Soft Skills Engineering

<p>In this episode, Dave and Jamison answer these questions:</p> <ol> <li> <p>Recently I was approached by a manager and informed that I needed to decide if I wanted to stay at the company or not. I initially said I would like to stay, and was told there was some negative feedback from coworkers I’d need to work on to do so. I agree that these were issues I need to work on to become a better engineer, so I’ve engaged in something like a performance plan with her over the last few weeks. But I’ve decided that I don’t want to stay after all, and I’ve started sending out applications.</p> <p>I don’t want to burn bridges when I do end up putting in notice, but I also would like to continue working with her on these issues, and I’m worried if I declare I am leaving that will end. So my question is: should I tell my manager I’ve changed my mind, or stay quiet?</p> </li> <li> <p>We used to have regular “tech talks” in the office - opportunities for people to share something they find interesting that doesn’t have to be work related but usually is tech/development focused.</p> <p>The talks were 30-45 minutes in length, and there used to be free food (at a place that doesn’t normally do that kind of thing)</p> <p>I wasn’t here at the time when it last fizzled out, but used to give similar talks at my last company and I’m interested in starting them up again here. People <em>say</em> they’re interested now but the novelty of free food eventually wears off - do you have any suggestions as to how to sustain people’s interest in attending giving talks?</p> <p>I might be able to convince a few people I work more closely with but there’s 60+ or so technical people in this office I’m still getting to know.</p> </li> </ol>

<p>In this episode, Dave and Jamison answer these questions:</p> <ol> <li> <p>I have a question - I sit in a desk with 3 other people. One of those people does a great job of personal hygiene…the other two not so much. I have dropped a couple of hints about it (I mentioned it is a good idea not to wear the same pair shoes/trainers every day so you’re feet don’t start to smell). Some days, my stomach will churn from the smells that inevitably waft over. What should I do - I am worried if I tell my boss to talk to them, he will mark me as a troublemaker/overly sensitive.</p> <p>To make things worse, one of them sits opposite and puts his feet under my desk, so the, let’s be frank, absolutely awful stench is <em>right</em> under my nose! :?</p> <p>It’s not just feet by the way, we are talking the full BO experience.</p> </li> <li> <p>I was at a interview recently. When being asked for expected salary. I mentioned a number lot more than what the company was expecting. It’s already been a week and I haven’t received a response from them. I really really love the company and the project they are working on. I would love to to contact the HR personal and tell that I am interested in the position even if it means less money. How do I approach the situation? I don’t want to mess it up more than I already have. 🙁</p> </li> </ol>

<p>This is a rerun of episode 87 from December 14, 2017.</p> <p>In this episode, Dave and Jamison answer these questions:</p> <ol> <li> <p>‘I’ve been working on a project for the past year with two other senior developers. One of them is the lead, and the other, is my peer. We all have a lot of respect for each others opinions and resolve our engineering disputes amicably.</p> <p>My problem is that sometimes my peer will just give up saying ““have it your way”” etc. I want to have it out with him and evaluate each solution on its merits. I’ve considered saying ““STAND AND FIGHT YOU MANGY CUR””, but then looked up ““Mangy Cur”” and decided against it.</p> <p>How do i get him to be more vocal about his opinions? (so that i can prove to him that i’m right)</p> </li> <li> <p>I like the idea of measuring things, but I also feel like work “metrics” are easy to game and hard to make indicative of actual quality work being done / product being produced.</p> <p>In particular I worry when the data collected leads people to choose work that will bump stats rather than lead to better end user experiences / product / maintainable code. What kind of data do you think is useful to collect in terms of developer activity? Can you share some examples of ways you’ve been able to assess your own and your coworkers productivity?</p> <p>I’m interested in this both on a team level and a personal one. How can I get better if I don’t have a way to track what “good” is for myself? Is trying to turn the complicated and messy thing that is what I actually do all day into a trackable, data driven domain a fool’s errand?</p> </li> </ol>

<p>In this episode, Dave and Jamison answer these questions:</p> <ol> <li> <p>I recently started working at a small dev shop. Somewhere along the way I may or may not have started seeing a coworker outside of work. It’s really been great but there are no clear examples of how the organization would react to something like this. We have fairly lateral positions and there are no written policies or anything in the handbook. Even so, we’ve been doing our best to act “business casual” when we run into each other during the day. We don’t work directly but it’s a smaller company so the chance is pretty good that we eventually will.</p> <p>It’s been fun to navigate so far but wondering what your take is on this/the pros and cons of telling trusted coworkers or management. Thanks!!</p> </li> <li> <p>I’ve been working as a software engineer for several years now. In my current job I have fortnightly one-to-one catchups with my manager. My problem is that I very rarely have anything to say. My work is going fine, I’m happy enough with my job, and I don’t feel like I really need help with anything. I feel as though not having much to say reflects poorly on me, giving the impression that I’m uninterested or that I don’t value my managers input. What is it we should be talking about?</p> </li> </ol>

<p>In this episode, Dave and Jamison answer these questions:</p> <ol> <li> <p>I’m working for minimum wage as a full Systems Administrator at a State University while I’m taking classes. I really like working here, but I need to make at LEAST 40K /year to justify this level of effort for much longer. I just got offered a job two hours away for 80 - 100K as a System Administrator at a smallish ISP. The same day my boss told me he got approval to hire me on at 45K in 3 - 4 months.</p> <p>If I wait and stay I’m not making what I feel I’m worth, but if I leave I’ll make WAY more money and probably won’t finish my bachelor’s degree.</p> <p>I already have 5 years of experience as a ““system admin”” but I want to move over to technical project management in the next 10 years.</p> <p>I think I should stay, make less money, continue growing my relationships in the Scholastic Network, and finish getting my Bachelor’s degree. That way I can get past HR checks to become a Project Manager somewhere else.</p> <p>What should I do?</p> </li> <li> <p>I’ve recently become the technical lead at my company. I need to build my team more but am struggling with one thing. How do I overcome the fear of hiring someone better than me who could potentially overtake me as the team lead? Is this a common fear among leaders? I want to build an effective team of high caliber developers. But I can’t do that if I let my ego and insecurity get in the way.</p> </li> </ol>

<p>In this episode, Dave and Jamison answer these questions:</p> <ol> <li> <p>Hey guys, I love the show! Thanks so much for keeping episodes coming every week.</p> <p>Some background:</p> <p>I work for a small, established company based in a small city with a growing tech scene. We have about 20 employees, 5 of which make up the engineering team and it’s been a great experience. My role is primarily being a full stack developer working on our web application, but since we’re a small company, I’ve been able to explore some other responsibilities like analyzing data for the marketing team and working with the sales staff to build custom solutions for select clients. I started working here as an intern while still in college almost 6 years ago. I feel my initial salary out of college started a bit low, but I’ve received an 8-10% raise each year I’ve been a full time employee (without having fight for them)–so I think I’m catching up.</p> <p>My question is, will I be stunting my career or making myself seem less hirable by staying here too long? I’ve clearly found a great place to work so leaving here would be difficult. I’m also concerned that I’m beginning to run out of skills to acquire here. It sounds easy to leave a job you hate, but how/when should you leave a job that’s this good to you?</p> </li> <li> <p>Hi Jamison and Dave,</p> <p>tl;dr:</p> <p>The role I was originally hired for is slowly being eroded - what should I do?</p> <p>Longer version:</p> <p>I have been working for my current company for a little over a year now. Things were going really well at first, I liked the team I was on, the work (backend) was interesting and I was learning a lot from my colleagues.</p> <p>Unfortunately, due to corporate machinations, my team was dissolved as part of a reorganization and scattered to seperate, mostly frontend focused, teams.</p> <p>Originally I was told that I would still be doing effectively the same type of work on my new team as on my old, and this has been mostly true. However, over the course of the last few weeks my new manager has gradually been announcing changes in the direction the team is taking as a whole and talking to me specifically about working more on frontend related tasks and upskilling, as I have almost no frontend experience.</p> <p>I have tried to make it clear that I have no interest in doing this but my manager is still pushing for it. I am currently still doing mostly backend work with a little frontend, but I feel like my days are numbered. There are other teams with a more backend focus, but I feel that my manager partly wants to keep me in the short term for some necessary backend work and in the long term is hoping I will acquiesce on doing more frontend work.</p> <p>How should I navigate this situation? It feels like I sinking in quicksand</p> <p>Thanks</p> </li> </ol>

<p>In this episode, Dave and Jamison answer these questions:</p> <ol> <li> <p>One of my friends recently was hired at a salary 20k more than my own, even though we are at the same level. This caused me to re-think whether or not my company is paying me fairly and planted seeds for making me leave for something better.</p> <p>So the question is: how does one gauge “average salary” (other than at say for example glass door.com) for one’s city and should I interview for a higher salary and come back and ask for a counter offer? How will I be viewed if I did such a thing?</p> </li> <li> <p>I’ve been an engineer in the video game industry for 10 years. I’ve worked for 4 large game studios and at each one the story has been the same. Once it comes time to release our game, the crunch time kicks in.</p> <p>Often the need to work overtime is implied, but on my current project the company president directly spelled out that ALL engineers would be working a minimum of 60 hours per week for AT LEAST six months. In the past I’ve chosen to jump ship before it gets that bad, but I really wanna see this project through to the end.</p> <p>We’re all salaried employees and so far we’ve received no compensation for our overtime hours. No comp time or anything. The only carrot that has been dangled is that ““it will be taken into consideration during bonus time””.</p> <p>How much is reasonable to expect as a bonus for this much overtime? 10% of my annual salary? 50%? A firm handshake and a swift layoff?</p> <p>Thanks guys for any advice you can give!</p> </li> </ol>

<p>In this episode, Dave and Jamison answer these questions:</p> <ol> <li> <p>Hey guys! Do you have any tips for making ““brain storming sessions”” more bearable?</p> <p>In my experience, I’ve found that it’s very hard to keep this type of meeting productive. I don’t think this is necessarily anyone’s fault, and I love the idea of making sure all sorts of folks have a path to contribute, but many times when I’ve seen these types of meetings organized, many participants don’t have enough context, or subject matter expertise to produce genuinely helpful ideas.</p> <p>I think it’s really powerful when cross-discipline teams collaborate well on a project or feature, so I guess I’m wondering if there are practical ways to generate the culture of trust and mutual respect that is needed for this to actually work.</p> </li> <li> <p>First time question asker, long time listener here. We have a Really Important Problem at work: in Slack, people tend to use @channel instead of @here. What are some strategies for educating everyone that they should be using @here and not @channel? I especially don’t want anyone to feel shamed or called-out in the moment. Thanks!</p> </li> </ol>

<p>In this episode, Dave and Jamison answer these questions:</p> <ol> <li> <p>I joined a new team that has a different way of working, which has exposed a lot of my shortcomings.</p> <p>On my previous team, collaboration was limited to discussions around architecture and strategy; after reaching consensus, we’d implement the components independently. I was very comfortable with this because I don’t have good intuition for how to interact with others.</p> <p>On the new team, we pair-program. Teammates have pointed out mistakes I’ve made while pairing, such as trying to control the mouse when they are in the middle of doing something or investigating something on my own computer without communicating what I’m doing. On this team, we are also expected to be much more engaged in group decision-making. As a result, I’ve made tons of mistakes in how or when I pose questions. Each time I make a mistake, it increases my self-loathing. I tried telling myself that I didn’t have bad intent when I made the mistake and the only way to grow is to make mistakes. I also told myself that this self-loathing doesn’t do anything for the team. I also do a personal post-mortem on each of my mistakes because I thought that would help me move on. These approaches didn’t work and my confidence has dropped substantially. I know it’s essential for me to learn how to work effectively with others instead of staying in my comfort zone of heads-down coding. Do you have suggestions for how to get through this learning process without letting it affect my self esteem and motivation?</p> </li> <li> <p>Hey Soft Skills Engineering,</p> <p>Love the podcast! You’ve helped me understand so much about the software engineering career field that I probably would have otherwise learned the hard way.</p> <p>I’ve been working at my current job for almost 4 years. The pay is very much below market (it’s a non-profit), the work is too easy, I can finish any task in a couple of hours, but we are given an automatic 1 week+ deadline to finish anything, and I’m much more technical than any of my co-workers, to the point where I can’t even have nerdy conversations with anyone at work.</p> <p>However, I’ve stuck around because the job is pretty much stress-free, I don’t have to think about work at all outside of work hours, and all the free time allows me to take on side-projects and learn new technologies, including every level of software development.</p> <p>With all this free time, I’ve started a company. In the last few months, I’ve managed developers, designed a system using blockchain tech, designed and implemented a database, learned the ins and outs of AWS management and server-less development, built a REST API from scratch, developed a full front-end in React/Redux, and learned a ton of other things.</p> <p>Since I’m in the prototype phase, my startup hasn’t gotten any revenue, and I’m aware it might take awhile to get any revenue if it ever does. I need to pay bills, and I need to start thinking about my financial stability. So I think it’s time to get a new job, even if it means not having as much freedom to work on the startup.</p> <p>I’m not sure on how to approach my next step. I want to continue working on the startup after I get a new job, but I’m aware that employers might not be fond of “CEO” on my resume when there’s no end-date on the position, because I might leave at any time if my company grows. If I don’t put anything about my company on my resume, then it seems like I have nothing to show for all the technical skills I claim I have (since all the learning, management and implementation has all been for my company).</p> <p>Do I put anything about the startup I’m working on in my resume? If not, then how would I showcase all the experience and skills I’ve gained by beginning this startup? Should I just keep getting by paycheck to paycheck while I build the company?</p> <p>Thanks</p> </li> </ol>

<p>In this episode, Dave and Jamison answer these questions:</p> <ol> <li> <p>Great podcast! Love what you guys are doing and very happy that you are doing this for such a long time! Here’s the question.</p> <p>I started to work in a Startup a year ago. When we were negotiating the salary we agreed on amount X, and CTO promised that after a year it will be increased. He did say the exact sum. So, the year has passed, I followed up CTO about the salary raise, and he delegated the task to the manager, who decided not to give me a raise. When I asked ‘why?’ he said that I am good at negotiating my salary and I’m getting what the market is offering. I don’t feel bad about not getting more money, but the fact that the CTO break his word concerns me. I don’t think I can trust this company when they are promising anything and I started to care less about what I’m doing here. Am I delusional that a programmers salary has to increase even by 2% on a yearly basis and how to find a way to trust company in the future? Or just drop this and take the default SSE case - look for another job?</p> <p>Thank you for your answer.</p> </li> <li> <p>Hi Dave and Jamison, Absolutely love the show.</p> <p>I share an office with a peer who works on my team. We are both early in our career and are lucky to work under a very hands off manager. However, I feel my peer is taking advantage of the situation and is slacking off. He is rarely in his office and often states that he is ““working”” from home. When he graces us with his appearance in the office, he asks the most basic questions. Granted, those questions are internal and specific (not easily Google-able), but still, I feel he should have known the answers after a year on the job.</p> <p>He intentionally exploits our monolith’s slow builds by running full builds all the time and complain that it is slow. Then plays video games in the office until the build is complete (about 4 hours). Then makes a minor change in his feature code and kicks off a full build again, even though he could build incrementally (about 2-3 minutes).</p> <p>What do you recommend me to do? Should I spend time and energy to answer his lifeless questions? Should I confront him?</p> </li> </ol>

<p>In this episode, Dave and Jamison answer these questions:</p> <ol> <li> <p>Is it just me or does systems like Jira and TFS get managers to go crazy on processes? We have TFS and management has created a convoluted mess of processes that takes forever to learn and gets changed on a whim to be replaced by an even more convoluted process. Every time I finish a large feature and need to merge it in, I have to run around asking ten people on what process changed since there are all sorts of permission denied and other strange error messages. In my previous job, same with Jira and Jenkins. As an engineer, do managers really need these crazy processes that get in the way or am I naive engineer who doesn’t really understand the value of these processes?</p> </li> <li> <p>Just wanted to preface by saying that I absolutely love your podcast. It’s definitely helped me mold into a better developer and team player!</p> <p>My company is having a tough time raising our next round. In light of this, I am actively looking for my next position. Financial stability and growth is my biggest concern as I am planning to get married, buy our own place, and have kids. My goal is to interview at multiple companies and get competing offers. From a hiring perspective, I can definitely see how companies and see this in a negative light. How do I navigate salary negotiations so that I can get the best deal (financially) without being stereotyped?</p> </li> </ol>

<p>In this episode, Dave and Jamison answer these questions:</p> <ol> <li> <p>I used to work totally remote, but found myself absolutely hating it. The lack of office culture and human interaction.</p> <p>The problem is that in my area there are few local development jobs that match my skill set. I work in a large but heathcare heavy town, and their tech does not blend with my skill set.</p> <p>All to say. When it comes time to find my next job I’ll probably be looking for remote again. How can I come to love remote jobs, or at least survive?</p> <p>Maybe my previous companies remote culture was terrible. Is there any advice you can give when evaluating a remote culture at a company?</p> </li> <li> <p>Love the show! I had a question on how to effectively manage of team of engineers who have only partial allocation to my project. I am a project & technical lead for a team of ““8 FTE””, which is composed of a rotating cast of engineers who are allocated to my project in small percentages (most commonly between 30-80% of their time).</p> <p>This has a lot of challenges which you can imagine, but the one I am most interested in your thoughts on is the struggle with other projects about ““whose deliverable for a given engineer has priority””.</p> <p>As an example an engineer with 50% time on my project and 50% on another project will give me feedback that his immediate tasking between projects is unclear, he knows he has to do both workloads but feels they are uneven, or he is under more pressure from one project than the other. My company stack ranks during performance reviews and competition between leaders of matrix organizations (such as myself) in particular is fierce, so discussions between projects on how to effectively tackle this problem does not yield constructive agreements (in my experience). I’m at times guilty of trying to ““squeeze”” more than my designated allocation out of engineers to deliver on agreements for timing, scope, etc.</p> <p>Any thoughts are appreciated!</p> </li> </ol>

<p>In this episode, Dave and Jamison answer these questions:</p> <ol> <li> <p>How do managers make firing decision during company wide cuts? Recently our company went through spending cuts and x percentage of people were laid off as part of this exercise. On one fateful day, our manager informed us that he let go John Doe as he had to fire someone. Overall John Doe was a decent senior developer and was with the company for 10 plus years. My gut feeling is that he was let go because he simply didn’t (or couldn’t) move to management and was too old for a developer position. Does ageism play a role when a firing decision has to be made based on non-performance reasons?</p> </li> <li> <p>I’m in my early 30s, I have a spouse and a small child, and work remotely as a software engineer. One of my peers, let’s call him James, is about 10 years younger than me, works on-site, and is single. He’s a good developer and really friendly. The problem I have with him is that this job is his life. It isn’t uncommon for James to work 14 hour days (including weekends sometimes), submitting code for review at midnight, then back in to work bright and early the next day. This is not at all encouraged at my company. Most everyone comes in at 9 and leaves at 6. I feel a little bad for James because I get the sense that he’s lonely, and doesn’t have much going for him outside of work.</p> <p>However, it’s frustrating working with a peer who puts in way more time at work when my home life literally makes that level of dedication impossible. James receives a lot of praise for the hard problems he works on after-hours. I know my performance is fine and I don’t need the praise per se, but it’s frustrating to feel that I’m going to be compared to him informally by my co-workers in terms of what we get done, and formally, as promotion opportunities come up. I honestly wish someone in management would ask him not to work after-hours, but that’s probably not going to happen. Thoughts on how to handle this?</p> </li> </ol>

<p>In this episode, Dave and Jamison answer these questions:</p> <ol> <li> <p>I started my first job as a developer 2 months ago. My boss wants me to give talks at meetups and then later, conferences.</p> <p>I have no idea what I can talk about as I am still very much learning.</p> <p>How do I find a topic to research and work on so that I can deliver value to people listening to my talk?</p> </li> <li> <p>What are some things I can try to increase the scale of my annual raise or bonus? For example, if my company averages a 2% raise each year, but I really want a 3% raise this year, how might I go about it?</p> </li> </ol>

<p>In this episode, Dave and Jamison answer these questions:</p> <ol> <li> <p>What is the right balance between asking for help and figuring things out on my own? How do I know when it’s time to ask questions or when it’s time to spend more time drilling down into the code?</p> </li> <li> <p>Been at my first job for a couple of years now, and I am very quiet in the workplace and still find it hard to open up, be assertive, and speak up in meetings.</p> <p>When I try to go out of my comfort zone (arguing about technical decisions, setting up and driving meetings), I don’t think my manager appreciates my efforts. I am told that I need to voice my opinions more and have more of a two-way conversation. I feel I’m not given concrete chances to improve, and it’s very demotivating. How should I deal in situations like this?</p> </li> </ol> <p>Job pitch time! Are you interested in working at Walmart Labs? Email Jamison at <a href="mailto:[email protected]">[email protected]</a>!</p>

<p>In this episode, Dave and Jamison answer these questions:</p> <ol> <li> <p>Will working as a defense contractor hurt my future employability in private industry?</p> <p>I work as a full stack engineer for a small defense contractor with a security clearance. My company is awesome; All of my coworkers are super talented/motivated. On top of that we get to work with modern tech stacks (React, Elm, Go, Rust, Kafka, you name it, we can use it). I have heard rumors that it’s hard to move back to private industry after working in this world due to working with old/legacy tech and the view that defense contractors generally have less than stellar engineers. Is this true? I feel I’m in a bit of a unique situation due to how good I have it at my company and feel I could demonstrate that my technical chops are up to par with industry standards.</p> </li> <li> <p>We we just did a 360 performance evaluation where we provided “strong points” and “improvement suggestions” for two colleagues assigned by management. The completed reviews were sent to management and management forwarded it to the people under review.</p> <p>One of the reviews I received was very positive but the other one, from a senior teammate I work closely with, had a very harsh and exaggerated “improvement suggestions” section and very short and unconvincing “strong points” section.</p> <p>I’m not sure if he really considers me incompetent or he just wrote the suggestions, which do have some truth in them, without bothering to put things in perspective and without considering the impact it can have on my career and motivation. I feel a bit resentful towards the reviewer and am worried about the potential negative consequences of this review (I am relatively new to the company, joined 7 months ago).</p> <p>For now, I am trying to act as if nothing happened.</p> <p>I am hesitating whether I should talk to this person. On one hand, he can write what he wants in the way he wants. On the other hand, I feel the review is unfair and too negative.</p> <p>I would appreciate your input on this.</p> </li> </ol>

<p>In this episode, Dave and Jamison answer these questions:</p> <ol> <li> <p>I work at a growing start up, and while I was hired as a web dev, I have started working on unrelated but cutting-edge tech for the company during off hours. My boss has encouraged me to do this with monetary and office life bonuses, and he has reworked our business model to focus on it. The only problem is that our CEO overpromises and pushes me to my mental and physical limits for very short turnarounds. I still have to do my regular job. While I love the challenge, and love the company, I feel set up to fail. And the 40 hour coding sprints over the weekend are killing me. I feel like I’m setting a horrible precedent because somehow, defying all logic, I’ve met the deadline each time. How far is too far? Should I keep killing myself, or take the agony of defeat on a project.</p> </li> <li> <p>I’m currently working as a Senior Solutions Architect after a career progression that looks like this: Junior Developer, Intermediate Developer, Senior Developer, Junior Architect, Intermediate Architect, Senior Architect.</p> <p>In a recent one-on-one with my boss, we were discussing my future career options and concluded that the next step for me would be one of the following three positions: VP of Engineering, Chief Architect, or CTO. According to him, all three have similar levels of prestige, pay and influence, but vary in the nature of the job.</p> <p>Reflecting on this conversation, it dawned on me that I’m close to the final stage of my career. I’m currently 39 years old, so I’m now thinking to myself: Is that really it? One more promotion and I’ve successfully climbed the corporate ladder? End of the line. Time to retire. Nothing more to strive for (other than working on the most interesting projects).</p> <p>So, could you please talk about the software career progression, what to aspire to and how to measure one’s own progress once one has reached the top of the ladder?</p> </li> </ol>

<p>In this episode, Dave and Jamison answer these questions:</p> <ol> <li> <p>Let say you accepted an offer from another company and you turned in your 2 weeks notice. If your current employer ask you how much you will be making at your new place, should you tell them?</p> </li> <li> <p>Recently I was on a panel of people hiring for my company. We were hiring for several positions and were given a fixed headcount. When it came down to the last spot we interviewed two people, one of which was a referral from someone higher up in the company. This person did terribly on the interview and we as a panel decided that we would offer the position to the other person, who was the strongest of all the interviewees. And all was fine until several days later when we received an email from HR showing the full list of people to be hired, and lo and behold, the list contained all the people we chose, plus one extra person, the referral person. Somehow there was magically more headcount for this person and now he is being hired.</p> <p>I’m not really sure how to feel about this. Because now we have a new person that is going to enter the company and I feel if he doesn’t perform well it will reflect badly on me and the panel that were involved in hiring. Also I am confused at this clear example of nepotism happening in my company. Should I bring this up with someone in the company? I’m leaning towards no but I am also confused and annoyed at what happened.</p> </li> </ol>

<p>In this re-run of episode 79, Dave and Jamison answer these questions:</p> <ol> <li>It seems like my teams always miss their story point commitments. Is this normal? How do you change it?</li> <li>How do you actually measure developer productivity?</li> </ol> <p>The article comparing research on productivity in static and dynamic type systems is <a href="https://danluu.com/empirical-pl/">here</a>. It is a great read.</p> <p>Jamison also mentions Goodhart’s Law. Read more about it <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goodhart%27s_law">here</a>.</p>

<p>In this episode, Dave and Jamison answer these questions:</p> <ol> <li> <p>How do I quit my first job if I’m working with a manager I love?</p> <p>I started my first full-time job about two years ago and I’m starting to think about looking for a new job, both because I am ready for new challenges and I’m ready to move to a new city.</p> <p>I have a great working relationship with my boss, so a part of me wants to tell her about my interest in finding a new job, both so that I could use her for a reference and also so that I can be honest with her about my intentions. She’s been a great boss and mentor to me, so there’s a part of me that doesn’t want to jeopardize our working relationship. But another part of me feels like I might be jeopardizing my presence in my current office if I make it clear that I am looking to move on, especially if my job hunt doesn’t go as smoothly as I hope.</p> </li> <li> <p>How do you deal effectively with rapidly increasing work responsibilities?</p> <p>My technical lead was recently promoted to management. Being both ambitious and the only Sr. Engineer without retirement plans in the next 4 months, I immediately stepped into the power vacuum and inverted a binary tree faster than all my coworkers to establish my position as new tech lead. After a few months the <strong>other</strong> senior engineer on my team retired, and I’ve ended up holding the bag for my new job responsibilities, my old responsibilities as a Sr. Engineer, AND the departed Sr. Engineer’s responsibilities.</p> <p>I told my manager how much was on my plate and that I was afraid my work output would suffer, and her response was to throw money hand over fist at me and promise to backfill both Senior positions within the next 12 months.</p> <p>How do I get through the next 18 months without losing all my hair? Are there any strategies to make sure the team doesn’t go up in flames when I forget about a key deadline? Or at least position myself so that nobody can tell it is my fault until I can make a subtle getaway in the brand new Ferrari I’m going to buy?</p> </li> </ol>

<p>In this episode, Dave and Jamison answer these questions:</p> <ol> <li> <p>Is it common for developers to take an interview without real interest in a job?</p> <p>Is it common for a company to reject a candidate because they think candidate is not interested in a job?</p> <p>Recently I had an interview and I was rejected even though I though it went really well. From internal channels in that company I learned that the interviewer thought I wasn’t really searching for a new job and was just doing interviews for fun or to improve my skills. That was really frustrating. And also, well, flattering. But still, I don’t understand what signals I may have given. I asked questions about the company, processes, etc. I prepared really well. And I asked for a salary that’s quite significant for our market.</p> <p>The only reason I see is that I always worked remotely and this is position in an office.</p> <p>By the way, LOVE your show!</p> </li> <li> <p>What happens when a wave of engineers leaves your company?</p> <p>I work for a startup that went through a brutal round of layoffs, before stabilizing. We’re building the engineering team back up, but the core team members that built our platform are gone.</p> <p>How do we approach maintaining things, adding new things, technology decisions, etc?</p> </li> </ol>

<p>In this episode, Dave and Jamison answer these questions:</p> <ol> <li> <p>Hello Jamison and Dave. 💕 your show! 👏</p> <p>I have been a C# dev for 7 years. Last year, I learn Erlang. I fell in love with functional programming. After that I learned Elm and oh boy… I had never dreamed a compiler/computer could do so much work for me, preventing so many mistakes that would otherwise require an unholy number of “unit tests”.</p> <p>The thing is I can no longer find satisfaction with any job. I love to write software, but at some point I became almost dogmatic. I abhor more and more the discipline it takes, in certain languages, to make my code be as pure and testable as in an FP language.</p> <p>I had to do so much un-learning, that now I feel that I am refusing to un-un-learn all these different ideas and paradigms and just go back to making the tests happy.</p> <p>I seek your humorous words of wisdom on how to find contentment with my job again, without looking at a language and dreading it.</p> </li> <li> <p>I have a co-worker, who is pretty incompetent technically. Over the past few years that I’ve been here, he has proved time and again that he is incapable of learning and really grasping how things work. He is able to accomplish basic feature work, but not capable of making good architecture decisions, or why a given framework should be chosen, or how to solve harder problems (I’m not sure how to describe this. But for example, how to build a resilient API client).</p> <p>However this person is great at creating slides, and presentations, and JIRAs, so I think management thinks they are ok at their job.</p> <p>He’s also a nice guy. I’m not sure how to say, hey you suck at your job. Which is pretty harsh. Or to suggest to someone that he should be replaced.</p> </li> </ol>

<p>In this episode, Dave and Jamison answer these questions:</p> <ol> <li>How do I help foster team spirit in a newly created team?</li> <li> <p>I work for small startup (fewer than 10 people). My boss wants to hire another developer and asked me to look around for people.</p> <p>I don’t feel particularly strongly about this team. I’ve been there for about a year, but I don’t imagine myself working there for another twelve months.</p> <p>I don’t want to refer my friends because I don’t want them to join a team I don’t feel good about.</p> <p>On the other hand, I want to work with great people. I see how other devs may enjoy working in such an environment, but it’s just not for me.</p> <p>In the long run, I obviously want to leave this job, but what would you recommend doing in short term? Is hiring under such circumstances really that different than hiring if I liked this team?</p> </li> </ol>

<p>In this episode, Dave and Jamison answer these questions:</p> <ol> <li>I run a small dev team. One junior developer constantly openly challenges things that don’t meet this their preference. As a manager I don’t want to stifle innovation, but need to find a balance on being able to meet business goals on schedule.</li> <li>I want to add an automatic formatting tool to our code, but my co-worker is resistant to the idea. He started this project and I’m brand new to it. I don’t want to push it too much, but I would really love to use it. I’ve shared with him all the reasons that it would be good, and addressed most of his concerns. I’ve also submitted a PR to show him what it would look like. Also, he is in another timezone 9 hours away, so communication is all on GitHub, Slack, and the occasional video call (if I wake up early). He finally said if it really helps me, then I can go for it, but I don’t think he would like it if I did. Should I go for it? Try to convince him more? Or just drop it?</li> </ol>

<p>We’ve got another re-run this week, as Jamison and Dave both recover from being sick. We’ll be back with a new episode next week.</p> <p>In this episode, Dave and Jamison answer these questions:</p> <ol> <li>How can I attract talent?</li> <li>How do I quit without burning bridges?</li> </ol> <p>This episode originally aired on November 15th, 2016.</p>

<p>In this episode, Dave and Jamison answer these questions:</p> <ol> <li>What do I do about an insecure teammate whose insecurity causes them to lash out at others?</li> <li>I’d like to change teams within my company, but I’ve had some negative performance reviews in the past. How early should I disclose this to my prospective manager?</li> </ol> <p>Jamison talks about the <a href="https://docs.google.com/document/d/1PW4NYn9pYNam2EuGEsTN9pTgwTfFnT_R9OZLJJICWQU/edit#heading=h.wksczgmzufvp">Khan Academy Engineering Principles</a>, which are great and which you should read.</p>

<p>In this episode, Dave and Jamison answer these questions:</p> <ol> <li>How can I encourage my team to be more visible in the office?</li> <li>How do I learn new technologies without going through a noob phase?</li> </ol>

<p><a href="https://twitter.com/djsmith42">Dave</a> and <a href="https://twitter.com/jamison_dance">Jamison</a> answer these questions:</p> <ol> <li>I recently interviewed for a role I was very interested in. I didn’t get the job,and despite several attempts, didn’t receive any feedback on what I could have done differently. I still really want to work there at some point in the future, but have I taken it too far? Have I accidentally burned all of the bridges before I set foot on them?</li> <li>I am a lowly SSE that recently started a tech newsletter at my company. One of the senior VPs (let’s call them “E”) sent out an email to the org asking people to reply to a newsletter survey so that their team can be featured. A senior manager (“K”), was upset his team wasn’t featured but I informed him that he didn’t reply to the original survey. I explained to “K” that he can still send me information for the next issue. “K” then replied back with something very condescending and has now made the newsletter a political device. How should I proceed from here?</li> </ol>

<p><a href="https://twitter.com/djsmith42">Dave</a> and <a href="https://twitter.com/jamison_dance">Jamison</a> answer these questions:</p> <ol> <li>Since working remotely I’ve noticed a trend to do things like not leaving the house, growing my beard out to above average length, or not wearing (real) pants. What should I do to keep from losing any/all interpersonal skills?</li> <li>Is there such a thing as meetup etiquette? When I attend meetups and attempt to initiate conversion with people, I’m hesitant to interrupt people who are in discussion with others. Should I wait, try to join the discussion or just barge in on the conversion?</li> </ol>

<p><a href="https://twitter.com/djsmith42">Dave</a> and <a href="https://twitter.com/jamison_dance">Jamison</a> answer these questions:</p> <ol> <li>I’ve been a software engineer for 13 years and would like to apply for a management role. I’ve never managed before. How do I apply for a job as a manager without managerial experience?</li> <li>How do I deal with annoying noises around my desk? One neighbor listens to loud music. Another one pops the bubbles on his bubblewrap (to calm himself obviously but also infuriate me). Please help =)</li> </ol>

<p><a href="https://twitter.com/djsmith42">Dave</a> and <a href="https://twitter.com/jamison_dance">Jamison</a> answer these questions:</p> <ol> <li>I went through the interview process, and as last step I had an interview with the VP of engineering. At the end of interview he asked if I had any questions for him. I didn’t know what to ask. What do you ask?</li> <li> <p>I’m a front-end web developer on a SCRUM team. Our Product Owner is also our tester, but she has a very busy schedule and she hardly has any time to test anymore.</p> <p>My team thinks we need a second product owner, but I think we should hire a dedicated tester to help the PO. How do I convince my team and my manager to hire a tester instead of a second product owner?</p> <p>We don’t work with scripted test plans or anything, so I think a dedicated tester would be a huge benefit to our team and our deliverables.</p> </li> </ol>

<p>A listener named Dan talks about ThanksBot, an internal tool at Facebook to support gratitude.</p> <p><a href="https://twitter.com/djsmith42">Dave</a> and <a href="https://twitter.com/jamison_dance">Jamison</a> answer these questions:</p> <ol> <li>I became an engineer because I loved my programming assignments and CS degree. However, at work I’m struggling to contribute beyond competing the tasks assigned to me. How do I participate more in broader technical solutions, process, etc?</li> <li>I recently started a new job, and a lot of the existing code is really bad. How can I raise this concern, or make improvements to the code, without offending my teammates who wrote it? Thanks!</li> </ol>

<p><a href="https://twitter.com/djsmith42">Dave</a> and <a href="https://twitter.com/jamison_dance">Jamison</a> answer these questions:</p> <ol> <li>A teammate is a great developer but English isn’t their first language. Sometimes this results in bad grammar or spelling mistakes in code comments, variables, and method names. Often I correct it in code review, but I sometimes feel like I’m nit-picking, although I really do want it changed to be correct. It slows down code reviews. And of course, I don’t wish to appear racist or discriminatory. Any ideas for solving this?</li> <li>This is my first job out of college. Been there for 2.5 years. It feels like my manager is always firefighting and not able to be proactive, trapped by the tyranny of the urgent. It feels like our group is always behind on deadlines trying to catch up and we’ve accrued large amounts of technical debt with little to no time spent on improving our processes or tools. The result is that we produce a worse product and documentation than we should. This causes additional support required down the road further loading down the group. What can I or my manager do to improve this situation? Is this more common than I think?</li> </ol> <p>Read more about the <a href="http://www.oliverburkeman.com/blog/posts/the-theory-of-the-hairy-arm-the-tactical-benefits-of-making-deliberate-mistakes">hairy arm principle</a> and the <a href="https://www.gamasutra.com/view/feature/132500/dirty_coding_tricks.php?page=4">fun memory tricks</a> that game developers pull.</p>

<p><a href="https://twitter.com/djsmith42">Dave</a> and <a href="https://twitter.com/jamison_dance">Jamison</a> answer these questions:</p> <ol> <li>A fellow developer submitted a pull request for me to review. The logic was totally fine, but the spacing drove me nuts. We use a linter to enforce some coding style but because this wasn’t a rule in the linter, I wasn’t sure if it was fair game to call him out on it. Was I being petty? I knew if this got into our code I would end up fixing it later myself. I told him I would approve the PR but thought that spacing should be more readable and consistent with the rest of the codebase. What is the proper etiquette here? Mention it and add the rules to the linter later? Don’t care about spacing if the code gets the job done?</li> <li>How do you express gratitude to your immediate supervisor? My immediate boss, who is lead engineer for our team, does an amazing job. Occasionally I get to peek into his world and see how much work he does. I am amazed at all he does for the team; shielding us from company politics, keeping us updated on relevant info, dealing really well with team drama and even makes time to contribute to code. How do I show gratitude besides building meaningful software?</li> </ol> <p>I recently read <a href="https://blog.acolyer.org/2018/03/16/when-coding-style-survives-compilation-de-anonymizing-programmers-from-executable-binaries/">a paper</a> on coding style and how it survives even through compilation and optimization!</p>

<p><a href="https://twitter.com/djsmith42">Dave</a> and <a href="https://twitter.com/jamison_dance">Jamison</a> answer these questions:</p> <ol> <li>Do you have any recommendations for maintaining physical health in a software developer role? For example, strategies to maintain good posture, reduce eye strain, etc.</li> <li>Is the practice of asking interviewing developers to regurgitate 20 year old algorithms on a whiteboard a recent trend or is this something new? Can you make sense of this madness?</li> </ol> <p><a href="https://www.health.harvard.edu/staying-healthy/why-sitting-may-be-hazardous-to-your-health">This</a> is a pretty good summary of some of the health effects of sitting.</p> <p><a href="https://twitter.com/threepointone/status/942872860779057153">Here</a> is the tweet Jamison talked about.</p>

<p><a href="https://twitter.com/djsmith42">Dave</a> and <a href="https://twitter.com/jamison_dance">Jamison</a> answer these questions:</p> <ol> <li>I’ve been pushed in to doing management tasks I really don’t enjoy. What do I do?</li> <li>How do I handle a co-worker who I really struggle to get along with?</li> </ol>

<p>This week Jamison and Dave answer these questions:</p> <ol> <li> <p>We have a great intern, who is smart and has good ideas but is also very quiet.</p> <p>She’s got a great deal of potential, and I want to tell her that being more vocal and assertive can help her greatly, both in her career and in life.</p> <p>How can I give her this feedback, without it sounding like a criticism of her personality, or her introverted tendencies?”</p> </li> <li> <p>Recently a team member was let go. I am the team lead so I played a role in their termination. While they weren’t a good fit for the team, I’d still like to be in touch and help them improve their skills. Should I steer clear of this? My gut says yes but my heart says no.</p> </li> </ol>

<p>This week Jamison and Dave answer these questions:</p> <ol> <li>I know that teaching others is important when working on a team so that the team can grow and get better. But what happens when one member of the team, despite being the friendliest person in the world, is missing so many required skills for his job that it becomes impossible for me to do anything besides teach him?</li> <li>I recently heard the concept of “known unknowns” and “unknown unknowns”. It’s the unknown unknowns that get me. Sometimes I ask a question of a seasoned developer and they seem annoyed because it’s something that I could have looked up. They knew it but I didn’t. Sometimes I ask a question and they are eager to help because the question is interesting and they know it will be good for me to learn. I struggle because I don’t want to waste my time or theirs, but I want to work through things and learn. How do I do this well?</li> </ol> <p>Wikipedia has a <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/There_are_known_knowns">whole article</a> on the origin of the phrase “unknown unknowns”.</p> <p>Also, Gary Bernhardt has a fantastic talk called <a href="https://www.destroyallsoftware.com/talks/ideology">Ideology</a> about “unknown knowns” - things we believe in software without even realizing we believe them.</p> <p><a href="https://youtu.be/FPlWssdjG30?t=146">Hoobastank</a>.</p>

<p>This week Jamison and Dave answer these questions:</p> <ol> <li>When should asking a developer pal for help go from something that is free because you’re pals to something you should compensate them for in some way?</li> <li>I’ve never worked with recruiters before. I’ve always found jobs from friends and other connections. Is working with recruiters worth it? What should I watch out for?</li> </ol> <p>I finally found the creepy <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KqEVYbPw9lI">Jack and the Beanstalk</a> video! It is still horrifying.</p>

<p>This week Jamison and Dave answer these questions:</p> <ol> <li>As a “less than ideal” engineer was leaving our team, he asked if he could use me as a job reference. How should I tell them no?</li> <li>What are your thoughts on having full sleeve tattoos (ie, tattoos that cover the entire arm) within engineering?</li> </ol>

<p>This week Jamison and Dave answer these questions:</p> <ol> <li>My job doesn’t seem to leave room to negotiate salary or raises for our year-end review. Is this normal? How do I negotiate in this process?</li> <li>Can working part-time, when it’s possible to work full time, to invest in personal development look bad to a future employer?</li> </ol> <p><a href="https://twitter.com/sarahmei/status/953426874528514048">This</a> tweet storm by Sarah Mei is good and relevant.</p> <p><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qTBAW-Eh0tM">This</a> is the video about making your own font and anagraphs that Jamison mentioned at the end. It is SO GOOD.</p> <p><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yVcAyEMM4Cc&index=2&list=PL4Nm4rhtI5e57ElPzTNKW0XHE1wisqr5H">This</a> is a funny and enlightening video that people of taste and culture will appreciate. <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VqiHiMuEkes&list=PL4Nm4rhtI5e57ElPzTNKW0XHE1wisqr5H&index=4">This</a> one is also good. Ok fine, they are <a href="https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCIOqgcoAGI2fycb89gPXMPA">all good</a>.</p>

<p>This week Jamison and Dave answer these questions:</p> <ol> <li> <p>A previous job involved a coworker who, over time, became very difficult to get along with.</p> <p>I did my best to talk it through with him, but he would only ever say I needed to “fix my attitude”. I tried to deflect and avoid conflict, but he’d continually impose himself on the situation. (Assign himself to review my code, come into my cube and demand my help, etc.)</p> <p>I had good relationships with the rest of the team, and they all agreed that he was out of line. Yet management viewed the situation as simply friction between two devs, with no clear instigator.</p> <p>Being a source of team friction is career death, and I’m personally embarrassed that anyone got that impression of me.</p> <p>How can I (or other listeners) handle this situation so that I don’t get painted as “part of the problem?”</p> </li> <li> <p>I’ve started a new job. I’m enjoying the work and the culture slightly less, and I discovered my salary could have been much higher had I negotiated harder. Is it too late to negotiate for a higher salary after I’ve already joined?</p> <p>Dave mentions <a href="http://www.kalzumeus.com/2012/01/23/salary-negotiation/">this</a> article on salary negotiation. It’s good!</p> </li> </ol>

<p>This week Jamison and Dave answer these questions:</p> <ol> <li>How often do candidates get hired who don’t match the requirements listed in a job posting? Is it a waste for me to apply to all jobs I come across even though I only have about 1/3 of what they want?</li> <li>I’ve been moved to a newly formed team. I suspect the team consists of people nobody really wants to work with. What are my options in a situation like this?</li> </ol>

<p>This week Jamison and Dave answer these questions:</p> <ol> <li>Upper management has a negative impression of me because of an early manager. How do I manage and improve my reputation with mid and upper level management, who I interact with very rarely?</li> <li>I have a job offer I feel unqualified for. Should I decline this offer I honestly don’t deserve, or face a massive amount of impostor syndrome and risk not delivering?</li> </ol>

<p>This week Jamison and Dave answer these questions:</p> <ol> <li>How do I deal with co-workers who constantly cite the decisions of engineers who don’t work here anymore?</li> <li>My employment makes it sound like the company owns my past work and side-projects. Is this true? Is this normal?</li> </ol>

<p>This week Jamison and Dave answer these questions:</p> <ol> <li>How do you dress for interviews? Full on informal beach bum? Smart casual? Formal suit tie?</li> <li>I’m a new developer and have been asked to interview incoming developers. How do I learn how to interview?</li> </ol> <p><a href="http://blog.noredink.com/post/145260396603/our-engineering-hiring-process">This</a> is the NoRedInk interview process. <a href="https://sockpuppet.org/blog/2015/03/06/the-hiring-post/">This</a> is the blog post Jamison likes on getting data out of the technical portion of the interview. <a href="https://zachholman.com/posts/startup-interviewing-is-fucked/">This</a> is a slightly pessimistic look at pitfalls in the standard interview process. Google wrote a great article about <a href="https://rework.withgoogle.com/guides/hiring-use-structured-interviewing/steps/introduction/">structured interviewing</a> that might also be helpful.</p>

<p>This week Jamison and Dave answer these questions:</p> <ol> <li>My peers give up and say “have it your way” whenever we have technical discussions. How do I get them to be more vocal about their opinions?</li> <li>I like the idea of measuring things, but metrics seem easy to game. How do I effectively measure team and personal productivity?</li> </ol> <p>Jamison cites <a href="https://twitter.com/danluu/status/926492239081197569">this tweet</a> and <a href="http://malisper.me/how-to-improve-your-productivity-as-a-working-programmer/">this</a> blog post about examining your own productivity.</p>

<p>This week Jamison and Dave answer these questions:</p> <ol> <li>Could you (Jamison and Dave) share some salary information publicly? It would help to know how much others make.</li> <li>My boss uses an offensive word in technical discussions. How do I ask him to stop?</li> </ol>

<p>This week Jamison and Dave answer these questions:</p> <ol> <li>One of my co-workers is a know-it-all, which is pretty annoying. How do I work with them?</li> <li>A former employer still has my photo on their team website eight years after I left. How do I get them to take it down?</li> </ol>

<p>This week Jamison and Dave answer these questions:</p> <ol> <li>I work with a very shy and anxious remote developer. How do I work effectively with them?</li> <li>Our manager is outsourcing the core architecture of our next products to an offshore team. How do I tell him I think this is a bad idea?</li> </ol>