Soft Skills Engineering

<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>

<p>This week Jamison and Dave answer these questions:</p> <ol> <li>I think I’ve saved enough money to get out of the rat race. If something goes wrong and I need to get a job again, how do I explain a long gap in my resume?</li> <li>I like writing code but I’m interested in moving to a more business-focused role. How can I test this without burning bridges? Do I need to take a pay cut?</li> </ol>

<p>This week Jamison and Dave answer these questions:</p> <ol> <li>How do I smooth things over after a blow-up between team members?</li> <li>A team mate admits he writes bad code on purpose for job security. What do I do?</li> </ol>

<p>This week Jamison and Dave answer these questions:</p> <ol> <li>A developer on a team I lead doesn’t seem interested in growing. How do I help them engage more?</li> <li>I gave two weeks notice, but was told part of the way through to not come in any more. I still had work left and this made me feel bad. Is this common? Did I do anything wrong?</li> </ol> <p>Jamison talks about the <a href="http://engineering.khanacademy.org/posts/career-development.htm">Khan Academy</a> engineering culture. He kinda misquoted it though. They don’t explicitly say they lay people off who don’t progress.</p>

<p>This week Jamison and Dave answer these questions:</p> <ol> <li>How do I keep up with new tech as a team lead?</li> <li>I manage a team. A manager from a different team wants me to run everything I do in my team by him. What do I do?</li> </ol> <p>Jamison mentions <a href="https://charity.wtf/2017/05/11/the-engineer-manager-pendulum/">this</a> by Charity Majors on the pendulum between technical and people leadership.</p> <p>Jamison also mentions <a href="https://hbr.org/2016/12/if-your-boss-could-do-your-job-youre-more-likely-to-be-happy-at-work">this</a> HBR article on employee happiness.</p>

<p>This week Jamison and Dave 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>This week Jamison and Dave answer these questions:</p> <ol> <li>We’ve re-written the project I’m on 10 times without launching. What should I do?</li> <li>I worked hard to hit a deadline, only to find out the deadline was moved. How do I avoid this in the future?</li> </ol> <p>We talked a bit about the value of deadlines way back in <a href="https://softskills.audio/2016/05/02/episode-9-deadlines-and-titles/">episode nine</a> if you want to hear some positive things about deadlines.</p>

<p>This week Jamison and Dave answer these questions:</p> <ol> <li>My boss wants me to speak at conferences, but I’m very new to software. What should I do?</li> <li>How do I get more than a 2% raise? That is the company average.</li> </ol> <p>We talked about conferences a bit more way back in <a href="https://softskills.audio/2016/04/11/episode-6-speaking-at-conferences/">episode 6</a>.</p> <p>We also talked more about playing the salary game in <a href="https://softskills.audio/2016/08/22/episode-23-cto-questions-and-getting-a-raise/">episode 23</a>, which is a technique for sharing salary information with your co-workers.</p>

<p>This week Jamison and Dave answer these questions:</p> <ol> <li>My organization requires me to set goals for myself. What advice do you have for writing good technical and non-technical goals?</li> <li>My managers openly joke about firing people all the time. What should I do?</li> </ol>

<p>This week Jamison and Dave answer these questions:</p> <ol> <li>What are some good ways for people who aren’t good at self-promotion to promote themselves?</li> <li>I’m moving to Europe in a year. How much notice should I give my company that I’m leaving?</li> </ol> <p>Way back in <a href="https://softskills.audio/2016/09/12/episode-26-communicate-your-efforts-and-i-told-you-so/">episode 26</a> we talked a little bit about self-promotion as well.</p>

<p>Jamison and Dave will be at the UtahJS Conference on September 18th. See <a href="https://conf.utahjs.com">conf.utahjs.com</a> for more info and to buy tickets. Come say hi!</p> <p>This week Jamison and Dave answer these questions:</p> <ol> <li>Do I need to take a pay cut when switching languages?</li> <li>I was promoted at work but didn’t get a raise or a title change. What do I do?</li> </ol>

<p>Jamison and Dave will be at the UtahJS Conference on September 18th. See <a href="https://conf.utahjs.com">conf.utahjs.com</a> for more info and to buy tickets. Come say hi!</p> <p>This week Jamison and Dave answer these questions:</p> <ol> <li>A developer on my team has been rewriting my code under the guise of “code cleanup” without saying anything to me. Is this normal? What should I do?</li> <li>How do you deal with co-workers who over-explain unimportant issues?</li> </ol>

<p>Jamison and Dave answer these questions:</p> <ol> <li>My CEO is micromanaging the developers. What do I do?</li> <li>I’m about to take a job as the only developer at a company. How do I handle working without technical coworkers?</li> </ol>

<p>Jamison and Dave answer these questions:</p> <ol> <li>I’m sometimes an informal lead on project teams. How do I help the team get stuff done as a peer?</li> <li>How do I deal with burnout after an extended period of crunch time?</li> </ol> <p>Jamison mentions the blog post by Jamis Buck called <a href="https://m.signalvnoise.com/to-smile-again-ae0ba9f2198c">To Smile Again</a> where he talks about his experiences with burnout.</p>

<p>Jamison and Dave answer these questions:</p> <ol> <li>I’m a new team lead with a team member who is very appraisal-driven. How do I deal with them?</li> <li>Have you ever experienced meeting-creep? What do you do about it?</li> </ol> <p>Jamison mentions the 37 signals blog post on <a href="https://m.signalvnoise.com/is-group-chat-making-you-sweat-744659addf7d">the downsides of group chat</a>.</p>

<p>Jamison and Dave answer these questions:</p> <ol> <li>My supervisor is a know-it-all who needs to be the smartest person in the room. How do I deal with it?</li> <li>I want to move to another city and work remotely. How do I convince my boss to let me?</li> </ol>

<p>Jamison and Dave answer these questions:</p> <ol> <li>It’s been a year and I still haven’t touched the codebase. What should I do?</li> <li>All my hobbies revolve around computers. How do I develop other interests?</li> </ol> <p>Jamison mentioned Dan Luu’s article on how bad teams are always hiring. <a href="https://danluu.com/hiring-lemons/">Here</a> it is.</p> <p>Rich Hickey’s <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f84n5oFoZBc">Hammock-Driven Development</a> talk was also mentioned.</p>

<p>Jamison and Dave answer these questions:</p> <ol> <li>Should I get a Masters in Computer Science?</li> <li>How do I ask good questions?</li> </ol>