Soft Skills Engineering

The podcast discusses topics like managing an ML team while wanting to code, the challenges of returning to an individual contributor role, leadership challenges, balancing technical knowledge with managerial responsibilities, transitioning between leadership positions, and strategies for overcoming awkward silences in Zoom meetings.

Advice on securing a promotion despite short tenure and reducing reliance on luck, creating a personal data store and finding impactful problems, factors influencing promotions in big tech companies, challenges of feeling unproductive in a remote job, importance of meeting expectations for job security.

The hosts discuss the return to the office and quitting tech. They explore the challenges of commute time and paycuts, as well as the uncertainty of layoffs. They also touch on parking allowances and perks in tech companies, burnout in the tech industry, and navigating personal and professional growth.

Visa rejection and its impact on professional competence. Dealing with a co-worker's constant mistakes and opposing mindset. Creating a comprehensive guide to software engineering mistakes. Navigating the Daily WTF blog and addressing the challenges of working with Bob.

Topics discussed: dealing with burnout and whether to inform your manager, challenges and tensions of joining a new team in a lead engineer role, strategies for success in leadership positions, the importance of humility and collaboration, and team building activities like science fairs.

The podcast discusses the importance of having a vision in the tech industry and explores the challenges of predicting the future. It emphasizes the need to gather data and understand customer needs to build a bigger vision. The hosts also provide advice on handling a negative work environment and navigating the tech job market. They share a frustrating meeting experience where a senior colleague disregards previous plans, leading to the speaker leaving the company.

The podcast discusses challenges of startup equity and valuation, navigating conversations about equity with managers, and the frustration of being interrupted in remote meetings, including solutions like raising hands and using the chat feature in Zoom.

Topics discussed include feeling inadequate compared to a predecessor who went above and beyond, interpreting nice things about previous employees as criticism, living up to the reputation of a predecessor, and the frustration of being left off a list of contributors.

The podcast discusses gaining confidence as a developer, imposter syndrome, understanding covariance and contravariance, and building a CSV importer. They also touch on differences in perspectives between employees and bosses.

This episode is sposored by OneSchema, the best way to build CSV import into your product. Check OneSchema out at https://oneschema.co/softskills In this episode, Dave and Jamison answer these questions: My employer offered a retention bonus after: The CTO left two weeks after I arrived Two weeks later 1/4 of the staff was laid off Two weeks after that the COO left Two weeks after that 2 board members resigned Three or Four weeks after that the Director of Engineering left What does that mean? What do I look out for? I discovered your podcast just about 2 weeks ago and I love it, and I listen to them daily when driving to office, this make forced RTO feels a little bit better. I am currently a mid to senior SWE at FAANG. For the past 1.5 years I have been trying to interview for other opportunities at Staff level. I have good result with coding and design interview but I felt like I’m always falling short at behavioral questions. Example is “Tell me a time when you have a conflict”. How do I go about showing seniority in these type of questions? I led a few projects and powered through a lot of conflicts to deliver results at my company, at the same time I can’t think of a particular methodology I used to get through them. There were times I compromised, pushed back hard, meet halfway depends on situation. I dont want to show i’m a pushover at the same I don’t want to show i’m not easy to work with. What are the signals they are looking for for a Staff level engineer in behavoral style questions