Soft Skills Engineering

In this episode, Dave and Jamison answer these questions: Questions Hey Dave and Jamison, really wish I found your podcast sooner as it has been a great insight into some of the challenges at work. Last year, a fairly close friend reached out asking for a referral for an entry level position to my work. Trying to help him out, I figured absolutely! What could go wrong? (Foreshadowing intensifies) About 3 months into his employment, my boss informally mentioned at a dinner how behind said friend was at a technical level. I brushed this off, and reassured him that he’ll catch up. 6 months into his employment said friend was written up a few times for a few different reasons: tardiness , performance (avoids taking tickets and calls), using phone too often during work hours, fell asleep at his desk. 7 months in brought in our yearly reviews, which he was denied a raise due to his performance history. He asked me if I thought this was correct, and I was brutally honest with him and agreed with that decision. He didn’t take this well, and resulted in an argument between us. At this point I was pretty frustrated with his performance, and it was definitely straining the relationship. 1 Year in (today), he was caught working on side-projects (paid) at work….. which resulted being put on a PIP / Final Warning. I got pulled aside by my boss and HR asking if I knew about it, I said I knew he had side work, but I wasn’t aware it was being done on company time. He’s on the verge of losing his job, but I can’t help but feel somewhat responsible for referring him. All of above events have really hurt the friendship, to the point where I don’t think I would call him a friend. I’ve pulled him aside more than a handful of times asking what’s going on, or if I can help him in anyway but either resulted in a small improvement or a stubborn response that he’s fine at work. Am I holding him to too high of a standard? I don’t think the friendship will heal anytime soon, which I am fine with, but am I responsible for referring them? Thanks for your time guys, love the podcast and advice! I’m currently a manager and applied for a manager role at another company. I heard back from the recruiter that the manager role was filled, but they were still hiring for tech leads. I really want to work at this company, so I asked to interview for a tech lead role. But I really want to be a manager. I’m tempted to ask if they’d be willing to then interview me as if I were a candidate for the manager position I originally applied for. Should I try to show them my readiness for a manager role (even though they no longer have a manager role available) just so I can be top of mind when a manager role opens up? Or should I just be happy falling back into the tech lead ranks and try to prove myself over time? I really don’t mind starting out in the tech lead role and moving back up to management when I’m settled in at the company and an opportunity presents itself, but I can’t help but wonder if I could have passed the bar for the manager role I originally applied for.

In this episode, Dave and Jamison answer these questions: Questions Hi Over time I have heard many different terms that all seem to equate to “I no longer have a job”. Some examples are quit, fired, laid off and terminated. What is the difference between these (and others) and what is best (both from benefits and emotionally) for the employee and the employer? Note I am not planning to quit my job or fire someone, but I am curious to hear your views. Hey guys, I love your podcast and find it super helpful for me as I start my career in tech. I am in a conundrum. I am a student and I took the opportunity Covid presented me to take up two internships instead of one. Both are at top companies. My question is I am feeling like I am drowning in work, how do I navigate through this and what are your general thoughts. Thank you in advance!

Topics covered in this podcast include the purpose of one-on-one meetings, a power struggle between front-end, back-end, and design teams, the importance of open conversations and healthy collaboration, and bridging the ownership gap within a team.

In this episode, Dave and Jamison answer these questions: Questions Listener Ryan asks, I am the only full-time software engineer at a relatively small company. There is also a contractor who has been with the company off and on for about 25 years. How do I manage playing multiple roles when the development team is so small? I take the role of software engineer, team lead, software architect, product owner, project manager, designer, QA, etc. Some of those roles are full time jobs. How do I still make progress on development (i.e. coding)? Hey guys, love the show. My question is this. I work in a small startup. About a year ago our team documented what our git workflow would look like. We agreed on things like rebasing instead of merging to master, and never squashing our commits into one, that sort of thing. One of our developers is now making a fuss about following these rules and constantly does their own thing. After speaking to them about it, they shut me down and said it is up to the individual developer to decide how they use these tools. There have been some heated discussion on merge requests with this person telling our senior devs that they don’t want to hear their opinions. This person started at the company 6 months before me, and I am only a junior engineer myself so I’m not sure if there is really anything I can do. I have been at the company for 2 years now. I have offered to help them learn how to use git the way our team agreed but was told “no thanks, I’ll do it my way”. What is the best way to navigate this situation? Is this something I should escalate to my manager, or should I just get over it? Thanks for the help, can’t wait to hear you rip this one apart :P

In this episode, Dave and Jamison answer these questions: Questions We have just today been told that we may or may not have a job in 1 week. I feel lucky because I handed my notice in yesterday for a new job, but my colleagues are not in such a position. The company burned through all it’s money, and its only hope is that someone or some company who wants to buy the business in its current state. How would you approach a situation like this? Is it best to just jump ship right away? What would potential new employers think when you told them the situation? What about my co-workers? Long time listener, first time caller asker. How do I tell my boss I can’t complete a task? I’ve been with my current company for 6 months. In that time I’ve fixed a lot of problems that have blocked our current embedded system project because of my hardware design background. Sometimes I take a bit longer than projected, but I’ve been upfront about that and it’s all fine. I was trying to implement a new feature and it was meant to take around 3 days of work to do, but after 3 weeks I just couldn’t quite get it to work. I asked for help and pulled out every trick in my arsenal and just couldn’t figure it out. I ended up having to tell my boss that I was out of ideas and letting him tell me to shelve it, but I could tell this disappointed him. What should I do next time? Show Notes https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D4tvZJGNIhM https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gnolia

In this episode, Dave and Jamison answer these questions: My manager has left, so I have the task of interviewing candidates for my future boss’ position. I’m not doing it alone, one more engineering lead joins me for my tech round. After this round, the candidate gets to talk to upper management for the final decision. My question is, what are the lines you should never ever cross in an interview when interviewing your future boss. Our company was purchased by a private equity firm this year. Layoffs began immediately. While the company was gradually carved up, leadership continually violated every promise made. This week, during the most recent round of layoffs, I lost my job. I worked my butt off for years trying to contribute as much as I could to make a positive impact for both users and coworkers. Alas, despite all of my efforts, I was proven expendable. It feels like there was little point in doing as much as I did for this company, especially during the panicked response to COVID. How do I find and sustain a sense of security at the next company? How do I ensure that I can safely care about the company—the work done and the people helping to do it—finding that precarious balance between being invaluable and burning myself out?

In this episode, Dave and Jamison answer these questions: I’ve been working at a big software company for two years. Since joining, 10 people have left my team, which is more than 50% of my team. Usually it’s the experienced developers who leave either for a different team, a different role or a different company altogether. The latest departure of a peer who I’ve been looking up to as a brilliant developer has been affecting my mood quite strongly. On one hand, I should be glad that I’m becoming a more pivotal member of the team, having moved up in the “seniority chain”. On the other hand, I’ve always believed the saying: “If you’re the smartest person in the room, then you’re in the wrong room”. Should I be concerned about this turnover rate? Is it considered normal? Why am I feeling different about this last departure than all of the previous ones? I am the tech lead on a team at a large tech company. One of the developers on our team has consistently struggled to meet deadlines and project deliverables. He frequently seems to invent his way into impossibly complex software problems. Additionally, he also seems to lack the ability to focus on a single thread, and tries to tackle diverse kinds of work in parallel. I’ve tried to help mentor and coach him, advising him to stick to one problem at a time and try to raise his hand and has for help before he backs himself into a hermeneutically sealed NP-hard problem — but I haven’t had much success. I wanted to see if you guys had any advice. Thanks a million!!! Actual study showing actual results that we actually linked in the show notes this episode: https://radford.aon.com/insights/infographics/2017/technology/q1-2017-turnover-rates-hiring-sentiment-by-industry-at-us-technology-companies

In this episode, Dave and Jamison answer these questions: Hi there Dave and Jamison! I am a tech lead in a small team of 5 people. 4 of them start working at 10-11 AM and one of them likes to start working at 1-2 PM. This person is me. Due to my biorhythm I feel I am the most productive at this time, and I also like to do some of the non-work-related stuff in the morning. Nobody in my team has any objections but as a team lead I feel guilty because it often happens that I block someone with my work schedule. I’m trying to do as much as I can to unblock everyone - distributing tasks in the evening, making it clear everyone knows what to do - but that’s not always helpful so it usually turns out that I am stopping my morning tasks to have a call and explain something or have a text conversation. Tbh it irritates me very much :D Should I feel guilty? As a tech lead, am I responsible for working at the same time everyone does? Hey Dave and Jamison! I love the show, I’ve listened to every episode and your advice has helped me a TON! I started a new job in a different city a month ago and because of Covid-19 everyone went remote, so I didn’t physically move to that city then. Now there are talks of going back to the office, and one of the developers on my team is also looking for a place to live so we started talking about rooming together. It seemed fine to me but then I realized I’d be spending almost ALL of my time with this person who I have not even met in real life yet. Do you think this is a good idea with a lot of convenience or a recipe for disaster? Have you ever lived with a co-worker? Any advice would be great. Thanks!

In this episode, Dave and Jamison answer these questions: My question is regarding studying and learning new material. Before I got my job as a web developer, I was studying at least 2 hours per night, but now that I have the job (been in the job for 2 years), I want to come home and relax. How much time do you spend reading about new technology or working on new projects? Do you do it while at work or at home at your own time? I plan on getting a new job in the future and I feel I need to start studying again. I need to refresh my skills on different algorithm questions. My GitHub is empty because I haven’t worked on new projects since I got the job. Should I worry about that? How much studying should I do for future interviews? Do I need to listen to hard skill engineering podcasts to be up to date on new technology? If I’m not doing any of these already, does that mean I’m not passionate enough and I won’t do well in this career? I just had a 1:1 with a junior engineer I’m mentoring. He mentioned that he has difficulty compartmentalizing work from his personal life (for example, even when he’s not working, he can’t stop thinking about his code and edge cases and possible bugs missed). Got any life hacks to help him care less?

In this episode, Dave and Jamison answer these questions: Is a “glue person” valuable on a software team? Someone who isn’t the strongest developer but is liked by teammates and builds a cohesive team dynamic. A while ago I interviewed with a big company. Right after completing a code challenge, covid-19 got out of hand in my country and they sent me an email saying they are putting the process on hold. Weeks have passed and I came across a job opportunity posted recently by the company for the position I was applying to. I felt betrayed. I emailed the recruiter asking for follow-up and she said that they are sorry about the situation and that they wanted to schedule a meeting. The question is, should I let them know I was displeased by this or is this really a non-issue? Do I risk my chances by doing so? Am I acting like a jealous teenager? Thanks a lot and love the podcast, stay safe!!