Developer Tea

I'm joined today by Brian Pulliam. I've personally engaged Brian as a career coach. In this discussion we'll talk a bit about coaching, and about how you can set yourself up to become a much better candidate in your job search as an engineering leader.

Values Exercise Live:

• Jonathan and Brian perform a live exercise, transforming company core values into interview questions.
• Discussing the importance of aligning your experiences with the values that a company holds.
  • "I'm going to do this live right now with you, actually. I think it'll be a cool exercise..."

Advanced Interview Techniques:

• How to handle unexpected questions by paraphrasing.
• Preparing for common interview questions derived from company values.
  • "You should convert every single one of those core values into a question that starts with tell me about a time when you demonstrated X."

Finding a Way to Succeed:

• The importance of creative problem solving in leadership.
• Examples of finding efficient solutions to technical problems without writing code.
  • "With zero lines of code...the ops team just reconfigured a job to run more often."

Effective Storytelling in Interviews:

• How to use stories to demonstrate competencies and cultural fit.
• The role of storytelling in making a lasting impression on interviewers.
  • "Stories move the world...people write $50 million dollar checks to startup founders based on stories."

Building a Culture of Excellence:

• Strategies for fostering a high-performance team environment.
• Reflections on leadership and creating positive workplace dynamics.
  • "We provide stable, fast, low friction developer experiences for all engineering teams at Zillow."

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