Soft Skills Engineering

By Jamison Dance and Dave SmithBusiness Technology

Soft Skills Engineering episodes

December 28, 2017Episode 89: Departed Engineers and Employment Contracts
This week Jamison and Dave answer these questions:
How do I deal with co-workers who constantly cite the decisions of engineers who don’t work here anymore?

My employment makes it sound like the company owns my past work and side-projects. Is this true? Is this normal?
31 min
December 22, 2017Episode 88: How To Dress For Interviews and Learning To Interview
This week Jamison and Dave answer these questions:
How do you dress for interviews? Full on informal beach bum? Smart casual? Formal suit tie?

I’m a new developer and have been asked to interview incoming developers. How do I learn how to interview?
This is the NoRedInk interview process. This is the blog post Jamison likes on getting data out of the technical portion of the interview. This is a slightly pessimistic look at pitfalls in the standard interview process. Google wrote a great article about structured interviewing that might also be helpful.
39 min
December 14, 2017Episode 87: Pushover Coworkers and Productivity Metrics
This week Jamison and Dave answer these questions:
My peers give up and say “have it your way” whenever we have technical discussions. How do I get them to be more vocal about their opinions?

I like the idea of measuring things, but metrics seem easy to game. How do I effectively measure team and personal productivity?
Jamison cites this tweet and this blog post about examining your own productivity.
48 min
December 07, 2017Episode 86: Sharing Salaries and Offensive Words
This week Jamison and Dave answer these questions:
Could you (Jamison and Dave) share some salary information publicly? It would help to know how much others make.

My boss uses an offensive word in technical discussions. How do I ask him to stop?
35 min
November 30, 2017Episode 85: Annoying Know-it-alls and Company Headshots
This week Jamison and Dave answer these questions:
One of my co-workers is a know-it-all, which is pretty annoying. How do I work with them?

A former employer still has my photo on their team website eight years after I left. How do I get them to take it down?
25 min
November 23, 2017Episode 84: Shy Developers and Outsourced Architecture
This week Jamison and Dave answer these questions:
I work with a very shy and anxious remote developer. How do I work effectively with them?

Our manager is outsourcing the core architecture of our next products to an offshore team. How do I tell him I think this is a bad idea?
27 min
November 16, 2017Episode 83: Gaps In The Resume and Moving To Business
This week Jamison and Dave answer these questions:
I think I’ve saved enough money to get out of the rat race. If something goes wrong and I need to get a job again, how do I explain a long gap in my resume?

I like writing code but I’m interested in moving to a more business-focused role. How can I test this without burning bridges? Do I need to take a pay cut?
27 min
November 09, 2017Episode 82: Blow Ups and Job Security
This week Jamison and Dave answer these questions:
How do I smooth things over after a blow-up between team members?

A team mate admits he writes bad code on purpose for job security. What do I do?
37 min
November 02, 2017Episode 81: Unwilling To Grow and Forced Out During Two Weeks Notice
This week Jamison and Dave answer these questions:
A developer on a team I lead doesn’t seem interested in growing. How do I help them engage more?

I gave two weeks notice, but was told part of the way through to not come in any more. I still had work left and this made me feel bad. Is this common? Did I do anything wrong?
Jamison talks about the Khan Academy engineering culture. He kinda misquoted it though. They don’t explicitly say they lay people off who don’t progress.
26 min
October 29, 2017Episode 80: New Team Leads and Constant Follow Up
This week Jamison and Dave answer these questions:
How do I keep up with new tech as a team lead?

I manage a team. A manager from a different team wants me to run everything I do in my team by him. What do I do?
Jamison mentions this by Charity Majors on the pendulum between technical and people leadership.
Jamison also mentions this HBR article on employee happiness.
32 min

About Soft Skills Engineering

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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…