173 How Can I Succeed In A Crisis?

How can I be successful in a crisis? What tips or tricks are there to help me come out of a bad situation with a good result? How do I ensure that I do not make a bad situation worse? These are the questions we are going to be answering in this episode of Dev Questions. 

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SPEAKER_00 0:00

Welcome to the Dev Questions Podcast with Tim Corey. Join us each episode as we tackle the questions you are asking about a career in software development, understanding the industry, and new technology. If you're just starting out or you want to grow stronger as a developer, this is the place to get your questions answered. Now, here's your host, expert developer and online educator, Tim Corey.

SPEAKER_02 0:25

How can I succeed in a crisis? How do I ensure that I don't make a bad situation worse? Now, this question actually comes out of a kind of a current event that's going on. Instead of normally I get questions from a suggestion site, so go to suggestions.imtimcore and ask your questions there. But this question actually comes out of some current events that have been going on in the.NET ecosystem. And something I wanted to address because there's a lot of questions around, a lot of confusion over how do you deal with a situation that's going on right now, and it's a crisis, and you want to make sure you come out the other side successful. So let's talk about this. Now, recently we went through a situation with Unity with our licensing where they really kind of destroyed everything. They they count as this pricing and licensing uh situation or um structure that was just bad. It was it was potentially devastating to indie game developers. And I did a video on that, get a couple of videos on that, but you know, there was a lot of quick emotional responses. Now, that's a really one of the most dangerous things you can do in a crisis is have a quick emotional response. Now, I'll be clear here that you also don't want to be passive. You do not want to just stand back and say, oh, you know, do bad things. I, you know, I'm not gonna say anything because I'm telling you, you know, emotional. You can absolutely be upset, you can absolutely not like the situation, you can absolutely speak out against the situation. But that's not the same thing as having a quick emotional response. What I mean by that is that you act quickly and emotionally. So let's talk about how to handle a crisis. So, number one thing not to do, okay? So don't panic. Panic does not help you make better decisions. It really doesn't. Think about it this way. Imagine if you're flying in a plane and let's say something happens, the engine goes out, or maybe both engines go out. Do you want your pilot to be screaming, freaking out, and starting to throw switches? No, you do not. You want someone who can say, I've got this, let's do this. In fact, they made a whole movie about it, I believe it's called Sully, um, where you know there was a bird strike where both engines went out at the lowest altitude ever recorded, where a plane didn't just crash and burn. And he successfully landed the plane on the uh Hudson River. Well, he didn't do that by screaming, freaking out, you know, yelling, you know, throwing things real quick, making quick changes to his direction. He didn't do that. They went through, okay, this is a crisis. We need to address this, and they started going through their procedures. But it was not panic. It was quick action, but it was not panic. So in your situation, when you come across something, don't panic. One of the things I saw was a lot of companies in the Unity situation where they said immediately, we're done with Unity, we're done. Well, that sounds, that sounds good and it could be the right decision for them, but I'm hoping they didn't make that move out of panic. Because when you make a move out of panic, you might regret it later because of the fact that you didn't evaluate the entire situation. You you made a decision, then go, oh, I there was a better choice. Even if it was to leave Unity, maybe there's a better choice of where to go to, and it's kind of too late now. You kind of pull the trigger. Okay. So that's one thing not to do is to not panic. Panic does not help you make better decisions. Number two, don't act on your anger. All right. Anger does not help you make good decisions either. So when you're angry, and it's you have a right to be angry over a bad situation. The developers who spent a lot of time in Unity, they have a right to be frustrated and angry over how Unity treated them and what that means for the long term. So they have a right to be angry, but that doesn't mean they should then just make decisions based upon that anger. All right. And number three, don't look at this situation in a vacuum. What I mean by that is, you know, again, let's bring back to unity for a minute. There's a lot of people that said, let's leave unity. Okay? That's a decision in a vacuum. What that's saying is that it's it's a stay or go decision. That's all we have. But the reality is that if your game is halfway built, you don't have a stay or go decision. You have a stay or go somewhere decision. You see the difference? The difference is not just we're gonna leave, the decision is where you're gonna go to. So that's where you make a decision, not just in a vacuum. So if you had a game that was halfway built, that's a console application, right? And the Unity situation comes up and you go, oh, we're gonna leave Unity. We're done. And you walk away. Okay, but here's the problem. You made a decision in the vacuum. Where are you gonna go to? So you're gonna go to, well, you can't go to Godot because Godot doesn't have console app or console games yet. So you kind of have to go to Unreal or build your own. And let's not consider build your own because that's totally that's a lot more work. So let's go with Unreal, right? Well, Unreal is C now, not C sharp. You have to rewrite your code. And it's a different engine, a different way of doing things. And by the way, they take a bigger cut. But let's just say you go to the Unreal. Well, now you have to rework your half-built application into a new language, into a new system. And that's gonna put you back maybe three, six, nine months, maybe a year of time. Well, when you're building a game, you have a runway, you have a length of time where you can build that game before you have to either take off or crash and burn. And you know what? When you say we're gonna use a lot of this runway just to move over to Unreal, well, now you have a whole lot less opportunity to take off. And you know, maybe you run out of money before you're done the game, or you don't have all the features you need to to get the game launched. And then what you have is you were upset at Unity, you made a decision in the vacuum, and the result is you don't have a game to launch, and you're in debt because you ran out of money. So your decision in a vacuum can actually hurt your company to the point of putting it out of business, especially for any developers, small developers, which is why I say you need to not panic, don't act on your anger, and don't look at the situation in a vacuum. You need to think of this thing as an entire solution and go, okay, what is the best choice now? Let's, you know, take a little bit of time, let's figure it out and make the right choice going forward for us. Okay, so what do you do in a crisis? Well, the first thing is gather all the data you can. And this is one of those things where it's going to take a little bit of time. For instance, I have a game development course that I've been working on. Well, what do I do now that Unity comes up with that situation that kind of blows up the community? Do I stay or do I go? Well, what I decided to do was take some time to gather all the data. That meant really taking about two weeks to wade through all of the initial announcements, all the thoughts in the community, and then all the follow-up announcements by Unity, and then even the final word from Unity on what the kind of wrapping up the situation, making things a whole lot better, um, but all that information into account, which means I couldn't make a snap decision. I had to wait to gather all of that data. And number two, if possible, because it's not always possible, but if possible, sleep on it. So when you have a situation where there's a crisis and things going on, you know, sometimes you have to make quick decisions. But even so, I'd encourage you to take some time to gather that data. But if possible, sleep on it. Take a little bit of time, take a step back from a situation, let your anger cool, let your frustration down a little bit. Yes, this is a bad situation. Yes, you have every right to be angry, but let's take a breather for a minute and let's think about this situation. Like I say, a step back and come back as objective as possible in order to make the best decision for you. That's the thing, is it has to be the best decision for you. And that may be different than everybody else. Now, number three, evaluate the alternatives. This is the idea of not making a decision in a vacuum. Okay, so if you're a console application, well, you can't go with Godot. You don't want to go self self-built engine, so you have Unreal. That's like that's your option, really, for mainstream game uh engines. So it's either Unity or Unreal. If you have a whole bunch of tooling and processes and systems built in Unity, and you know how to make it work, and you know that you can get this game launched in the next six months in Unity, compared to it's gonna take you a year to get up a speed in Unreal and get your game poured over, and then it's gonna be another six months to finish your game out. That's 18 months. So now you have launch the game in six months or launch again 18 months, which is a better decision. It may still be 18 months, but you need to evaluate that with a level head and with without the anchor. Now, number four, identify the long-term results of each choice, including staying. And that's where I said again, maybe that 18-month time frame is okay for you. And that's a short-term pain for a long-term gain. Maybe you say, you know what, I need to move over to Unreal anyway, or I want to anyway. I think this is the right choice for my business going forward. And so, yeah, I'm gonna eat the next year. It's gonna be difficult, I'm gonna eat a lot of ramen and try and get through the next 12 months in order to get over to the um the solution I want long-term. So identify the long-term results, not just the short-term results. So the long-term results of Unity might be there's a glitch, but then it works for a while because the new pricing is out, it's a whole lot better. So maybe that's better for us for a while, but then maybe do I not trust the company still? And so maybe it's a good short-term choice, but long-term it's not. And so, what do I do there? And so identifying what's the long-term results from each choice will allow you to better evaluate your decision. And then number five is get an outside opinion. Getting an outside opinion is really helpful because again, you may still be struggling with anger and frustration, and you're really close to the situation, and you just you need to make a decision. And so you say, you know what? I'm gonna touch somebody else, somebody who maybe is not fully in the situation, who can provide a better outside perspective or or kind of push back on some of my assumptions that I need to realize were assumptions. So my team and I did this. My team is not as technical as I am. So, you know, I have mostly non-developers on staff. And yet we had a discussion as a team about this uni situation and what we're going to do because they were able to provide some outside opinion or ask some good questions that really helped form a better choice for us going forward than just me making the choice alone. I want to tell you the story about a friend of mine that has done a great job of this. So he works for an employer that isn't the greatest in a job that isn't the best, but it pays the bills. And his employer came to him and said, you know what? We're gonna start requiring you to work every Saturday. And he didn't get up many Saturdays to begin with because he'd already lost this battle once. And so now he's up to, you know, six days a week sometimes and you know, no Saturdays off because his employer really wants to kind of build the business up. And the way they build the business up is by requiring more of their existing employees. That's not great. And along with that, the workplace has become more toxic because you know, it's been that friction and that, you know, the problems that come from that, and you know, people being angry at the boss and people being angry than at each other. And, you know, there's a whole lot of friction that comes of that when it's not a great work environment. So with that, he was in a crisis. What do I do? And you know what? The the easy thing to do is to say, you know what, I quit. But again, that's making a decision in a panic, under anger, and without with thinking about it in a vacuum. That's not making a decision based upon, you know, good, careful thought processes. So instead, he first talked to his leadership about the changes, said, hey, you know, this is what where I'm at, and I don't like this, and you know what? That didn't change much, but at least he had that conversation to see, you know, where are they? Are they flexible at all? Because again, he was trying to gather data. And he didn't make a decision the day of the announcement. You know, that would make them making a decision in the moment or in anger and say, you know what, I quit. And instead, what he did is he looked around and said, hey, what other jobs are in the area that that would work for me? Because his situation is different than anybody else's situation there. So it's not like every person can make the same choice. And for him, it could have been that he could have, you know, found a different job, but he really needed to be in that area. He didn't want to move. So he didn't find good jobs elsewhere for him. And so he did the math on what leaving would mean for his family. So he said, okay, if I leave, I could potentially get this job, or you know, these are jobs I could get, but here's the pay difference and here's the, you know, the work environment difference potentially, but maybe not. And he looked long-term what that would mean. And then he talked about it with his close friends, which includes me. And so he asked me, what do you think I should do? Not that he's saying that he's gonna do what I tell him to do. That's I wouldn't want him to do that. But instead, what he wants is that outset opinion about, hey, I'm frustrated, I'm angry, I'm in this situation. Can you look at this from a different perspective and just check my math? Make sure I'm making the right choice. Now, in the end, he decided to stay for now because it was the best financial choice for him right now. But then he also worked to be a more trusted voice at work. He worked to be a better employee that his boss would be more happy with. Why? Because obviously he's frustrated how his boss is treating him. But if he's a more trusted voice, he has more uh more opportunity to speak into these situations and potentially, you know, change the future of how decisions are made. But then he also identified where he wants to be long term. And guess what? It's not there. And so he got education, got more education to start pursuing that goal. So now he his situation isn't great, but he's transitioned into using a situation to his advantage in order to pursue what he really wants to do. You see how there's a difference between making a decision in a panic versus making a decision that he's been, you know, he's processed and been careful about. Instead of just saying, I quit walking away and really hurting himself financially short term and potentially even long term, he decided I'm gonna use this bad situation, which is bad. I'm gonna use the bad situation in order to help me leverage my goals and get me to the place I want to be later in life by readjusting how I do things, by readjusting my priorities instead of just saying this job's where I'm gonna be for the next 10 years, to I'm gonna get out of this job and here's how I'm gonna do it, X, Y, and Z. And here's the steps. So when I when you are addressed with a, when you're faced with a crisis, when you're faced with a decision where you're like, this is bad, this is really bad, I want you to think through these steps. Think through how do you approach the situation. Don't panic, don't respond in anger, don't look at the situation in a vacuum, but instead gather all the data, sleep on it if possible, evaluate the alternatives, identify the long-term results of each choice, and get an outside opinion. By doing so, you'll have a much better success rate out of a crisis. And based on that, you will have a much better long-term outlook for your career. All right, so that's my advice based upon some hard-won um experience in the field. Thanks for listening, and as always, I am Tim Corey.

SPEAKER_01 18:56

Thank you for joining us for this episode of Def Questions. Tim is committed to making it easier for you to become a developer. If you would like to help make more content like this possible, please like, subscribe, rate, and share Dev Questions. You can also send your questions to questions at IamTimcorey.com. Until next time, remember, you are too smart and your time too valuable to waste it making all the mistakes Tim did. When you're ready to learn to think and code like a professional developer, head over to Iamtimcorey.com and enroll in a course.