Soft Skills Engineering

Episode 390: Fixing typos and Cassandra


Listen Later

In this episode, Dave and Jamison answer these questions:

  1. I’m a backend engineer at a large non-public company. I noticed a bunch of our emails and website riddled with typos. I can not claim that it is metrics impacting or impacting business, so I get that teams always deprioritize, but the overall feel just irks me. Many of these come from a CMS I don’t have access too, so it’s not like I could offer to help with code even if I wanted. When things like this are not in your space, any advice on how to up overall quality?

  2. Possibly Mute Senior Engineer asks,

    I’m currently a senior engineer in a really small startup, and I’ve been here just long enough that I’m deeply familiar with our flagship product in multiple areas - infrastructure, the guts of the business logic, our deployment patterns, our most common failure modes, etc. Unfortunately, I have to be involved in every project and pick the application up off the ground when it dies. As a result, I’ve become spread very thin, and I have to cut corners just to stay afloat (or I am specifically directed to cut corners to meet a deadline). Frequently (because of all the corner cutting), we run into two situations that really tick me off:

    • I see bad thing on the horizon, talk to my team about it, am ignored, then bad thing happens and I get to have a crappy day fixing it
    • I recommend a basic best practice, we don’t use it and do some coat hanger + duct tape thing instead, thing breaks, and I get to have a crappy day fixing it.
    • I’m very tired of being on the wrong end of the consequences of our own actions. I pour so much into this job, but I feel like I need to go get my vocal cords inspected, because it’s like my teammates and my manager can’t hear me when I talk about the things we’re doing poorly that lead to bad outcomes.

      Quit my job? Or is there an easy way to deal with this situation that I’m just missing? I feel like I’m screaming into the void every time I have these discussions and get completely blown off with “oh that’s not important right now” or “oh that terrible thing could never happen”. Thanks in advance!

      ...more
      View all episodesView all episodes
      Download on the App Store

      Soft Skills EngineeringBy Jamison Dance and Dave Smith

      • 4.8
      • 4.8
      • 4.8
      • 4.8
      • 4.8

      4.8

      281 ratings


      More shows like Soft Skills Engineering

      View all
      Software Engineering Radio - the podcast for professional software developers by se-radio@computer.org

      Software Engineering Radio - the podcast for professional software developers

      271 Listeners

      .NET Rocks! by Carl Franklin and Richard Campbell

      .NET Rocks!

      243 Listeners

      The Changelog: Software Development, Open Source by Changelog Media

      The Changelog: Software Development, Open Source

      283 Listeners

      Thoughtworks Technology Podcast by Thoughtworks

      Thoughtworks Technology Podcast

      41 Listeners

      Talk Python To Me by Michael Kennedy

      Talk Python To Me

      583 Listeners

      Software Engineering Daily by Software Engineering Daily

      Software Engineering Daily

      627 Listeners

      Data Engineering Podcast by Tobias Macey

      Data Engineering Podcast

      141 Listeners

      Syntax - Tasty Web Development Treats by Wes Bos & Scott Tolinski - Full Stack JavaScript Web Developers

      Syntax - Tasty Web Development Treats

      986 Listeners

      REWORK by 37signals

      REWORK

      211 Listeners

      The freeCodeCamp Podcast by freeCodeCamp.org

      The freeCodeCamp Podcast

      484 Listeners

      CoRecursive: Coding Stories by Adam Gordon Bell - Software Developer

      CoRecursive: Coding Stories

      190 Listeners

      Practical AI by Practical AI LLC

      Practical AI

      189 Listeners

      The Stack Overflow Podcast by The Stack Overflow Podcast

      The Stack Overflow Podcast

      63 Listeners

      Oxide and Friends by Oxide Computer Company

      Oxide and Friends

      58 Listeners

      The Pragmatic Engineer by Gergely Orosz

      The Pragmatic Engineer

      62 Listeners