Every software engineer gets stuck every once in a while. What makes the difference is, how we deal with it.
Being “stuck” means not being able to make progress on the top priority work.
The bigger the company the more likely it is to get stuck due to organizational, not technical reasons. Knowing how to navigate these situations has a direct impact on your career. If you can, you should prevent getting into this state in the first place, but it’s not always possible.
One of the most effective ways to get unblocked is to talk to people. Sometimes finding the right person is difficult, but it can be done. If you don’t know this person, maybe you know a person who knows this person? You can also post your question to a company forum, Slack channel or mailing list. For technical questions, the ultimate hack is to find relevant code and see who contributed to it.
When working with multiple teams communication is crucial. Frequent sync ups help discover issues before it’s too late. To mitigate the impact of delays, you need to establish an interface both teams can work against. This way both teams can make meaningful progress independently.
Getting unblocked can be difficult and even frustrating at times, but the alternative - waiting until things get better themselves is not a winning strategy.
Read more here: https://growingdev.substack.com/p/getting-unblocked
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