Soft Skills Engineering

In this episode, Dave and Jamison answer these questions:

1. Listener Myamax myamax says,

   I just listened to episode 527 and could really use some advice on being good at interviews.

   I was recently laid off with a decent severance package, so I have some breathing space. I’ve had several interviews, and I usually get past the initial screenings, but I don’t shine in technical rounds.

   I’m a...

In this episode, Dave and Jamison answer these questions:

1. Hi Jamison and Dave, jesters of my daily commute. I’m a *mechanical* engineer at a megacorp, and since people are people, I find most of your advice transfers pretty well.

   I’m the tech lead within a small-ish org of about 25 people. We’re in-office, and split between two locations (in a similar time zone), and multiple different projects. ...

In this episode, Dave and Jamison answer these questions:

1. A listener named “Will angel answer my question?” asks,

   Hi, I recently joined a new company about 1.5 months ago. It is the technology arm of a family-owned business group that has existed for over 30 years, providing technology services to all the other companies in the group.

   After a one-week onboarding, I was assigned to a team. After 2&...

In this episode, Dave and Jamison answer these questions:

1. Hello Dave and Jamison!

   I’m a longtime listener going back to the early days of the podcast, and I’ve listened to every episode since. When I started listening, I was beginning my career as a software engineer. Your advice has truly helped shape how I think about work, engineering, leadership, and all the weird human stuff that comes with buildi...

In this episode, Dave and Jamison answer these questions:

1. Hi Dave & Jamison! I’ve been listening for almost a year now and have worked through nearly your entire back catalog in reverse. The podcast has genuinely helped me become a better engineer, so thank you!

   I’m two years into my software engineer career at a large infrastructure company. I was promoted to SWE II last year, and this year my man...

In this episode, Dave and Jamison answer these questions:

1. Hey Dave and Jamison, First, I love your show and it has now been part of my Monday evening routine for many years to listen to your podcast while cooking dinner.

   I recently joined a mid-sized software company (500 people) as a senior data engineer. The salary is a significant bump from my previous job and I really like the team on a personal level. Three m...

In this episode, Dave and Jamison answer these questions:

1. I work for a small software company on a team of about 7 or 8 engineers. I like working here. I like the people, the autonomy, the pay, my boss, and the stack among other things. I try to remind myself of this regularly so I don’t take it for granted. I’ve been here for about 2.5 years and would love to continue working here.

   Our CTO, like many,...

This is a rerun of episode 331.

In this episode, Dave and Jamison answer these questions:

1. Listener ninjamonkey says,

   I am a new grad who is half a year into the role now at a very large company. Recently, a senior engineer on my team asked me to create a ticket for an infra team for a problem with a service. I provided logs and steps to reproduce the issue and did a health check before submitting.

   Right afte...

In this episode, Dave and Jamison answer these questions:

1. I stayed too long at my first company and now my career is ruined?

   Hi both, long time listener. (Since I graduated university 4 years ago actually and felt I could never find a job but listening to you guys made me feel not like such an outcast in our field.)

   I graduated in 2022. Didn’t really apply around much and almost immediately accepted the...

In this episode, Dave and Jamison answer these questions:

1. Dwill Ainghell asks,

   During the golden era of software development, it was commonly stated that you should always negotiate job offers. The argument was that the company has invested significant time and resources into you as a candidate and there is always some wiggle room for negotiations. A popular article / podcast by Patrick McKenzie likened it to doin...

In this episode, Dave and Jamison answer these questions:

1. Hey Dave & Jamison,

   Long time listener. Love the podcast.

   I recently rejoined a remote team that I worked with in the past. I was super stoked to rejoin this team because they were collectively one of the most competent and technically excellent teams I’ve ever worked with. And they’re all genuinely nice people as well.

   I left the ...

In this episode, Dave and Jamison answer these questions:

1. Hi D&J! Question from Sweden!

   I’m a senior dev that have seen a lot of orgs without tech lead and/or staff engineer roles. I know some companies have them, but mostly newer more techy companies. Bigger older less techy companies usually have non-coding “architects”. Though that’s one title I have no good experience of, just neutr...

In this episode, Dave and Jamison answer these questions:

1. I have been at a small startup company for 5 years now. It’s a very small technical team, 4 devs and a tech lead that contributes code & architecture. I am getting a small raise this week for my 5 years but it’s a smaller raise than I was expecting. We’re an all remote team across the globe but I had a dev co worker in the same city as me j...

In this episode, Dave and Jamison answer these questions:

1. Hey guys. This question comes all the way from New Zealand. Recently discovered your podcast about a month ago, and have been catching up with older episodes on morning walks ever since - you guys are awesome. Anyway - the question: Is it more beneficial to work for a company where the software itself is the product (SaaS etc) or does it no longer matter given t...

In this episode, Dave and Jamison answer these questions:

1. My company follows scrum, with daily standups. We got a new scrum master. He is very formal and procedural and I struggle with our daily meetings.

   He goes through a long list of assigned tickets, asking each ticket owner about status and info on progress. We are all engineers with many years of experience but it feels like we are in the kindergarten. We don...

In this episode, Dave and Jamison answer these questions:

1. Hi from a long-time listener and first-time caller. I need some advice on a toxic workplace situation.

   I’m currently unhappy with my job due to a difficult dynamic with a colleague. My manager put us on the same team, meaning we share responsibility for our output. Although this colleague is technically a level below me, they act as though they have s...

In this episode, Dave and Jamison answer these questions:

1. My parent organization has trust issues: we registered on a recent survey as one of the lowest across the bigger software org (thousands of employees).

   There are two groups: functional, trustworthy people who get stuff done, and people who are behind, stuck, or just not working. Those struggling say they need better emotional support, but there is consisten...

In this episode, Dave and Jamison answer these questions:

1. How long until I am ethically obligated to let my company know I’m doing no work? There was a big re-org at the company I recently joined. It’s a huge financial company, so there’s a lot of bureaucracy. Somehow in this mess I was kicked off the first team I joined so that I was pending re-assignment. It’s been a month and I haven’t ...

In this episode, Dave and Jamison answer these questions:

1. Should I declare my struggle with this AI world we live in here? Nah. I mean, I’d like the hype to die down, a lot, but we keep getting new tools and I get to experiment, so here we are.

   My real struggle, and this podcast is implicated in it, is around non-technical people contributing to production systems. Why are we so obsessed with this idea?

   ...