Hey!

Welcome back to another week of musings. I took two weeks off for a trip with my wife!

Many good things come from resting. I hope you also had uneventful weekends as we head into November and Thanksgiving!

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Things I enjoyed in the past week

• RDEL #165: Can AI review agents take humans out of code review? - A sidebar on Code Review A sidebar written by Camille Fournier.
• AWS Capacity Largely Sold Out Through 2027, With On-Demand Headroom ReservedAt work, we've been having issues with GCP capacity, as called out in another article.

With review season coming along, I've been thinking not only about my own role and where I want to go with it, but also about helping other people craft their reviews in a way that helps them be positioned for their next level.

Over time, we get used to drafting these yearly reviews, and they end up feeling mechanical; in the age of AI, it feels easy to pass blurbs or small notes and get a full 2-pager back. Those reports tend to be written in a very characteristic way, and tend to lack any soul, if you will.

Even writing reviews for other people has been agentified, which feels sad in many ways. While that's an easy way out, especially if you feel uneasy qualifying yourself, I still think there's value in crafting a personal yearly report.

I'm thinking about this because of the mechanical aspects that come with being burned out or discouraged in "the process." I see we end up writing in ways that might not help a promotion (if you're looking for one), a role change, or changing the work we're currently doing.

We tend to call out tasks or projects that were done, and I've given feedback (or reviewed my own) to position these projects in a direction I'm interested in pursuing, or as a way to demonstrate execution at the next level of the ladder.

Just a quick post to remember to take ownership of your career! I'll see you all next week.

Happy coding!