How GREAT Senior Software Engineers Think! (Steal these 9 TIPS!) Kent C. Dodds
The Programming Podcast
Defining Mental Models and Why They Matter
Leon and Danny define mental models and explain how they increase impact and reduce cognitive load, setting the episode's framework.
Senior engineers don’t “wing it.” They use mental models to turn plans into production—faster, safer, and with less drama. Danny Thompson, Leon Noel, and Kent C. Dodds break down the exact models they use: decision docs, second-order thinking, reducing cognitive load, Occam’s Razor, leaky abstractions, feature flags vs. staging, chaos engineering, AI context windows (and rot), MCP, onboarding docs, blind code reviews, and more. If you’re pushing from mid → senior (or trying to sound senior in interviews), steal these.
Guest: Kent C. Dodds!
https://kentcdodds.com/
https://x.com/kentcdodds
@KentCDodds-vids
SITE https://www.programmingpodcast.com/
Stay in Touch:
📧 Have ideas or questions for the show? Or are you a business that wants to talk business?
Email us at dannyandleonspodcast@gmail.com!
Danny Thompson
https://x.com/DThompsonDev
https://www.linkedin.com/in/DThompsonDev
www.DThompsonDev.com
Leon Noel
https://x.com/leonnoel
https://www.linkedin.com/in/leonnoel/
https://100devs.org/
📧 Have ideas or questions for the show? Or are you a business that wants to talk business?
Email us at dannyandleonspodcast@gmail.com!
You’ll learn
→ How to communicate invisible work like a senior (impact vs activity)
→ Decision documents: making tradeoffs explicit
→ Second-order thinking to prevent “future bugs”
→ When to ship fast with flags vs. slow with staging
→ Designing for onboarding—humans and AI assistants
→ Using AI without nuking your circle of competence
→ Local job tactics (Memphis example), recruiters, and “entry-level” framing
If this helped, hit 👍 and subscribe. Drop your favorite mental model in the comments
Chapters
00:00 Cold open — “When plans break in prod”
00:36 Why mental models matter for seniors
02:45 Define “mental model” (map vs. territory)
05:22 Intros + episode setup
07:05 Decision documents & guiding principles
10:48 Coaching moments: easy vs. right solutions
12:56 Second-order thinking (caching, short links, spam)
15:58 Occam’s Razor in real engineering decisions
18:12 Onboarding for Future-You (and your AI)
20:44 Tests as guardrails for humans + LLMs
22:18 AI context windows, “context rot,” and structure
24:55 Circle of competence in the AI era
27:18 Should juniors use AI? The real risks
30:06 Shipping fast vs. learning deep: when to limit AI
31:55 Interviews are changing: system design vs LeetCode
33:42 Confidence traps: getting gaslit by your prompts
36:00 Too many abstractions → leaky abstractions
38:40 Blind code reviews & cross-team learning
41:20 Google-style anonymous reviews (tradeoffs)
44:00 Feature flags vs. staging (the spicy debate)
46:52 Chaos engineering & safe rollouts in prod
49:10 Pragmatism over dogma: what actually ships
50:58 Kent’s Epic AI cohort & MCP primer
54:20 Listener Q&A: local vs. remote, .NET vs. Node
1:00:45 Ask Danny, Leon, And Kent!
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