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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In each episode Adam interviews somebody who works in the web world as a designer, developer, manager, advocate, or founder. These are people who have built something awesome or are experts in something awesome. Together we're all building the web of tomorrow.
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Soft Skills Engineering


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Episode 384: EM missing code and non-location pay
25:47
25:47
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25:47
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 helped me a lot financially, I like what I do and I think I’m doing it really well. However, I have two concerns.First, I love …
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Soft Skills Engineering


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Episode 383: In the trenches without writing code and how to close a social skill gap
37:28
37:28
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37:28
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 leading as a peer as opposed to just relying on the EM title. I love this approach, but the…
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Soft Skills Engineering


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Episode 382: Mentors for managers and mob programming
31:58
31:58
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31:58
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 I’m not sure I would want him to because I feel like his advice isn’t always the best. Where can I go …
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Soft Skills Engineering


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Episode 381: Doing less and bad reference
32:53
32:53
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32:53
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 new technologies and supported other teams in adopting them, to great effect. But looking back, I wish I could trade hal…
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Soft Skills Engineering


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Episode 380: Overruled by non-technical manager and describing technical stuff to non-technical people
38:03
38:03
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38:03
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, our non-technical business analyst discovered our current system re-uses lots of code from the legacy…
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Soft Skills Engineering


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Episode 379: Someone fixed my ticket and is tech debt bad for my career
36:20
36:20
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36:20
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 done so for another instance. I took a day or two to figure out how to fix it globally, and even tied it i…
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Soft Skills Engineering


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Episode 378: Too much leadership and awkward zoom silence
29:49
29:49
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29:49
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, I miss being an engineer and wish I could spend more time coding. I was considering asking for a role change to IC, but out of nowhere my …
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Soft Skills Engineering


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Episode 377: Short Tenure Promotion and too much free time at work
28:51
28:51
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28:51
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 has even mentioned that her superiors are impressed with my performance, and my colleagues have shared th…
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Soft Skills Engineering


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Episode 376: Return to office and quitting tech
36:29
36:29
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36:29
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 more round trip and the yearly cost of parking is several thousand dollars. The company also announced to their inve…
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Soft Skills Engineering


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Episode 375: visa woes and Bob does everything wrong
33:53
33:53
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33:53
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 was my turn, everyone said it would be a piece of cake because our company is well-known. However, to my surp…
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Soft Skills Engineering


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Episode 374: Secret burnout and no room for failure
30:28
30:28
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30:28
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 of the latter, but not the former. Should I tell them? I suspect that I would get a lighter work load and less responsibilities, but…
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Soft Skills Engineering


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Episode 373: I have no vision and not-so-positive environment
40:58
40:58
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40:58
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, they actually offered me the option to accept a Staff role! I definitely didn’t feel ready for that, but I accepted as a wa…
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Soft Skills Engineering


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Episode 372: Equity and getting interrupted in Zoom meetings
36:58
36:58
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36:58
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 company has not grown much in terms of users or revenue. The company also had a layoff just like many startups. As even…
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Soft Skills Engineering


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Episode 371: After Mary Poppins and credit denied
34:07
34:07
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34:07
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 sake of being a team player. I was told she even went as far as providing homemade snacks for meetings. I, on the ot…
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Soft Skills Engineering


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Episode 370: Fake imposter syndrome and opposite ends
35:35
35:35
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35:35
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 podcast centered around the “soft skills” instead of more complex topics like “Covariance and Contravariance”, “Temporal Logic”, or …
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Soft Skills Engineering


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Episode 369: Staying at a sinking ship and behavioral interview questions
33:30
33:30
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33:30
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 left Two weeks after that 2 board members resigned Three or Four weeks after that the Director of Engineering left What does that mea…
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Soft Skills Engineering


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Episode 368: Manager in crisis and cutting costs
36:57
36:57
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36:57
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 work. I decided to help him out by temporarily taking on some of his responsibilities. Over the months things seemed to have go…
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