Purpose: What I Learned from Stepping Down as Team Lead Twice

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I know developers feel doubts of choosing the IC role over a manager or vice versa. I'll tell about my own road how to find own purpose doing things I like.

This talk has been presented at TechLead Conference 2023, check out the latest edition of this Tech Conference.

FAQ

Alex Ptahin recommends 'Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us' by Daniel Pink, which discusses the concepts of autonomy, mastery, and purpose.

Alex Ptahin is a software engineer at Presto Tech who has experience both as an engineer and a team leader.

Alex Ptahin learned the importance of finding fun and purpose in work, realizing that long-term goals without enjoyment can be exhausting and less fulfilling.

Alex believes that less fun leads to less learning and happiness, which can make long-term commitments and achievements in professional settings feel less rewarding.

Alex recommends considering career progression as a series of short-term directions or experiments, allowing for adjustments based on what is learned along the way, rather than focusing solely on long-term goals.

According to Alex, finding purpose is about identifying what is important and valuable to us, and it involves continuous experimentation, fun, and learning.

Alex suggests viewing mistakes as part of the learning process, advocating for writing them down along with wins to better understand and improve from them without blame.

Alex Ptakhin
Alex Ptakhin
8 min
09 Mar, 2023

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Video Summary and Transcription

The Talk discusses the importance of finding purpose and learning from past experiences in software development. It emphasizes the need to test different areas and reflect on experiences to find direction. Understanding one's purpose and the value it brings is crucial. Mistakes are seen as valuable insights for improvement.

1. Introduction to Purpose and Learning

Short description:

Hello, thank you for coming. Today I will talk about purpose and what I learned from stepping down as team lead twice. I started in childhood with C, C++ and PHP for web development. Does my work make me fun? What things I need to remove, change, or add? Let's try short-term directions. My directions will approach brand-senior engineer experience and, with some knowledge, go into team lead position, and then engineer position, and then team lead position again.

Hello, thank you for coming. My name is Alex Ptahin and I'm a software engineer at Presto Tech. Today I will talk about purpose and what I learned from stepping down as team lead twice.

A few words about me. Half of the experience engineer. Half of the experience team leader. Sometimes I ask myself what am I now after this experience.

Let's go to the beginning. We have different routes to Tech. I started in childhood many years ago with C, C++ and PHP for web development. Why was it so interesting? Because it was a play. Why do children play? It's fun. When I grew up, I lost fun because now I am an adult. I should be severe and considerate serious and respectable man. Also, we are on a fast-changing world and although human psyche has a large margin of safety, it isn't elementary to do long-term things without fun.

Less fun, less learning. Less fun, less happiness. I started to think. Does my work make me fun? What things I need to remove, change, or add? What can lead me to do things without fun? And I used to be driven by long-term goals. I want to be the CTO in 5 years. Accomplishing this goal can be as good as very bad. Reaching the big goal was very exhausting and I had no idea if it will be better. Finally, will it make me happier? All is the things I wanted. Or did I want only some part of being the CTO picture? Long-term goals can play a cruel joke on us. Let's try short-term directions. Consider them as experiments and adaptation. No focus now of achieving requirements. We can change the direction if we understand things going the wrong way. My directions will approach brand-senior engineer experience and, with some knowledge, go into team lead position, and then engineer position, and then team lead position again. Then engineering stuff also.

2. Finding Direction and Understanding Purpose

Short description:

Currently, my direction is more defined, but it can change. How can we help ourselves find a direction? Test different areas like architecture and design, try being a team leader, or explore mental engineering. Understanding our purpose is crucial. It's the meaning that is important and valuable to us. Reflect on our experiences, both the new ones and the ones we've forgotten. Mistakes can provide valuable insights into what works and how to improve.

Currently, my direction is more defined, but it can change again and again. Will. Will. So, how we can help us to get any direction? Let's help people get what is your direction now. Want to test more architecture and design things? Say about it. Want to try to be the team leader? Say about it. Want to mental engineer? Start doing it and say about it. What should we ask ourselves in this case? It is considered more understanding of purpose, but it is another philosophical word. What is it? Oxford dictionary gives us a couple of definitions, but interesting for us it is the last one. It is meaning that is important and valuable to us. But what is essential? Some things are new from my experience, some not. I see this experience as a picture of British Canyon in Utah. Other people can say it is amazing, but I see mistakes and this is also mine and I almost forgot about this. These very subjective picture of mistakes didn't help me understand what was good and what my advantage is and how to improve other things.

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What led you to software engineering? 
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What would be your three tips for engineers to level up their career? 
First, be patient. I often see posts on Twitter or LinkedIn about developers who were promoted to a senior position after a year. And while this is wonderful, I think we forget that each company has a different standard for what constitutes a senior developer, and everyone's journey will be different.
Second, don't be afraid to ask questions. If you try your best to solve a problem or answer a question you have, but you can't figure it out after a reasonable amount of time, ask a team member or mentor for help.
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You're currently working as a software engineer at Spotify. What does a typical day of yours look like there?
I begin my day answering emails. Then we have a team breakfast and a standup remotely as we're all still remote at Spotify. After that, we might have a web tech sync with the other squads in our business unit. The day usually includes some form of pair or mob programming, depending on the work stream. 
My team always has Fika, a traditional Swedish coffee break, scheduled every afternoon. Every couple of Fridays, we have team games planned to release some stress. 
Also, I tend to have a lot of free time to focus, which is nice but makes for a boring answer to this question!
Do you have some rituals or tools that keep you focused and goal-oriented?
I'll admit that I've been struggling with staying motivated in the time of remote work. I've been remote with Spotify since onboarding a year ago, but my team is wonderful, and they help me when I'm down.
Apart from that, I use Todoist to keep track of my tasks, and, naturally, I listen to Spotify while working. But other than that, not really. Maybe I should adopt some new tools to keep me on track!
My current favorite Spotify playlist is Brand New Chill: https://open.spotify.com/playlist/37i9dQZF1DX6uQnoHESB3u?si=380263b3c853442e
I also love Chillout Daily: https://open.spotify.com/playlist/7ozIozDp260fjNOZy1yzRG?si=66d6c839ec9b458a
You wrote a book called De-coding the Technical Interview. What was the impulse to do it?
I wanted to give the community a manual of the essentials of computer science knowledge to ace the technical interviews. The book covers data structures like stacks, queues, or linked lists, tackles algorithms, and deals with systems design. You'll also learn about the interview process from start to finish, get tips on how to submit an amazing take-home project, or understand how to problem solve. You'll also gain knowledge on the frontend coding skills needed to excel at a frontend interview.

If you could stress one piece of advice on surviving a technical interview, which would it be?
Do not lie your way through an interview. If you don't know the answer to something, just admit it. There's no shame in admitting you don't know the answer to something. There is shame in faking it and pretending like you do know the answer.
What's the single best practice everyone who writes code should follow?
Remember that while you are technically writing code for computers, you're also writing it for humans. Your code should be readable and have as little complexity as possible without sacrificing accessibility or performance.
In addition to the book, you co-host the Ladybug Podcast. What inspired you to enter this field, and what are the podcast's main topics?
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***
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What led you to programming?
I had a friend when I was a teenager who was really into it, and he tried to teach me. But I just couldn't get it — it didn't make any sense to me. So I never really thought I'd get into programming, but I liked computers a lot, and I ended up going to school for electrical engineering. 
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Committing to creating high-quality content. That might sound obvious because I'm a full-time educator now, but I would not have gotten my job at PayPal if I hadn't been so active with my blog. In fact, lots of my jobs came out of me being involved in the community around meetups, conferences, or open-source projects. 
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What would be your three tips for engineers to level up their career? 
The number one thing I tell people is to be a nice person. I know that sounds fluffy or silly, but it cannot be overstated. You will get so much further in your career and just in life in general if you're a nice person. That doesn't mean that you take people being jerks lying down, but how you interact with others is out of kindness. You could be the best engineer in the entire world, but if you're not a nice person, you will not reach your full potential or accomplish your goals, whatever they may be.
Second, it's just as important to decide what you are not going to learn as it is to decide what you are going to learn. You could jump into countless things — and there are successful people who are polyglot programmers, but I can't speak to that a whole lot. All I can tell you is that in my experience, focusing on specific things that I want to be truly good at has worked out great for my career. That doesn't mean that I closed myself off to other things. With my website rewrite, I have been doing a lot of dev ops-related work and a lot of back-end stuff that I've typically not been involved in. You want to keep your head up on what's going on outside of what you're doing so that you know what direction to go in when you come across problems you need to solve. However, finding a focus on what you want to be good at has helped me a lot. That way, you feel a little less stressed.
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What are you working on right now? 
The big thing I'm working on right now is a rewrite of my website. It'll be much more than just a developer portfolio — I'll have user accounts, and there'll be fun things that you can do with it. And because it's more than just a website, I'm using Remix, a new cool framework in the React ecosystem. I'm also working on updating my material on TestingJavaScript.com and a TypeScript course as well. 
So, whatever I'm working on, it ends up resulting in lots of opportunities for content.


Do you have some rituals that keep you focused and goal-oriented? 
I have a notepad where I keep all of my notes of what I'm going to do for the day so that when I'm checking things off, I'm not distracted notifications. I've tried apps for that, and that does not work well for me. 
I also am a firm believer in inbox zero. I have my work inbox and my personal inbox, and I keep them both at zero. And I kind of use that as a to-do list. 
And if I'm not feeling excited about working for some reason, I will often hop on my Onewheel, which is an electric skateboard that only has one giant wheel in the middle. It's just a total blast, and I'll hop on that with my backpack and a charger, and I'll go to a Starbucks or a park just to declutter my mind.
What things in the React universe are you excited about right now?
React version 18 is coming out soon. The experimental version is out there, and it's fun to play with. I'm just really thrilled that it's no longer a concurrent mode but concurrent features that you can opt into. Cool things like that will enable React server components in the future. 
But the biggest thing I'm excited about is Remix. That's huge. It eliminates a lot of problems that are solved well other tools, but when I'm using Remix, I don't have those problems, so I don't need those clusters.
You already said that teaching is an integral part of the learning process, and you stand your word since you're also a full-time educator. What inspired you to enter this field?
I have been a teacher for as long as I can remember. I grew up in a church where you talk in front of your peers from a very young age, and my mom was an elementary school teacher, so teaching has just always been a part of me. 
I really just enjoy sharing what I'm learning with others. As far as teaching technical topics, I gave my first workshop when I was still a student at Brigham Young University. With my fellow, we taught how to use AngularJS, and I got Firebase to sponsor pizza so they would show up, and that was pretty fun.
Then I started teaching on the side at egghead.io right after I'd graduated. That was when I first got a paycheck for teaching. And I realized that teaching could be quite lucrative and support my family and me as a full-time endeavor. So I did it — I quit my job. I'm a very risk-averse person, so I'd done teaching as a side hustle for four years just to verify that I could make this work.
When TestingJavaScript was released, and I got that paycheck, I realized that I didn't need my PayPal salary anymore. I could just focus my daytime on teaching and give my evenings back to my family, which was a nice trait.


Apart from that, how has teaching impacted your career? 
Earlier I mentioned that pretty much all of my jobs came because I was perceived as an expert. After the first job, where I was an intern and then converted into full-time, I never applied to another. I worked for four different companies, and they wouldn't have recruited me if they didn't know who I was and what I was doing. My content is how they knew who I was — I just made it easy for them to find me. Teaching made that impact. It made my career. 
We talked about React and Remix. Are there any other open-source projects that you'd recommend keeping an eye on or contributing to?
I have some myself. React Testing Library is probably the biggest one that people are familiar with. And if React isn't your jam, then other framework versions of the testing library. 
React Query is also really popular. If you're using Remix, you don't need it, but if you're not, I strongly advise using React Query cause it's a stellar, fantastic library, and Tanner Linsley, the creator, is a stellar and fantastic person. 
What pieces of your work are you most proud of? 
Probably the biggest thing I've ever done is EpicReact.Dev. It has helped tens of thousands of people get really good at React, improve their careers and make the world a better place with the skills that they develop. My whole mission is to make the world a better place through quality software, and I feel like I've done that best with Epic React. 
There are things that I've built at other companies that are still in use, and I'm proud of those cause they've stood the test of time, at least these last few years. But of everything, I think Epic React has made the biggest impact.
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