Episode 129: Office romance and What to say during one-on-ones

Soft Skills Engineering

In this episode, Dave and Jamison answer these questions:

1. I recently started working at a small dev shop. Somewhere along the way I may or may not have started seeing a coworker outside of work. It’s really been great but there are no clear examples of how the organization would react to something like this. We have fairly lateral positions and there are no written policies or anything in the handbook. Even so, we’ve been doing our best to act “business casual” when we run into each other during the day. We don’t work directly but it’s a smaller company so the chance is pretty good that we eventually will.

   It’s been fun to navigate so far but wondering what your take is on this/the pros and cons of telling trusted coworkers or management. Thanks!!

2. I’ve been working as a software engineer for several years now. In my current job I have fortnightly one-to-one catchups with my manager. My problem is that I very rarely have anything to say. My work is going fine, I’m happy enough with my job, and I don’t feel like I really need help with anything. I feel as though not having much to say reflects poorly on me, giving the impression that I’m uninterested or that I don’t value my managers input. What is it we should be talking about?