Soft Skills Engineering

Vote for Soft Skills Engineering on the Hackernoon Noonies awards for best Dev Podcast ! In this episode, Dave and Jamison answer these questions: How do I stop getting angry at other peoples’ code? Often when solving a complicated problem or implementing a feature, I have to modify or at least use systems designed by someone else. Often I find myself thinking ““Why did they do it like this??? Thi...

Vote for Soft Skills Engineering on the Hackernoon Noonies awards for best Dev Podcast ! In this episode, Dave and Jamison answer these questions: One of my co-workers at the software company I currently work on has an ‘uncommon’ set of beliefs that include, among many other things, a strong mistrust of mainstream science. He is currently very concerned about the effect that Wi-Fi signals have on...

In this episode, Dave and Jamison answer these questions: Hey there. I don’t program I administrate in IT but you’re my favorite podcast, awesome job, never stop. I ran into a crazy situation that is WAY above my soft skills ability to deal with so I am seeking wisdom. I was working with someone from HR on a OneNote syncing problem. I asked someone to log in and let me look at the notebook in ques...

In this episode, Dave and Jamison answer these questions: We’ve all been on that tour of that local startup that is showing you around their office pointing out all of the amenities. “Over there? That’s our foosball table!” You notice no one is playing it and the table and players all look very new and haven’t seen much action. You get down to the interview and at the end they ask you if you have...

In this episode, Dave and Jamison answer these questions: I’m so glad I discovered your podcast last week! You guys are hilarious (I laugh to myself in the car) and you talk about issues that I have thought about since coming into the “adult world”. I’m a new CS grad and have started as a new hire at the company I interned with last summer. I’m on my third week of full-time employment but I still...

In this episode, Dave and Jamison answer these questions: I recently joined a startup. After joining I realized most of the engineers are gamers. They play games during the lunch hour, and if we end up having lunch together, everyone is talking about the game that they are playing or some news in the gaming circle. As a non-gamer and introvert, I find it different to join in their conversation. Ho...

In this episode, Dave and Jamison answer these questions: Hello, First of all, I love the show, thank you so much for the amazing work! I always think I’m going to be fired. I’m an extremely anxious person so I feel the need for constant feedback and for someone to tell me everything is alright. Minor problems send me into absolute despair. How can I deal with such anxiety? I frequently ask my man...

In this episode, Dave and Jamison answer these questions: I recently joined a new team to help rewrite a batch job whose source code has long been lost. After taking some time to learn the tech stack and the business problem, I realized that the current approach will not let us meet our nightly deadline. Even a very generous back of the envelope estimate suggests that we’ll miss it by two orders o...

In this episode, Dave and Jamison answer these questions: How do I quit my first job if I’m working with a manager I love? I started my first full-time job about two years ago and I’m starting to think about looking for a new job, both because I am ready for new challenges and I’m ready to move to a new city. I have a great working relationship with my boss, so a part of me wants to tell her about...

In this episode, Dave and Jamison answer these questions: Hey guys, I’ve graduated with a CS degree 8 years ago, but due to circumstances I accepted a QA job because I wasn’t getting any other offers. Well 8 years later, I’m still stuck in QA and would love to move into development. I tried transferring within companies and applying to developer jobs, but the QA brand is holding me back. Any advic...

In this episode, Dave and Jamison answer these questions: Is it weird to have 1-1s but not with my ‘manager’? Management is planning to start holding ‘1-1s’ every 6-8 weeks for the development team. The purpose of these 1-1s: ~ ‘So you can talk about non-technical things, any issues with the team or things that are making you unhappy.’ But these 1-1s be with someone who is nominally ‘HR’, not our...

In this episode, Dave and Jamison answer these questions: I’m a hiring manager and sometimes have to say no to candidates who interview with us. How do I reject them kindly? In my current company, they only care about reputation of the company. They don’t care about their employees or values, they prefer to invest in other things. One time the CEO asked everyone in the company to create fake accou...

This episode is sponsored by the O’Reilly Velocity conference. Register today and use discount code SKILLS for a 20% discount: http://velocityconf.com/skills . In this episode, Dave and Jamison answer these questions: I was unhappy at my job despite having a great manager, so I started interviewing around. Then my manager helped improve things considerably, but I ended up getting a job offer that...

This episode is sponsored by the O’Reilly Velocity conference. Register today and use discount code SKILLS for a 20% discount: http://velocityconf.com/skills . In this episode, Dave and Jamison answer these questions: I became a manager a year go. I took over someone as my direct report who was not performing well at the time. On my first day, I gave a motivational chat to welcome him again to the...

This episode is sponsored by the O’Reilly Velocity conference. Register today and use discount code SKILLS for a 20% discount: http://velocityconf.com/skills . In this episode, Dave and Jamison answer these questions: Hey! I love your podcast, you have definitely helped me improve my soft skills in my career. I am a full stack web developer and I have been pretty much loving it. Web development wa...

This episode is sponsored by the O’Reilly Velocity conference. Register today and use discount code SKILLS for a 20% discount: http://velocityconf.com/skills . In this episode, Dave and Jamison answer these questions: Hello! Thank you for the show! What do you think about employee monitoring software? I received a message from a company about a job position and they use such software. It seems wei...

This episode is sponsored by the O’Reilly Velocity conference. Register today and use discount code SKILLS for a 20% discount: http://velocityconf.com/skills . In this episode, Dave and Jamison answer these questions: I keep getting asked to interview new candidates. But my interview feedback history is pretty bad. I’ve said yes to hiring: Someone who’s super smart, but drives me absolutely crazy...

This episode is a rerun of episode 71 from August 2017. In this episode, Dave and Jamison answer these questions: I’m sometimes an informal lead on project teams. How do I help the team get stuff done as a peer? How do I deal with burnout after an extended period of crunch time? Jamison mentions the blog post by Jamis Buck called To Smile Again where he talks about his experiences with burnout.

In this episode, Dave and Jamison answer these questions: Hi guys! Big fan of the show. Here’s a question: What to do if I hate working in pairs? I’m in a tricky situation. I work on a great project in a team of great people We try to implement all the good programming practices. Retrospectives, cross-review, working in pairs.. I hate working in pairs. I am a typical introvert-programmer and the t...

In this episode, Dave and Jamison answer these questions: I have a lot of software developer colleagues who are 20 - 35 years old but none 50+. At what age does a software engineer’s career end? Hi Dave and Jamison, thanks for the great podcast. I recently started a new position on a small remote team. The co-founders are increasingly dismayed by my lack of Slack-question-asking, although I have r...

In this episode, Dave and Jamison answer these questions: I worked for four years doing web development for a company while I got my degree, and loved it. I eventually became the lead developer because I had been on the team the longest. I thought it was really cool. I worked with the team to make organizational tech decisions, trained new hires, held regular meetings to discuss projects. After ab...

Joining us this episode is special guest Nedda Amini ! In this episode, Nedda, Dave, and Jamison answer these questions: My engineering career started out pretty promising. But along the way, I took a couple of unfortunate decisions and jobs, that instead of helping me grow as an engineer, were a big setback. When you career takes a few too many bad turns, how do you steer it back to where you wan...

In this episode, Dave and Jamison answer these questions: I’ve been an engineer for about 5 years and in the last two jobs, rock-star programmers have made my life very difficult. I define rock star programmers as ones with ability to produce lots of code and implement features at a pace that dwarfs my own. In my last job, the RSP would constantly rewrite core libraries and I would have to figure...

In this episode, Dave and Jamison answer these questions: I work in a flat organization. There aren’t really any titles, and very few managers. There is no common “climbing the ladder” here. What are options for career growth that will help me feel confident that I am progressing in my career? How do references work? I’m starting to look for a new job which means potential employers are going to b...

In this episode, Dave and Jamison answer these questions: Hi guys! I was faced with quite a dilemma recently. A few days ago one of my co-workers said he was sick and worked from home. But the next day he came to office, constantly sneezing and looking terrible, and for some reason finished the day in the office. The same happened the day after that. I didn’t want to be rude and I felt for this gu...