In this episode, Dave and Jamison answer these questions:

Shan writes:

“Awesome podcast! I’ve used your advice to better communicate with my employers which has been super helpful.

I recently was working as an intern at a company where I did quite a bit of significant work. I left to pursue a Master’s in CS. I set the expectation that I would be available for questions, but not bug fixes during at least the beginning part of grad school. The company said that was totally fine and they would take any amount of work I could give them.

I’ve noticed some bugs that have to do with what I was working on. I feel really bad for my team having to work on those bugs while I’m not. It is getting to the point that it is distracting me during the day as I see emails or Slack messages about them. I want to help them, but I just don’t have the time. I am also worried that the reputation I built up of being a solid engineer is damaged.

Should I apologize to my teammates that have to work on my now legacy code?

I have this feeling of having abandoned my team. Any thoughts on how to mitigate those feelings?

I work as software engineer at a ~10 person software agency.