Leo Dion (host): Hey everybody.
Before we begin, I have a few things I wanted to announce.
As you can see, if you're watching this on YouTube or maybe you're
listening to this on your podcast player, this is the first episode
in my brand new office studio.
At the time of the recording this episode with Jaim, it
was still getting set up.
So I apologize for some issues with the audio in that episode.
Regardless, the contact is fantastic, so definitely check that out.
I'm pretty much, I just need to set up a green screen, so hopefully
in the next few episodes you'll see that up in my announcements.
Next I wanted to say that if you're not subscribed to the
Bright Digit newsletter, you should there's some really cool
new newsletters that came out.
Issued 100 went over our top articles, so that if you're gonna
get started, that's a great one to get started with to see some of
the cool stuff that we've put out.
And then issue number 1 0 1.
Was about my trip to London and the server side server side,
SWIFT conference, and some of the great talks that were there.
We have videos links to all the videos of all the talks, including mine.
So if you wanna know how that went you'll definitely wanna check
both of those out and subscribe to the Bright Digit newsletter.
Next.
I'm still looking for folks who are interested in.
Beta testing bushel bushel two.
I'm hoping to come at coping to release by the end of the
year which will be just in time for the one year anniversary.
I'm really if you're interested in the development and how that's
going, you should subscribe to the YouTube channel because I've been live
streaming every 9:00 AM on Tuesday.
My time zone, E-D-T-E-S-T depending on whether this is before November or not.
And yeah, just go to get bushel.com.
I'm adding in a screen recording and some stuff there for folks to be able
to record the work that they're doing on their VM and take screenshots and stuff.
So definitely check that out.
And lastly we have a Patreon.
If you are really enjoying my content, I would appreciate your support.
It'd be greatly appreciated.
I released these episodes on cut early on there.
I might put out some drafts of content that I'm working on, things like that.
So definitely check that out as well.
Patreon.com/bright digit.
All the links will be in the show notes, and that's about it.
Thank you.
Have a good rest of your day and enjoy this episode,
Welcome to another episode at Empower Apps.
I'm your host Leo Dion, back from five years ago.
We have Jaim Zuber
from episode 11.
Jaim, thank you so much for coming back on.
It's been a while.
Jaim Zuber (guest): Yeah, probably five, five years or so but yeah, glad to be
back and I've been enjoying all the stuff you've been posting since then.
Leo Dion (host): Thank you.
So for
those who don't remember episode 11, could you go ahead, introduce yourself?
Jaim Zuber (guest): Yeah, so my name's Jaim Zuber.
I've been working on Apple platforms almost exclusively, not
entirely for, the past 14 years.
Started,
Maybe 2011, mostly iOS, a little bit of Mac here and there as needed, but
a lot of that was as a consultant.
So I was doing independent work, got a chance to work with some really
cool apps, especially, in the 2010s.
Over the past three years, I switched gears.
I took a
leadership role, so I was a director of engineering for a digital bank.
Did that, enjoyed it, so I did it with kinda a manager slash
director slash principal engineer.
Enjoyed it, but that ended earlier this year doing layoffs.
That's a.
A pretty common trend throughout the industry of people just being laid off.
That, that's it in everyone.
Yeah, I got back to consulting a little more hands-on work enjoying it.
Being able to
write code every day.
So I'm doing that now and kind looking for work, looking for a
full-time job while doing consulting
work.
And that kind of brings us up into our topic, which we're gonna talk about.
How do you
navigate, this job market, which is
unlike.
Most of us have ever seen.
Leo Dion (host): Yeah, and I've been doing this for 25 years now, and.
I've been through recessions, but nothing like this where it's not
really a recession, but tech has been hard, parti hit particularly poorly.
Just kinda what's your thoughts on what, what's changed?
Why is it different this time?
What, like what are you finding out there?
Jaim Zuber (guest): Yeah, what's different is we had a
gold rush for years, a decade.
Interest rates were close to zero, so tons of people were
fund pouring money into startups.
Big tech had just infinite money to spend.
Everyone's hiring.
And like we all benefited from that,
Salaries skyrocketed.
We've all done pretty well in that era.
And that ended interest rates went back up.
We printed a bunch of money during the downturn and we're paying
for that down, trying to keep, the, from, macroeconomic forces.
We're trying to keep inflation low, lower, and that's affecting us.
But we've had a great run.
It's just an adjustment right now where we have to.
A new type of market.
Leo Dion (host): Yeah.
And part of it, I've seen this as far as a homeowner, I've been affected by
the interest rates, So I totally get it.
Just buying a new house and then also the fact that I mean it
seems to me like AI has sucked all the oxygen in the room.
As far as like any tech spending that there is, it's all going towards,
yeah, basically ai, AI research people think that they're gonna
get a lot of return off of that.
I'm very doubtful that it's going to be the revolution people think it is.
And I think, yeah, that's made it really difficult.
On top of that, I've also just seen issues with basically don't know
if it's the term ghost posting, but there's just a ton of posts out
there and there's a ton of people applying and then on top of it
there's just a lot of garbage as far
as job postings are concerned, and so it's like hard to navigate that as well.
Jaim Zuber (guest): That's true.
I think, the jobs are out there.
I think there are companies with openings.
It's just very competitive for the openings that are out there.
And like you said, there are companies that just post things to look good.
I.
Or jobs that they don't, they have no intention of hiring or just
don't quite have the budget yet.
So there, there are a lot of postings that aren't real, but I
think the jobs aren't out there.
I think the challenge is it's just super competitive.
There's way more people looking than there ever have been before.
There's tons of layoffs in the industry over the past year or two.
HR was big part of layoffs.
If a company's not gonna expand, they got rid of hr.
So we've got a, you've already got, they were already understaffed
for the past year, even if they're hiring.
You got one hr, you got one
HR person.
They're, they were already overworked
and now
they're completely overworked trying to hire for this
position, and they've got 200
resumes to look at.
Half are not
real people.
The AI generated or some scam, and they have, they've got a, they've
got a scan, a resume for five seconds
and figure out if you're the right person or not.
It's just that's the game.
That's the game we're in.
Three years ago, my resume would get a return call from like 80, 90% of the
things I sent for, but that would be like lead staff, principal type things.
Typically now it's closer to 10, maybe 20,
Leo Dion (host): Yeah.
Yeah.
So let's talk a little bit about what you've been doing
to navigate that market or maybe even pivot in your career
as a lead principal, senior iOS developer.
Jaim Zuber (guest): Yeah let's talk about more
kind of the hands on things you can do.
First thing I did is just tightened up my resume,
Make sure it was like four or five pages.
It was just long and it worked.
I had no reason to mess with it.
Before, but,
Now you wanna tie it up.
You wanna have the stuff that's directly relevant to the job you're
applying for right at the top.
cause hr, the person scanning
your resume, is gonna look at the first three below points.
And if it's not a match you're done.
You know you're out they'll never see you again.
It's important to,
have a resume that's really tuned for the position you're applying for.
If you're applying for a senior engineer position, your resumes can.
be very different from an engineering manager.
Or yeah, even a staff or lead engineer.
If you're a, if you're a senior engineer, mid-level engineer, make
sure your hands-on skills are right up front, features that you've
worked on, stuff that you did, if you're,
if it's a lead, make sure that leadership's up top, that you've
led teams, things like that.
If your staff principal, make sure that you've been able to
show impact like beyond your team.
Hey, I helped my whole organization improve their test coverage or whatever.
We
Leo Dion (host): right,
Jaim Zuber (guest): document improve documentation, which
allowed the teams to move faster.
Things like that.
So I've got a different resume for each type of role that
I apply for, and I think.
Leo Dion (host): There's just so many positions out there that seems like
a lot of work to have to if I'm gonna apply to 10 or 20 positions to have
to make 10 or 20 resumes, is there a simpler, more optimal way to do that?
So you can.
Apply to a lot of positions, but the same time, like not waste time because
like you could end up basically not going anywhere with it because, I'd
rather have more applications, more resumes posted than necessarily
making every single one Perfect.
If that makes sense.
Jaim Zuber (guest): Yeah, you're not gonna rewrite your resume for
every job post that's out there.
That's not something that.
That's really doable.
I've
got, three or four basic standard ones that I have.
My, if it sounds like a lead engineer, it's one thing if the staff or
principal, it's another, if it's the engineering manager, it's one if it's a
director, 'cause those are all different things that you're gonna look for that
So I've got four basic templates that I use and it's all the same content.
It's just sums higher, some's lower, but I, versus, I, I would
definitely say pick your spots for the roles that you apply for.
Look ones that are really good fits yep, I am.
I can walk in there with this right face and say, I'm the exact right
person they wanna hire for this.
Start with those, start with, and put time in.
I'd say, invest time in it.
If you're looking for work,
you got time.
And looking for work is a full-time job, it's, it.
When you're doing
it, it takes time.
It's draining.
It's not easy.
So I, my approach is like, just pick the
best ones and, but it's also important use your time wisely,
Say is this type of thing that's gonna get me to the next phase, maybe not.
And even if I have the perfect resume for the perfect job, you get bounced,
Leo Dion (host): right.
How, what do you think about cover letters?
Jaim Zuber (guest): I don't have a good answer for that.
One thing, AI can help 'em with that.
That's one thing AI is good for.
You just say.
Leo Dion (host): Yeah I think that's a good point.
It is just cover letter is a little bit like, to me it'd be like emailing
somebody or messaging somebody in HR at a particular company being,
Hey, I posted here, I'm, I really know a lot about swift concurrency
and migrating to Swift concurrency.
I think I could really help out your team.
Be very be very specific when you.
In your cover letter or in your contact of that person about why you are a great
fit, show that you actually read the requirements and what they're looking
for, and I think that goes a long way to getting your name out there.
Jaim Zuber (guest): Yeah, I think so.
Yeah.
Definitely have everything in your cover letter be true.
Even if you can start with AI and I don't really know
if
Leo Dion (host): You could start with ai, but don't let it be
too generic and sound like a bunch of nonsense, which can
Jaim Zuber (guest): Oh yeah the HR person, I'm sure they can spot a, an
a AI generated resume right there.
So you have to be able to stand behind everything that's in there.
I told my team would, when I was doing, when I was a director, it would submit
documentation that was AI driven.
I was like, okay, that's okay, but you have to stand behind
everything that's in there.
It,
It's still you submitting it even to something else wrote it.
It's good.
It's okay for a starting point.
But yeah, don't lean too hard into it and really, I don't really know.
I have no, I don't know if cover letters are worth it anymore,
pre three years, three years
ago.
Leo Dion (host): to me doesn't necessarily mean cover letter,
like something super fancy.
It just more means like a paragraph or a couple sentences just saying,
Hey, I'm interested in this position.
I saw this this would be great for me.
Here's why you should hire me, and I've attached my resume and call it good.
I don't know what more a cover letter should be, but I don't think
it needs to be more than that right
Jaim Zuber (guest): Yeah, it could be lightweight and three years
ago, I didn't even bother them.
I just set it out there and I think no one did.
Now it's I don't know, but I don't have any info to say you
should do a covered letter.
I don't know if any
Leo Dion (host): right,
Jaim Zuber (guest): I don't know.
If I don't.
If they don't look at the resume, you're dead in the water Anyway I do have,
Leo Dion (host): really good point.
Jaim Zuber (guest): yeah, I do have a summary at the top of my
resume, which is a newer thing.
So it just kinda explains yeah, I've done, I've been a manager, I've been a
director, but now I'm trying to be hands on, so just a kind of a summary, which
could do some cover letter type things.
So that's one thing I did add to my resume based on some advice that I read.
Leo Dion (host): How many pages is your resume?
How many is too many pages?
I've done a lot, I've done a lot of
work in that time.
How many,
pages should I have?
Like how many pages
is too many?
And how do I like, summarize it in such a way that somebody's gonna
be interested in it, if that makes
Jaim Zuber (guest): Right.
I, think the standard answer is you want it?
Add two pages.
I never did this before, like three years ago when I was looking,
it was like four or five pages.
'cause I've been doing this a long time.
Like you had a lot of cool stuff on there that I had done.
And I figured, and people would dig into the old stuff, like in an
interview or something they made oh, I worked with this technology.
Just a way to, connect with your, with the person who's interviewing you.
But I think nowadays, like HR expects it, to be.
Yep.
Two pages have all the good stuff right up front, like no
one really cares what you did.
Even five years ago,
It's it's all what have you done lately?
Especially with this parking where there's so many resumes out there, like
you wanna make sure everything that's relevant to this job is right up front.
Leo Dion (host): Yeah, the only thing I can think of is I have this experience.
I know how to learn new things.
I know how to lead a team.
The more abstract stuff I think would be helpful on a resume.
But otherwise, if it's newer techno where they're just like, I just want
you to make sure you know the latest technology, like that's it, then yeah,
it makes total sense to just have the latest five years of, work that
you've done in Swift ui, for instance.
What do you have any other tips when it comes to resumes
like gotchas or do's or don'ts?
Jaim Zuber (guest): Yeah, not sure.
I would say I'm a
Leo Dion (host): Winds, wind digs is at the preferred font now.
Jaim Zuber (guest): windings.
Yeah, that
that's definitely the way to go.
One tip I did
learn is that I always exported mine
to PDF.
Like some back in the
day, like recruiters would literally change your resume if you submitted
a word or something like that.
I've had recruiters do that, like sketchy stuff, so I always did.
I always did a PDF.
And if you submit it, it's gonna be harder
for the tracking system to read all the stuff out of
there for your experience.
So you're gonna go there and fix a bunch of stuff.
So be able to export to like word format and pages.
Pages
can do that.
So you can do that from your Mac.
Like with everything, but especially if anything workday, export it to
the Word document you'll be happier.
Leo Dion (host): So my my anecdote is I recently submitted a marked down resume
in Workday and it was marked as spam.
I now have I'll post a link to it in the show notes, but
I have a marked down to PDF.
Converter that.
runs a GitHub action.
'cause that's where I had my resume.
So hopefully from now on I won't have that issue.
But yeah, it sucks.
'cause Workday especially, it's just not gonna look at it, it's
not gonna check what it looks like.
So you think like a mi you think Microsoft Word is better than PDF?
Jaim Zuber (guest): Yeah, especially for things where they're scanning
it and trying to get it to your experience, like work rate does that.
And
Leo Dion (host): They don't scan PDFs.
Jaim Zuber (guest): they do, they just make a lot of mistakes.
So I had to go
Leo Dion (host): Okay.
Jaim Zuber (guest): Any like small eye, I had to fix every version of
every time Swift has mentioned my resume, which is everywhere I had
to go and change it that got fixed
when
I,
Leo Dion (host): What, did it do with Swift?
Jaim Zuber (guest): Any like little, I lowercase, I, it just got it wrong.
So any word we thought, okay, I had to go and fix.
Once it's already in there.
So the automatic import worked a lot better with Document, with a Word doc.
Workday is a terrible software from the hiring side and from the applicant side.
Just that's
just,
Leo Dion (host): it's what was I gonna say?
And now with these cut HR departments, they just
are gonna totally rely on a piece of crap to do it.
That sucks.
How, what do you think of formatting?
Keep it all one font.
Bold out things that you think are gonna really catch people's eye.
Maybe use headers properly.
Jaim Zuber (guest): I think all of those things, like I'm not I
wouldn't be the grant expert for
all.
Leo Dion (host): I guess is what I'm trying to say.
Just think of it from the HR person who's gonna wanna look at this quickly
and just be like, yes, no, and then.
Do you think like links, do you think links work?
Like people will actually look at it and be like, yeah,
I wanna pull this up and see what they actually did, or,
Jaim Zuber (guest): Yeah, I'm not sure.
I don't really have any links in mind.
I just know there's a good site I was gonna, it's in the show notes from.
Gie Roche, who's done a lot of writing on the tech industry.
He's got eng, he's got the resume template site.
He's got a book on the engineer tech, the tech resume, and he
just gives out tons of good advice
Leo Dion (host): we'll put that in the show notes.
So definitely take a
look at
Jaim Zuber (guest): that's in the, that's in the notes.
But yeah, have as much as you can have a standard format.
Don't get too weird, they're used.
HR is used to looking at something in a certain format.
Don't mess with it.
They got three to five seconds to scan your resume and they're gonna
look for the place they're used to looking for the stuff they wanna see.
Leo Dion (host): Okay.
Let's jump to talking about do you wanna talk about navigating the market
or do you wanna talk about switching between leadership and development?
Jaim Zuber (guest): Yeah.
They're interrelated.
Like last year,
like I had a job.
I saw all this laugh happening.
I looked at kinda my skillset.
I'm like, I've got two years of like actual,
literal engineering management experience.
Even though I ran a software company, consulting company,
I ran a band, music band.
So I came in pretty high level understanding the
role of an engineer manager.
So my equivalent experience is a lot higher than two years, but
that's what it's on my resume.
And if you're applying and they don't know you.
That's what they're gonna look at.
So I was kinda like looking at my skillset and if something happens,
like my engineering skills are gonna be the most portable, that's gonna
help me get the next job more likely than the engineering management,
at least until the market improves.
Once the market improves, then you can do a lot of things.
'cause I had a lot of interest in my resume for engineering management three
years ago, where now it's, those are.
Really tough to get.
A lot of the layoffs in the industry, that was the managers,
the directors, so middle management flattening has been the trend.
Leo Dion (host): I was gonna ask about that.
Jaim Zuber (guest): any engineering manager engineering manager role that's
open, kind, have way more applicants than they would've, a couple years ago.
And the people that have been doing it for, five, 10 years, a lot of times
they're pretty big name companies.
So I kinda knew that just by my resume, I wasn't gonna stand out.
And I'm getting in the loop for some of those roles.
But realistically, like the engineering skills are probably gonna make my
kind of make the next move happen.
That's not a step back in my book one blog post I read.
Years ago charity Majors wrote a blog post on the pendulum theory that
says the most effective engineers have spent time in management.
The best managers aren't more than three years removed from
hands-on work, to paraphrase.
So she recommended going back and forth, go into leadership a little bit, come
back sharp, sharpen up your tech skills.
That works for me 'cause I get bored doing one thing.
For two to three years, so getting a change of pace is works great for me.
Leo Dion (host): When you say manager, I mean there's a lot of
different kinds of managers, like project manager or product manager
or just like a boss, so to speak.
Like what kind of manager role do you think is more apt for
somebody who's in engineering?
Jaim Zuber (guest): Yeah, typ, the typical path is, most people listening
to this are iOS engineers, mobile engineers of some sort, hands-on skills.
Typically you go into engineering management product management,
totally different thing.
There are a lot of engineers that go into product management.
That's where you're managing a product, not people necessarily, at least, and
a lot of engineers go into product project management, program management.
That's more, that's a different thing altogether.
That's making sure projects and things bigger than one project moves smoothly.
But typically the engineering path is to, for, seed engineer if they've
got a good reputation at the company.
People like them, like working with them.
They know the tech stack.
They know the main, they're a good fit to go into management.
Typically, that's how people get their first cha chance
at engineering management.
So at that point you're leading team, like they report to you.
You have to go into work, you have to go into Workday to manage a bunch of stuff.
That's why the managers don't like Workday either,
because it's just it's rough.
Leo Dion (host): One, one thing, I forgot which episode it was, but we
had talked about management and one of the things that I do and I've
learned as I've grown more mature is,
The thing about being a manager is as like a developer who,
especially somebody who's indie like myself, it's like
I
I,
can't get everything I
want done.
I need to get somebody to help
me.
And I end up getting, I end up becoming a manager because I
have a couple of people who are helping me on certain products or projects that
I'm working on.
And that's where I've
seen like the manager be
A.
Not augmenting, but just being able to like multiply yourself and the
work that you do, if that makes sense.
And I think that's where the manager skill is really helpful because if
you do it all by yourself, you're just not gonna get as much done.
But if you have two or three other people doing it with you and
you're managing them and breaking things into tests, knowing how to
organize stuff, I think that's.
That's where becoming a manager, that's where it clicked with me,
where like becoming a manager is just being a, an engineer who can
multiply themselves so to speak.
Does that make sense?
Jaim Zuber (guest): I think so.
Yeah, if I looked throughout my career, like at least the first
decade, like I saw what my managers did and I didn't wanna do it.
I was like, I don't wanna do this.
They just go to meetings.
They had to do a bunch of paperwork.
I didn't wanna do it.
But I think like you said, I got frustrated with poor
management or just mismanagement.
It's if I could have done that, I could have avoided a lot of these pain points
that we face, that the team is facing.
So just let me handle that.
I can do it.
I did that.
I don't necessarily wanna do it, but I'll, I'm happy to do it just
to make everyone else's life easier.
So I think just, yeah, I think the challenge is like scaling yourself,
just like help instead of making yourself an effective member of the
team, making an effective team or making an effective organization
where everyone's working together.
Leo Dion (host): Yeah.
I think of it as from the indie perspective where I'm
pretty much directing myself in everything I do to where it's
like I, you get to a point in your career where you realize you're not
gonna get any faster at coding, I.
You're people are like, oh, like I got like this product done in a week.
And then you realize, they didn't add any tests and it barely works.
Jaim Zuber (guest): Right.
Leo Dion (host): if you do one right, but they're so proud of
how fast they are and you realize being fast is in everything.
And that if you want to get more done, you just need more people and you need
to manage them and teach them and so on.
That's just what has been my revelation over the last year.
Do you, I think one of the things that somebody might say is Ugh,
I don't wanna manage, 'cause I don't want to deal with somebody
above me basically pushing me to do things that I don't think I can do.
An executive is we gotta get this done in a week, get it done.
And it's yeah, if we do that, it's gonna break.
That kind of stuff where you're just like having to
deal with that kind of crap.
What do you do, what do you say to somebody like that?
Jaim Zuber (guest): But that's at every level, right?
You could be a
Leo Dion (host): That's what I
Jaim Zuber (guest): you could be a mid-level engineer and they're like,
you need to get this done in two days.
Leo Dion (host): Yeah.
Jaim Zuber (guest): So if you're, the higher your level, the more skin
you have in the game to push back.
But.
You have to be smart about it and talk in the type of, with the
type of values that the people above you, your manager, director,
vice president, can understand.
If we get this done, we're gonna burn the team out and we're
not gonna be able to do the things for the next six months.
But there's gonna be, we can't do it with the quality that we
have, that you, an enlightened view is like you have to.
Think of the long term benefits to the team, to the company.
If you burn your team out, you really suffer with bugs.
Is that worth getting that out?
Sometimes yes.
Sometimes it makes sense to, to crunch something out there for
the business, especially the startup, dates are important.
But if you burn your team out, then they can't continue to iterate on
the things that you want them to do.
So you have to make sure that you're presenting all the
terms in the things that.
The people at every level value
Leo Dion (host): Yeah.
Yep.
So let's talk about what are, can you think of any specific
benefits to each of these tracks?
And why you may not want to stay in one long, too long, if that makes
Jaim Zuber (guest): Yeah.
You mean like just engineering versus management.
upper
Leo Dion (host): Yeah,
exactly.
Jaim Zuber (guest): I think I've.
Seen enough where I can make calls on that.
If you don't wanna deal with stuff outside of your
team as much, you can be a
senior engineer, you can be a worker bee, crank out features,
functionality and do that, that's fine for a lot of people.
I, you don't really need to go beyond that to have a
good career.
I got to the point where I got bored
just cranking out table views year after year,
Leo Dion (host): is that what it was?
It was cranky out table
views.
Jaim Zuber (guest): more to it than that, but okay, we need
to, we need another screen here.
Here's another table view.
I've been doing this for 10 years.
I can still do it.
Even with Swift ui
Leo Dion (host): UI just
did not
Jaim Zuber (guest): No
Leo Dion (host): come in soon enough.
Jaim Zuber (guest): I, no, not so much that, but just
okay, I can learn Swift ui.
Here's another way to do the same thing we've been doing for,
20 years.
Like I started doing Windows apps.
Day, embedded stuff, windows, apps, some Mac.
But so you can do that.
That's a, it's a good career.
But like you're just downstream from all the decisions that
get made in the company.
And that got frustrating for me.
'cause I could have prevented these headaches that we're all having
right now had I been in the room or they're making these calls, so
maybe you could be a tech lead.
They can be a tech lead manager where you're a little hands on.
Working more closely with people outside of the team, with product
management, backend web teams that's also, you're still pretty hands on.
Your time is less spent hands on
coding.
You can, you're directing things you're, mentoring, things like that.
And that's a also a great way to spend a career.
You don't have to go beyond that if you like doing it.
It you can do it.
So management is a totally different thing.
You have a totally different schedule.
Like you barely have any time to write code, and you shouldn't
be writing a lot of code.
Leo Dion (host): Okay.
Okay.
I was gonna ask that.
Do you think that a manager should never write code?
That's one of the big questions.
Jaim Zuber (guest): definitely I didn't say never.
You shouldn't be writing a lot of code and you shouldn't be
in the critical path.
Because you're gonna get distracted 10 times today.
So if you need to, if you need to get this feature out so the
rest of the team can do their work, you're the bottleneck.
Leo Dion (host): I think a little bit of code and a little bit of
PR review and code review would be good just to keep yourself
knowledgeable about what is going on underneath and keeping quality good.
Otherwise, yeah, I wouldn't assign somebody I wouldn't assign
a manager to a feature per se, unless you absolutely had to.
you
know what I
Jaim Zuber (guest): Yeah.
Leo Dion (host): that sound about right?
Do you
Jaim Zuber (guest): No, I agree.
I agree with that.
I think,
Leo Dion (host): Okay.
Jaim Zuber (guest): yeah, even I, my title is director, had managers warning
to me and also engineers sent LED team.
So I still was reviewing code.
I was in charge of making sure the architecture was what we wanted.
Even if I wasn't the person, I wasn't dictating everything, I was
letting the team make the calls.
I would ask the right questions to make sure that they understood the
priorities that they needed to consider.
Yeah.
But they kinda like this is but yeah,
one of the most important lessons you have to learn if you're a manager
is you can't dictate everything.
That's recipe for failure.
The absolute worst managers you've ever worked for, try to
be the tech lead as the manager.
'cause you can't just tell everyone what to do.
They need to figure things out on their own.
Even if it's not exactly what you'd have done, like maybe my solution was 80% of
the right solution and their's is 70%.
Like you'd let 'em run with it.
'cause lets us move forward.
They're bought into it, so if something goes wrong, it's okay that
they own it versus I told 'em to
do it.
Leo Dion (host): know how it
works.
Yeah.
That's really good.
Jaim Zuber (guest): so that was one thing I had to
let go on.
Like not everything was gonna be as perfect as it would've
been if I would've done it.
But I think overall we all move faster, and
ultimately the managers make sure that everything.
Is appropriate level, quality, test coverage, all those things.
But not every one thing has to be
optimized, like the way I would've done it,
Leo Dion (host): Yeah, totally.
100%.
What have you been working on lately?
Jaim Zuber (guest): Yeah.
I.
Given I got the notice I was gonna get laid off in February,
Looked at my skill set of man, I need to catch up on Swift y 'cause we
weren't doing that much with my, we had a little bit proof of concept here
and there, but we weren't h heavy with it, so I need to catch up on that.
So we'd wrap it up with Swift ui helped worked with a company, helped
them with their hiring the loop.
So like the first half of this year, I was still a hiring manager.
I was like hiring people.
And the second half, I'm the job seeker.
That's how it goes sometimes, but had a little break, so
that ended earlier this year.
So I'm in job seeking mode.
I've been writing.
So, digging into swift concurrency.
I got a chance to work with it with my last client.
So they had started using kinda the tasks and ay, a weight, a
asynchronous coating with Swift.
So got a
chance
to actors got a chance to dig into all that.
So I've been going through
that
Leo Dion (host): Swift six or still Swift
five.
Jaim Zuber (guest): so that was,
That was still Swift five.
'cause
EXCO 16 was not out yet.
But I got a chance to work with,
The different, the tasks
and kind of actors, things
like that.
Got my foot with that.
And I, at the time, I was
like, oh no, I'm so far behind.
I've been away from Crow for two years.
I'm done.
I don't know, I'm completely lost.
And I looked every I went to
one more thing, conf and
Cupertino, and I realized yeah, no one's doing this
yet.
I was like, okay.
Whew.
Okay, good.
I was like, I'm so far behind.
I'm done.
Stick a fork of me, but no one's doing.
Leo Dion (host): a, it's really big challenge.
I've seen that a,
lot lately.
Jaim Zuber (guest): Yeah, it's a,
Leo Dion (host): My head has been totally into it especially the
swift six stuff with ay weight.
and like when I talk to other people, they're just like, oh my
gosh, it's so hard and so difficult.
Jaim Zuber (guest): Yeah it's, a mind though.
It took me a little bit time to get used to it now, like I love
it.
I think it's, I
think it's, I think it's huge.
I think it's especially for big teams.
If you're a lead engineer or staff
Leo Dion (host): Have you done anything with Swift six and Async Coate?
'cause it's a lot more strict
Jaim Zuber (guest): You could always turn on the strict checking in
Leo Dion (host): right?
I know.
Oh I know
Jaim Zuber (guest): Okay.
Oh
Leo Dion (host): a glutton for punishment,
Jaim Zuber (guest): yeah.
So we were always
turning it on, turning it off to see where we're at.
I'm at the, I'm at the point where.
Yeah I have no problem building an app in Swift six.
It's,
largely a lot of the stuff that our, we always should have been doing.
Like use struc instead of classes, make things stateless that you
can just pass around that no one
cares what thread they're operating on.
So, yeah, I'm a big fan, especially for as like a staff type role where.
You probably can't review every line of code that comes through your
code base.
If you get a big NF team, swift concurrency allows us to
do that, checking at compile
time.
A lot of those
Leo Dion (host): Yes.
Jaim Zuber (guest): A lot of those 'cause
Classic iPhone development, you just throw off a, async,
Block whatever you want to, and it's fine.
Nothing really bad happens until a lot of people start doing it.
And then things start crashing and
Leo Dion (host): It extends the sort of I don't know if you remember when we had
the transition to Swift, but like people were pissed about how like optional or
int and double and all these types had to be the type that they actually were.
Whereas an objective C, everything was loose goosey.
And so people were pissed because it's God, I gotta convert this
decimal point number to that end, and I've gotta do it all manually.
And I feel like that's essentially what Swift six is with concurrency.
It's no, you have to make sure that.
You don't change a thing unless it's, if it's sendible, you gotta do
it properly, or you have to have an actor to make sure that two things
don't come in and you have a race condition and all this kind of stuff.
It's like introducing that safety when it comes to concurrency,
which I think is really fantastic.
Jaim Zuber (guest): Yep.
Yeah, I agree.
And yeah, the type stuff in Swift is a little bit ugly, but at least you're
being explicit about what's happening, which I think is just valuable.
Leo Dion (host): It's safer.
I think too especially optionals,
Jaim Zuber (guest): Yeah, that
Leo Dion (host): I still don't, I still, when I have to go back into
Objective C code I'm not happy about having to deal with that.
Jaim Zuber (guest): Where's my flett?
Where's my flett?
I just wanna, I wanna guard this, please.
Leo Dion (host): yeah because every, everything is optional
and objective, so it's
Jaim Zuber (guest): but I agree with your analogy, but if you're working
with the legacy code base that's been around for five, 10 years, like
it's, could be, it's gonna be really hard to
Leo Dion (host): No don't go.
Don't go to strict build.
Maybe your new libraries or your new frameworks strict, but don't.
Migrate your old code.
We could talk about migrating old code until the day's done.
There would not be a short podcast episode 'cause there's
so many things about it.
I'll link a art.
So I have a couple articles I'll link in the show notes.
One to migrating.
And then I did a sort of very basic how to migrate Swift six besides
the excellent one that Holly and Matt did on the Apple site.
But I have a very basic one for beginners if they're interested.
Do you miss GCD?
Jaim Zuber (guest): I still like it.
I think it's the.
Leo Dion (host): Why?
Jaim Zuber (guest): What's that?
I'm glut for punishment 'cause I dug in and got to know it so well
Leo Dion (host): Oh, okay.
Okay.
Jaim Zuber (guest): and
I
think not every scenario is gonna be covered
by structured concurrency.
I think we're, it's a swift UI versus c UI kit where if
you stay in the lane with
Swift UI you're fine and it's getting better.
But if you got really custom things like you
you're probably just better
off.
Leo Dion (host): Tune into our previous episode with Ben if you want
to do
Jaim Zuber (guest): I listened to It it was great.
That was great stuff.
It's yeah, if you wanna do really custom things, it's
gonna, it's gonna be painful.
If you stay in your lane, you're fine.
And
But if you wanna do like some esoteric things with concurrency and threading,
Leo Dion (host): Pull to refresh.
Yeah.
Jaim Zuber (guest): GCD is, it's still there been.
It's been powerful.
Leo Dion (host): Was there anything else you wanted to
talk about before we close out?
Jaim Zuber (guest): think I think that's pretty good.
So I'll throw a couple links to some, like some of the books that help me
understand the role of an engineering manager and engineering leader.
Like manager's path from Camille, er, resilient Management, Laura Hogan.
Those are both excellent.
If you have any interest in being a manager or in
leadership, buy those books.
Read them.
Even if you don't, you'll at least understand the role.
Like you'll understand what your boss is doing, what they're
supposed to be doing, what your director is supposed to be doing.
Like manager's path talks about the whole stick up to CTO vp, it's I didn't
really know what a VP did until I was a director and I interacted with the vp.
Now I know.
Okay.
But just going through that book just under kinda helps you
understand what people above your.
Trying to solve so you can help
them do their thing.
Make yourself look good.
Everybody wins.
Leo Dion (host): Jaim, thank you so much for coming on.
Thank you for being my Guinea pig.
First episode in the new house.
We learned the importance of directly hooking up a webcam to a Mac studio
instead of going through a hub.
So that's been fantastic.
We've been good for the last half hour.
Jaim, where could people find you online?
Jaim Zuber (guest): So Jaim er.com is where I'm doing most of my writing.
I'm on, I'm My Mastodon.
That's really the only place I really post.
You can find me there.
I'll put a link in the notes.
Leo Dion (host): Awesome people should check out our latest newsletters.
I just posted newsletter 1 0 1 on my experience at Server Side Swift.
Check that out.
Check out my link to my talk I did in London, which was awesome.
It was great to see everybody there, Aaron, and talk about fitness working
out in server side, swift and gb.
So a lot of great for the latest newsletter.
Check that out.
If you have any more questions about resumes, hiring, any of that
stuff, reach out to me on Twitter or email or whatever you have.
Twitter at Leo Dion and MAs it on at Leo Dion at c Im
bright digit.com is my website.
Thank you so much for joining me, and I look forward to talking
to you in the next episode.
Bye everybody.