318: Successful Skills with Edward Loveall The Bike Shed

Fellow thoughtboter Edward Loveall joins Steph to cohost and talk about alternative frontends and his own that he created: scribe.rip: an alternative frontend to Medium, learning about what it's like to be a manager/non-IC, and helps answer a listener question re: how do you think about empathy in your work?




This episode is brought to you by ScoutAPM. Give Scout a try for free today and Scout will donate $5 to the open source project of your choice when you deploy.





Empathy Online: Edward Loveall
Scribe
GitHub - mendel5/alternative-front-ends: Overview of alternative open source front-ends for popular internet platforms (e.g. YouTube, Twitter, etc.)




Become a Sponsor of The Bike Shed!


Transcript:


STEPH: Hello and welcome to another episode of The Bike Shed, a weekly podcast from your friends at thoughtbot about developing great software. I'm Steph Viccari. And this week, Chris is taking a quick break. But while he's away, we have a guest on today's show. Today's guest is fellow thoughtboter, and wonderful friend, and British accent enthusiast Edward Loveall.


EDWARD: Oh, hello, Steph. It is lovely to meet...No; this is not my real accent. Anyway, hi, friends. [chuckles]


STEPH: [laughs] Hello, British Edward. I am so excited to be chatting with you today. Are you going to maintain that accent throughout the whole episode?


EDWARD: No. There's no way I could do that. I need a lot more professional actor training to be able to maintain quality of that level, I think.


STEPH: That's fair. I won't hold you to that standard. I was reflecting on preparation for this chat. I've been thinking about all the fun that we've had together, the time that we have worked together at thoughtbot, all the remote coffee walks that we have gone on together as we've talked through consulting challenges or coding challenges. And I realized that we have never worked on a project together, which is wild to me.


EDWARD: Huh. Yeah, I think you're right. That is wild. Because I've been here three and a half years, and you've been here even longer than me. So in three and a half years of overlap, we've never done that.


STEPH: And yet we've still always found ways to hang out.


EDWARD: We make it a priority, you know.


STEPH: I think we need to...we might have to bribe somebody for us to get on a project together.


EDWARD: I'm pretty sure we know the person to bribe.


STEPH: We do.


EDWARD: We can go talk to our boss and make that happen. One thing we've both done in our career here at thoughtbot, too, is we have gone from individual contributor to being a manager, which is a cool transition.


STEPH: That's a really good point. That is fun that we have embarked on that journey together. I was very much encouraged to become a team lead, and that was very helpful. Because I'm the type of person where I'm not sure I would have put myself up for that role. I'm very thankful that others encouraged me to do so because I really love it. There are certainly challenges with being a team lead. But overall, I have very much enjoyed the role.


Just to provide some context for being a team lead a thoughtbot, because I feel like those management roles tend to differ from company to company as to the level of responsibilities that you have. So for us in particular, it's really focused on leading a team of developers, usually two to three developers, and conducting regular one-on-ones to ensure that they are fulfilled and are successful in their projects and their growth at thoughtbot. And then helping them become senior developers if they're not already and essentially coaching them through difficult development and consulting scenarios.


EDWARD: Yeah, there is still an expectation that you are an individual contributor in some form on client projects. It is not just a management position.


STEPH: Yeah, that's a good point. For me, that context switching is often what makes it challenging but yet also helps me still feel that I ca