A Pragmatic Definition for Accountability
Developer Tea

A Pragmatic Definition for Accountability

B2Upper-intermediateAugust 14, 202622 min

Accountability is a word you'll hear in your performance reviews, from your manager, and increasingly as you step into leadership. It's also one of the most abused and misunderstood concepts in our industry. Many of us have a visceral, negative reaction to it—not because the concept is broken, but because the companies and people we've worked with have bastardized its meaning. In today's episode, I want to strip away the scary parts and offer you a pragmatic, working definition of accountability: one that a good engineer would actually invite rather than dread. What We Cover Th...

Play episode

Opens the player: the full transcript, every word clickable, with translation and flashcards.

Try it: tap any word

Real sentences from the start of this episode. Every word is marked with its level.

Sentence 1 of 12 · 0:00

, ,

for people to wrap their minds around, but something that keeps coming up over and over

Tap a word to see its meaning in your language.

Do you know these words?

8 harder words from this episode. Tap one to see what it means, then mark it.

Mark a few words and we'll tell you how this episode fits your level.

Is this episode right for you?

B2

B2 · Upper-intermediate

Comfortable if you already follow TV news

A1 20%A2 32%B1 22%B2 19%C1 7%
  • 74% of the words are B1 or easier.
  • 146 words a minute: a natural pace.
  • 81 harder words (B2 and up) in the whole episode.

Transcript

The opening of the episode. The whole transcript is in the player.

0:00

In today's episode, I want to talk about an amorphous subject, something that's difficult for people to wrap their minds around, but something that keeps coming up over and over and over in our conversations as we grow in our careers. going to hear this in your performance reviews, you're going to hear it from your manager,

0:33

and it's this term, it's this term that often gets abused and misunderstood and unfortunately it also is very important. It's an incredibly important concept and the more you can understand about it, especially if you're an engineering leader, especially if you are, if you have people reporting

0:53

to you, if you are a senior engineer, if you're some kind of, you know, if you're responsible for some kind of performance situation, whether that's your mentoring other engineers, whatever it is, if you are in any kind of leadership position, and probably you will be at some point in your career, especially if you're listening to this show, then this concept

That was the opening. The rest of the episode (21 min) is in the player: every word clickable, with translation, saved words and flashcards.

Continue in the player

Automatically generated from the audio. May contain errors. Audio belongs to its publisher and is played from their feed. Rights holders can request removal — copyright & takedown policy