# The 3 Conversations That Improve Developers' Lives w/ Reprise's Jennie MacDougall | Dev Interrupted Powered by LinearB

> Jennie MacDougall, Director of Engineering at Reprise, explores the 3 most impactful conversations a developer can have.

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The 3 Conversations That Improve Developers' Lives w/ Reprise's Jennie MacDougall

# The 3 Conversations That Improve Developers' Lives w/ Reprise's Jennie MacDougall

By Jennie MacDougall

|

May 23, 2022

![Jennie_Mac_Dougall_Podcast_Card_861922832c](https://assets.linearb.io/image/upload/c_limit,w_3840/f_auto/q_auto/v1/Jennie_Mac_Dougall_Podcast_Card_861922832c?_a=BAVMn6ID0)

If you’re doing your job right, most of your time and your team’s time should be spent actually building things. That means conversations should be reserved to the very important ones.

In our latest [Dev Interrupted](https://devinterrupted.com/podcasts/) episode, [Reprise](https://www.getreprise.com/)’s Director of Engineering Jennie MacDougall looks back on the most useful conversation she has ever had with her devs that are also the ones she encourages them to have with others.

From the most important conversation when evaluating a prospective dev to the question that actually keeps engineers motivated and invested, this was an incredible download of things I started doing right after the recording was finished.

### Episode Highlights Include:

* (6:27) Jennie's favorite interview question
* (11:49) What to look for in a junior dev
* (20:59) The "Donut Exercise"
* (25:41) Things devs hate doing
* (31:17) Do you want it fast or complete?
* (37:52) Balancing product & engineering

## Real conversations with top engineering leaders

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