that grocer is a conductor.

[00:03:24] He’s directing business as they go along.

[00:03:25] But the reason, the value that they provide is that they help people get the groceries that they need.

[00:03:32] The slight distinction here is incredibly important.

[00:03:36] The job description is not a listing of the specific tasks or skill-oriented responsibilities

[00:03:43] you are required to complete, but rather it’s the reason you have the job, the value you are providing.

[00:03:51] This is not very difficult to understand.

[00:03:54] For the grocer, of course.

[00:03:55] But for developers, this concept may seem a little bit foreign because we’re used to

[00:04:01] thinking about jobs in terms of the language that we may be writing in.

[00:04:05] For those of you who work in an agency world, while you may be coding in the same language

[00:04:10] for the next three or four years, your job description may be changing on a weekly basis,

[00:04:16] maybe even on a daily basis, if you work with multiple clients.

[00:04:19] If you’re working on an application, for example, as an optimization,

[00:04:24] your job description isn’t simply to make the application load in under 0.2 seconds.

[00:04:32] Instead, you may perform the task of making the application fast,

[00:04:37] but you must understand the reason why the application needs to be fast.

[00:04:43] What makes a fast application valuable?

[00:04:46] Of course, that reason, or number of reasons, may be for user experience or for resources,

[00:04:53] but if you don’t know what the reason is, if you don’t have the reason the application should be

[00:04:59] fast, then as the optimization expert, you don’t really have a job description. You just have

[00:05:05] tasks. We’ll take a quick sponsor break and come back to talk about why having the real job

[00:05:11] description, understanding the value you deliver with the context of the purpose in mind is so

[00:05:18] important if you want to cultivate the mindset of a great developer. Today’s episode is sponsored by

[00:05:24] RefactorU. RefactorU is an immersive 10-week JavaScript training bootcamp. They are dedicated

[00:05:30] to getting you hired and empowering you to reinvent yourself. If you have been trying to

[00:05:38] learn how to code online and you’ve hit a brick wall, well, it doesn’t make sense to keep on doing

[00:05:43] the same thing over and over again. RefactorU may be the perfect opportunity to learn how to

[00:05:48] On top of that, RefactorU is GI Bill approved and they have diversity scholarships available for each

[00:05:55] cohort. You’ll learn from world-class peers and instructors while you’re working on real

[00:06:01] hands-on coding projects with JavaScript. Now, as kind of icing on the cake for Developer T

[00:06:07] listeners, RefactorU is offering a 20% tuition discount when you mention the show. Just go to

[00:06:14] spec.fm slash refactor and make sure you mention Developer T.

[00:06:18] When you sign up, that’s spec.fm slash refactor. Thanks again to the folks at RefactorU for

[00:06:25] sponsoring Developer T. Having a full understanding of your job description is essential for many

[00:06:31] reasons, but today I’m going to focus on one primary reason. Now, again, let’s go back over

[00:06:38] what a good job description looks like. It’s not your responsibilities, your skill-based

[00:06:43] responsibilities, but rather it is the value you provide, the reason

[00:06:48] that your job exists. To do your job well, having the context of why a specific task is being

[00:06:55] performed, it isn’t only helpful, it’s essential to performing that task to the highest standard

[00:07:02] of excellence. And that’s really essential to being a great developer, isn’t it? For example,

[00:07:07] if you know your task is to build a registration process that allows users to sign up for a service

[00:07:13] with minimal interaction, and if that’s all you know, you may go down the path of building a

[00:07:18] login form that is optimized for the fastest login and allows people to do auto-complete or

[00:07:24] whatever number of features you decide are relevant. But if you knew that the ultimate

[00:07:29] goal of the application was to acquire user phone numbers so that you can text them updates,

[00:07:35] for example, from a specific event or something like a conference, you may change the entire

[00:07:41] strategy of that task. Instead of having people enter their emails and a password, you may simply

[00:07:48] enter their phone number. Or to return to our discussion on optimization, if you know the

[00:07:53] goal is to make the application feel fast, in other words, the perceived speed of the application,

[00:08:00] you may be able to accomplish that goal more effectively by putting your energy into the

[00:08:06] initial rendering steps rather than over-optimizing the entire application.

[00:08:12] We talked about this specific concept in an episode last week called Getting Fast First,

[00:08:18] but really what we’re talking about here is when you start optimizing an application,

[00:08:23] you have to understand what you’re optimizing for. In other words, what are you doing? What

[00:08:28] value are you providing by performing that optimization? So take a few minutes a day,

[00:08:33] write down your job description on your to-do list, write this at the top.

[00:08:38] Today, my job is to fill in the blank. Avoid writing specific tasks and instead think about

[00:08:46] the effect of your actions.

[00:08:48] Maybe call this a purpose statement for your day. For example, every day at Whiteboard,

[00:08:53] a significant part of my job is to encourage learning and an unwavering commitment to quality

[00:08:58] for the developers at our company. Notice that I didn’t prescribe exactly what steps I need to take

[00:09:05] in order to do that, but instead, this gives me an idea, some guardrails, some values of what

[00:09:11] effect I’m trying to achieve. Here’s the underlying truth here, that few job titles or descriptions are

[00:09:18] actually going to give you. The underlying truth is that specific skills, actions, techniques of your

[00:09:23] job, those are very likely and almost guaranteed to change. We change to different technology,

[00:09:30] for example. However, your goals may remain constant. Perhaps more importantly, the tasks

[00:09:36] for the same goal may change from day to day. You may decide to change the way that you approach

[00:09:43] a particular problem because something new has been released that accomplishes,

[00:09:48] that particular goal better. The specifics of how you accomplish your job are fluid. And as a

[00:09:55] result, the growth of your career will come when you truly internalize the concept that the effect

[00:10:02] and the value of what you do, rather than the specific steps you take to do it, are the most

[00:10:09] important detail of the work you do. Thank you so much for listening to today’s episode of

[00:10:16] Developer Tea. Of course, thank you again to

[00:10:18] today’s awesome sponsor, RefactorU. If you are looking to reinvent yourself, RefactorU wants to

[00:10:24] come alongside you in their 10-week JavaScript training boot camp. RefactorU’s goal is to turn

[00:10:31] you into the developer you want to be. If you have been stuck trying to learn how to code online,

[00:10:37] go and check it out. It’s RefactorU. That’s spec.fm slash refactor. And don’t forget,

[00:10:42] you get a 20% tuition discount when you mention Developer Tea. Thank you so much for listening.

[00:10:47] If you enjoyed today’s episode, make sure you subscribe. We actually had a record

[00:10:52] day of listens on Monday. So thank you all for listening. I hope you stick around for future

[00:10:58] episodes. Subscribing is the best way to make sure you don’t miss out on future episodes of

[00:11:03] Developer Tea. Thank you so much for listening. And until next time, enjoy your tea.

Visão de gráfico