Her majesty, the principal engineer

Whenever a gap is created, someone usually jumps in to fill that gap. So maybe one of those engineers will really step up. That's how we, that's how senior engineers are created.

That's true. That's how they're born. You're listening to Autha VPN, the show where two work besties get real about working in tech. What up, Jasmine?

What's up, Allison? How are you?

I am, I'm okay. Oh, it's, it's dreary out today. Oh, facts. I think we've talked about this before, like the weather significantly impacts my mood. I need like one of those red light things in my house so I can just pretend that I'm whatever, on a beach or something. Um, but yeah, it's really dreary out, completely gray, misting even.

So I'm like, I'm okay, it's not a vibe outside. But I'm glad you spoke about light, almost like an infrared light.

What do you, what do you know about infrared lights, Jasmine?

If you remember, like, I manifested something for 2025. If you remember, I only bring it up on every single episode.

We, we did, we did discuss last week that you had purchased a sauna. Has it arrived?

It arrived 3 days early, so I used it last night. And I can confirm it was probably one of my best life choices. Not going to school. Not like, you know, running in like a 5K. Not like putting my health. No, buying this sauna definitely takes number one. Yes, absolutely.

You are tempting me so hard right now to go. I have like a shitty one. I have like one of those ones that like you basically just put your body in and you zip it up and you sit in like a tent.

See, I almost did. I almost did that. And it's like, oh well, if you use it, you'll use it enough. I'm telling you, this like level up. Like the fact I have a door and there's like Bluetooth speakers. I just watched Grey's Anatomy from there for like 20 minutes last night.

You're so fancy.

I felt so good. I slept so well last night. Oh my God. I even put like a little hook near it so I could put towel. Like my office smells like a sauna. I'm, I am fully encouraging this. You should get one.

You seem like you're thriving. And you know what would be perfect on a dreary day like today?

What?

A beautiful sauna. A beautiful sauna sesh. That's what I need.

You do.

Next time you're in town, you can use it. Send me a referral link. Do they— I will. Do they have family discount?

It's on Amazon right now, just saying. Like, it was on sale.

So, okay. And you—

I can confirm, I used it.

It's quality.

It's good. What— setup was easy. I did it by myself.

Okay.

All right.

All right. Okay.

You could be the proud owner.

Yeah, we'll see. We'll see. I don't know, because here's the thing, I already have a sauna, you know what I mean? So I'm like, it's just wasteful.

But yeah, it's not infrared. Those have two different benefits. Okay, have a sauna. You don't have an infrared sauna.

You're right. You're right. All right, I'll crunch some numbers. I'll think about it. Anyways, this podcast is not about saunas, but—

It's not?

This is probably like the fourth time we brought up saunas.

It will not be the last.

It definitely will not be the last.

You're right. You're right. We're not talking about saunas. But you know what else is good? Is a nice story. I wish I had a nice story to listen to. What do you got for me this week?

Well, I don't know if it's nice, but at the very least it will be entertaining. Yes. Yes. I wouldn't call it nice. So today's story is about an engineering manager and a very, very, very, very, very difficult senior dev.

That's a lot of verys. I'm scared.

It's like also locked in. Yeah. It gets kind of, it gets kind of fun. Like, I'm not gonna lie. There's some shit in here that I'm like, that person's really acting that way.

So.

Today's story will be from the perspective of the engineering manager and we're going to call her Maria.

Ooh, hey Maria.

Hey Maria girl.

Maria. All right. Sorry.

Which song did you sing?

Like West Side Story? Oh yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

That's what I thought you did.

I'm gonna play it every time in my head when you say her name.

Okay. Just give me a little jingle every time I say it too. I feel like we should be doing that. Yeah.

Yeah.

Clear out the throat. Okay, so Maria manages a small software team, and I'll give you just the layout of the team to set some context. All right, so there's Maria as the EM, there's a product manager, a tech lead, our senior dev who will be the star of today's story, 3 junior developers, and then a UI/UX designer or tester. Okay.

So they got like a little mixed team here. Some like, I'm imagining they have a designer thing with some producty things that they're building out. Maybe a web app, maybe a—

yep.

Am I guessing? Did I guess it right?

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So this team works on a niche SaaS application.

Okay.

And this thing has been around for 2 decades.

Oh.

Mm-hmm. Maria has only been acting as a manager at this company working on this product for around a year and a half. Prior to that, she worked at the same company as a senior engineer for like 2 and a half years. So Maria has not only experience as being a dev and as an EM, but she's, she's been at this specific company for 3, no, for like 4 years. How do I add numbers?

Yeah, I mean, it sounds like 1.5 plus 2.5, that's 4 years.

We did it.

We got there.

So apparently the specific product line that Maria and her team works on was developed by a single human being. So this is like a company that has multiple products within it, right? And so this specific product that Maria's team is concerned with was developed by a single guy who owned it and developed it for the, like, over the course of 20 years.

No!

And nothing has been around for that long.

That's terrible!

Customers are— customers have been paying for this, and it was all written and maintained by a single guy.

You cannot pay me to be— to work on that. You cannot. Pay me enough. Actually, that's not true. I probably— there's probably some number I would accept, but it'd be very, very high. We have very high number.

But so what are some things you think of when you hear that a 20-year-old product developed by a single human being? What are some things that maybe come to mind?

So here's the thing, especially 20 years.

Oh my God.

So there's a reason why having a diversity of thoughts and opinions in engineering and on teams is so important is because you want to allow for differing perspectives into what you're building. Because when you're, you'll start to build something super lopsided and not considerate of things that are in your peripheral or in your blind spots. And so you'll find that their solutions are not really super well thought of because they don't have the input of different of those different perspectives. And so what you end up getting is that, and also no one to peer look at your review, it's only your stuff. So you might start to get a little lazy about how your code is written. And so most likely you have like a convoluted system that grows in such a way and just a big bowl of spaghetti. It's just spaghetti. And anyone who goes into it, like, what do they call it? You look into the eyes of the into the abyss. Like, it's just like you go in there and you come out and you're just, you know, you look like a mess, like Medusa. Like, you're just like, ah, like you can't look in there. It's so terrible. And so, you know, the result of trying to work on a system like that, most likely if you try to change something, there's also like a kind of Jenga block type thing where, or pick up sticks where you don't actually know what it's touching or what it might impact. And so everything is living in this one person's brain, that missing diversity of thought, that missing like different perspectives. You're going to make a mistake and you might blow something up, like where you don't wanna touch a piece of code, especially if it's 20 years, like you could make one single change and it breaks things like far down, like downstream. It most likely, like when a team goes to look at this stuff, they end up just building something completely new and from scratch, which is very expensive. With these legacy systems, they often suffer due to, it, it seems like you're making a cheap thing by just paying one engineer, but actually you will suffer in the long run because you're gonna need to pay for the upkeep or to like pretty much redo the whole thing and move customers over to a new system. And it could be a lot. It, it sounds terrifying. I've witnessed these few systems myself and it's traumatizing.

For sure. Here's the thing, you nailed it. This is spot on for the situation. Like, Maria, I guess they're gonna redo it. That, no. But everything else, for some reason, this team did not decide to just, let's stand up, let's stand up a whole new thing. To them, they were like, the only way out is through. We'll get into it. But Maria describes this as just like not fun. I'm like, girl, it sounds way worse than not fun. This software though has made the company actually like a ton of money for a long time. That's even worse. Yeah. So I think that's maybe part of why there was some, not that they talked about this in the story, but maybe that's why they didn't want to stand up a whole new thing. They were like, no, no, no. Like we can just, we can just make it better, which is exactly what they tried to do. Right. So this is a code base that is best described as a hot mess. Zero documentation. No comments. No like repeated patterns that like follow like good code practices or like code standards that like one might expect. Security is lacking, uh, the org, which is scary because people are paying for this thing. Um, like real customers are using it. The organization is a hot mess, as you described, like spaghetti, and there's no tests. So it's like one of those codebases too, though, where like people come in and they're all, they're, they're judgmental about it, which is maybe for sure you can be like, I think that's valid. But like when people come in, they're like, oh, if we were starting today, we would do this like X, Y, and Z. And it's like, yes, but on the one hand, it's like this single person built a thing and got a bunch of customers on it and like people are getting value out of it. So it's, let's find a happy medium to balance those things.

It's not that engineer's fault. They didn't have the support of other folks. Like you don't have the ability to do a massive refactor. You're one person, like that's like being mad about how well a skyscraper was built cuz one guy built it.

Like, right.

Yeah. They probably cut some corners.

Yeah. Yeah, exactly. But yeah, so interestingly, like they don't decide to go and write a whole separate thing.

Oh no. Big mistake.

This team is like, you know what, let's just fix what we can. So they have like a massive push to just go in. Go into the spaghetti code, reorganize what they can, add comments, add tests. Like they really, really try and fix this thing up. Obviously this is not easy or simple at all. And it's not like it takes a week. Like this takes like mad time. And the team eventually is just like, no one is having fun. No, like the opposite of fun. It's like demoralizing because as you predicted, Terrible. It's literally hell. But like, as you predicted, they go in, they change one thing, and then it breaks this other thing over here, and it's just like a never-ending sea of issue after issue after issue.

And I bet since it's such a successful product, if they make a mistake, there's like, you know, customers or business impact that they have to consider. Like, that's just Yeah, I don't, again, you need to pay me a lot of money to lie. I know.

One thing I was thinking about here, it's not funny.

It's not funny at all.

This team was going through it. This team was going through it, but I'm like, if I were like leading this team, I would be like grasping at what can I do to make people feel better? And then my brain started going down these like pathways of like what, like really shitty activity Do you think like Maria or like some other like leader on this team could propose that would actually like make the team feel like they could have fun?

Oh my gosh. What would you do? I don't know.

Like laser tag? I don't know. Like I'm like, laser tag. Oh, like you're saying, um, no, I'm like, we need to balance this.

Laser tag is gonna save the fact that every time I go to code, I want to toss my computer out a window. That's totally gonna save it. Pizza party.

Yeah. Hey everyone, we're doing pizza. Two slices max.

I know you hate your life, but here's a Dunkin' Donuts gift card.

Honestly, Dunkin' might work for me. I'd be like, okay, I know.

I was thinking of when you said this, I thought of something else. I remember we did something where there was like a push I can't remember, you weren't on that team with me, but we had to do database migration. It was just like some grunt work we had to do and we did try to make it look more fun and like how many can you do in a week? Contest type situations. I'm like, maybe you could do that. Maybe there's like a way to gamify it. I also think like trying to shove it over wouldn't work either. Like I would want to confront how annoying it was.

Yeah. Um, oh yeah. I hope these people are showing up to standup being like, 'Yo, this shit sucks. Like, I never want to do this again.' Like, I hope they have that, like, psychological safety to at least complain about it.

Yeah, I'm thinking, have you ever looked at, like, just a really bad spaghetti piece of code? And I will walk away. I will literally look at it and I'll be like, I need a minute. I will, like, get angry because I'm like, why?

Yeah. Why?

Why?

Yep.

Why?

Yeah, yeah, it's just like you want to try and like get in the head of like when it was written, who was written by. Like, I just want to understand. Like, no, zero, zero judgment initially. I'm just, I just, I'm like, initially, no, I always benefit of the doubt first. I'm like, there must be a reason for this. And listen, I'm not perfect. I will read things that I wrote years ago and I'm like, oh yeah, Who?

Like, what? This happened to us recently, remember?

This happened like 2 days ago.

Except that was a little—

That was a little different. That was like, I was, I forgot the decision I had made when I wrote that. And somebody else on our team was like, no, I'm pretty sure it works like this. And I was like, I don't think so. And then I looked and I was like, what?

Oh, I was thinking of even when we had a moment where we were all complaining about like, why does this thing work like this? This is why that makes no sense. And I'm asking you guys, does anyone know why this is happening? And this doesn't make any sense. Why was this built this way? And then I went to go look into it later and my name was over all of it from 6 years ago. And I was like, I had, but I had like documentation of like why I did it. I read it and I was like, I don't know what you mean. Like I read my own comments and was like, what is this?

Yeah, that's great. We had two instances of that this week. That's the thing is I'm very empathetic to this, like to both sides here. Yeah. Because we know what it's like to read spaghetti code, but it's also like, that's not spaghetti.

It was just a dumb decision. There's a difference.

Well, yeah, but also like, here's the thing. I feel like if you are going to, sometimes you write code that you're like, I don't know if I feel good about this in the moment. Leave a comment. Like, yeah, just put that somewhere. Like, these people have to like reverse engineer 20 years of that with zero comments, zero context.

You got it.

But you can't, you can't.

Anyway, so their life sucks.

Their life sucks because this is day in, day out. This is what they're doing. And it's not like they don't have other things they need to do. Like, this is all like tech debt, right? They, also have like growth related work that they need to try and balance with this.

You think that engineer who worked on it for 20 years in the middle of the day is like, ooh, like he feels being cursed.

Like there's a chill. Yeah. Yeah. Maybe, maybe. Or that person's on a beach, like not even thinking about it at all. Just made a bunch of decisions that like people are like, ha ha ha. I hope not.

I think that's funny.

Well, here's the thing though, is like this team actually has bigger problems, if you can believe it. Oh, how? I know.

Who's beefing?

Who's beefing? Enter our senior developer on the team. Okay. We're going to call him Hank.

Is this also the team lead? Oh, not tech lead.

Tech lead. No, there is a, this is a different human cuz there's an EM, a tech lead, a senior engineer.

Okay.

And then, and Hank, we're gonna call him Hank. Yep. All right.

All right. Hey Hank.

Hey Hank. Welcome. Welcome to the story. So Hank is by far, maybe unsurprisingly, like the best dev on the team, like in terms of pure technical capability. He's like very, very talented. He has a lot of experience and he's just like very efficient.

Come through, Hank.

Even Maria, who is Hank's manager, is like, yeah, like this guy is like levels and levels and levels above me. Like years of experience aside, she's like, respect for the immense knowledge, immense technical knowledge that this guy has.

And it's being wasted on this legacy system, but keep going.

Well, yeah, yes. I mean, like, I'm like, I'm like the way that, the way that she's describing Hank, I'm like, just this dude can rewrite the whole thing. Just like, like if he's truly that good, let him rewrite the whole thing. Let everybody else do, give them peace in their lives. Like get them off this project. So while Hank is, uh, an amazing engineer, Maria also describes him as the following. And this is quite a long list, but there's some good stuff in here. Highly opinionated and stuck in his ways. Ah, disrespectful to others.

Not easy to work with. Doesn't like other people's ideas.

Next. Yep. Disrespectful to others on the team, including disrespectful about their work and their experience. So undervalues or devalues their experience.

Translation: thinks everyone's dumb around them.

Mm-hmm. Hank thinks he knows better than everyone.

I don't need to translate that.

Hank also does not believe in what the company does. Oh.

Translation: I'm here for a check.

He disagrees with the high-level strategy and direction set by leadership.

Translation: I think everyone's dumber than me.

It wraps back around. Yep, here we go again. Thinks the product roadmap is just like completely wrong. I really like this one: doesn't like Agile or the ticketing system that they use.

Again, translates to everyone's stupid around me.

I'm like, are they like anything? Hold on, there's more. And I feel like it gets better.

This is so good.

This one is so good. Doesn't like how the company does IT. I'm like, bro, you have problems with the VPN? Like what? Like what? Is the Wi-Fi bad? Like, I would love to know specifically what Yeah, I want to know more about that one. And I would like to give— I'm like, yeah, they don't like the systems that they have in place.

Again, probably thinks he can do it better than them. Like, translation: I think everyone's dumber than me.

Okay, here we go, next one. It's not just IT that Hank is going after. Hank also thinks that he knows how to do UX better than the UX designer on the team.

Man, this guy Hank, man.

Hank is a gem. An absolute gem.

Mad respect for standing on it. Hilarious.

It's so good. And lastly, Hank has flat out told Maria, and I quote, no, it's amateur hour all the time, end quote. So let all of that sink in and simmer.

Hank, Hank, Hank has clearly outgrown his role here, but is the check is clearing?

The check is clearing, right? Because my first thought is like, this laundry list of things, I'm like, Hank, this isn't good for you. Like, you, you can't possibly be happy. What are you doing? Even just like when I read like doesn't believe in what the company does, I'm like Okay. Hank, come on now. Get out. You must have options. You must have options.

Yeah. I mean, they're comfortable. That check is clearing. Doesn't wanna— listen, I hate interviewing enough that I would understand not wanting to move, but the amateur hour is hysterical. It's amateur hour over here. Is it? We should find out. I'm curious. It— 'cause they might be right. Hank might be right.

The best part about this is that Maria, our engineering manager who Hank reports to, actually like agrees with him on a lot of the issues he raises. So not everything, but she does agree with him on a lot of the stuff that he says. But like Maria's view is, look, I'm not running this company. The best that I can do is speak up and say my mind and like tell people sort of my perspective and how I see things if I disagree with like strategic leadership or or whatever it is, but like at the end of the day, Maria has, is like, I accept that I don't run this shit. Like I have a job to do and my job is to like make sure that I'm supporting my team and giving them what they need. Right. And giving them the context and like helping them technically and like growing my engineers and their careers. Like, she's like that, I gotta, I gotta focus there. I can agree that there are things that are not Necessarily like right at, at the top, but like also I'm staying in my lane. I'll voice my opinion, but I'm staying in my lane. Like Hank, let it go. Like she's like, you gotta, you gotta learn to do that.

Yeah. What, what a job as a manager to, to have an engineer. But you know what? I feel like most senior engineers end up like Hank.

It's not uncommon.

Not all, but that same like, oh my God, everything's stupid vibe that happens. That's not uncommon. I, that's just, there's like a turn in tech where you start to look around and be like, what's happening?

And you also lose the empathy or perspective of what it was like to be starting at a new company or like what it was like to be junior. Like you, and this doesn't happen all of the time obviously, but I, observations of it sometimes, I think for any career probably. The further you get into it, the less you remember about what it was like when you were in that position. So it's hard to bring it back. I feel like I've painted a good picture of Hank to you, but I wanna like make it even more concrete. So Maria's team will host like project kickoff meetings, you know, when, when they're about to start like a big initiative, if they even have time to do it with all of the tech debt that they're dealing with, but. They'll have these project kickoff meetings and Hank, this has happened multiple times, will just come in super hot immediately.

Pigeon, knock over the chessboard type situation.

Yeah. Hank, Hank completely just like commands the room and will be like, this is dumb. This is dumb. Why are we dumb?

I don't know if he says that, but he's like, this is dumb.

This is not what we should be working on.

He's thinking it.

Yeah, he's definitely thinking it. And he tries to like litigate all of these decisions that have already been made about this project, like before the kickoff, like in the kickoff meeting. And so like the meeting gets completely derailed. He's just coming in like, why are we even doing this? Here's what I think we should be doing. And there are like other people on this team just sitting back, just watching.

Maria gotta step up. She can't be letting that happen.

So here's where Maria—

Hank, Hank, I can already see this. Hank is the, like, the, the, like, the, the gem here, the one who's actually getting the stuff done. Most likely Hank has the upper hand and is using that because you can't just let Hank go.

Yep. I think his job security Yes, that's exactly right. And Maria knows it. She's, that's my best dev. I need him on this project. And yet he is going to fight me every step of the way. In the time that we could have completed this project, Hank will be arguing about why we're doing it at all and what else we should be doing instead. So she's in a tough spot where she like ultimately has to convince him because she needs his expertise and his skills. But usually she can't.

Yeah, we gotta figure out a better role for, for Hank, man. Hank, Hank needs to be in these rooms earlier. Hank needs to have more hand in this stuff.

Yeah.

Or you sell it to Hank and you're like, I don't want that. Which one do you want? You gotta have that conversation cuz you can't have both.

Yep.

Cuz Hank might be like, I just want to code. I'll be like, all right then, so do that.

Just do that. Just go in your corner, Hank.

You can't, you can't be mad at both. You gotta, you gotta either be involved or don't. Like, you can't, I don't know. There's a line here.

Also, can you just imagine being on this team? I have no insight into what the other developers or the other people on this team said or like what they were going through while these meetings and like where Hank repeatedly takes, takes charge and derails everything.

Yeah.

I just feel like by the 5th time, like maybe the 3rd time I'd be unmuting and be like, stop, I can't do it anymore. Like, I feel like I would break if it was like every single time. Maybe they did, maybe they tried, but that's, Maria has not told us that.

You know what? That's interesting. I'm the opposite. I feel like I speak up the 1st time or the 2nd. Mm-hmm. And then I, by the 5th time. I would disassociate. Mm.

That is very, yeah, we're different in that way.

I'm like, oh, well, good. I did my best.

Yeah. Cuz I feel like for me, the first time or the first few times, I'm like trying to figure out like, is this a pattern? And then by the time, like, this is a pattern, I'm like, okay, Hank, I would like to get through the end of this meeting because it's the other thing is like the meeting gets completely derailed. So like all of the junior devs like leave and they're like, Great. Project is, has not been kicked off. So like they keep doing this over and over again. But okay. One, one thing I want to throw in here is we did get a little bit of Hank's perspective in all of this because apparently Hank spends his one-on-ones with Maria saying that he doesn't feel valued and he doesn't feel like he's ever listened to.

No, that's not what he really means. What he really means is you don't, do what I say, because everybody's listening.

Yeah, they for sure are all listening. Yeah, bro rants in meetings.

Clearly he's super talented. Clearly he has interest in things that are not his current job. But yeah, you gotta like pick a, you gotta pick a lane, my guy, or go somewhere else where that lane is broader for you to make those decisions.

Maybe it's head of IT, maybe it's head of UX design.

Like, you lost everything. You lost everything, clearly.

And like, Maria in these one-on-ones is like, Hank, you have every opportunity to speak your mind. You speak often in all of our meetings, like, and 9 times out of 10, we listen to you and we take your approach and your way because you are very good at what you do. And in her head, she's just like, Hank is like zeroing in on and is like focusing on that like 1 out of 10 times where that's not the case and somebody else sort of makes the call. And like, this is where this is coming from, of like, no one listens to me. Hank's like paying attention to like— oh my gosh, diva. Yeah, that's the thing, Marie.

I love a diva, but Hank, come on.

But Hank is like Angie's a mega diva.

Oh my gosh.

No, it's too much. And Maria is like, yo, like the emotional overhead of dealing with this, like week after week is a lot. And the thing though about this story is that it ends somewhat mysteriously. We have to end on a cliffhanger. No, because at this point things have gotten pretty bad. We are a few weeks away from a performance review. Like it's performance review. Uh, Season. Yeah. And Maria's like, obviously I have to do something about this. I have to address this. This is like, she's like, I need to prioritize the team overall, the team's health, and not just focus on like individuals. And has some reasonable anxiety over this performance review with Hank in particular, because he's so difficult. And Hank basically flat out tells her, listen, I'm miserable and I'm going to start looking for other jobs.

Honestly, that might be the right call.

Honestly, if I'm Maria, I'm like, yes.

I mean, I, I think, I think that makes sense at this point. He might be too far gone. Frank might— Frank? Hank. Hank might be too far gone.

Renaming him. Yeah.

And, uh, to be frank, I would try— I think what I'm seeing Maria do is kind of— she's not moving the chessboard in any way or changing the configuration. If you keep doing the same thing and you're getting the same result, it's not, you're not gonna change this person. What you need to do is find out how this person could be most successful and call shots and have the autonomy that they desire. Like, I think you had a good idea of like, hey, why doesn't he go build off the next version and start doing that? And like, you know what I mean? Like maybe they need somewhere where they're calling the shots, they're by building thing and. I think that if I saw this, I would realize that Hank was not in a good position to— they're, they're not feeling like they're thriving. And it's possible Maria can't do anything about that. That is a thing. There's only so much you can do as a manager. You can advocate, come up with ideas. I would be like, okay, clearly you're not happy with this. What do you need? What do you, what is it that's like your hope and desire for your career? Like as much as this person's senior. As a manager, like your value is still, you still have a lot of value to give to a senior engineer. You can often, as a manager, you will be managing people who have far more years of experience than you do, but you're still that extra support that they need to be successful and happy in their gig, right? So I think it's unfortunate that Hank is leaving. I think it probably is the best bet for Hank to— clearly they've been here for a while, they're over it. They're complaining about everything at this point. It's just like a big snowball. You can't really unfurl something like that at this point. But I think Maria should take a lesson of like how to create spaces that is gonna make her self successful. Like she couldn't have keep doing those project meetings and that keeps happening over and over again. You need to try something different. Is there a pre-meeting with the designer and her and whoever, like, and the senior engineer? And then there's the meeting with everybody else so that you can get the feedback early. Is that what you should be doing? Because you know, that's, you know, that disruption is happening because now you're, as much as you have like the productivity gain with Hank, like you're tanking everybody else's. So the impact, you know.

Yeah. And I think you bring up a lot of really good points and Maria is still early in her management career at this point. Like she's only a year and a half in. And so I think she like, she acknowledges like, what, what should I be learning from this? And in some ways it's actually like maybe a good thing that she encountered someone like Hank early in that career journey so she could see it sooner rather than later. But yeah, I, I think you're spot on. Like there, there are a lot of things here that Maria came to eventually, huh, I should really start thinking about the team more holistically and make sure I'm supporting like the team's efforts and not just thinking at the individual level. Which I think she was for a while, and that's why she talked herself into like Hank can get away with a lot of stuff because he's so good at his job and he's highly effective. So yeah, I, I hope that, I don't know, I just hope this team got out of tech debt land.

Probably not.

I hope Hank went off to a company that he believes in. I hope Maria and her team started working on something that's a little bit not as draining, not as draining as what they were doing.

But, but I don't know, we'll have to see. I mean, they'll keep moving forward, that's for sure. Yeah, I'm not— I don't know, who knows. Maybe after their— whenever a gap is created, someone usually jumps in to fill that gap. So maybe one of those engineers will really step up, and that's That's how we, that's how senior engineers are created.

That's true. This, this, yeah, that's how they're born.

Senior engineers are born from, from gaps, from immense gaps and pressure.

Yeah.

They have to step up even though they don't know what they're doing. Don't let anyone tell you that they do, cuz it always starts with not knowing what, what you're doing and then. You just keep figuring it out. You get some grit, and next thing you know, you're complaining and thinking you're better than everybody else. That's how you know you've made it.

Next thing you know, you're tearing down other departments.

What are you doing over there? That's hilarious. I actually love that.

No, I think— yeah, it's funny. The amount of diva is, is exceptional coming from Hank. It is some— it's some good stuff. Some good stuff.

But at least they don't suck. Hank is actually like crushing code. But I do think this is such a classic situation of trying to preserve the talent of one person at the expense of psychological safety for others. We gotta be better. And I do think it sounds like they— I think there's a line. There's one where they're like flipping over the table, like, you need to figure that stuff out. But if they're especially saying things that are nasty or not nasty, but demeaning to other teammates. I've said this before, there's no excuse. And as a culture in tech, it's so important that we don't continue to reward that type of behavior. And there should be consequences to it because actions like that are what feed, like we're joking about it at Code Diva, but if you've ever been around one and you've been in an experience where a senior engineer is like beating you about something, like they're not all like that, but we've all been in a situation where we've experienced it. It's just something that shouldn't be. Tolerated. And I think because of talent, some bad behavior does get tolerated. And that's something that we just collectively as a culture, if we don't find ways of how to deal with it, where it comes from, like often it's burnout, like over the course of decades for some people. We need to figure out like how it happens. We need to figure out how to keep people happy, but we also need to not allow or tolerate those things. I could be like, hey, listen, I know you're pissed, but this behavior that you're doing cannot happen. And there needs to be consequences. And you can work together and understand, like, why do you feel like you're not— you have to kind of dive in into the psyche a bit. Like, all right, what do you really want here? Like, how can I make this better for you? Because we can't do this anymore. This can't happen. So how do we not make that happen? You got to solve the problem and not just let them run around and be divas. They can be a little bit divas, but there comes a point where it becomes low-key toxic, high-key toxic in this scenario.

I actually would describe the situation as pretty toxic and especially like everything you're saying, it's like there are 3 junior engineers on this team. Look at what example this is setting by sort of letting it just go, letting it all be tolerated. We don't know how junior they are. This could be their first job and this is like what they're staring into. This is what their future is if they become senior. Engineers? No, absolutely not. Yeah. Listen, Hank does sound like a little burnt out.

Hank. Yeah, no, beyond, like there's like a, they need a new stage past burnt out.

Yeah. Yeah. Hank needs an apartment sauna and like some, some time off for a bit.

A sabbatical.

Yes. Hank needs a sabbatical. I hope he got that because yeah, hopping to another company. Right after all of this. It's like, it doesn't sound—

telling you, I said this from the jump, Hank's there for the check. Hank just wants to check. So Hank's gonna go get a check to somewhere else. Like, yeah, yeah, we don't know. It could be in credit card debt from all the saunas he bought.

Like, he already has a sauna. Oh, I like that narrative.

Too many, too many. That was way too many. Came in deduction, there's like an entire sauna room. Kind of.

Um, no, because he's like, he would be way more chill if he had that many saunas.

True, true. I was just thinking of the credit card debt. Yeah, like they go in the sauna, they feel great, but then they come out and they're like, then the debt overwhelms. The debt is still over there, still there.

Oh, this turned dark. Why do you do that?

I don't know, this, this is how my mind works.

I don't know. No, it was already dark. That's the thing about these is like when we don't know how they end, there's no happy ending. It's Yeah, we're going to fill in.

You always have the nice happy ending. I never go that way.

No. Yeah, you're going to fill in how somebody is in massive credit card debt and that explains their behavior. And I'm trying to grasp for, like, he took a sabbatical. Maybe he's on a beach. We really hit it from both sides.

My cynicism.

And my hope.

You have such good hope. This is, this is actually a pattern now that I think about it. This is not the time.

This is the pod.

This is the pod. I guess we'll end it there.

All right, on that note, go enjoy your sauna. Yeah, next time. See you for more of this next time. Bye.

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