Soft Skills Engineering

By Jamison Dance and Dave Smith

Technology

What's Soft Skills Engineering about?

It takes more than great code to be a great engineer. Soft Skills Engineering is a weekly advice podcast for software developers about the non-technical stuff that goes into being a great software developer.

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LAST EPISODE

Episode 384: EM missing cod...

11.27.2023

In this episode, Dave and Jamison answer these questions: A listener named Jay asks, Over the past eight years I’ve been promoted from Software Dev to Team Lead and then to Engineering Manager. After two years as an EM, it ...

Soft Skills Engineering episodes:

11.27.2023 Episode 384: EM missing code and non-location pay In this episode, Dave and Jamison answer these questions: A listener named Jay asks, Over the past eight years I’ve been promoted from Software Dev to Team Lead and then to Engineering Manager. After two years as an EM, it ...
11.20.2023 Episode 383: In the trenches without writing code and how to close a social skill gap In this episode, Dave and Jamison answer these questions: I recently started the interviewing for a senior engineering manager role at a fairly prestigious, but not huge (maybe 30-50 engineers) tech company. The job description heavily emphasized the idea of ...
11.13.2023 Episode 382: Mentors for managers and mob programming In this episode, Dave and Jamison answer these questions: There aren’t a lot of engineering management growth resources in my company. It’s a relatively small company with about 50 engineers. My manager doesn’t have time to properly mentor me. And ...
11.06.2023 Episode 381: Doing less and bad reference In this episode, Dave and Jamison answer these questions: My company is doing performance reviews. While writing my self-review, I was shocked by how much I had accomplished in the last 6 months. I’d led our org to adopt multiple ...
10.30.2023 Episode 380: Overruled by non-technical manager and describing technical stuff to non-technical people In this episode, Dave and Jamison answer these questions: Listener Ashleigh asks, I’m a mid-level developer at a small company with a non-technical manager. After several months working on migrating our users from a legacy system to our new system, ...
10.23.2023 Episode 379: Someone fixed my ticket and is tech debt bad for my career In this episode, Dave and Jamison answer these questions: “Hi! Love the show, long time listener. So an architect noticed an issue with credentials embedded into request body being logged. I had planned to resolve that, and someone already had ...
10.16.2023 Episode 378: Too much leadership and awkward zoom silence In this episode, Dave and Jamison answer these questions: I’ve managed an ML team in a small company for ~2 years now. I created an 8 person team from scratch and I’m super proud of the team I’ve built. However, ...
10.09.2023 Episode 377: Short Tenure Promotion and too much free time at work In this episode, Dave and Jamison answer these questions: Hi, I’m a senior software engineer at a big tech company, where I’ve been employed for precisely one year. So far, the feedback I’ve received has been overwhelmingly positive. My manager ...
10.02.2023 Episode 376: Return to office and quitting tech In this episode, Dave and Jamison answer these questions: I applied and was hired for a 100% telecommute position. Recently, the company has mandated all employees near an office switch to a hybrid schedule. I’m looking at an hour or ...
09.25.2023 Episode 375: visa woes and Bob does everything wrong In this episode, Dave and Jamison answer these questions: I work as a Software Engineering Manager at the European office of a US company. Recently, many of my colleagues successfully obtained US visas for an upcoming business trip. When it ...
09.18.2023 Episode 374: Secret burnout and no room for failure In this episode, Dave and Jamison answer these questions: Morning! I will cut straight to the chase: I’m burned out and tired. At the same time, I’m aiming to get a promotion during the next cycle. My manager is aware ...
09.11.2023 Episode 373: I have no vision and not-so-positive environment In this episode, Dave and Jamison answer these questions: Love the show, you guys have saved my bacon more times than I can count! I interviewed at an organization for a Senior Engineering role, but the interview went so well, ...
09.04.2023 Episode 372: Equity and getting interrupted in Zoom meetings In this episode, Dave and Jamison answer these questions: I joined a startup at the peak of the tech bubble which sadly means that my equity was based on the company’s valuation which was very over-valued. To corroborate this, the ...
08.28.2023 Episode 371: After Mary Poppins and credit denied In this episode, Dave and Jamison answer these questions: Kate asks, Hi Dave and Jamison! I’m in a situation where my predecessor, Jane, was a super helpful “Mary Poppins” type. She did anything and everything beyond her role for the ...
08.21.2023 Episode 370: Fake imposter syndrome and opposite ends In this episode, Dave and Jamison answer these questions: Hello Jave and Dames, Long time listener short time Dev. Big fan of the show, my confidence in my skills as a programmer has always been pretty low so having a ...
08.14.2023 Episode 369: Staying at a sinking ship and behavioral interview questions 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 ...
08.07.2023 Episode 368: Manager in crisis and cutting costs In this episode, Dave and Jamison answer these questions: I am a senior engineer working in a team of 7. My team lead went through a pretty rough divorce in December. Since then he’s been quite distracted and disengaged at ...
07.31.2023 Episode 367: Hybrid denier and recovering from crying In this episode, Dave and Jamison answer these questions: We’ve recently switched to mandatory 2 days of in-person work a week but my employee keeps working from home! Whenever I ask him to come in person he says sure but ...
07.24.2023 Episode 366: No FE work and my co-worker is a parrot In this episode, Dave and Jamison answer these questions: I’ve been working with this fintech company for the past year as the only FE developer in a team with other 6 BE developers, but recently, I’ve noticed that the product ...
07.17.2023 Episode 365: Rerun of 307, side hustles and telling me when you are stuck This is a rerun of episode 307. Enjoy! In this episode, Dave and Jamison answer these questions: I work for a big bank. I recently found out I am severely underpaid. I have only received “exceeds expectations” ratings since joining ...
07.10.2023 Episode 364: EMs doing technical tasks and too soft? In this episode, Dave and Jamison answer these questions: Do you think an EM should only be involved with management tasks, and let the members handle the technical stuff, or should they have some technical expertise to manage things like ...
07.03.2023 Episode 363: Future impact of tech stacks and async communication In this episode, Dave and Jamison answer these questions: Listener Thor asks, Is there a chance the tech stack I choose throughout my career will hurt my chances to shift direction towards project leading/managing in the future? Say, I do ...
06.26.2023 Episode 362: Running the clock down and updating linkedin without freaking people out In this episode, Dave and Jamison answer these questions: Greetings from Germany! My job is creating a customized Windows installation image with PowerShell & C#. It takes about 2 hours to build and test an image. Sometimes I have to ...
06.19.2023 Episode 361: Get git and non-tech ramping up In this episode, Dave and Jamison answer these questions: Listener Schtolteheim Reinbach III asks, Hey soft skills engineering, love you guys. I work at a company you wouldn’t hear much about, on a product that you wouldn’t think about as ...
06.12.2023 Episode 360: Mixing up names and improving without feedback In this episode, Dave and Jamison answer these questions: At work, I occasionally mix names of people in my team when I refer to them in meetings. My mother used to do this with my siblings when I was a ...
06.05.2023 Episode 359: Competition and awkward in person In this episode, Dave and Jamison answer these questions: Hi Dave and Jamison! What do you do when one of your immediate teammates is constantly competing against you? I really don’t like competition. Ignoring the competitiveness + praising his value ...
05.29.2023 Episode 358: Sticky Note Scandal and startup appeal In this episode, Dave and Jamison answer these questions: During our next team meeting I jokingly gave a status report on the state of my desk and referenced the note. I believe this was the first time someone had publicly ...
05.22.2023 Episode 357: Waiting to be paid and survivor's guilt In this episode, Dave and Jamison answer these questions: A listener Steve asks, How long is too long to wait to be paid? I’ve worked for 4 early stage startups in my career. Two were successful. One failed. My current ...
05.15.2023 Episode 356: Ummmmmmmmm and failed spikes In this episode, Dave and Jamison answer these questions: I recently started listening to your podcast from the very start of the show! One of the largest differences I noticed (aside from the audio quality, lol), is how often you ...
05.08.2023 Episode 355: Driving kids instead of team and jk i quit In this episode, Dave and Jamison answer these questions: My architect is too busy with his kids! His kids have had a lot of school and medical issues over the last few months and he’s ended up flexing a lot ...
05.01.2023 Episode 354: Good at circuits, bad at git and ghosts of team members past In this episode, Dave and Jamison answer these questions: I work at a startup that makes embedded devices and the software that runs on them. Everyone on the tech team does both. We recently hired someone to lead the tech ...
04.24.2023 Episode 353: Easter outage and unethical things In this episode, Dave and Jamison answer these questions: I work for a startup with a distributed team. Recently one of our clients experienced a production outage. As a small startup, we do not have an on-call rotation, and teams ...
04.17.2023 Episode 352: Exploding manager and I hate computers In this episode, Dave and Jamison answer these questions: My manager finally exploded. They screamed and insulted our whole team because one teammate had a 4 day delay on a 2 week task. Our manager Theo (fake name) was recently ...
04.10.2023 Episode 351: Senior hoarding and layabout lead dev In this episode, Dave and Jamison answer these questions: I’m not a software engineer, so you can stop reading here if you like ;-). I listen to this show every week as the soft skills you discuss are just as ...
04.03.2023 Episode 350: Bombing a technical interview and background vetting In this episode, Dave and Jamison answer these questions: Hi, have you ever been through a technical interview and bombed a question? I did, and it feels awful, especially when the question was easy but I couldn’t focus due to ...
03.27.2023 Episode 349: Performance review dissonance and being a remote manager In this episode, Dave and Jamison answer these questions: I am a senior engineer looking to make staff. Every week at my one on one I ask my manager what I can do to improve and always receive the answer ...
03.20.2023 Episode 348: Making too many mistakes and low code career risk In this episode, Dave and Jamison answer these questions: Hey Dave and Jamison, long time listener of the show. looking to get your advice on dealing with guilt at work. Lately, I’ve found myself in a lot of situations of ...
03.13.2023 Episode 347: New untrusting manager and crappy project management In this episode, Dave and Jamison answer these questions: Our small team where I work as a senior software engineer has a new engineering manager. They don’t trust me at all and verify simple technical things like how git rebase ...
03.06.2023 Episode 346: Changing jobs with no raise and wrangling a cowboy coder In this episode, Dave and Jamison answer these questions: I recently applied for a job for a great company. The interview went well until we talked compensation. I said I expected to get a pay raise for changing jobs, but ...
02.27.2023 Episode 345: Head of Engineering vs writing code and Voluntary Severance In this episode, Dave and Jamison answer these questions: I have around 14 years of experience and was recently promoted to a Head of Engineering role. I am now leading an engineering department of around 75 people. I’ve become increasingly ...
02.20.2023 Episode 344: Showing impact without hiring and over over over engineering In this episode, Dave and Jamison answer these questions: I’m a senior front end engineer at a medium sized tech company. During the good times of limitless tech growth, a common way for engineers to grow our “impact” (an important ...
02.13.2023 Episode 343: Tech lead/manager and discouraging seniors In this episode, Dave and Jamison answer these questions: A listener named Mike asks, I’ve been offered an Engineering Management position at a company I previously worked for. The team is very small and composed of juniors and mid-level developers. ...
02.06.2023 Episode 342: Losing my job to AI and bad review season In this episode, Dave and Jamison answer these questions: Hello Dave and Jamison, thanks for your great work. Your podcast has the bizarre magical property of making me look forward to long drives. Keep it up! I have been feeling ...
01.30.2023 Episode 341: Offer rescinded and layoff stuff In this episode, Dave and Jamison answer these questions: I am an American student finishing my undergraduate degree in computer science in the Midwest this semester. I am concerned about the economic climate of the technology industry. I am doing ...
01.23.2023 Episode 340: Productivity lulls and code review showdown In this episode, Dave and Jamison answer these questions: A listener Daniel asks, How do I handle periods of time where I am just not productive as I used to be? I’m talking about periods of several weeks. For example, ...
01.16.2023 Episode 339: Coworker double-dipping and building toxic community In this episode, Dave and Jamison answer these questions: I think the new hire on my team is juggling multiple jobs. On several screen shares, I’ve seen them quickly close IDEs with third party code, browser windows with what look ...
01.09.2023 Episode 338: I am the golden handcuffs and Staying in management In this episode, Dave and Jamison answer these questions: Listener Mattoosh asks,‌ I’m the last remaining support specialist on a really old, not actively maintained, but still lucrative SAAS product. I’m stuck. As a front end engineer I want to ...
01.02.2023 Episode 337: Helping the principal and Manager conflict In this episode, Dave and Jamison answer these questions: I am a mid-level engineer with ~5 years of experience (1 year at my current company). My team has recently hired a new principal engineer, and I’m wondering how I can ...
12.26.2022 Episode 336: Roadmap roadkill and returning to office In this episode, Dave and Jamison answer these questions: Dear Dave and Jamison, I work for a medium sized startup, and our planning process sucks! We used to do quarterly planning, and it seemed like the product managers had no ...
12.19.2022 Episode 335: Senior questions and overly optimistic In this episode, Dave and Jamison answer these questions: Greetings Jamison and Dave, love the show and all your shenanigans! I’m a mid-level dev who has quit my job (TM) a few times. While I feel like I’ve absorbed some ...

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