Detailed Notes
In this episode of Building Better Developers, the host dives into a crucial topic—ending your developer journey. Whether you’re nearing the end of your career, transitioning to a new job, or closing down a side project, knowing how to wrap up your work properly is essential. The episode offers insights into how to leave things in good order, ensuring continuity for whoever comes after you.
Read more... https://develpreneur.com/ending-your-developer-journey-how-to-leave-a-lasting-legacy/
We invite you to join our community and share your coding journey with us. Whether you’re a seasoned developer or just starting, there’s always room to learn and grow together. Contact us at [email protected] with your questions, feedback, or suggestions for future episodes. Together, let’s continue exploring the exciting world of software development.
Additional Resources
* Moving Forward – Releasing Past Mistakes ("https://develpreneur.com/moving-forward-releasing-past-mistakes") * Admitting Defeat – Moving Forward And Accepting The Loss ("https://develpreneur.com/admitting-defeat-moving-forward-and-accepting-the-loss/") * Pivoting: How to Embrace Change and Fuel Your Professional Growth ("https://develpreneur.com/pivoting-how-to-embrace-change-and-fuel-your-professional-growth/") * Planning For Growth – Give Your Changes Time To Take Hold ("https://develpreneur.com/planning-for-growth-give-your-changes-time-to-take-hold/")
Follow- us on:
* https://develpreneur.com/ * https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCZOuFN_LhczvGyT2KSItH_g/featured * https://facebook.com/Develpreneur * https://twitter.com/develpreneur * http://linkedin.com/develpreneur
Transcript Text
[Music] hello and welcome back we are hanging out here a little bit we've hit record as far as you know anyway we' hit record after a series of edits and things like that and we're thinking about our our this is going to be the last episode other than a recap episode so you know this is the penultimate episode as they say I like using that word because it makes it sound more impressive than it is so I'm thinking for our topic is uh let's do like a ride off into the sunset kind of thing let's talk about um it's sort of like succession planning but it's basically like when do you talk a little bit about like hanging them up and saying okay I'm done with this what does that look like and maybe thinking about things like retirement and things like that and this will be an interesting because I I'm not retired yet I'm pretty sure you're not retired yet so this isn't something necessar that we have experienced as much but I think it's some things that we can maybe throw some thoughts out there as we are you know starting to get sort of towards that but also we know some people that have and maybe see where we can throw some things for people that are uh where they may need to start thinking about it now even though it's 10 or 15 or even 20 years in the future how's that sound I like that within that conversation though we have we haven't necessarily hung up our hats but we have done side hustles that didn't work or weren't going anywhere and we have looked at them and no one to shut them down and to Pivot to something else I think that works with this conversation what do you think I think yeah I think that's a good thing to add as well is be because there are going to be it's maybe it's a little bit when to call it quits because there is going to be something like that where it's like okay well what happens if you're done with that side hustle whether you move on to another one or or you're retiring or you're closing it or whatever it happens to be um yeah I think that actually I think we can talk about that a little bit it's like what happens when you're getting to the end of your journey in a business as well as your your journey as a developer uh we can talk about both of those I think a little bit sound good well hello and welcome back we are building better developers we are developing numers this is the penultimate episode of this season I just like using that word a lot it just like I said it sounds cool you always see like horns in the background or something like that or a little confetti going off or whatever my name is Rob Broadhead I am one of the founders of develop preneur also a founder of RB Consulting where we help you take your technology sprawl and turn it into something that is manageable and gonna work better for you we use that we use simplification we use automation we use integration we look at what you've got where you need to go and help you build the better vehicle to get there the better solution to get for where you are to tomorrow and 6 months 6 years 60 years down the road okay 60 is a little far because technology is going to change too much but we try to make you as future proof as possible in the world of good things and bad things let's see where do I want to go oh good things let's start with my good thing is I'm I'm working from home this week I've got like a a schedule that allows me a little bit more freedom during the day I haven't been in as many meetings and stuff like that which I guess is good in itself but a bonus was I got like some rays of sunshine the other day just yesterday I guess it was in the middle of the day I wasn't in the middle of the meeting and I was perfectly set up to say you you know what I can go knock out mowing the yard so I was able to like take advantage which is one of the values of working remotely is take advantage of that and be able to get a couple of chores done at like the the perfect kind of weather and time to do that uh so I guess that's my good thing bad thing bad thing bad thing but boy I've had so much good lately bad bad bad bad bad bad bad I may have to punt on the back cash now I got I I came into this trying to think a bad thing and I'm really struggling with the bad thing what have I done bad lately um oh bad thing I'll give you a bad thing this actually came out of a good thing so sometimes you have a situation where you've got a like I had you have a customer sort of come out of the blue and they're like hey we've got to do some stuff cool you dive in let's do it and it's not a uh let's get ready and then they just disappear it's like you're working with you're doing some stuff and you think it's going to continue and you're like sort of ramping up and then it's like and it doesn't and then suddenly they just sort of like oh no wait we really don't need it and it's not it's not like getting laid off it's not like you know a project necessarily being canceled or anything it's just like you thought that this was going somewhere else or you were moving it's like you had all the momentum and then suddenly it stops and it's you know it's business it's what it is it's just like oh okay well we're done it's like you're working to the end of a project and it's like bam okay we're done and it's like it's jarring because you're like you're moving forward really fast on this thing and all a sudden you're done and it's like whoa It's like you hit a brick wall so that's my bad thing is I just had one of these happen where I was like okay I gotta get all this stuff done and I was like oh wait no I don't it's done like all right moving on also moving on in this podcast we're gonna go talk to Mike on the other side and allow you to introduce yourself hey everyone my name is Michael balash one of the co-founders of developer ner building better developers I'm also the founder in QA where we help small midsize companies clinicians help them with their technology stack their software and actually help them with existing development Cycles or Stacks as well we can help you really ramp up your development Cycles reduce bugs with utilizing automation testing and redefining or defining what it means to test your software good and bad uh I'll start with the bad CU you're good with the fact that you were able to actually get out and mow the lawn I have not been able to I have had rainy days every chance I get to try and get out and do my tours in the yard and when you own a large sck of land that can be very timec consuming and doesn't work good side however is the weather's starting to get better we're starting to get into the fall I won't have to do that very much longer uh and I get a few months off from that so good and bad nice those are that's a good pair there this episode because it is the penultimate episode we're going to talk about ending your developer journey to some extent we this has been the developer Journey so we are reaching the end now we want to talk about this in two different ways that you end your journey there is the ending your journey that you riding off in the sunset and you are no longer caring about being a better developer because you are wrapping up your career we are not there yet so there's going to be just sort of like some things that we've lessons learned from other people people and so take it with a big grain of salt or a big whole salt shaker of salt the other thing is when you're ending uh it's not necessar it's not a career but it's a path whether it's a side hustle whether it is uh actually I think we also want to talk about because this is a very good one is ending a job when you're moving from one job maybe into of you know your side hustle becomes full hustle or going from one job to another wrapping things down and this isn't I want to take this we're going to look a little bit not just at like a project level but things like okay we're moving on to the next thing and some of the key things I want to like this almost feels like harping on things because it's a lot of the stuff that we've talked about throughout the season one of the things you want to be able to do when you are wrapping something up whether it is actually a project whether it is moving to a new job or whether you are looking to uh you know stop your developer career to close the door on that is to document is to make sure that you have what you use on a daily basis for sure it's not like you know how to code but it is like what are some of the processes there what are some of the the key things like what are the servers that you connect to maybe even usernames and passwords and particularly one of the things that becomes a problem a lot is emails that are automated that go to you and this is a thinking usually that it's going to be handed off to somebody else if you're just going to shut everything down and you don't care if anybody ever talks to you again and none of your work is ever going to be carried on then you don't have to worry about this it's very simple you shut the laptop off or your desktop you unplug it right off in the sunset that almost never happens there's almost always needs to be some continuity of knowledge and of processes all the more so when you're leaving a company now leaving a company sometimes they're going to be very they are going to be very much a part of what you can or should do because sometimes it's things like hey if you give notice they're just like go away you can you gave two weeks notice but you're not going to show up here again because security and stuff like that there could be other reasons around it as well but if that's not the case or if you know it's coming just make sure that you are putting things in place that your house is in order so that you can hand the keys over to somebody else and say here you go along with this is going to be like I said it's going to be things like documenting things it's going to be looking at who are the who are the contacts that you deal with to make sure that people have contact information for those contacts emails that come in making sure that the people that email you know that you are going to be handing that off a lot of times this includes some sort of a a call or something like there or a meeting or something where you're like hey Rob is leaving let me introduce you to Mike you're his problem now you know so it's you're GNA do it a little better than that but something along those lines that you can do a hand off and you can't hand off by being like it's not a dump a bunch of stuff on somebody's lap and go here you go bye have fun it is actually handing it to them so they can look at it and making sure that they can be successful picking up where you left off those are the kinds of things you want to do because you want to you put all this work into this whether it's a company whether it's a project whether it's you know whatever it is whether it's your entire career don't screw it up or you know tarnish it by not allowing it to be handed off properly now when you're getting into these things take a look at like also if you know you're coming into like if you're winding something down or you're uh you've got a company that you want to close make sure that you are signaling to customers and things like that and this is a good example is there's a company that I I deal with just I'm on one of their you know mailing list and I just got something them that said hey by the way we're going to close down at I think it's the end of the year and they sell products physical products so it is them saying we're going to be closing down we're not going to be making those products anymore if you need those products in the future they didn't say you know here are links but they said there are other people out there there are other providers or other vendors so go check them out we know they're out there see what you like see what you don't like so they they didn't even you they didn't even have to recommend even but they just said hey we're giving a heads up this is what's happening so that the customers don't feel like they were hung out to dry like for example actually I think Michael was there one time we had or maybe think was we had a lunch on a Friday at a restaurant and we came back like Monday or Tuesday to have lunch there again the business was closed Friday nobody knew everybody was like hey let's go fine great we come in a couple days later we're like there's nobody in there the doors are locked what the heck they were should they should be open and we we had to dig around I think to figure out that it was closed so don't do that to your customers let them know and that includes your boss I know there's always politics and personality and all that kind of stuff and I hate this job or whatever it happens to be that could come up try to take the high road and try to do all the right things to make sure that you're making the right notification even if you say even if you if you offer to say hey I'm going to like I'll work on train I can cross train the next person or something like that even if the company doesn't really offer you the opportunity to do that try to take advantage where you can whether it's you know if you if you can't go to that person and spend a little time with them even if it's like have a lunch or a dinner or something to hand stuff off at least put again documentation together so that when they sit down you can say here's a folder this is what you need to know uh you also have been through more than a few changes in your career so what are some of your thoughts on these yeah so let me start with the developer Journey side of things so throughout my Development Career like you said there are times when you give notice and you're just walked out the door for security reasons I've worked for a couple companies where you had to have security clearance to even get into the building and then you had to have even more security clearance to get into certain areas if you're in one of those situations and you're going to be leaving you definitely want if you want to make sure that you leave in good standings which you almost always should even if there's friction or tension within a job you never know who's going to go somewhere else that you're going to go to in the future and find out your black ball so always try to leave think in terms of software always try to leave things in a better place than where when you start it so in those situations TR like you said like Rob said try to document what your pro what your tasks are because your job role from the day you started to today is probably not the same job role and if you're in a very small company or a small team if they need to replace you if they were to go out and just dig out the old job requirements and try to go hire someone they're probably not to get what they need from the next candidate to fill that position or to do that job so maybe kind of write down your tasks what it is that you do daily what is required to do your job and sometimes that may mean oh they have to go hire more than one person another time I was transitioning L the company really didn't want to leave but due to financial stipulations with the company there really was was no more upward momentum there was really nowhere to go and you just hit that ceiling and it's really hard because they tried to find something else for me to do to keep me but they just financially much better offers out in the industry I had to leave however I did give them 30 days notice because this was one of those situations where I was the lynchman I was the only person who had been doing this task for seven years no one else in the company knew what I did or how I did it so in that situation I literally had to document everything I did I recorded videos I transcribed everything I sat down with multiple team members to walk them through the process and I really do feel I left them in a better place than when they started one they had almost minimal automation of their application Suite by the time we left we went from maybe a couple hundred test Suites to over 20,000 automated tests running against her system but I built that entire framework and that for that company so really they had no none of this information so I documented it all I put it all together the best part was which to me was kind of a mixed blessing was 6 months later I'm still friends with my old manager and he was like you know we had hire two people to take over for your task but you left us in such a good place they were able to just sit down pick it up and roll with it and that's really a good thing to hear if you're handing off a project even if you're within the company moving to a different department if you really liked what you did you don't want it to crash and burn you really want it to succeed so those are some of the good success stories bad success or bad stories are when you do give that notice and they literally walk you out the door and in that kind of position it's really sad because you know and I've heard this more than one times from people I've worked with before they had no idea what it is that you did they don't by walking you out the door they literally shut down the project because they didn't take the time they didn't think there was no conceptional thought to why you know why you left or what it is that you were doing do we have everything that we need so from a business perspective if you are going to walk someone out the door or get rid of someone make sure you know what they do passwords emails things of that nature like Rob mentioned now transition out of our development Journey out of working for a business to side hustles and working in your business if you're doing this full-time from a side hustle perspective at one time and Rob I think we were working it for recruiters or something else at that time but there have been times in my career where I've had multiple side hustles going at once CU I wanted to try different things and they didn't quite fit into one one hat so I actually spun up five different companies one time for different things I helped my wife spin up an online uh store selling uh knives I did a kind of a fan based Doctor Who website that it just finally shut down I actually had it sitting around for three years I was doing nothing with it thinking boy why am I paying for this if I'm not doing anything with this and you get to that point where it's you forget about it you probably need to shut it down but before you do shut some things down like that if you took the time to write something or have some intellectual property make sure you back that up because you want to make sure you have that CU if someone steals that you want to make sure that you can say hey no that's my property you can't take that on the flip side of that because of covid and because I've had some customers that have aged out and some have passed you will run into situations where companies that you work for shut down but they'll want you to help them shut down because sometimes you can't just turn the lights off and walk out the door if you're a financial institution a healthcare institution you still have to hold on to patient records or certain Financial documentation for years after a company closes so if you're in the process of helping them shut down or shutting down yourself these are some things you need to think about and actually plan for before you just turn the lights out and walk away so you need to kind of have an exit strategy for a business or helping a business kind of shut down so I wanted I'm sorry go ahead I was just going to say your thoughts yep uh a couple quick hits because there's a there's a lot of places we can go with this um one of them is that when you're shutting something down one is there's two things to consider and this sort of goes to this you know making sure that you have backups and things like that is there is your for your purposes and then also for your customers purposes now a lot of us do software and things of that nature so you do need to consider things like do I give a repository or source code over to a customer do I uh do I give them the keys to the kingdom for you know like my GitHub account or something like that or do I share it over do I make them an administrator uh there are you know are there servers that maybe you have that you were they were leasing through you or something like that you need to move those servers somewhere else for them or allow them to have full access while you're doing that now you don't want to be the jerk which a lot of people had where you just shut it down and now they've got to go figure out a way to do all of that moving themselves you want to allow them as much as possible access so that they even though you don't have to do it for them it's ideal if you give them some way to transfer out if not at least give them full access so they can do so as much as makes sense for your business now there can be you know there's issues around all of that so take each case on a case-by casee BAS you also want to make sure like Michael mentioned if you have any IP any intellectual property if you're shutting down a business if there's anything that you put into that then make sure that you have a way to access that again for example when we shut down it for recruiters we had numerous things that we had put together there were uh classes there were blog articles there's a whole bunch of stuff we still have somewhere not exactly sure where it is I could find it if I really needed to it um all of the BL all of that site we have the database backed up we could go respin that site up if we needed to I've actually done it once or twice to find like a couple of things we also have all of our documentation is sitting out on a an archived folder somewhere so we can go back and get things and we actually did in a couple of cases like I think it was a couple years later we came back and actually repurposed some of the lessons that we had and helped another company build out some of their lessons based on that so you want to do that when I shut down the blessing not stressing podcast I still have same thing I have the database for it I have the site I could spin it back up if I needed to I also made sure one that because it was a podcast I actually left the podcast side of it up for quite a while so even though it had been dormant for a long time it was still live in apple podcast even though I think they showed in a lot of the other podcast places they showed that it was uh not active because there hadn't been a u there hadn't been an episode released in a certain amount of time which is funny because if you listen for example to Hardcore History Dan Carlin sometimes will go a year before he turns another episode out it's still active but it will show is not active because he hasn't cranked one out recently but I did take when I did that I took also copied down the audio for every single episode because I wanted to make sure that I had backups of every one of those if I ever for whatever reason ever needed to go back to them because you may want to repurpose stuff this is particularly if you go from one company to another now there can be uh licensing and legality issues and stuff like that that it may be that what you built you didn't own and you're not allowed to do that but for the stuff that you did definitely want to do that and a lot of times you need it just again it's almost cya but it's also just to go back if somebody a year later says hey how did you do that or what did you do or who did you email or something like that it is useful to do that that includes like if you're Outlook extracting the little Outlook files your little inbox or whatever I forget PST files I think is what they're called uh if you're whatever you know wherever you can back up and store and archive that information and it may be that you don't hold on to it but put it somewhere there to say hey by the way this is my you know maybe it's your personal network drive out there at the company to say here's all of my stuff so somebody knows where to go for it also be like I said be be prepared to uh hand some of that stuff off maybe have a a meeting where you can say here's all the code and by the way here's how here's the build scripts here's how you build it knock yourself out something along those lines that's quite a bit but you probably did quite a bit potentially you spent years working there so there could be quite a bit going on and there are people that I've talked to that have that I've been involved with where I've I've helped people shut down their career sometimes in a couple cases where it was basically their entire career was spent in this company 20 30 years and ramping things down and helping find the next person to replace them uh so you know it's I've watched this and a lot of it does come down to unfortunately enough a lot of it comes down to documentation comes down to really making yourself if you're that person making yourself sit down probably on a daily basis and get your thoughts to paper about the things you do and it's helpful if you've been there a long time if you're looking at retiring or shutting a business down take months spend a quarter or more ramping things down making sure that you're taking care of this stuff your you know payments are being dealt with so that you can shut all that stuff down so if there's licenses and stuff like that that those are all being closed down and they're not Auto renewing all of those kinds of things that being said we are wrapping up this pin ultimate episode of this season I could say that at least one more time and I want you still we're not done this is not our last season we are going to step into the next season we're going to have lots of nuggets and challenges and and key things to do each episode a good action item for building a better developer how do you and for you whoever you are yeah you to that guy in the back all of you people including us what are things we can do to become better developers and there will be these shorter term and longer term things a lot of it's going to be about habits and things of that nature so shoot us an email info develop and or.com you can contact us out on developer.com there's a contact form you can check us out on XD developer develop preneur d v l p r Nur R you can also check us out we have a Facebook page we have LinkedIn we have a lot of those things you can leave comments out on YouTube you can leave comments wherever you get your podcast you can leave those comments out on our our site if you want to do it definitely give us your thoughts what are some things maybe that you would that you have if you have some suggestions or some things that you would like to say hey I struggle with X and I would like not Twitter but like I I struggle with this thing and I would like to figure out how can I better do that how can I become better at it and we're going to have all kinds of suggestions for that related to wherever you are in your career and how you can better yourself that being said why don't you go out there and have yourself great day a great week and we will talk to you on the final the ultimate episode for this season have yourself a good one bonus material so one thing I want to throw out that I didn't touch on during the podcast is if you are shutting a business down or you're shutting a project down make sure that if you are keeping your intellectual property or you're keeping any of your media your emails things of that nature one make sure that when you store it somewhere you're storing the unsecured information there's been a couple times where I've backed up my email messages and it's tied to an exchange server and even though I've exported them I still can't get them so make sure you export them to a non-secured folder secondly make sure you back up your media to Media that's going to be around if you want to keep looking at it or maintaining it I found floppy discs that I had information on and I had to go buy an external floppy drive thank God to get something that was a little outdated but was actually something really cool I did back in college that I wanted to pull out and show my daughter Well that took about three months to get that one little files in some additional cost so make sure you store it on media that is going to be around if you need to old-fashioned printer print stuff out you know that lasts for quite a long time you know unless you have a fire or water damage CDs a little more fuzzy since a lot of more computers these days don't have CD or DVD drives or even Blu-ray drives uh definitely hard drives are pretty much de facto they've been around for a long time and there's a lot of adapters and that for using those you have external drives things of that nature be careful of cloud backup Some Cloud backups that were around 10 years ago are not around today so be very cautious about that so if you back anything up I recommend to do it to something physical and something that is maintainable or at least will be around for at least 20 to 30 years uh because depending upon where you're at within your career you may need to transfer that at some point to maintain that but if you're retired that's probably about all the time you need to really care about it because your kids aren't going to to pick it up and they're not going to care about it the last thing I want to touch on is if you have any type of GitHub or repository where you have source code that you have put a lot of effort into but you're done with it think about open sourcing it maybe find another contributor put it out basically put it out there hey it's like hey this had a good run anyone that wants to continue give it to the community and let it Thrive you never know it could turn out to the next big Blockbuster or you might save someone a headache down the road by them looking at and say hey this is exactly what I need let me go tweak this and hey you just made someone stay so just some ideas to kind of keep your legacy going or at least keep a backup of it in case you ever need to revisit it I'll keep it short and follow it up with the Version Control thing is uh well two things I guess I will go back definitely keep an idea an eye on your media devices I have done this same thing I have done stuff I just accidentally I don't know why I raised my hand it was like I have my hand i'm talking with my hands too much I'm sorry I'm just going to sit on my hands um I recently have gone back through because I've been doing some cleaning and I have I've had some stuff I've got five and a quarter inch floppy disc I have got the three and a half inch hard Diss and I have got actually I have what was called a zip Drive which would be one of those things I have the discs the drive piece of crap right now I don't think I could find one anywhere so I should have at some point pulled off of those I also was burning CDs and so I do have cd backups and I have literally just for such an occasion and because I occasionally like to run music on my laptop or something like that when I'm running around I do have a USB CD drive so I can use that and now I've had to it's USB and I think I'm now going to have to change the plugs because I have apple stuff and they keep upgrading these things so you may have to do that you may have to periodically check out your backups if you need them if you're you know if you're riding off into the sunset you probably won't have to worry about it if you're like thinking like Michael like hey I might want to look at this 20 years from now then you may have to continue to move your stuff forward in a similar sense don't try if you whatever you used for your version control back up a withdrawn a pull pull it out and zip up or however you do it compress The Source or ideally don't even compress The Source put it somewhere where you can store it that is not within the Version Control System I happened to actually back up a long time ago my I had an RCS Version Control piece actually I also had a uh Source safe I think is what it was called the old Microsoft I had Source safe stuff that I just backed up the whole kit and Kaboodle the whole server that or that piece of it and then later when I wanted to go digging it up I had to go find the server piece of it to be able to connect to it to be able to pull the stuff out and extract it all and actually at that point I actually took all that crap and shoved it up into GitHub because I'm like all right I'm going to put it into a git repository and like get it out of the way but you know be careful what you use like Michael said be careful what you use to store your stuff because if it's a technology that technology might disappear cloud is great but always you should have physical copies somewhere as well and as I say this I sort of panic because I'm thinking about all the code that I have out in GitHub and other places that I don't actually currently have a physical other than my you know my devices I don't have other physical copies so I may be spending a couple of weekends in the near future pulling stuff down and burning it to a disc or something like that that being said time to wrap this one up we will come back next time for the ultimate episode of this season the final one we have finished our journey and we're going to talk about that Journey again and maybe do a little bit of a we'll do our you know like a Sprint we're going to get to the end we're going to do a little retrospective and then we'll be into season 23 so as always reach out however you feel like reaching out to us even smoke signals we'll figure it out we'll get that information that'll help us help you as we grow into this next season as always go out there and have yourself a great one and we will talk to you next time [Music]
Transcript Segments
[Music]
hello and welcome back we are hanging
out here a little bit we've hit record
as far as you know anyway we' hit record
after a series of edits and things like
that and we're thinking about our our
this is going to be the last episode
other than a recap episode so you know
this is the penultimate episode as they
say I like using that word because it
makes it sound more impressive than it
is so I'm thinking for our topic is uh
let's do like a ride off into the sunset
kind of thing let's talk
about um it's sort of like succession
planning but it's basically like when do
you talk a little bit about like hanging
them up and saying okay I'm done with
this what does that look like and maybe
thinking about things like retirement
and things like that
and this will be an interesting because
I I'm not retired yet I'm pretty sure
you're not retired yet so this isn't
something necessar that we have
experienced as much but I think it's
some things that we can maybe throw some
thoughts out there as we are you know
starting to get sort of towards that but
also we know some people that have and
maybe see where we can throw some things
for people that are uh where they may
need to start thinking about it now even
though it's 10 or 15 or even 20 years in
the future how's that sound I like that
within that conversation though we have
we haven't necessarily hung up our hats
but we have done side hustles that
didn't work or weren't going anywhere
and we have looked at them and no one to
shut them down and to Pivot to something
else I think that works with this
conversation what do you think
I think yeah I think that's a good thing
to add as well is be because there are
going to be it's maybe it's a little bit
when to call it quits because there is
going to be something like that where
it's like okay well what happens if
you're done with that side hustle
whether you move on to another one or or
you're retiring or you're closing it or
whatever it happens to be um yeah I
think that actually I think we can talk
about that a little bit it's like what
happens when you're getting to the end
of your journey in a business as well as
your your journey as a developer
uh we can talk about both of those I
think a little bit sound
good well hello and welcome back we are
building better developers we are
developing numers this is the
penultimate episode of this season I
just like using that word a lot it just
like I said it sounds cool you always
see like horns in the background or
something like that or a little confetti
going off or whatever my name is Rob
Broadhead I am one of the founders of
develop preneur also a founder of RB
Consulting where we help you take your
technology sprawl and turn it into
something that is manageable and gonna
work better for you we use that we use
simplification we use automation we use
integration we look at what you've got
where you need to go and help you build
the better vehicle to get there the
better solution to get for where you are
to tomorrow and 6 months 6 years 60
years down the road okay 60 is a little
far because technology is going to
change too much but we try to make you
as future proof as possible in the world
of good things and bad
things let's see where do I want to go
oh good things let's start with my good
thing
is I'm I'm working from home this week
I've got like a a schedule that allows
me a little bit more freedom during the
day I haven't been in as many meetings
and stuff like that which I guess is
good in itself but a bonus was I got
like some rays of sunshine the other day
just yesterday I guess it was in the
middle of the day I wasn't in the middle
of the meeting and I was perfectly set
up to say you you know what I can go
knock out mowing the yard so I was able
to like take advantage which is one of
the values of working remotely is take
advantage of that and be able to get a
couple of chores done at like the the
perfect kind of weather and time to do
that uh so I guess that's my good thing
bad
thing bad thing bad thing but boy I've
had so much good lately bad bad bad bad
bad bad bad I may have to punt on the
back cash now I got I I came into this
trying to think a bad thing and I'm
really struggling with the bad thing
what have I done bad lately um oh bad
thing I'll give you a bad
thing this actually came out of a good
thing so sometimes you have a situation
where you've got a like I had you have a
customer sort of come out of the blue
and they're like hey we've got to do
some stuff cool you dive in let's do it
and it's not a uh let's get ready and
then they just disappear it's like
you're working with you're doing some
stuff and you think it's going to
continue and you're like sort of ramping
up and then it's like and it doesn't and
then suddenly they just sort of like oh
no wait we really don't need it and it's
not it's not like getting laid off it's
not like you know a project necessarily
being canceled or anything it's just
like you thought that this was going
somewhere else or you were moving it's
like you had all the momentum and then
suddenly it stops and it's you know it's
business it's what it is it's just like
oh okay well we're done it's like you're
working to the end of a project and it's
like bam okay we're done and it's like
it's jarring because you're like you're
moving forward really fast on this thing
and all a sudden you're done and it's
like whoa It's like you hit a brick wall
so that's my bad thing is I just had one
of these happen where I was like okay I
gotta get all this stuff done and I was
like oh wait no I don't it's done like
all right moving on also moving on in
this podcast we're gonna go talk to Mike
on the other side and allow you to
introduce
yourself hey everyone my name is Michael
balash one of the co-founders of
developer ner building better developers
I'm also the founder in QA where we help
small midsize companies
clinicians help them with their
technology stack their software and
actually help them with existing
development Cycles or Stacks as well we
can help you really ramp up your
development Cycles reduce bugs with
utilizing automation testing and
redefining or defining what it means to
test your software good and bad uh I'll
start with the bad CU you're good with
the fact that you were able to actually
get out and mow the lawn I have not been
able to I have had rainy days every
chance I get to try and get out and do
my tours in the yard and when you own a
large sck of land that can be very timec
consuming and doesn't work good side
however is the weather's starting to get
better we're starting to get into the
fall I won't have to do that very much
longer uh and I get a few months off
from that so good and bad nice those are
that's a good pair there this episode
because it is the penultimate
episode we're going to talk about ending
your developer journey to some extent we
this has been the developer Journey so
we are reaching the end now we want to
talk about this in two different ways
that you end your journey there is the
ending your journey that you riding off
in the sunset and you are no longer
caring about being a better developer
because you are wrapping up your career
we are not there yet so there's going to
be just sort of like some things that
we've lessons learned from other people
people and so take it with a big grain
of salt or a big whole salt shaker of
salt the other thing is when you're
ending uh it's not necessar it's not a
career but it's a path whether it's a
side hustle whether it is uh actually I
think we also want to talk about because
this is a very good one is ending a job
when you're moving from one job maybe
into of you know your side hustle
becomes full hustle or going from one
job to another wrapping things down and
this isn't I want to take this we're
going to look a little bit not just at
like a project level but things like
okay we're moving on to the next thing
and some of the key things I want to
like this almost feels like harping on
things because it's a lot of the stuff
that we've talked about throughout the
season one of the things you want to be
able to do when you are wrapping
something up whether it is actually a
project whether it is moving to a new
job or whether you are looking to uh you
know stop your developer career to close
the door on that is to
document is to make sure that you have
what you use on a daily basis for sure
it's not like you know how to code but
it is like what are some of the
processes there what are some of the the
key things like what are the servers
that you connect to maybe even usernames
and passwords and particularly one of
the things that becomes a problem a lot
is emails that are automated that go to
you and this is a thinking usually that
it's going to be handed off to somebody
else if you're just going to shut
everything down and you don't care if
anybody ever talks to you again and none
of your work is ever going to be carried
on then you don't have to worry about
this it's very simple you shut the
laptop off or your desktop you unplug it
right off in the sunset that almost
never happens there's almost always
needs to be some continuity of knowledge
and of
processes all the more so when you're
leaving a company now leaving a company
sometimes they're going to be very they
are going to be very much a part of what
you can or should do because sometimes
it's things like hey if you give notice
they're just like go away you can you
gave two weeks notice but you're not
going to show up here again because
security and stuff like that there could
be other reasons around it as well but
if that's not the case or if you know
it's coming just make sure that you are
putting things in place that your house
is in order so that you can hand the
keys over to somebody else and say here
you go along with this is going to be
like I said it's going to be things like
documenting things it's going to be
looking at who are the who are the
contacts that you deal with to make sure
that people have contact information for
those contacts emails that come in
making sure that the people that email
you know that you are going to be
handing that off a lot of times this
includes some sort of a a call or
something like there or a meeting or
something where you're like hey Rob is
leaving let me introduce you to Mike
you're his problem now you know so it's
you're GNA do it a little better than
that but something along those lines
that you can do a hand off and you can't
hand off by being like it's not a dump a
bunch of stuff on somebody's lap and go
here you go bye have fun it is actually
handing it to them so they can look at
it and making sure that they can be
successful picking up where you left off
those are the kinds of things you want
to do because you want to you put all
this work into this whether it's a
company whether it's a project whether
it's you know whatever it is whether
it's your entire career don't screw it
up or you know tarnish it by not
allowing it to be handed off properly
now when you're getting into these
things take a look at like also if you
know you're coming into like if you're
winding something down or you're uh
you've got a company that you want to
close make sure that you are signaling
to customers and things like that and
this is a good example is there's a
company that I I deal with just I'm on
one of their you know mailing list and I
just got something them that said hey by
the way we're going to close down at I
think it's the end of the year and they
sell products physical products so it is
them saying we're going to be closing
down we're not going to be making those
products anymore if you need those
products in the future they didn't say
you know here are links but they said
there are other people out there there
are other providers or other vendors so
go check them out we know they're out
there see what you like see what you
don't like so they they didn't even you
they didn't even have to recommend even
but they just said hey we're giving a
heads up this is what's happening so
that the customers don't feel like they
were hung out to dry like for example
actually I think Michael was there one
time we had or maybe think was we had a
lunch on a Friday at a restaurant and we
came back like Monday or Tuesday to have
lunch there again the business was
closed Friday nobody knew everybody was
like hey let's go fine great we come in
a couple days later we're like there's
nobody in there the doors are locked
what the heck they were should they
should be open and we we had to dig
around I think to figure out that it was
closed so don't do that to your
customers let them know and that
includes your boss I know there's always
politics and personality and all that
kind of stuff and I hate this job or
whatever it happens to be that could
come up try to take the high road and
try to do all the right things to make
sure that you're making the right
notification even if you say even if you
if you offer to say hey I'm going to
like I'll work on train I can cross
train the next person or something like
that even if the company doesn't really
offer you the opportunity to do that try
to take advantage where you can whether
it's you know if you if you can't go to
that person and spend a little time with
them even if it's like have a lunch or a
dinner or something to hand stuff off at
least put again documentation together
so that when they sit down you can say
here's a folder this is what you need to
know uh you also have been through more
than a few changes in your career so
what are some of your thoughts on
these yeah so let me start with the
developer Journey side of things
so throughout my Development Career like
you said there are times when you give
notice and you're just walked out the
door for security reasons I've worked
for a couple companies where you had to
have security clearance to even get into
the building and then you had to have
even more security clearance to get into
certain
areas if you're in one of those
situations and you're going to be
leaving you definitely want if you want
to make sure that you leave in good
standings which you almost always should
even if there's friction or tension
within a job you never know who's going
to go somewhere else that you're going
to go to in the future and find out your
black ball so always try to leave
think in terms of software always try to
leave things in a better place than
where when you start it so in those
situations TR like you said like Rob
said try to document what your pro what
your tasks are because your job role
from the day you started to today is
probably not the same job role and if
you're in a very small company or a
small team if they need to replace you
if they were to go out and just dig out
the old job requirements and try to go
hire someone they're probably not to get
what they need from the next candidate
to fill that position or to do that job
so maybe kind of write down your tasks
what it is that you do daily what is
required to do your job and sometimes
that may mean oh they have to go hire
more than one
person another time I was
transitioning L the company really
didn't want to leave but due to
financial stipulations with the company
there really was was no more upward
momentum there was really nowhere to go
and you just hit that ceiling and it's
really hard because they tried to find
something else for me to do to keep me
but they just financially much better
offers out in the
industry I had to leave however I did
give them 30 days notice because this
was one of those situations where I was
the lynchman I was the only person who
had been doing this task for seven years
no one else in the company knew what I
did or how I did it so in that situation
I literally had to document everything I
did I recorded videos I transcribed
everything I sat down with multiple team
members to walk them through the process
and I really do feel I left them in a
better place than when they started one
they had almost minimal automation of
their application Suite
by the time we left we went from maybe a
couple hundred test Suites to over
20,000 automated tests running against
her system but I built that entire
framework and that for that company so
really they had no none of this
information so I documented it all I put
it all together the best part was which
to me was kind of a mixed blessing was 6
months later I'm still friends with my
old manager and he was like you know we
had hire two people to take over for
your task but you left us in such a good
place they were able to just sit down
pick it up and roll with it and that's
really a good thing to hear if you're
handing off a project even if you're
within the company moving to a different
department if you really liked what you
did you don't want it to crash and burn
you really want it to succeed so those
are some of the good success stories bad
success or bad stories are when you do
give that notice and they literally walk
you out the door and in that kind of
position it's really sad because you
know and I've heard this more than one
times from people I've worked with
before they had no idea what it is that
you did they don't by walking you out
the door they literally shut down the
project
because they didn't take the time they
didn't think there was no conceptional
thought to why you know why you left or
what it is that you were doing do we
have everything that we need so from a
business perspective if you are going to
walk someone out the door or get rid of
someone make sure you know what they do
passwords emails things of that nature
like Rob mentioned now transition out of
our development Journey out of working
for a business to side hustles and
working in your business if you're doing
this
full-time from a side hustle
perspective at one
time and Rob I think we were working it
for recruiters or something else at that
time but there have been times in my
career where I've had multiple side
hustles going at once CU I wanted to try
different things and they didn't quite
fit into one one hat so I actually spun
up five different companies one time for
different things I helped my wife spin
up an online uh store selling uh knives
I did a kind of a fan based Doctor Who
website that it just finally shut down I
actually had it sitting around for three
years I was doing nothing with it
thinking boy why am I paying for this if
I'm not doing anything with this and you
get to that point where it's you forget
about it you probably need to shut it
down but before you do shut some things
down like that if you took the time to
write something or have some
intellectual property make sure you back
that up because you want to make sure
you have that CU if someone steals that
you want to make sure that you can say
hey no that's my property you can't take
that on the flip side of that because of
covid and because I've had some
customers that have aged out and some
have passed you will run into situations
where companies that you work for shut
down but they'll want you to help them
shut down because sometimes you can't
just turn the lights off and walk out
the door if you're a financial
institution a healthcare institution you
still have to hold on to patient records
or certain Financial documentation for
years after a company closes so if
you're in the process of helping them
shut down or shutting down yourself
these are some things you need to think
about and actually plan for before you
just turn the lights out and walk away
so you need to kind of have an exit
strategy for a business or helping a
business kind of shut
down so I wanted I'm sorry go ahead I
was just going to say your thoughts yep
uh a couple quick hits because there's a
there's a lot of places we can go with
this um one of them is that when you're
shutting something
down one is there's two things to
consider and this sort of goes to this
you know making sure that you have
backups and things like that is there is
your for your purposes and then also for
your customers purposes now a lot of us
do software and things of that nature so
you do need to consider things like do I
give a repository or source code over to
a customer do I uh do I give them the
keys to the kingdom for you know like my
GitHub account or something like that or
do I share it over do I make them an
administrator uh there are you know are
there servers that maybe you have that
you were they were leasing through you
or something like that you need to move
those servers somewhere else for them or
allow them to have full access while
you're doing that now you don't want to
be the jerk which a lot of people had
where you just shut it down and now
they've got to go figure out a way to do
all of that moving themselves you want
to allow them as much as possible access
so that they even though you don't have
to do it for them it's ideal if you give
them some way to transfer out if not at
least give them full access so they can
do so as much as makes sense for your
business now there can be you know
there's issues around all of that so
take each case on a case-by casee BAS
you also want to make sure like Michael
mentioned if you have any IP any
intellectual property if you're shutting
down a business if there's anything that
you put into that then make sure that
you have a way to access that again for
example when we shut down it for
recruiters we had numerous things that
we had put together there were uh
classes there were blog articles there's
a whole bunch of stuff we still have
somewhere not exactly sure where it is I
could find it if I really needed to it
um all of the BL all of that site we
have the database backed up we could go
respin that site up if we needed to I've
actually done it once or twice to find
like a couple of things we also have all
of our documentation is sitting out on a
an archived folder somewhere so we can
go back and get things and we actually
did in a couple of cases like I think it
was a couple years later we came back
and actually repurposed some of the
lessons that we had and helped another
company build out some of their lessons
based on that so you want to do that
when I shut down the blessing not
stressing podcast I still have same
thing I have the database for it I have
the site I could spin it back up if I
needed to I also made sure one that
because it was a podcast I actually left
the podcast side of it up for quite a
while so even though it had been dormant
for a long time it was still live in
apple podcast even though I think they
showed in a lot of the other podcast
places they showed that it was uh not
active because there hadn't been a u
there hadn't been an episode released in
a certain amount of time which is funny
because if you listen for example to
Hardcore History Dan Carlin sometimes
will go a year before he turns another
episode out it's still active but it
will show is not active because he
hasn't cranked one out
recently but I did take when I did that
I took also copied down the audio for
every single episode because I wanted to
make sure that I had backups of every
one of those if I ever for whatever
reason ever needed to go back to them
because you may want to repurpose stuff
this is particularly if you go from one
company to another now there can be uh
licensing and legality issues and stuff
like that that it may be that what you
built you didn't own and you're not
allowed to do that but for the stuff
that you did definitely want to do that
and a lot of times you need it just
again it's almost cya but it's also just
to go back if somebody a year later says
hey how did you do that or what did you
do or who did you email or something
like that it is useful to do that that
includes like if you're Outlook
extracting the little Outlook files your
little inbox or whatever I forget PST
files I think is what they're called uh
if you're whatever you know wherever you
can back up and store and archive that
information and it may be that you don't
hold on to it but put it somewhere there
to say hey by the way this is my you
know maybe it's your personal network
drive out there at the company to say
here's all of my stuff so somebody knows
where to go for it also be like I said
be be prepared to
uh hand some of that stuff off maybe
have a a meeting where you can say
here's all the code and by the way
here's how here's the build scripts
here's how you build it knock yourself
out something along those
lines that's quite a bit but you
probably did quite a bit potentially you
spent years working there so there could
be quite a bit going on and there are
people that I've talked to that have
that I've been involved with where I've
I've helped people shut down their
career sometimes in a couple cases where
it was basically their entire career was
spent in this company 20 30 years and
ramping things down and helping find the
next person to replace them uh so you
know it's I've watched this and a lot of
it does come down to unfortunately
enough a lot of it comes down to
documentation comes down to really
making yourself if you're that person
making yourself sit down probably on a
daily basis and get your thoughts to
paper about the things you do and it's
helpful if you've been there a long time
if you're looking at retiring or
shutting a business down take months
spend a quarter or more ramping things
down making sure that you're taking care
of this stuff your you know payments are
being dealt with so that you can shut
all that stuff down so if there's
licenses and stuff like that that those
are all being closed down and they're
not Auto renewing all of those kinds of
things that being said we are wrapping
up this pin ultimate episode of this
season I could say that at least one
more time and I want you still we're not
done this is not our last season we are
going to step into the next season we're
going to have lots of nuggets and
challenges and and key things to do each
episode a good action item for building
a better developer how do you and for
you whoever you are yeah you to that guy
in the back all of you people including
us what are things we can do to become
better developers and there will be
these shorter term and longer term
things a lot of it's going to be about
habits and things of that nature so
shoot us an email info develop and
or.com you can contact us out on
developer.com there's a contact form you
can check us out on XD developer develop
preneur d v l p r Nur R you can also
check us out we have a Facebook page we
have LinkedIn we have a lot of those
things you can leave comments out on
YouTube you can leave comments wherever
you get your podcast you can leave those
comments out on our our site if you want
to do it definitely give us your
thoughts what are some things maybe that
you would that you have if you have some
suggestions or some things that you
would like to say hey I struggle with X
and I would like not Twitter but like I
I struggle with this thing and I would
like to figure out how can I better do
that how can I become better at it and
we're going to have all kinds of
suggestions for that related to wherever
you are in your career and how you can
better yourself that being said why
don't you go out there and have yourself
great day a great week and we will talk
to you on the final the ultimate episode
for this season have yourself a good one
bonus
material so one thing I want to throw
out that I didn't touch on during the
podcast is if you are shutting a
business down or you're shutting a
project
down make sure that if you are keeping
your intellectual property or you're
keeping any of your media your emails
things of that nature one make sure that
when you store it somewhere you're
storing the
unsecured information there's been a
couple times where I've backed up my
email messages and it's tied to an
exchange server and even though I've
exported them I still can't get them so
make sure you export them to a
non-secured
folder secondly make sure you back up
your media to Media that's going to be
around
if you want to keep looking at it or
maintaining it I found floppy
discs that I had information on and I
had to go buy an external floppy drive
thank God to get something that was a
little outdated but was actually
something really cool I did back in
college that I wanted to pull out and
show my daughter Well that took about
three months to get that one little
files in some additional cost so make
sure you store it on media that is going
to be around if you need to
old-fashioned printer print stuff out
you know that lasts for quite a long
time you know unless you have a fire or
water damage CDs a little more fuzzy
since a lot of more computers these days
don't have CD or DVD drives or even
Blu-ray drives uh definitely hard drives
are pretty much de facto they've been
around for a long time and there's a lot
of adapters and that for using those you
have external drives things of that
nature be careful of cloud
backup Some Cloud backups that were
around 10 years ago are not around today
so be very cautious about that so if you
back anything up I recommend to do it to
something physical and something that is
maintainable or at least will be around
for at least 20 to 30 years uh because
depending upon where you're at within
your career you may need to transfer
that at some point to maintain that but
if you're retired that's probably about
all the time you need to really care
about it because your kids aren't going
to to pick it up and they're not going
to care about it the last thing I want
to touch on is if you have any type of
GitHub or repository where you have
source code that you have put a lot of
effort into but you're done with
it think about open sourcing it maybe
find another contributor put it out
basically put it out there hey it's like
hey this had a good run anyone that
wants to continue give it to the
community and let it Thrive you never
know it could turn out to the next big
Blockbuster or you might save someone a
headache down the road by them looking
at and say hey this is exactly what I
need let me go tweak this and hey you
just made someone stay so just some
ideas to kind of keep your legacy going
or at least keep a backup of it in case
you ever need to revisit it I'll keep it
short and follow it up with the Version
Control thing is uh well two things I
guess I will go back definitely keep an
idea an eye on your media devices I have
done this same thing I have done stuff I
just accidentally I don't know why I
raised my hand it was like I have my
hand i'm talking with my hands too much
I'm sorry I'm just going to sit on my
hands um I recently have gone back
through because I've been doing some
cleaning and I have I've had some stuff
I've got five and a quarter inch floppy
disc I have got the three and a half
inch hard Diss and I have got actually I
have what was called a zip Drive which
would be one of those things I have the
discs the drive piece of crap right now
I don't think I could find one anywhere
so I should have at some point pulled
off of those I also was burning CDs and
so I do have cd backups and I have
literally just for such an occasion and
because I occasionally like to run music
on my laptop or something like that when
I'm running around I do have a USB CD
drive so I can use that and now I've had
to it's USB and I think I'm now going to
have to change the plugs because I have
apple stuff and they keep upgrading
these things so you may have to do that
you may have to periodically check out
your backups if you need them if you're
you know if you're riding off into the
sunset you probably won't have to worry
about it if you're like thinking like
Michael like hey I might want to look at
this 20 years from now then you may have
to continue to move your stuff forward
in a similar sense don't try if you
whatever you used for your version
control back up a withdrawn a pull pull
it out and zip up or however you do it
compress The Source or ideally don't
even compress The Source put it
somewhere where you can store it that is
not within the Version Control System I
happened to actually back up a long time
ago my I had an RCS Version Control
piece actually I also had a uh Source
safe I think is what it was called the
old Microsoft I had Source safe stuff
that I just backed up the whole kit and
Kaboodle the whole server that or that
piece of it and then later when I wanted
to go digging it up I had to go find the
server piece of it to be able to connect
to it to be able to pull the stuff out
and extract it all and actually at that
point I actually took all that crap and
shoved it up into GitHub because I'm
like all right I'm going to put it into
a git repository and like get it out of
the way but you know be careful what you
use like Michael said be careful what
you use to store your stuff because if
it's a technology that technology might
disappear cloud is great but always you
should have physical copies somewhere as
well and as I say this I sort of panic
because I'm thinking about all the code
that I have out in GitHub and other
places that I don't actually currently
have a physical other than my you know
my devices I don't have other physical
copies so I may be spending a couple of
weekends in the near future pulling
stuff down and burning it to a disc or
something like that that being said time
to wrap this one up we will come back
next time for the ultimate episode of
this season the final one we have
finished our journey and we're going to
talk about that Journey again and maybe
do a little bit of a we'll do our you
know like a Sprint we're going to get to
the end we're going to do a little
retrospective and then we'll be into
season 23 so as always reach out however
you feel like reaching out to us even
smoke signals we'll figure it out we'll
get that information that'll help us
help you as we grow into this next
season as always go out there and have
yourself a great one and we will talk to
you next time
[Music]