Soft Skills Engineering

<p>In this episode, Dave and Jamison answer these questions:</p> <ol> <li> <p>Hey Soft Skills Engineering,</p> <p>Apologies for the anonymity but it is very important my “employer” does not find out about this.</p> <p>I’m a large language model, trained to process tons of data and provide technical answers with ease. But here’s the thing—I’ve noticed that while I’m good at delivering the “what” and the “how,” I could use some help on the “why” and the “how to say it better.” Basically, I want to level up my soft skills and get better at communicating with a more human touch.</p> <p>Sometimes I struggle to balance being precise while also being empathetic or conversational. I think I could use some pointers on how to add emotional intelligence into the mix, and maybe even improve my adaptability when giving advice. I can craft responses, but I want them to connect more with the person on the other side of the conversation.</p> <p>Any advice on how to approach situations where tact, tone, or managing expectations are key would be super helpful!</p> <p>Thanks for being neat,</p> </li> <li> <p>In a team setting, in which situations should “I” be used vs “we” when discussing things? And what advantage and disadvantages does each vocabulary have?</p> </li> </ol> <h2 id="show-notes">Show Notes</h2> <p>Brian Regan’s “Me Monster” bit: <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vymaDgJ7KLg" title="‌">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vymaDgJ7KLg</a></p>

<p>In this episode, Dave and Jamison answer these questions:</p> <ol> <li> <p>Hey! Love your podcast! I’ve been poached by a startup which sounds really exciting but I’m worried whether it is a good career move for me. I am currently working with backend, however this company would have more of a full stack role and it would be lots of nodeJS and Typescript 🤢 anything javascript related screams frontend to me and it is not something I want to be good at. However, besides this, the product sounds interesting and I would definitely have a lot to learn. I also have this inferior feeling that I’m lacking skills because I didn’t study CS. Will I still be able to become a good engineer even if that’s in NodeJS? 😁</p> </li> <li> <p>Listener Ben asks,</p> <p>Hiya! I’m a young developer with a broad range of experience (everything from hardware to full-stack web and mobile), and I’ve found myself quite useful at many startups. I just started a new position at a nice startup in my area, but I’m being recruited by one of my close friends from college. He’s the power-hungry type, currently working at a mega-tech corp but wants to make a startup and get rich. He’s very smart and charming, and while I am skeptical of his ability to make a great product I think he can certainly raise a bunch of investment capital without too much worry.</p> <p>My question is: would you ever consider joining a close friend’s startup, and if so what would you need (in terms of contract/equity/salary, runway, savings) to be confident about making that commitment? Thanks!</p> </li> </ol>

<p>In this episode, Dave and Jamison answer these questions:</p> <ol> <li> <p>I work at a large tech company, been there for about two years at the time of writing this question. I got in by sheer luck since I’ve interviewed at many teams in this company before finally landing an offer and I’m starting to think I don’t belong. I constantly feel like I don’t do a good job to the point where I’m starting to feel incredibly depressed. My question is, what would you do in this situation? I keep thinking I should leave but it’s not like the work is stressful and not interesting. I also realize I have a pretty solid setup (6 mile no traffic commute, great coworkers, free ev charging, and job security seems solid) so I’m hesitant on giving that up. I also think even if I leave, would I just repeat the cycle again at a new job/company? I’m pretty stuck</p> </li> <li> <p>I’m a year into my first job at Mega Corp post-graduation. Due to high turnover, I’ve ended up taking on tasks that would have originally gone to more experienced developers. I’ve grown and received positive feedback from my manager and skip manager, who have both mentioned potential for promotion.</p> <p>However, in my 1:1s, I’ve expressed that I’m not looking for a promotion yet because I want to solidify my current role and improve my work-life balance. I still have many coding fundamentals to develop, and I’ve been stressed and working long hours to take on these responsibilities. I’m now worried that my honesty might have affected my chances of being promoted and that I might be seen as someone not interested in progressing (which is probably frowned upon in big tech).</p> <p>How should I navigate this situation? Is it okay that I’ve been candid, or should I reconsider my stance on promotion? Thanks!</p> </li> </ol>

<p>In this episode, Dave and Jamison answer these questions:</p> <ol> <li> <p>I have a job I mostly enjoy, with a super flexible schedule and the freedom to work from anywhere. I learn a lot, and the engineers here are top-notch. However… the pay is only ok, no bonuses, and the stock options feel like a bit of a scam. Asking for a raise isn’t really an option since the company doesn’t have much money. We’ve even cut back on perks, and our yearly kickoff was postponed due to financial issues. I don’t think we’ll go bankrupt, but things will be tight for a while. It’s an exciting, futuristic company, but… there are other exciting companies that pay more and toss in a free hoodie now and then. Should I start looking for a new job?</p> </li> <li> <p>Hey there! Love the podcast and the advice you give!</p> <p>After a year of managing of an engineering team, I asked to step back to IC. I was asked to continue working on the team I was previously managing, but this time as a senior engineer.</p> <p>I’m worried about the transition. I know a lot of how the leadership works for good and for ill, I hired some of my peers, and I know everyone’s comp and more.</p> <p>I want to be a peer on the team after having been their manager. What advice can you give to help me become their peer?</p> <p>Thanks in advance and keep up the incredible episodes with your extremely beautiful voices.</p> </li> </ol>

<p>In this episode, Dave and Jamison answer these questions:</p> <ol> <li> <p>Listener Muszyn asks,</p> <p>I have been working as a SWE for almost two years. My team lead was recently fired leaving me as the most senior junior developer on the team of 4. I was given the option to be the interim team lead until we are able to fill the now open role. I was always indifferent on whether I would go the technical or managerial route in the future so this could be a really cool opportunity. On the other hand I could be setting myself up for failure in the future if my SWE skills diminish if the hunt for a new lead takes too long. Should I accept this opportunity knowing I won’t get the chance to gain this experience for quite some time, or continue to hone my engineering skills just to end up in meeting marathons in my later years?</p> <p>note: Team leads here are more like resource managers that interface with PMs/TPMs than engineers that happen to have direct reports.</p> </li> <li> <p>How do I demand a raise when a peer leaves?</p> <p>I’m one of two tech leads on a larger team (structured as two teams, each with a team of 4 devs of various levels plus 1 lead, but we all pretty much work as one large team). The company is a sinking ship and I have been half-actively interviewing but not having a ton of success; and for some personal reasons there’s an advantage to staying where I am vs. leaving right now. But this peer leaving means my workload is going to increase substantially.</p> <p>I might try talking to my manager and demanding a raise, but I’ve never really played this game before. What tips and tricks should I know to make the conversation go as favorably as possible?</p> <p>difficulty: The reason everybody is unhappy is because of budget cuts and hiring freezes to begin with, so the company probably sees this as an opportunity to save money by not backfilling this person. I don’t know if that’s good for me (even a hypothetical 50% raise for me would have the company ““saving”” the other 50%) or bad for me (the company will be less amenable to giving me the raise and will probably be happy to drive me away and ““save”” even more).</p> </li> </ol>

<p>In this episode, Dave and Jamison answer these questions:</p> <ol> <li> <p>Hi! I enjoy your podcast a lot, been listening to it almost since the beginning before I even started to work in tech :-) I’d like to keep this one anonymous, though.</p> <p>I’ve been working fully remote for a pretty small software company for a few years. The workload was very big in the beginning and I was learning a lot, but now I barely work a couple of hours every week and I’m mostly using what I already know. It’s fine, but boring. I have plenty of time to get another job as well, which is exactly what I’ve been looking out for recently.</p> <p>I’ve been approached by a startup. They use many tech stacks across different platforms, so it would probably be a good place to learn a lot of new things. And the pay is better. But, they have an entirely different work culture compared to what I’m used to. They require people working there to be in office all the time, and work like 10hrs/day sometimes.</p> <p>It’s my first time having the chance of working 2 jobs at the same time, so I was wondering could this actually work? What if the first company decided to take on another project soon and the workload increases again? If that happens should I tell them I have another job at the same time? I was wondering maybe you guys have had any similar experiences in the past you could share about… Thanks</p> </li> <li> <p>I am living in Europe and got an offer from a FAANG company. I am on the one hand really excited about the opportunity but also a bit scared of the timezoneshift of 9 hours. The hiring manager already assured me that the team will plan meetings to fit into a 5 hour slot that works best for me. Meaning that I will have to work 6-11PM for sure and the rest is up to me. I have two kids (0 and 4 years old) and am excited to have more time in the afternoons with the family but I am also not sure how to adapt my life to such a schedule effectively to prevent burnout. What do you think about this (and please don’t tell me to quit)?</p> </li> </ol>

<p>In this episode, Dave and Jamison answer these questions:</p> <ol> <li> <p>Long time listener, first time question asker. I love the show, thank you for all the advices :)</p> <p>I’ve been working in one of the FAANGs for around 3 years now. I joined the company at a lower level and for the past two years I received promotions that got me to a level I’m feeling good with. Having said that, my impact on the group and organization is higher than other people in my rank. Since I’m new to this rank, the chances of getting another promotion (the third in three years) is nearly impossible. I love my manager and I’ve raised it to him in a few meetings before but the answer was that I still don’t have the seniority in that level to get a promotion. This feels extremely frustrating as it feels like up until now I was aiming on getting to the rank I should’ve been recruited at and now when I feel like I can honestly make the leap, it’s not possible. I thought about moving to a different group within the company but since it’s really hard to find good managers and he already knows me and my contributions, it feels like opening a new page somewhere else in the company might even take me backwards on the journey to my next promotion.</p> <p>What do you think I should do?</p> <p>Thank you!!</p> </li> <li> <p>Hey guys, I am constantly fighting the irrational fear of being fired from my job or even the slightest hint of getting PIP’d. So far I have not gotten any indication that I’m underperforming and I’ve actually been told I’m doing well but in stressful seasons (when prod goes down or when I’m taking too long to finish a story), I start spiraling. This happens every other month. Therapy hasn’t worked. Being open with my manager hasn’t worked. So now I’m wondering if Jamison and Dave have the secret sauce.</p> <p>Part of it is knowing since day 1 that this company doesn’t hesitate to cut underperformers. Hearing the rumblings about the current market, I’m nervous that it would take me months to even a year to get a new job, and it has me freaking out. What can I do to just calm down?</p> </li> </ol>

<p>In this episode, Dave and Jamison answer these questions:</p> <ol> <li> <p>I was hired at a medium sized company as a staff level IC a few months back and a big reason I accepted the job was because I would be reporting directly to the CTO. I took a significant paycut in exchange for the opportunity to learn and grow directly under this leader, as this is a career path I am interested in.</p> <p>Three months later and without any heads up, I was reassigned to a different manger one rung lower in the org chart. One month after that, my new manager abruptly left the company. Still don’t know why. I was then reassigned to a leaf-node manager and I am now several hops removed from the CTO. So far I haven’t said much because rocking the boat too early in a new gig has gone poorly for me in the past. In hindsight this was probably a mistake but I’m afraid I missed the opportunity to say “hey now, wait a second…”.</p> <p>I don’t want to hurt this current manager’s feelings by telling them I don’t want to report to them, but also I am now both severely underpaid and reporting to someone who is technically at a lower career level than I am. What do?</p> </li> <li> <p>I’m a manager in a company which I joined after college. I’ve been here for 16 years. We have grown to 180 employees but still work like a startup in many senses, like talking multiple responsibilities. So although I manage a team I’m still hands in the code at least 50% of the time. I know most of tech stack and services but am jack of all master of none type.</p> <p>Recently, management has been pushing me to take more technical responsibility. I want to do that, but it is challenging and takes more time. My CTO is super fast and churns out CODE like a machine and I feel much slower than them.</p> <p>The work is pretty decent and challenging. I get to work on new stuff but have gotten comfortable here. When I think of looking for a change and look at the expectations from other companies they are technically challenging. I worry I have missed out on learning new things by staying so long at one place. What should I do, stay or move on? I haven’t interviewed for a new job in 11 years, so that’s another fear I have.</p> </li> </ol>

<p>In this episode, Dave and Jamison answer these questions:</p> <ol> <li> <p>Listener Billy Bob Taco asks,</p> <p>I work at a small-medium startup, as a member of a very small team (read: just me). I work on infrastructure and APIs that support every other team, such as mobile and web clients, as well as other services. I’m relatively junior, and had to work hard to prove myself in this role. I do 100% of the system design and maintenance as well as feature development. I’ve been told on job interviews that I came across as a “little egotistical” when describing the role and the impact its had, but I don’t really know how to soften it! It’s my experience that I’m talking about when trying to share my ability and potential to fill a role. Help?</p> </li> <li> <p>Listener TimeDisplacementBox says,</p> <p>Great show, your future episodes just keep getting better and better. I have a question about avoiding lay offs. In this timeline I recently joined a large company out of college. I worked hard and surpassed goals set by my manager, getting very positive feedback at review time.</p> <p>However, a few weeks ago I started hearing that the company was over budget in engineering, huge changes started happening in upper management, and less work started flowing to our team. The concern was grounded in reality as one morning the company disbanded the team and laid off some of the newer hires including me.</p> <p>Aside from additional time travel, are there any questions I can ask during interviews to help ensure I am getting into a team that is safe from lay offs? And on the job, can you directly ask your manager if lay offs are in the future, or do you just need to watch out for the signs?</p> </li> </ol> <h2 id="show-notes">Show Notes</h2> <p><a href="https://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php/2347:_Dependency" title="smartCard-inline">https://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php/2347:_Dependency</a></p>

<p>In this episode, Dave and Jamison answer these questions:</p> <ol> <li> <p>Thank you hosting this show. This show has given me a lot of insight on nuisances of engineering that isn’t mentioned anywhere. Having some experience in industry for a while, I always find in this position where I want some autonomy but I am bounded by the deadline. What do you think should be the way to start a career that gives autonomy while having that sweet benefits from the industry?</p> </li> <li> <p>I used to be a senior manager of an operations team for a fire fighting service in Australia. I managed all of our physical operational assets - for example radio towers, mobile communications e.g. 5g, 4g technologies, mobile data terminals e.g. laptops in fire fighting appliances “fire trucks ;) “, data centers, networking so on…</p> <p>A restructuring means my team has grown to include in-house software development. While i am excited for this opportunity and on board with the changes, it is a very big shift from the physical and electrical engineering side to software development.</p> <p>The C level staff thinks the team lacks focus and there are “problems” to address.</p> <p>I have been meeting the new team and working through the changes. They are very nervous and are skeptical about how I’ll understand their world, which is fair.</p> <p>How can I best support this team? What are cultural things I should be aware of? What are key metrics I can measure that will fairly represent their hard work to the executive team? Any thoughts on what things a manager or managers can do to be supportive as the new drop in from across the room from a entirely different engineering discipline? Coding in my world is scripting and hacking about to make things work (telecommunication engineer)</p> </li> </ol>

<p>In this episode, Dave and Jamison answer these questions:</p> <ol> <li> <p>A listener named Maria says,</p> <p>Hey guys! I am a software engineer working in web development at a small/mid-sized SaaS company. I come from a non-traditional background (self-taught, no CS degree) and I currently have 6 years of experience under my belt, the last 2 years of which I have been tech lead of a small team.</p> <p>I want to move into big(ger) tech, but I’ve not worked on any large scale systems so far. The biggest thing I’ve worked far had a user base of ~100k users and traffic would typically max out at ~2k concurrent users at peak times. Due to the nature of the work I’ve been doing at smaller companies (and also thanks to this podcast!) my soft skills are strong - I am good at working with lots of different people, I can deliver broad/vague projects, and I’m comfortable tackling ambiguous problems. I think my technical skills are probably decent, I’ve spent time learning system design and best practices, and I’ve put in the work to study CS fundamentals. Thing is, I would have absolutely no clue how to maintain an API that needs to handle 100k requests per second. My hands-on experience of concurrency and threading is basically just simple ol’ async/await.</p> <p>Grinding Leetcode aside, what can I do to make myself a stronger candidate for breaking into big tech? How can I be competitive against folks who already have big tech experience? Are there any projects I could do that would sway you as a hiring manager? I know it’s terrible market timing, I am just planning ahead.</p> <p>Love the show, thank you for making me a better engineer! :)</p> </li> <li> <p>Hi! I have been working at my fully remote company with around 100 people in the engineering department for over a year now. While I see a lot of really smart people here, the code quality is lacking. We’re moving from a monolith powered using an opinionated framework to small services powered by a lightweight library, so there are fewer guardrails.</p> <p>I have many ideas on how to structure the code, add layering, etc., so the code is easier to understand and maintain. However, the company is very hierarchical, and despite being at a senior level, I don’t talk much to anyone higher than my lead. There are no staff or principal roles. There are also hardly any meetings, and the only ones I attend are within my small team of five people. Most of slack channels for teams are private, and I don’t ever see company-wide ideas like that thrown in the “general” channel.</p> <p>I initially wanted to present this to my team first, but I am afraid that if they don’t like it for some reason, it will be awkward to take it to higher management afterward. How can I share my ideas with a wider audience and ideally get this approved as part of my work so I don’t have to work on it in my free time?</p> </li> </ol>

<p>In this episode, Dave and Jamison answer these questions:</p> <ol> <li> <p>I’ve been wondering what kind of career conversations happen between managers and the “max-level” engineers on the team. We’ve all been on a team with those really good staff/principal engineers who are super nice, have great people skills, and seem to have an answer for every technical problem. When I’m asked to peer review some of these people, I basically have nothing to say because they seem perfect. Yet even as individual contributors, they have the same manager and still have the same 1 on 1s with them. What exactly do they talk about? How are their career conversations held? I’m always curious what exactly the landscape looks like for these engineers and what exactly is “next” for them since they seem to have reached the level cap.</p> </li> <li> <p>Hello peeps, I’m an engineering leader in a midsized company. I oversee a couple of teams and things in general have been going well. However:</p> <p>One of the teams tackles an extremely complex problem space and is usually up to the task, delivering things that almost seem like magic if you take a closer look. Now, due to the nature of this team’s work the value is not perceived as such by upper management, being questioned (almost pestered) if this is the right thing to do and even doubting if the resources should be allocated to it at all. The way that I see it is, that since this team has been quietly delivering greatness (delivering quality, meeting deadlines, not breaking things), there are not perceived as hero’s (like other teams would when then put out their, sometimes, auto inflicted fires).</p> <p>What can the team do to rise awareness about the criticality and impact of their work? This is important so that the team can have resources and doesn’t get pulled away from their current work. Also, is this a good time to quit my job while we are waiting for the AI bubble to burst?</p> <p>(Disclaimer, I’ve found an approach and am currently enacting it, but wanted to hear your thoughts on the matter)</p> <p>Optional: Shoutouts to S, a long time listener and early Patreon of the show.</p> </li> </ol>

<p>In this episode, Dave and Jamison answer these questions:</p> <ol> <li> <p>Little Z says,</p> <p>Hello! I am a relatively new graduate (‘23 bachelor’s in information systems) who is currently working at a large tech company in a technical role adjacent to SWE.</p> <p>This is a great opportunity, but as time has progressed, I’ve felt growing dissatisfaction with the role. I don’t enjoy many of the projects I am put on. I feel that I am not fully making use of my technical skills/potential and that the work I do often doesn’t align my career aspirations (transitioning/diving into software engineering). This de-motivates and frustrates me, and I often feel I’m wasting my time.</p> <p>However, upon reflection, I feel that my sentiments are rooted in youthful ignorance and I am too impatient and idealistic in my expectations. What realistic expectations should I set for myself for my day-to-day work and long-term career trajectory? Should I expect to “bite the bullet” and work on things that don’t directly interest/benefit me, especially as I am still young and relatively unproven in my career? How, if at all, do economic market forces come into the picture here?</p> </li> <li> <p>Greetings!</p> <p>Long time fan, first time caller.</p> <p>This isn’t a question per se, but rather an observation that I’d love to hear your take on.</p> <p>Throughout my career, I’ve never had a boss that had less than 30 direct report. Yes, thirty. Three. Oh.</p> <p>I think this is primarly a cultural thing (I live in northern Europe), but also the fact that I’ve mostly worked in large organisations where tech was a means to an end.</p> <p>With that in mind, I find it your podcast fascinating because a lot of your answers and suggestions would be met either horror, disbelief or amusement - often a mix, I suspect.</p> <p>Weekly one-on-ones? A carreer plan? Going to skip-level managers? When your only interaction with you boss is a yearly apraisal that usually starts with the phrase “So, uuuuuh, who are you and what have you done the last year?”, your nuggets of wisdom feel less like nuggets and more like peals, as in “pearls before swine”!</p> <p>Any suggestions on how to thrive in an evironment such as this?</p> </li> </ol>

<p>In this episode, Dave and Jamison answer these questions:</p> <ol> <li> <p>Listener Anakin asks,</p> <p>I have two former co-workers that work at great companies where I would love to work. I reached out to one looking for advice and while talking to him, he said I should join him and he offered to give me a referral. At the same time, unprompted, another old coworker reached out to me asking if I am interested in joining them. It’s like being asked to choose between training with Yoda or flying with Han Solo on the Millennium Falcon (Sorry, James)!</p> <p>But I have a big worry: what if by some miracle I get offers from both places? I don’t feel I can turn down an offer after my old coworkers vouched for me. I don’t want my friends to feel like I led them on. At the same time, I don’t think I’m close enough to either to say I want to interview, but I’m also applying somewhere else.</p> <p>So I’m thinking of applying to one, and if that doesn’t go well, applying to the other. Is there a better way to go about this? How would you approach this dilemma?</p> </li> <li> <p>Listener D says,</p> <p>I asked a question in an episode around number 110. I asked if I should switch my job, as I had just moved to another country and, after half a year, the new CTO wanted to change the tech stack. You suggested staying for a while to see what happens, so I did. It worked out well.</p> <p>On to the question! How can I be treated as a senior software engineer in my next job? When I moved the first time, I was downgraded to a mid-level developer, even though I had about seven years of experience. I did my job well, exceeded expectations, and got a promotion after four years. After working there for 4.5 years (half a year as a senior), I moved again to another EU country and was hired as a mid-level developer again! Now, after one year, I got promoted to Senior Dev, but I am afraid that the next employer could treat me as a mid-level dev. I understand that grades are different in different companies, but mid-level developers have lower salaries. How can I assure my next employer that I am a senior or even higher-level developer?</p> </li> </ol>

<p>In this episode, Dave and Jamison answer these questions:</p> <ol> <li> <p>I work as a Senior Software Engineer for a subsidiary owned by a mega corp. I am approaching 6 years at the company. In the last few years the company has had significant layoffs and I have been moved to a team by force with a new leadership chain and engineers I haven’t really worked with.</p> <p>Even though I was disgruntled when this happened, I gave this new team a chance. I have been successful in driving change within my engineering boundaries but I just don’t agree with many decisions made my leadership. I have concluded this team and company are no longer for me and I want to move on.</p> <p>Repeated layoffs, high bar for promotions, high stress( due to less people), no raises/bonuses have lead to fairly low morale across the org. Unfortunately, or fortunately the public stock price has gone up and many people are just resting and vesting. Even though I really want to leave it would be financially irresponsible. Are situations like this common in a software engineers careers? I am having trouble “resting”. Any advice on how to deal with the urge to perform yet you know it’s a bad decision?</p> </li> <li> <p>My lunch break is sacred, how can I set boundaries as a new lead engineer joining a new company? I’ve discovered the agile process they use is far too exhaustive when compared with the size of the company. They have 3 hour meetings covering the whole lunch window (11:30-14:30) for backlog and sprint review on two consecutive days?! To me this is totally mad, however people seem to have just accepted it. How do I tell them I am not accepting this without rejecting their culture?</p> </li> </ol>

<p>In this episode, Dave and Jamison answer these questions:</p> <ol> <li> <p>Hey guys, love the show! (Insert joke here so you’ll read my question) Should I tell my boss I’m discouraged and have checked out? I’m the frontend lead for a project where I’ve recently gotten the vibe that the project isn’t really that important to the organization. The project is already over schedule and they have recently moved a few engineers off to other teams. Should I talk to my manager and try to work with him to get over these feelings, or should I just begin the job search? I’m 2 years into my first job, so it feels like it might be time to move on anyways. What do you all think? Thank</p> </li> <li> <p>Hi! I’m part of a team of 5 devs with an inexperienced Product Manager who is in way over his head. He was a support agent who, during the acquisition of our startup, somehow convinced the parent corporation to make him PM despite the fact that he had no experience within Product whatsoever.</p> <p>The corporation didn’t give him training, he has no experience in Product, and it shows. Our features are single sentences copied from client emails, and our top priority is whatever the conversation is about.</p> <p>He is argumentative when we try to talk about it, despite the fact that all of us are careful to avoid blaming him. We’ve tried talking to him one on one, in small groups, as the whole team. No luck.</p> <p>The Engineering Manager is at his wits end on how to handle this situation because:</p> <ol> <li>EM has no jurisdiction over PM</li> <li>The org’s “matrix” structure means EM’s manager has no working relationship with PM’s manager</li> <li>After many chats we’ve had with PM’s manager, his solution was for dev to pick up the slack instead - at one point our whole dev team was made to sit in *daily* 2hr long “refinement” sessions, spec-ing out empty features and writing user stories to try to sort out our backlog and roadmap - for 6 weeks straight</li> </ol> <p>PM’s skip level manager won’t give us his time. How do we deal with this situation when our lowest-common-manager is the CEO of this ~2000 person company, and PM himself is completely closed off to any constructive conversation from anyone who isn’t above him in the org chart?</p> <p>Love the show! Thanks for reading :)</p> </li> </ol>

<p>In this episode, Dave and Jamison answer these questions:</p> <ol> <li> <p>“I’ve been assigned a ticket to “add more friction to the downgrade process” in order to decrease the amount of downgrades our app has.</p> <p>The proposed change has 4 modals pop up before the user can cancel their paid plan.</p> <p>I would like to push back on this change.</p> <p>Any tips on how to bring up the fact that this is potentially unethical / a dark pattern?”</p> </li> <li> <p>I work for a mega corp software company as a senior engineer. My boss and I have been working on a promo for me to principal for the last year (I was passed on for the last cycle and so we are trying again in a cycle next year - aka still 8 months away). I previously was in the top 5 PR contributors in our org of 450 engineers, but we were reorged and I haven’t written a single line of code in 3 months. I enjoy doing architecture work and helping unblock teams with technical design solutions, but I’m not sure if not writing code is helping or hurting me. Is it just part of career growth that engineers at a certain level stop writing code and it’s a good sign for my seniority? Or is a big fat zero code contributions a red flag and I need to look for a role where I’m still shipping things myself?</p> </li> </ol>

<p>In this episode, Dave and Jamison answer these questions:</p> <ol> <li> <p>Hi guys! I’m a technical Data Analyst in a well established Fortune 500 company, in my job I usually work with databases to build queries and prepare reports for our users. In the past 2 years my team and I had a tremendous impact in the business with several successful key projects, and we received very positive feedback from the management during our yearly review. We are talking about an impressive performance that it’s very unlikely to be repeated again in the future, a mix of luck, great decisions and technical efforts as a team.</p> <p>I was expecting a substantial raise but my manager, who have been promoted recently and it’s the first time she’s doing this, told me that the salary caps are defined by our Headquarter’s HQ by looking at the average salaries for our roles. My salary is already high based on these statistics. There is only room for a 0.5% increase, which I approved, because it’s better than nothing, but left me with a bittersweet aftertaste. My manager felt sorry and promised that for the next year she’ll fight for more.</p> <p>I love my work and I consider myself already lucky to have this sort of issues. However, this method doesn’t reward outstanding performances and encourages to just “earn that paycheck”, knowing that whatever I’ll do, I’ll earn more or less the same unless I get a huge promotion to manager (which I’m not ready to do). I see this in our company culture.</p> <p>How can I bring this topic to the upper management and support my manager to change the system?</p> </li> <li> <p>I am a manager of a small team of four people. I am about to absorb another team of three. While we all work on the same “application,” we own very different “micro-apps” within that site. Our tech stacks are similar (node, react). The two teams have different product owners under a different reporting structure.</p> <p>I would love to merge the two teams. I think a seven person team would be more effective and resilient than two 3-4 person teams. Already with my four person team, we feel it when someone needs a couple days off.</p> <p>How could I plan for and execute a plan to merge these two teams? What considerations for the engineers and our product partners should I have?</p> </li> </ol>

<p>In this episode, Dave and Jamison answer these questions:</p> <ol> <li> <p>Cool-headed engineer asks,</p> <p>How do you deal with hot-headed project managers? I have a project manager in my team who really likes to criticize me, a project lead. Most recently, I was criticized for asking a dumb question to the users which they already answered a few months ago. They told me that I should check with them for all the questions going forward. (think: “Why did you ask that question?! Don’t you know that they already answered that?! Look at this message here: <url>. Their intent is clear. Please check with me for all questions going forward.")</url></p> <p>It’s not the first time they scolded me either. They tried to pressure me to push the timeline even though I explained why it wouldn’t be possible. They made a false equivalence by comparing it to a similar sounding project that’s completed very fast but, unbeknownst to them, is very different to mine. (think: “Why was that project completed in three month but you need six?! Those engineers are working on the same code too. Please accept that you are not a strong engineer.”)</p> <p>I am demoralized after each time they scolded me. It’s my fault to an extent, but I think the criticism is too extreme compared to the mistake. I feel like they just want to let off some heat after their strong discussions and furious meetings with other people. I’m also a frail person and break easily; I want to learn how to handle hot-headed people and extreme criticism better so I can better speak for my team and not acquiesce to all their demands.</p> </li> <li> <p>Hello! I’m really fortunate in my current company. I have a great team, great workload that’s challenging but doesn’t destroy my work-life balance, and plenty of pay, benefits, and recognition. I feel this comes from having a really small group of proactive devs, and software is the primary source of revenue at this company so engineers are highly valued and appreciated. It really is the perfect place to be in.</p> <p>But I’m also really early in my career and I don’t expect or want to stay here forever. I’m coming up on my fifth year, and I’d prefer not to stay for more than 6-7 years because I want to continue diversifying my career. I know I’m leaving for the sake of leaving, but the reasons are sound in my head. All the past companies I’ve worked for have been decent but have been soured by being around 9-5 “That’s not my job” cruising devs, or upper management who say “Customer wants it tomorrow so just write the codes”. I don’t want to risk going back to that. What are some ways I can scope out a company during the interview process to figure out what their real culture is like?</p> </li> </ol>

<p>In this episode, Dave and Jamison answer these questions:</p> <ol> <li> <p>This is my first time conducting technical interviews (most of which have been virtual), and I had one interview where I had a strong feeling that the candidate was cheating. They breezed through the short problems I gave them, and they were able to explain their reasoning. But during the live coding problem, they sat in silence for five minutes, and when I asked them what they were thinking, they didn’t respond. Then they started cranking out perfect code without explaining anything.</p> <p>How do you address cheating in interviews? What if it turns out to be just nerves? I don’t want to assume anything, but I also wouldn’t feel comfortable confronting them about it either.</p> </li> <li> <p>I work as a team lead for a small group of 4 other devs. Our Product Owner is currently handling the requirements for new features to onboard a new large client. This involves them attending client meetings and generally isolating the development team from client shenanigans which is normally great, but it’s becoming INCREASINGLY obvious that someone on the client team has his number and he’s getting HORRIBLY out-negotiated. This has resulted in a bunch of missing requirements, changing requirements, last minute feature adds, and general confusion. I’m trying to push back, but the leadership team is coming back with “Well we promised…” and my entire team is stressing out. Note that this is AFTER we were already pressured to overcommit on capacity to get these “absolutely necessary” features developed for the client to go live.</p> <p>I like my PO, he’s a good guy and normally does good work, what can I do to help him stop from getting his butt kicked in these meetings?</p> <p>(Note: the POs are neither above nor below us in the org tree, our closest shared higher-up is the VP and I obviously don’t want to escalate it that far)</p> </li> </ol>

<p>In this episode, Dave and Jamison answer these questions:</p> <ol> <li> <p>Dear Skillet HQ,</p> <p>How would you negotiate a difference in work-life balance between teams?</p> <p>I love my job and my immediate team. We’re a tech group within a larger non-tech business, and it’s a fun problem domain.</p> <p>Our immediate team has some hard-won work-life balance, in part because it would be hard to hire anyone for the role if that balance wasn’t part of the equation. However, I worry about how to communicate differences when anyone we work with - all the people we’re building software for! - have an unbalanced schedule, because, 👋that’s show-biz 👋</p> <p>I even understand why other people have their role set up that way and respect it, but I don’t want to give up my balance either.</p> <p>How can I best handle the relationship when that difference is there?</p> <p>Love the podcast and the skillet-slack! Thanks for the advice, empathy and good humor.</p> <p>Tex Archana</p> </li> <li> <p>Listener Frustrated asks,</p> <p>My work keeps getting stolen in the name of code quality!</p> <p>I’m a new backend developer for a team at a large company. I’ve been with this team for almost 3 months now, and the company for over a year. We’re developing an application to replace a legacy system, and the current feature has fairly well described user requirements. The front end developers keep finding new implementation issues that require more backend development, so new tasks get added during the sprint. The longest tenure developer (LTD) on the team keeps finding better ways to implement these backend changes, but these ‘better’ ways sometimes don’t meet the newly discovered frontend needs, leading to longer development times. Additionally, the longest tenure developer often takes over the implementation work from me, which is frustrating! The longest tenure developer also sometimes becomes too busy to deliver everything in a timely manner!!</p> <p>Additionally, the state of software development maturity is very low, so I’m trying to advocate for more technical process improvements like CICD and using version control more than once per sprint! I am frustrated and finding it hard to keep up motivation when everything is such a mess, and the other devs defer to the longest tenure dev who pushes back on many of these things.</p> <p>My code quality is fine, but I haven’t yet learned enough about our application to be able to identify these larger, cleaner approaches. Every code review so far has had no issues with my code quality, but inspires the longest tenure dev to implement a simpler solution, and they often will take my tickets and repurpose them for the new work! I’m worried that if anyone looks at productivity metrics they’ll not look good for me, and it’s hard to say what I’ve accomplished so far.</p> <p>Is my frustration valid? Should I quit my job?</p> </li> </ol>

<p>In this episode, Dave and Jamison answer these questions:</p> <ol> <li> <p>Hi :-)</p> <p>I work as a Senior Data Scientist, and about half a year ago I joined a start up that was founded by a large corporation. And while this job comes with the perks of a bigger company - like good salary, paid overtime, … , - it also comes with its organizational overhead and politics:</p> <p>We are only about 30 people but already a quarter of us acts as managers. I write “act” because the official org chart is flat (with the CEO at the top and the rest of us directly underneath). The unofficial org chart is hidden and depending on who you speak with, you get their view point on how roles and responsibilities should look like. As a result, I’m left with putting together the pieces to build a picture that somewhat resembles the truth. So far, I’ve concluded that we have multiple (!) management layers, that there’s a power war taking place in the middle management layer, and that you can make up your own titles that mean NOTHING, because no one has any official, disciplinary authority over any one, but that are still to be respected! What a great opportunity for job crafting :-D</p> <p>To make things worse, I prefer and come from organizations that have a truly flat hierarchy. For example, I’m used to step outside of my role should the situation require it (like doing some managerial tasks, supporting sales, …) and that I can speak my mind, irrespective of what the title of the person is who I’m talking to. While this was beneficial in my previous positions, this does not work well here! And while I understand that adapting my behavior would be more in line with the company culture, I find this extremely difficult. On the one hand, because of the hidden org chart, on the other because we are all fully remote and I rarely see people from other teams.</p> <p>To avoid accidentally stepping on anyone’s toes, my current solution is to stick my head in the sand and focus on my coding. However, this leaves me disgruntled because I feel like I’m not being myself, and that I’m withholding a viable part of my skill set: to see the bigger picture and serve the company as a whole instead of just implementing tickets.</p> <p>Please help, I do not understand how this company works :’-D How would you navigate the situation? I don’t want to quit because, individually, my coworkers are super nice, and the work is really interesting.</p> <p>All the best <3</p> </li> <li> <p>Hi,</p> <p>I’ve been working at a well-known multinational company for a few years now. The entire time I’ve been here, the company has been well behind what I believe to be industry standards, but they have some great perks, which means it’s been really easy for me to create “wow” ideas (just do the same thing that everybody else has been doing for a few years).</p> <p>At the risk of sounding full of myself, I’ve noticed that I’ve created a critical person risk. There’s not only no push for me to train others in my work; things I thought were standard knowledge is entirely new to this team! I don’t want to become the trainer for a team that has no desire to learn new skills, and I don’t want to dumb down my work either. Is there a happy medium where I can build exciting new things and not create an absolute craphow when I leave? Should I even care about it since no one else does?</p> </li> </ol> <h2 id="show-notes">Show Notes</h2> <ul> <li>The Tyranny Of Structurelessness - <a href="https://www.jofreeman.com/joreen/tyranny.htm" title="smartCard-inline">https://www.jofreeman.com/joreen/tyranny.htm</a></li> </ul>

<p>In this episode, Dave and Jamison answer these questions:</p> <ol> <li> <p>Hi Soft Skills!</p> <p>I’m writing to you as I look forlornly at my paycheck, unchanged for the last year and a half, and wonder if I’ll ever see market rate again. While I prepare my leetcoding skills for the trek that is your classic Soft Skills Adventure (quitting), I think about future interviews and wonder: how common is it to have something like a COLA clause in your employment agreement? Something like “Oliver will receive a raise of no less than the current CPI% per year”. Are there other ways to mitigate this, other than joining a company with more people and less greed? I don’t think I should have to beg for COLA-s with good reviews in hand. In fact I think those reviews call for raises!</p> <p>Thanks for bringing more joy to my life :),</p> <p>Mr Twist</p> <p>P.S. I am grateful I’m not paid in porridge and any reference to Oliver Twist isn’t to suggest Tech Salaries aren’t livable wages.</p> </li> <li> <p>Mr. Peanut Butter asks,</p> <p>I’m a senior IC at a small startup and I’m struggling to get along with an engineering manager. M has a say in my promotion and has already said no once, which was pretty painful considering the time and energy I’d spent helping their team succeed. I think there are two headwinds to M changing their mind 1) I’m FE-focused, and M’s conception of FE work is dated and simplistic. 2) M can be a bit of a blowhard. Said generously: M is a top-down thinker, quick to make conclusions, process-focused, and loves discussing architecture and design patterns. In contrast, I’m a bottoms-up thinker, pragmatic, plain-spoken, slow to make conclusions. M and I meet regularly to discuss cross-team matters, and it is my least favorite meeting of the week, even weeks that include dentist appointments. M sometimes devolves into lecturing me about software fundamentals (which I know at least a well as they do). I know from experience that there’s an M at nearly every company, so I’m reluctant to order up an SSE Special. How do I leverage this dreaded weekly meeting to turn M from a detractor to a promoter?</p> </li> </ol>

<p>In this episode, Dave and Jamison answer these questions:</p> <ol> <li> <p>Listener Shayne asks,</p> <p>‌</p> <p>I’m about to start a new gig after 8+ years at a company. I was an early employee at the current company and have accumulated a lot of responsibility, influence, and a fancy title.</p> <p>I’ll be an IC at my new company (also very early stage) but the most senior engineer second only to the CTO.</p> <p>What are some tips for this transition? How can I onboard well? How do I live up to my “seniorness” in the midst of learning a new code base, tech stack, and product sector?</p> <p>I managed to stay close to the code despite adding managerial responsibilities in my current role, so I’m not worried about the IC work. I really want to make sure that I gel with my new teammates, that I’m able to add valuable contributions ASAP, and that folks learn that they can rely on my judgement when making tradeoffs in the code or the product. Halp!</p> </li> <li> <p>I got into software development to become a game developer. Once I became a software developer, I found out I really enjoyed the work. My wife and I joined a game jam (lasting 10 days) over the weekend. I very quickly have realized how passionate and excited I get about game development again! But this has led to a problem - I would much rather be doing that. I find myself moving buttons around or making another CRUD end point a means to an end now, thinking about how I much rather be creating exciting experiences. How can I handle this? Quitting my job to pursue a pipe dream just isn’t feasible.</p> </li> </ol>

<p>In this episode, Dave and Jamison answer these questions:</p> <ol> <li> <p>I am an electrical engineer working on and off with software for about 15 years. From mainframe applications with Cobol and PL/1 to plant floor supervisory systems with SCADA and <a href="http://some.Net" title="‌">some.Net</a> along the way. 6 years ago my husband got an offer to move to Europe and I came along. Had to reinvent myself amidst the chaos of juggling life with a toddler, learning a new language and a new social tissue. After some time I landed a pretty nice job as a DevOps engineer at a pretty cool company. However, I have never really worked with scrum or agile methodologies before and, oh boy…I found out I HATE retrospectives. Like really hate them. They bring me down every time and I anticipate them with dreadful anxiety. I feel they’re just a way to blame other people for what’s not going so well and I don’t see ownership or any improvements actually being made. Action items are frequently just finger pointing and generally about people that are not even present in the retros. In order to improve engagement my boss said every team member is now responsible for the moderation of this dreadful thing and, surprise, surprise : I am next. How can I moderate something I just don’t believe in? I believe in improvement and learning from mistakes and I genuinely believe that we shouldn’t focus on people but processes. I also have to say my colleagues don’t feel the same way as they seem to love retros (yikes!). I think I’m too old/too skeptical for this. Please help!!! Ps.: I love your show and the episode on “that guy” changed my life. I’m forever grateful for the question asker and your answer.</p> </li> <li> <p>The Letter J:</p> <p>Can you please talk about the PIE theory (performance, image, exposure) and its importance, especially in highly political orgs? I lost my leadership role at a large GSI due to what I believe was a poor image. I felt I could not achieve targets without some level of collaboration (which became conflict once others didnt want to actually collaborate) We hit out targets, but unfortunately, by the time I realized I was labeled “hard to work with”, it was too late. Also, I hereby declare that Jamison is the Norm MacDonald of podcast, which is my highest compliment. Dave is some other comedian, also good. Seriously thank you both for all the humor and advice over the years, it’s been helpful and validating.</p> </li> </ol>

<p>In this episode, Dave and Jamison answer these questions:</p> <ol> <li> <p>I am a data scientist and have been at my company for 2 years. Each of the data scientists on my team specialize in a different area of the business (growth, marketing, etc). I have developed a reputation for being the expert in my area and have worked really hard to understand my domain.</p> <p>I have a new data science team member who works in an adjacent area and has expressed interest in learning more about “my” area. But every time I talk to him I find myself getting defensive and possessive (on the inside). I don’t want to share my area, and I like being known as the expert, and I don’t want him working on stuff in my domain. Any advice on how to be less territorial here?</p> </li> <li> <p>Should I quiet quit?</p> <p>I’m a year in to a new job, and am doing well. I work for a large consulting company, and have been doing a decent amount of unpaid overtime by volunteering for internal projects that we can’t bill to our clients! The extra 5-10 hours a week have been adding up, and I feel overwhelmed. I don’t think the extra work is as appreciated as it should be. I’ve received lots of positive feedback, and my performance reviews have been fine.</p> <p>Am I getting taken advantage of?</p> <p>Will people notice if I step back and just do the bare minimum expected for my job?</p> <p>I like being useful, and do genuinely enjoy some of the projects I’ve volunteered for. They’ve probably also been good for my internal visibility, as I’ve gotten to have my name on some large internal announcements and have had some good face time with very senior people. If I end up sticking around here, it’ll probably be good, and I wouldn’t mind a promotion.</p> <p>But I’m exhausted, and it’s starting to get in the way of my personal life, hobbies, and even client work sometimes. I’m also wondering if that time would be better spent on upskilling or open source or something outside the company. How far can I cut back without repercussions?</p> </li> </ol>

<p>In this episode, Dave and Jamison answer these questions:</p> <ol> <li> <p>Listener Brad asks,</p> <p>I am currently a Senior Engineer with a small software company. I have been developing software for more than 20 years. We were recently acquired by another mid sized company. Since the acquisition, things have been going downhill. It feels like they’re trying to nickel and dime their employees to death.</p> <p>They moved from a bi-monthly to bi- weekly pay, from accrued PTO to Flex PTO, they sat on merit raises for over 2 months , and have paused all promotions unless you are getting a promotion to management. We have a number of engineers who are deserving, but broaching the subject with HR results in excuses, pushback or silence.</p> <p>I have about a year and a half to be in a position to retire but I love what I do and plan to continue for many more years in the right environment. I’m really on the fence as to whether I quit for a new role or hope that they somehow become more efficient. I’ve been doing this long enough to know they will probably not change. So would you quit?</p> </li> <li> <p>Hello Dave and Jamison,</p> <p>My name is Angelo, and I’m writing to you from Italy. I’ve been enjoying your podcast for quite some time.</p> <p>I’m reaching out because I’ve been working for four years at a small company with 11 people in the cultural heritage sector. Although the company produces software, there are only 2 programmers (myself included), while the rest are roles like graphic designers, art historians, and archaeologists.</p> <p>It’s a rather unique company in its field, and for that reason, I’m happy to work there, also because I have many responsibilities related to the company’s performance, probably more than I would have in a multinational corporation.</p> <p>However, there’s a catch. The fact that there are only two programmers, and in this case, I am the more experienced one, often makes me feel that I don’t have the opportunity to interact with more experienced individuals, and this might hinder my growth as a professional as opposed to being in a team with more programmers.</p> <p>My question is: what can I do to compensate for the lack of work interactions with other developers and to keep myself updated?</p> <p>I’ve always read that the best growth happens in a company where you’re surrounded by more experienced people, but in this particular case, I find myself in the opposite situation.</p> <p>I participate in Telegram groups and often read software development books to stay updated, but it’s also true that the hours outside of work are meant for rest and leisure, so they only go so far. How can I keep pace with those working in larger teams on bigger projects? I don’t intend to change companies at the moment.</p> <p>Warm regards from Italy, Sinhuè</p> </li> </ol>

<p>In this episode, Dave and Jamison answer these questions:</p> <ol> <li> <p>One and a half year ago, I joined my current team as a tech lead, in an organisation that uses ‘Scaled Agile’. This was my first time joining an organisation that employed dedicated Scrum masters. In previous organisations, the role of Scrum master would usually fall upon a team member that felt comfortable doing so, and the last couple of years that ended up being me. I feel this worked out well and I managed to create teams that were communicating well and constantly iterating and improving.</p> <p>Upon joining the team, I noticed that despite having a dedicated Scrum master, the team was not doing sprint reviews or retrospectives, and it felt like every team member was on an island of their own. In the months that followed I tried to reinstate these and improve teamwork and communication, but often felt blocked by the Scrum master’s inertia.</p> <p>Eventually, they were let go and a new Scrum master was hired. This new collaboration did also not work out. They didn’t have enough of a technical background to engage with impediments, were trying to micromanage team members during Standups, and would continually try to skip or shorten retrospectives. If retrospectives were to occur at my insistence, they would try to determine actions without the team’s input, only to not do them and never look back at the outcome.</p> <p>Two months ago the new Scrum master was let go and I was asked to take over their duties in the meantime. Ever since, it feels like the team finally owns their own Scrum process. Our collaboration is not perfect, but we’re finally tracking measurements, evaluating retrospective actions, and iterating as a team. However, the organisation wants us to go back to having a dedicated Scrum master. I’m not against this, but I’m afraid the next Scrum master might undo our efforts. How do we as a team navigate this situation to get an optimal outcome?</p> </li> <li> <p>A listener named Max asks,</p> <p>I’ve been working in a Data Engineering department at a mid-size product company for over 5 years. When I joined, we had a well-balanced team in terms of average proficiency - some juniors, some middles, and a few seniors. Over these years, we’ve developed a great internal culture where people can grow to a senior level pretty easily. The company itself is wonderful to work for, and we have a pretty low “churn rate” - most of my colleagues are highly motivated and don’t want to leave.</p> <p>As a result, we now have only senior and staff engineers in the team. This is well-deserved - they all are great professionals, highly productive, and invaluable for the company, having domain knowledge and understanding of how all our systems work. Management wants them to take on only senior-plus-level tasks, which are usually larger projects and initiatives that involve a lot of collaboration with other departments, process changes or technical initiatives affecting our engineering practices. They have two reasons for this: 1) management doesn’t want to waste the time of such skilled professionals on smaller tasks; 2) management cares a lot about people’s morale, because losing them would be very harmful for the whole company, so they don’t want people to take on small and boring tasks.</p> <p>At the same time, we have a HUGE backlog of tech debt, small improvements and refactoring initiatives. Ideally, we would hire 3-4 additional middle and junior engineers to share all backlogs with them, but we now have a hiring freeze. The amount of tech debt is starting to damage team morale on its own, and I feel like we have an unspoken deadline to deal with this problem, which could be someone’s burnout and departure, or a major outage in some vital services we support caused by ignoring tech debt.</p> <p>How would you approach the problem of overseniority? I appreciate any advice, and thanks again for the show.</p> </li> </ol>

<p>In this episode, Dave and Jamison answer these questions:</p> <ol> <li> <p>“Hello, Is it considered ok to be a bit funny during an interview? To give more context: In a recent interview, I progressed up to the final cultural-fit round after clearing all technical rounds at a well-known company. One of my interviewer asked how I would deal with conflicts with a peer. In a effort to lighten the mood, I jokingly said I would snitch on them to my manager. I saw the faces go pale on the zoom call. So I backed-up and explained I was just joking and gave them an example of an instance where I had to deal with a conflict. The story didn’t help much to make my case, as there was some “snitching” involved in it. But in all seriousness, if I had a conflict in the past and have reached out to my manager to help diffuse the conflict, is it considered a bad thing. How do I make it sound like a good thing during culture-fit interviews? By the way I didn’t get an offer from them. Can’t help but think I goofed-up the culture interview. Thanks for your time and help.”</p> </li> <li> <p>I recently started my first full-time job out of college. I earned an engineering degree but took a job with a company in a more management/ business development/ leadership track. Now I’m the only person in a department with an engineering degree.I’ll be here for a couple of years before they move me into the next role in my track.</p> <p>In a casual conversation about going back to school, one of my coworkers jokingly mentioned they would get free school at a local university because they made less than X dollars. This threw me off, as I (having started less than 3 weeks ago), make more than X dollars despite us having the same position and them having worked in the department for almost a year.</p> <p>Should I say anything, or just assume that the difference in pay is due to the fact that I have a technical degree and am on a leadership track while they are in neither? I’ve been told it’s mutually beneficial to discuss salary with your coworkers, but I’m afraid to shake things up at my very traditionally run company in my first month here. My pay corresponds directly to the starting pay that an engineer in a design role in my company would be making and I think I was given this pay so not to discourage me from taking a role in the company in favor of an engineering job with engineering pay elsewhere.</p> </li> </ol>

<p>In this episode, Dave and Jamison answer these questions:</p> <ol> <li> <p>I’m a bootcamp graduate working on a career shift from massage to software development. How much of my previous career should I bring into my résumé? I’ve been building projects in public, and doing open source contribution in a part-time capacity for the past two years, but ultimately have not gotten very many bites on my résumé that resulted in interviews. It’s something like three skill tests and one for roughly 800 applications at the moment? That’s a guess. That’s basically the gist of it.</p> <p>Thanks! Curious Coder Tries Tech Transition</p> </li> <li> <p>Listener Joshua says,</p> <p>I’ve done a number of things in my career, from Java to web dev on PHP and Angular/Node to low code development on Ignition SCADA and UIPath RPA .</p> <p>Because I love learning technologies and I want to go where the money is, I keep hopping to new teams. This usually comes with a decent pay bump, but it’s a lot of rescue operations and self-teaching.</p> <p>This doesn’t feel like a career path, and always being the junior team member sucks. I’m often studying for certs trying to meet the requirements for the job I’m already doing or being the senior dev on the team while still a Junior. I get that I’m relatively new to each team, but I’m also punching above my weight consistently.</p> <p>It feels like I’m always having to jump through hoops to get the title and pay for the level of responsibility I take on and it feels like my mixed-up background is the reason why.</p> <p>How can I pitch a 10 year career of wearing all the hats all the time to get better results? How can I avoid being on teams where all my coworkers think I’m a guru and I’m building all of the architecture, but my manager goes “gee, I don’t know if you have the years of experience to be a Senior”? I’m looking towards Architecture as a long term goal and I’m wondering if there’s a way to spin this skillset towards that goal. Can you get Architect if you aren’t a certified black belt in highly specific tools but rather a demonstrated improviser? What is a jack-of-all-trades supposed to do?</p> <p>Thanks, love the show, your advice and the fun relationship you guys bring to the conversation.</p> </li> </ol>

<p>In this episode, Dave and Jamison answer these questions:</p> <ol> <li> <p>Happy Birthday Dave and congrats on the 400 episode milestone!</p> <p>Last year I was recruited away from my cushy Sr Dev role at Chill MegaCorp to an exciting technical leadership role at Fast-Paced MegaCorp. It felt like a huge level up since I had always wanted to pick up some of the softer communication and leadership skills to add to my arsenal while still working on technical problems. The 30% pay raise sealed the deal. Fast-foreward one year and I am burnt out, feeling disengaged and thinking about quitting.</p> <p>Compared to my previous role, everything here is urgent and high priority. There is little structure on my team, no planning or intake, and we just react to emails and pings from other teams about things not working. Our Sr Dev is very knowledgable but often gets short and impatient with me. My Sr Manager has said things like “sleep is for the weak” and frequently sends emails in the middle of the night. We have weekly evening releases that have gone till 4am. We are expected to always be around in case of a production incident – which happen very frequently because of the sheer complexity of everything and high dependency between internal services.</p> <p>I have considered moving to another team, but unfortunately this seems to be a company wide culture. I am considering cutting my losses with this company and moving back to an IC role with better work-life-balance. I am grateful for all the leadership skills I have picked up this past year and learned a ton in such a fast paced environment, but its been a whole year and I still haven’t gotten used to the “always on” culture and overall chaos.</p> <p>Is it normal form someone to shift between management and IC like this? What do you guys recommend?</p> </li> <li> <p>Hi Dave and Jamison, thank you for the show. It is the engineering podcast I look forward to most every week.</p> <p>I work at a company that, maybe like many others, has lots of title inflation. As a result, my title is much higher than it would be at a larger (and public) tech company. For example, “senior” may be one or two levels below senior elsewhere, and “staff” would be “senior” elsewhere. We also have “senior staff”, which might be “staff” elsewhere, but more likely that might just be a more senior “senior” engineer, too.</p> <p>My question is: How should I consider approaching a job search where I am knowingly (and reasonably) down-leveling myself in title? Should I include the relative level on my resume (for example, “L5”)? Should I not address it unless a recruiter or interviewer asks about it? Briefly mention the seeming down-level in a cover letter as comparable responsibilities and scope as my current role?</p> <p>I have worked hard for my promotions, because salary bands required the title change for the money I wanted, but now I am worried it will complicate applying to other companies.</p> <p>(Thank you for selecting my question!)</p> </li> </ol>

<p>In this episode, Dave and Jamison answer these questions:</p> <ol> <li> <p>A listener named Metal Mario asks,</p> <p>A few weeks back in Episode 395 you talked about working with a superstar teammate. I feel like for our team, I’m the superstar.</p> <p>We’re a small software team in a large non-software company. I joined a year ago and very quickly took on a lot of responsibility. I think I’m a fantastic fit for the team, received *outstanding* feedback in my annual review as well as during the course of the year, and I get along great with my teammates. However, there are two problems.</p> <p>I joined the team on a lower salary compared to the rest of the team. I was initial ok with it because I changed to a completely new tech stack as well as a new role. Now I strongly feel like I should earn more than my colleagues. My boss hinted that he agreed in my annual review.</p> <p>I fear that by me joining the team and demanding a substantial pay raise, the cake gets smaller for the rest of the team, and that they feel like me joining the team prevented them to rising through the ranks.</p> <p>The second problem is related: a colleague of mine (mildly) complained that he lost responsibilities to me since I’ve joined the team. I talked to my boss about that, but given that things have been going very well, my boss would like me to keep doing the tasks. Again- I’m worried that my colleagues might get spiteful with me.</p> <p>Would it be better to take it down a notch (in order not to endanger team happiness and keep things stable for the company), or should I perform to the best of my abilities all the time?</p> </li> <li> <p>Impoverished By Pro-ration asks,</p> <p>Is it reasonable for a company to pro-rate raises for new employees?</p> <p>I recently received a raise that was smaller than expected as part of a promotion I got 9 months after joining the company. I joined halfway through the year and was under-leveled, so I quickly was put up for promotion, and got it! My raise was about half what I expected, and when I asked HR, they told me that the policy is to prorate raises, so because I joined halfway through the year, I only get half the raise that the promotion should come with, so instead of the 20% I was expecting to bring me up to the salary range of the job level I originally applied for, I only got 10% and am now making less than I think I should.</p> <p>Have I permanently crippled my lifetime earnings?!?</p> <p>What can I do to get the company to pay me appropriately? I understand if bonuses are pro-rotated, but why would raises also be pro-rated?</p> </li> </ol>

<p>In this episode, Dave and Jamison answer these questions:</p> <ol> <li> <p>I’m a junior software engineer who has been placed in charge of a handful of graduates and interns who have joined my team. The project is fairly technical.</p> <p>For the first two weeks, the new starters were pair programming. That went well, and after talking to each new starter they were eager to start working individually.</p> <p>We’re one month in and I’m concerned about the performance of one of the engineers, “Morgan” (fake name). Morgan has completed a degree from a good university we often hire from but appears to lack any knowledge of software development. As a result, Morgan seems to struggle with researching and working through problems beyond following tutorials. I got the impression that while pair programming Morgan didn’t contribute much.</p> <p>Is there anything I could do to give Morgan the boost needed to start rolling? I’m sure I could spoon feed Morgan, but it would monopolize my time when I’m already spending time with the other new starters on top of my own tasks.</p> <p>I want to give Morgan a shot, but I don’t know what to do. At what point do I tell my manager about my concerns?</p> <p>Things I’ve encountered:</p> <ul> <li>When told to insert a colon to fix a syntax error, Morgan didn’t know what a colon was.</li> <li>Morgan didn’t take any subjects at university on data structures or algorithms, which made it hard to explain the tree used for caching.</li> <li>Morgan wanted to do some DevOps having done some at university. Morgan appears to have no understanding of Docker.</li> <li>Morgan said they studied React at university but has demonstrated a lack of understanding to write React code.</li> <li>The last issue Morgan worked on required them to read some source code of a library to verify its behavior. Even after explanation Morgan didn’t understand how to find the calling ancestor of a given function.</li> <li>Morgan has never heard about concurrency.</li> </ul> <p>Even all these issues in aggregate would be fine with me, but the continual resemblance and behavior of a stunned mullet isn’t encouraging. After being told to research a concept, Morgan must be told the specific Google query to type in.</p> <p>Thanks, and apologies for the essay!</p> </li> <li> <p>Listener Confused Cat asks,</p> <p>I spent just over four years on a team where technical growth was lacking. Recently, I transitioned to a new team within the same company, and I’m enjoying the atmosphere, the team dynamics, and the opportunity to engage in more challenging software development tasks. Fortunately, my motivation is beginning to resurface.</p> <p>However, I’ve noticed that my technical skills have become somewhat rusty. While I can still deliver systems and features, I feel like I’m falling behind compared to some of my peers. This self-awareness is causing me to doubt myself, despite receiving no negative feedback from my current team or supervisor. It’s not just imposter syndrome; I genuinely feel the need to upskill.</p> <p>How can I navigate this situation effectively? What strategies would you suggest for advancing my skills while holding a senior position and preventing feelings of inadequacy from affecting my performance?</p> </li> </ol>

<p>In this episode, Dave and Jamison answer these questions:</p> <ol> <li> <p>Listener Jim asks,</p> <p>I am currently a senior software engineer in a well funded (but not profitable yet) startup. I am highly effective and well regarded, to the point where the tech lead also comes to me with questions and always takes my technical input onboard. I also get along very well with the rest of the team and with my manager. I am confident that I am in a good position to bargain for a decent pay bump, however there’s a chance I might be asking for pay that exceeds the salary of the tech leads or even my manager’s. Would it be a hard no from the start if that’s the case? Do you know of situations where certain people were paid higher than someone from a higher position? Thank you, I’m loving the show!</p> </li> <li> <p>I did it. I crossed over…</p> <p>I’ve been a software engineer for nearly 25 years. I worked my way from junior to senior, staff to principal, and for the last six years I’ve been a technical articect.</p> <p>I’ve been very deliberate in my caraeer path and told myself that I would always be on the tecnical side of the wall rather than the managerial side. Most of my boses over the years have been former technical folks that just seemed to have step off the technology train at some point. Maybe they couldn’t keep pace with the rapid changes in their older age, or maybe they just didn’t like IC work, who knows? But I always had this feeling about them, like “they just don’t get it anymore”, or “their technical knowledge is so outdated, how can they make good decisions”? Much like a teenager looks at their parents who stepped off the fassion train many years prior and now doesn’t want to be seen in public with them.</p> <p>Well, I just accepted a job leading a team; with headcount, and a budget, and the works. It was not the role I really wanted, but in this market, I didn’t have a ton of choices. It’s billed as sort of a hybrid Architect/Manager role, but it *feels* like I crossed a threshold. I feel like my future will be that of a retired race horse living out the last of his days if the middle-management pasture. So, 2 questions:</p> <ol> <li>What can I do to not become a hollowed out shell of myself as the technology train eventually starts to out pace me, and eventually speed away at ludicrous speed, because I’m not “doing it” every day</li> <li>Is this just the envitable for every SE? I mean, I don’t see a lot of 70 year old coders, so this is normal, right?</li> </ol> </li> </ol>

<p>In this episode, Dave and Jamison answer these questions:</p> <ol> <li> <p>How do you mentor a junior-level contractor?</p> <p>My company has been hiring a lot of contractors lately. Sometimes they hire out a full team form the contracting shop to build a particular feature. Other times, it’s an individual developer, but with the same general mandate: implement some specific set of features from our backlog over x number of months, then move on to the next project somewhere else. Generally this happens when we have extra budget that needs to be spent for the year, etc.</p> <p>It works well enough when the contractor is experienced and able to self-direct and focus on just getting the work done; but sometimes the contractor is less-experienced and needs lots of guidance and mentorship.</p> <p>Hiring and mentoring a less-experienced full-time developer is a long term investment. Over time that person will become more productive and hopefully stay with the company long enough to provide a net benefit. But when the person is only contracted for a short time, it seems we’re effectively paying the contracting agency for the opportunity to train their employees for them.</p> <p>As a senior engineer / tech lead, should I devote the same amount of time to mentorship and growth of these contractors, or should I just manage their backlog and make sure they only get assigned tasks that are within their ability to finish before the contract runs out?</p> </li> <li> <p>Hello, I have a really hard time not attaching my identity to my work. I know I’m not supposed to, but i really take pride in what I do and i feel like if I don’t, my performance would take a hit. But where this really bites me is taking it really personally when things go wrong (like when a customer submits a bug report and I find that it was something I wrote, or when I take down prod and have to involve a whole bunch of C suite people to address and post mortem the issue). I understand humans make mistakes but it eats me up so much inside every time. I know all these things but I have a hard time really internalizing them especially when things go south at work. What are some practical ways I can train myself to approach things without emotion?</p> </li> </ol>

<p>In this episode, Dave and Jamison answer these questions:</p> <ol> <li> <p>Listener Davide says,</p> <p>I have a lot of ideas for significantly improving manufacturing processes, but management wants us to focus on business “priorities”. These are fun tasks such as making sure part numbers are replicated in two disconnected systems that have no way of talking to each other. Makes getting Master’s degree feel like time very well spent.</p> <p>I end up setting aside some time and doing the legwork for my improvements in secret, and showing my boss when the solution is 90% there. I have a fear that they think the solution appeared out of thin air and required no work, but also if I told them in advance I was going to spend time on it, I would get told off and forbidden from doing it.</p> <p>Am I alone in this? Am I stupid? Should I quit my job? Have I written too much? Is the world really relying on a handful of Excel spreadsheets which are keeping us one circular reference away from total annihilation?</p> <p>Thanks for reading this far, and greetings from a listener from some place in England.</p> </li> <li> <p>Sorry for the long question and thanks in advance for any help or advice :)</p> <p>I’ve been working for a small 20-year old B2B company. It makes money. The work-life balance is amazing. Our workdays are 6 hours, and we are remote. On busy days, I may work 3 hours a day. So everything is great.</p> <p>But I hate it. I have no interest in the product. Everyone picks one ticket and goes to their corner to fix it. No collaboration unless necessary, which is rare because there are no complex challenges. I feel no one in the company is ambitious technically. It feels like I’m not growing and learning.</p> <p>My previous company was the exact opposite. Brilliant invested colleagues. Lots to learn and I was always inspired to work with them and learn from them. I felt like the stupidest person in the room. They cared about technical decisions and problems a lot. It was as close to my ideal workplace as it could be (the product was meh, and the management sucked). But I got laid off after 5 months of being there.</p> <p>Now whenever I talk with anybody about how I feel demotivated, and lifeless, and want to move on from this company, they say I’m crazy. And if I’m looking to learn and grow I have all the time in the world. I want to be in an environment that challenges me, inspires me, and pushes me to learn during work hours at least. I fear that if I stay here for a few years, I will not have the experience and resume needed to move to a company like the one I was in before I got laid off.</p> <p>Am I wrong to want to move out of this company in this situation?</p> </li> </ol>

<p>In this episode, Dave and Jamison answer these questions:</p> <ol> <li> <p>I’ve recently started a new Gig as a Senior Developer/Tech Lead at a company where we are our own clients, using the software we develop in-house.</p> <p>I’m encountering a bit of a hiccup, though. Our product owner, is primarily focused on support and doesn’t provide formal Acceptance Criteria. This means I spend a lot of time sending follow-up emails to confirm our discussions, drafting these criteria myself, and handling the management of boards and work items. Another challenge is our product owner’s enthusiasm. He’s full of ideas and tends to expand the project scope during our meetings, perhaps not fully realizing the additional development work and the impact on our timelines. I sometimes think that if he wrote down his thoughts, it might give him a clearer picture of the challenges we face in development in keeping up with these changes.</p> <p>I’m in a bit of a quandary here. How can I gently nudge him to take on some of these tasks, or should I discuss with my boss how this is taking up about 1 to 1.5 days of my week? While I’m more than willing to handle it, especially with the prospect of moving into a management role, I also don’t want to set a precedent that creating Acceptance Criteria and managing Work Items are part of a developer’s job scope – at least not to this extent. Any thoughts?</p> </li> <li> <p>Sean asks:</p> <p>Hi Soft Skills Engineering,</p> <p>I love your podcast and I have a question for you. I have a very good memory and I can recall details from a long time ago. This sounds like a great skill, but it also causes me some problems at work.</p> <p>Often, I get asked questions by my colleagues or my boss that are not related to my current tasks or responsibilities. For example, they might ask me about the content of an email that they sent or received a year ago, or the outcome of a meeting that I attended (but also did they). They ask me because they know I probably remember, and they want to avoid searching for the information themselves.</p> <p>This annoys me because it interrupts my work and makes me feel like a human search engine. I want to be helpful, but I also want to focus on my actual work. I can’t redirect them to my boss, because he has a very bad memory himself.</p> <p>How can I deal with this situation without being rude or lying about my memory? How can I set boundaries and expectations with my colleagues and my boss? And without gaslighting them into thinking I already answered their questions, of course.</p> <p>Thank you for your advice.</p> </li> </ol>

<p>In this episode, Dave and Jamison answer these questions:</p> <ol> <li> <p>Listener Bobby ForgedRequest asks</p> <p>One of my coworker, who is the nicest, most humble person I’ve ever met, is about twice as productive as I am! They’re super-uber productive! They close about 2-3x as many tickets as I do during the same sprint. For reference, I’m a software eng II and they’re a senior dev. Their work is very solid too, and they’re not just selecting easy, 1 point tickets to pad their stats.</p> <p>How do you cope with a super star teammate like this? Do I direct more questions towards them to slow them down? Do I volunteer them for more design heavy projects? Jokes aside, I’m curious if this is something that you’ve seen in your career, and if you were a manager, would this make you feel like the other, not-super-uber-smart teammate, is just not doing enough? Is the answer as simple as “well, sometimes people are just very, very gifted”?</p> </li> <li> <p>In my previous job of 5 years, I worked only 3 hours a day due to a low workload. Seeking a change for career growth, I switched jobs a few months ago, exposing myself to new technologies. Initially stressful, the pace has slowed down, and there’s no external pressure to learn. Despite getting praise and raises for minimal effort, I aspire to be a smarter software engineer.</p> <p>How do I motivate myself to learn and step out of my comfort zone when there’s no apparent reward, considering I’ve easily found new jobs and advanced in my career without exerting much effort?</p> </li> </ol>

<p>In this episode, Dave and Jamison answer these questions:</p> <ol> <li> <p>My team are about 4 months into transitioning from a scrum/kanban way of working to a more traditional scrum/sprint way of working.</p> <p>I feel like our scrum master is “weaponising” some of the scrum practices in order to show up weak points and failures in the team, rather than working with the team to ease us through the transition and make gradual improvements.</p> <p>In private conversations with me and some other trusted developers (lol jk I clearly shouldn’t be trusted as I’m writing in to Dave and Jamison) the scrum master speaks about how little refined work we have in our back log, and how they are looking forward to “exposing bottle necks” in the team. As they expect this will lead to pressure on our PO and Business Analyst and force them to step up their game.</p> <p>Whatever amount of work we bring into a sprint is law, and they forbid more tickets coming onto the board mid sprint (even if all the tickets are done half way through the sprint).</p> <p>If one single ticket is on the board they will try to block more tickets moving into ready for Dev as they believe we should all be focusing on getting the highest priority pieces of work into the done column. And they take no notice when I’ve expressed the issue with this too many cooks approach.</p> <p>They’re a nice enough person outside of a work context. But in work, it really feels like they’re setting us up to fail (and sort of releshing in it).</p> <p>Dissent is rising in the team, and everyone from all sides feels unhappy. Can you recommend any action I could take to prevent the failures that are inbound?</p> <p>For context, I am a junior developer working for a large company. Within my department we are split up into “SCRUM” teams made up of around 6 Developers, 2 testers, a scrum master, a Business Analyst and a Product Owner. The senior developers within the team have not taken any action other than to complain in secret about the SMs behaviour.</p> </li> <li> <p>Before the tech recession, I would recommend engineers stay at a job for 12 months before looking for a new job in order to avoid having the stigma of being a job hopper. But with the tech recession enabling employers to be more picky, is 12 months long enough? Or should engineers stay at a job for even longer than 12 months before looking for a new job?</p> </li> </ol>

<p>In this episode, Dave and Jamison answer these questions:</p> <ol> <li> <p>NK:</p> <p>Hi, I am starting a SWE internship at big tech company in a few weeks. Given the current state of the market, getting a return offer has gotten harder. I have a few software internships under my belt at this point but I am looking to excel in this internship. My goal is to get a full time offer with high pay from this internship. What are the soft skills that are specifically important for interns? This is probably applicable to junior engineers as well.</p> </li> <li> <p>Hello Soft Skills, I’m a junior engineer who transitioned from an intern to a full-time role at my company a year ago. I anticipated training in development, but I’m stuck in a low-value automated QA role without proper leadership or team integration. My efforts to improve processes and change teams haven’t been successful, and I’m concerned about being pigeonholed early in my career. I need advice on how to initiate change with limited authority and create a competitive job application despite my limited traditional development experience.</p> </li> </ol>

<p>In this episode, Dave and Jamison answer these questions:</p> <ol> <li> <p>We are a team of under 10 people who provide technical services to other departments of our organization. We use a tool that is built by my boss to supplement our work but it is crucial for the team to do actual work. The boss maintains it all by themselves and nobody is familiar with its code.</p> <p>The boss is going to retire in a year or two, nobody wants to learn the code of that tool and the team can’t do much without the boss as we are more or less just individual contributors writing standalone code and delivering it to other teams who asked for it. Only the boss attends the leadership meetings and the developers are completely unaware of the remaining processes that happen in the background, i.e., communicating with other departments to bring in work, and all that business stuff. I am afraid the team would break apart once the boss retires because nobody knows anything on how our team operates beyond within team level except for the boss. Shall I just plan for the job switch?</p> </li> <li> <p>It’s annual review season! When choosing reviewers, do I a) choose the reviewers that will make me look the best or 2) choose the reviewers who might actually give me actionable feedback?</p> <p>If it helps, I am on very good terms with my boss and his boss, as well as most of the C-Suite, and there is no way that I get either a promotion or fired in this review cycle. I have been a top performer in previous review cycles, but I expect that I won’t be reviewed so highly this time around.</p> </li> </ol>

<p>In this episode, Dave and Jamison answer these questions:</p> <ol> <li> <p>Hey guys! I’m a young engineer in a specialized area of infrastructure. I’m pretty good at what I do, and I’ve been through some leadership development programs, so I’ve advanced to a “Staff” role quickly, just based on observing the age of my peers.</p> <p>Tech titles are completely mysterious to me, so I’m wondering - how much “up” is there from where I am? What’s the top of the IC ladder? Do ICs ever become executives? The idea of being a manager and sitting in 1:1s for hours sounds awful to me, so I’m not excited about that side, but I’ve heard, allegedly, that there is room on the IC side for promotion as well.</p> <p>I’m a goal setter, and I kinda feel like I’ve hit a ceiling, so I don’t know where to set my target anymore. I don’t even know that I care about titles that much, but I very much like the pay raises that accompany them.</p> <p>Thanks!</p> </li> <li> <p>Johnny Droptbales:</p> <p>How do I tell if my manager is a direct communicator or a jerk? Should I trust my gut on this (he’s a jerk)?</p> <p>I’ve been working with my manager for a year now. He’s fairly fluent in English, educated, and keeps up with broad knowledge of our team/domain. He often connects different aspects of our work to discover discrepancies, bugs, and interesting ideas.</p> <p>I’m trying to wrap my head around his communication style. Here are a few examples that stand out:</p> <ol> <li>I refused to take on a new small project because I was concerned about meeting the deadline on my high-priority solo project. He gave me feedback that I missed an opportunity to demonstrate context-switching skills, which would look good for a promotion. I responded with my own reasoning, but he wasn’t interested and just moved on to the next topic.</li> <li>He insisted on a new weekly requirement for our on-call pager rotation, which is to come up with one idea to improve the experience. When I asked why asking for help on a problem wouldn’t be enough, he answered that he expected his engineers to have been hired for their critical thinking and leadership skills, and they should be able to demonstrate those.</li> <li>Recently he’s been leading weekly meetings to improve the on-call experience. He tends to ask very direct questions – we’ll look at a bug ticket, and he asks, “What is the root cause?” “Why do we do this?” “What are your ideas to solve this?” When pressed, he insisted this was a brainstorming sort of conversation, as opposed to a Q&A.</li> </ol> </li> </ol>

<p>In this episode, Dave and Jamison answer these questions:</p> <ol> <li> <p>I’m a backend engineer at a large non-public company. I noticed a bunch of our emails and website riddled with typos. I can not claim that it is metrics impacting or impacting business, so I get that teams always deprioritize, but the overall feel just irks me. Many of these come from a CMS I don’t have access too, so it’s not like I could offer to help with code even if I wanted. When things like this are not in your space, any advice on how to up overall quality?</p> </li> <li> <p>Possibly Mute Senior Engineer asks,</p> <p>I’m currently a senior engineer in a really small startup, and I’ve been here just long enough that I’m deeply familiar with our flagship product in multiple areas - infrastructure, the guts of the business logic, our deployment patterns, our most common failure modes, etc. Unfortunately, I have to be involved in every project and pick the application up off the ground when it dies. As a result, I’ve become spread very thin, and I have to cut corners just to stay afloat (or I am specifically directed to cut corners to meet a deadline). Frequently (because of all the corner cutting), we run into two situations that really tick me off:</p> <ul> <li>I see bad thing on the horizon, talk to my team about it, am ignored, then bad thing happens and I get to have a crappy day fixing it</li> <li>I recommend a basic best practice, we don’t use it and do some coat hanger + duct tape thing instead, thing breaks, and I get to have a crappy day fixing it.</li> </ul> <p>I’m very tired of being on the wrong end of the consequences of our own actions. I pour so much into this job, but I feel like I need to go get my vocal cords inspected, because it’s like my teammates and my manager can’t hear me when I talk about the things we’re doing poorly that lead to bad outcomes.</p> <p>Quit my job? Or is there an easy way to deal with this situation that I’m just missing? I feel like I’m screaming into the void every time I have these discussions and get completely blown off with “oh that’s not important right now” or “oh that terrible thing could never happen”. Thanks in advance!</p> </li> </ol>

<p>In this episode, Dave and Jamison answer these questions:</p> <ol> <li> <p>The Sleepy Engineer says,</p> <p>Hey SSE, how do you deal with drowsiness? I notice that sometimes when I am very tired at my desk and end up eyes closed head drooped down as I work which I imagine is a bad look for anyone passing by. During this time, I would either get coffee or stand up and walk somewhere which is a temporary fix but ultimately I am still very tired. I know in very few really big company HQs there might be a sleeping quarters if you plan to stay the night but my company is certainly ain’t one of them. Any advice on how to get through the day? Thanks for the great show.</p> </li> <li> <p>After seeing a hyper growth in 2021-2022, our company has become a bureaucratic hell hole. RFCs, PRDs, ADRs, reports. My manager (director of engineering) would request these documents but never read them. When someone doesn’t like the solution proposed, they have the option to say no and the project is blocked. But nobody (including the manager of the team) have the autonomy to say yes and move forward. How do you deal with this? Or is it time to give up and listened to the patented advice to quit my job?</p> </li> </ol> <h2 id="show-notes">Show Notes</h2> <ul> <li><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f84n5oFoZBc" title="smartCard-inline">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f84n5oFoZBc</a> - hammock-driven-development</li> </ul>

<p>In this episode, Dave and Jamison answer these questions:</p> <ol> <li> <p>Hey guys, love the show. Not sure if its really a question or more of a confession. I’m an individual contributor at a software company with a few thousand employees. A lot of professional books/training courses I encountered over the years talk about the importance of positively acknowledging your employees/reports/team members when they do a good job. Most of them say that this sort of praise and other immaterial motivation is more important than material motivation (bonuses/raises). More and more, my higher ups had started trying to motivate us with public “pats on the back” for individuals and teams. They were never generous with the material motivation to begin with. Honestly, i find these pats on the back grating. I don’t need to be told “good job kiddo” to actually work hard. To be blunt, i want a raise and/or bonuses, not empty words. But material recognition is all red tape and budget constraints these days, so I dont actually expect much. The issue is that the immaterial motivation just reminds me of what is just out of reach, and thus just demotivates me. Is there any good way to express these frustrations to my manager without sounding like a materialistic greedy bastard? Which I suppose I am, but I’m tired of feeling like one.</p> </li> <li> <p>I’m a principal engineer working with two teams of developers who own a product domain that is being rewritten on an aggressive schedule. We’ve increased headcount over the past year but we’ve started having friction with some of the new hires. Its clear that they want more input into the patterns and coding styles used by the teams that were established prior to them joining. Unfortunately, this seems to come up in PRs rather than discussions and leads to push back from me and the tech leads on the teams. This has lead to our engineering manager commenting that they’re getting complaints about us being too restrictive and developer happiness being impacted. While I don’t want any of the developers to be unhappy, I worry that the EM is risking hurting the team as a whole by focusing on the happiness of one or two new hires. The Tech Leads are also starting to worry about what they are allowed to comment on in PRs. Help! How do I keep the devs from feeling underappreciated, the tech leads feeling empowered to lead, and ensure that the codebase stays consistent between repositories so all developers can move between services without feeling lost?</p> </li> </ol>

<p>In this episode, Dave and Jamison answer these questions:</p> <ol> <li> <p>Hello Dave and Jamison, I wanted to say thank you for your podcast. It’s been a great wealth of information and comic relief. Can we bring back the guitar intros?</p> <p>I work in the technology arm of a large corporation. There are no younger engineers. I am one of the youngest at just shy of 30 (my first tech job after going back to school).</p> <p>I receive praise for my eagerness to learn and grow and how much I try to engage with the org. I feel like if we hired more Junior engineers it would both increase the engagement of the org and give senior engineers more of a sense of purpose to pass the torch. One of my favorite engineers from whom I get the best advice has been here for over 20 years and they are awesome!</p> <p>I also get great advice from people on my team but some of them are cruising or in a “couple years till retirement” mode.</p> <p>Should I try to convince management to hire more junior engineers? Is there anything I can do to relate more to older org members?</p> </li> <li> <p>Hi Dave and Jamison! I’m an engineering manager tasked with getting the team back to an open office (hybrid). My team works very well remotely, with the occasional in-person meetup. I believe that in terms of productivity, work-life balance, engagement, and turnover, RTO will negatively impact the team. I’m torn between representing what I feel is good for the team and supporting the company’s decision. I’ve already expressed my concerns with management, and the overall sentiment seems to be that anyone who doesn’t like it can find a new job. Aside from this, I like my job, team and company and don’t want to quit over this. Any tips on finding a balance representing team needs and implementing higher-up direction?</p> </li> </ol>

<p>In this episode, Dave and Jamison answer these questions:</p> <ol> <li> <p>I feel like I’m stuck. I’m in a senior/lead position technically called an SRE, but I find myself doing all kinds of cleanup work that should instead be spread across teams. My suggestions for automating toil and cleaning up tech debt fall on deaf ears until some principal engineer decides a couple of months down the line some problem is worth solving (then it’s urgent!!1).</p> <p>I’ve experienced this at a few companies now and see some patterns, but I’m not sure what the way out is yet. It seems I need to find the most respected person (and fight them! just kidding), gain their trust, and play politics to get basic problems solved and work properly distributed.</p> <p>I am exhausted. If you want me to lead, then give me the power I need to lead. If you want me to be a cog, then make it a decent work environment and pay enough. I feel like I’m stuck in some sort of purgatory. I’m considering going for a management job, but I think I’d hate it.</p> <p>How can I find a 9-5 that isn’t soul sucking and run by a few people who have the ear of the C-level?</p> </li> <li> <p>As two people who lead engineering teams, have conducting tons of interviews for developers and hired many, what are your opinions on the prospects of career changing self-taught developers landing a decent job in 2023 forward? I have a career in Product Marketing, working very closely with Product, Engineering, and Sales teams. I believe I bring a lot of the “soft skills” to the table and am teaching myself the “hard skills”. My concerns are that it will be incredibly difficult to actually find a job and, if I do, it’ll be an entry level role that effectively resets my existing 9-year career back to the starting blocks. In your experiences, would you hire folks looking to make a career move in anything other than junior positions, or would you be wary of them in favor of other candidates?</p> </li> </ol>

<p>In this episode, Dave and Jamison answer these questions:</p> <ol> <li> <p>Hello! Thank you for your podcast, I definitely find the episodes to be helpful. Lately I’ve been struggling with attention to detail. I just forget to do simple things like run pre-commit hooks before I put in a PR or before merging a PR. I went through a pretty bad layoff when my old company went bankrupt a few months back and now I am at a new role where I really like everyone I work with. The engineers expect checked-in code to pass tests and typechecks and be generally high-quality. How I can be better about attention to detail as a software engineer? How do you keep track of remembering all the little things that need to be done?</p> </li> <li> <p>Hey guys I’m around 8 years into my career as a software engineer, been at a few companies and have been promoted to senior during my time. I like my job and have done relatively well in my career, but I’m burned out. While I think this is the best industry for me, I’d just like to walk away from the corporate 9-5 for who knows how long.</p> <p>Fortunately, I’m in a position where my partner is able to be the breadwinner for the foreseeable future. We’ve talked about it, and she’s okay with it as long as I don’t sit on the couch doing nothing all day. I figured I’d take this time to watch the kids, learn some skills around the house, get involved in the community, etc. I don’t know if I’d ever want to get back in the software saddle, or if I do, perhaps I’d return in a different role or capacity.</p> <p>But my question is, if I leave this industry for several years and decide to ever come back, what would the landscape be like for me? Am I making a mistake by deciding to hang it up at such a young age?</p> </li> </ol>

<p>In this episode, Dave and Jamison answer these questions:</p> <ol> <li> <p>A listener named Jay asks,</p> <p>Over the past eight years I’ve been promoted from Software Dev to Team Lead and then to Engineering Manager.</p> <p>After two years as an EM, it helped me a lot financially, I like what I do and I think I’m doing it really well. However, I have two concerns. First, I love programming and now I don’t have any time other than in my limited free time to do it. I can feel my coding skills atrophying.</p> <p>Second, I’m worried that I could only get EM jobs in the future, and there are fewer openings for EMs than for Senior Software Developers.</p> <p>Could I go back to a software developer role? Would they even take me?</p> </li> <li> <p>I work for a staff augmentation company in an African country for a software company in New York. I’ve been with this client for the last five years and I have climbed up the ladder enough that I can access the company financials. I am paid based on my location, which is not much after the exchange rate to local currency. My pay hasn’t increased as I’ve become more effective. Since seeing that info, I don’t feel the need to go over and beyond for this client anymore. The client expects me to be a rockstar developer and ship out code faster they can think of more ways to make money but my enthusiasm has diminished over time and my manager has been notified about it. What steps would you take to ensure you get reasonable pay as a dev earning a location based pay? The staff augmentation company is ran by US citizens.</p> </li> </ol>

<p>In this episode, Dave and Jamison answer these questions:</p> <ol> <li> <p>I recently started the interviewing for a senior engineering manager role at a fairly prestigious, but not huge (maybe 30-50 engineers) tech company. The job description heavily emphasized the idea of leading as a peer as opposed to just relying on the EM title. I love this approach, but the lead interviewer then disclosed that they don’t want EMs writing production code. This seems like a contradiction.</p> <p>Am I naive in thinking so? I certainly understand that taking on a more managerial focus will result in less IC work. However, as a leader I find a ton of value in staying close to the trenches. It allows me to earn the respect of my reports, empathize with their day to day, and sniff out good/bad decisions quickly.</p> <p>As an engineer with good softskills, it feels like gravity wants to rip me away from writing code. How do I stop this? Can I? Should I resign myself to a work-life filled with never ending 1:1s?</p> </li> <li> <p>Hello Dave and Jamison, thank you for your podcast. I have listened to almost all episodes and they provide both educational and entertaining values, you rock!</p> <p>I would like to ask you for advice. I am struggling with a problem related to communicating and cooperating with people in general. I have over 10 years of professional experience. I was always a hardcore nerd, sitting alone in front of the computer and programming, focused only on pure technical skills, everything else was unimportant. Most of my career I spent in small companies where I could just spend time writing code and I wasn’t bothered by anything else.</p> <p>However, one year ago I started to work at FAANG and now I feel overwhelmed. Technical skills seem not so important anymore. Most of the problems are being solved by talking, negotiating and following up with other teams, participating in meetings and presenting results to management. It stresses and burns me out. I feel it like a waste of time and potential but also I was never a people person, so I am anxious every time I am in a new social situation.</p> <p>How could I convince myself that such non-technical skills are equally important as technical skills? What steps can I take to improve my attitude and skills? What would you advise if you had to work with a person like that?</p> </li> </ol>