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Jamison Dance and Dave Smith

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.

Soft Skills Engineering

In this episode, Dave and Jamison answer these questions:

 1. 

Hi Dave and Jamison, I’ve been in QA/QA automation for 13 years now with a CS degree, and I’ve been trying to change my role to a software developer for a while. My only issue is that every time I brought my career aspirations to my managers they seemed to “not care” or give vague answers to “kick the can down the road”. In the past I fully demonstrated I can do the work by submitting bug fixes, writing and deploying a few microservices by myself (all product feature work), on top of performing my QA duties. I get high marks in my performance reviews, but that doesn’t seem to be enough! I also seem to attract some resentment from my team (silently but it’s noticed) as they see a QA trying to soak up their dev work and I get a strong “stay in your lane” vibe. I do it to help them, not take all of their work. Any advice? Am I approaching this the wrong way? And what would you do in my situation? Thanks and all the best!
 2. 

 3. 

Hi!
 4. 

Three years ago, I relocated from a third-world country to Europe for work. I tend to undersell myself a lot. I know I am a competent, hard-working, and smart engineer. I have strong opinions and can evaluate trade-offs. I can participate in discussions about complex systems, and I have experience managing projects.
 5. 

But sometimes I’m afraid of looking dumb and scared of confrontation. This means I rarely voice my opinions or suggestions. I often let go of them at the slightest objection, even if I believe the other person is mistaken. Whenever I speak or comment on a subject in Slack, I always use phrases like “I’m not 100% sure”, “as far as I remember”, or “I have to look it up but I think … “. These would not matter If I was showing my confidence through other means like participating in discussions confidently, but these all add up to create an image of someone reliable in getting things done, but not reliable at taking more responsibility.
 6. 

I was not like this before moving. Occasionally I struggle with the language when in big meetings or talking about complex matters, but I’m comfortable with English. It has an effect for sure, but it is not the cause.
 7. 

I’m going to start a new position and I want to have a longer career there. But I’m afraid that I can not give myself the head start I know I’m capable of. How can I improve my own personal onboarding process and let my new colleagues and manager know how lucky they are to have me on their team?
 8.

Episode 490: How do I break into software dev from QA automation and underselling

In this episode, Dave and Jamison answer these questions:

 1. 

Hey Jamison and Dave, love your show!
 2. 

A question for you guys coming all the way from the Netherlands 🧀
 3. 

I’ve started as a software engineer in a gambling company lately and the moral aspect of it bothers me a bit.
 4. 

And while listening to you talking about the importance of accessibility in the last episode (#488) I came up with this moral dilemma: should a developer push for making a gambling app more accessible for users with disabilities or better not to? 😅
 5. 

Thank you 🖤
 6. 

 7. 

Listener Arie Marie asks,
 8. 

What are some good ways to research prospective employers to see if they have a strong commitment to ethical and human values? What are good questions to ask prospective employers during an interview? How can I be a developer and do what I love, and know that I’m not making the income inequality greater? How do you develop a lens to look at a company and discern it’s positive impact? How do you know if you’re making the world a better place?
 9.

Episode 489: Ethical dilemma for a gambling app dev and ethical employers

In this episode, Dave and Jamison answer these questions:

 1. 

Hey Dave and Jamison,
 2. 

Big fan of the show — listening from Portugal! (Proof that even across the Atlantic, software politics are universal.)
 3. 

I’m a tech lead, and lately I’ve noticed a culture where people seem to care way more about how things look than what actually gets done. It’s like the appearance of productivity matters more than real impact. Honestly, it drives me nuts!!
 4. 

I know politics are part of any organization, and way more in a leadership role, but this feels excessive. As someone who values substance and solid engineering, how do I deal with or influence this kind of culture without losing my sanity (or turning into one of those “optics-first” people myself)?
 5. 

Thanks for all the insights and laughs. Kudos from Portugal!
 6. 

 7. 

Listener Charlie says,
 8. 

I’m fresh out of college at my first software engineering job. Several months ago I was appointed the accessibility champion for my team. I proposed a few items in the quarterly planning session, but I think it wasn’t enough. My project manager called out our whole team, but I think it was mostly aimed at me.
 9. 

I’ve been struggling with creating Jira cards, shaping with the team, writing a11y guidelines, etc. It’s tedious and I’m not really familiar with this kind of work. How can I get better at the “other stuff” besides just writing code?
 10. 

P.S. I volunteered for this responsibility 😩
 11.

Episode 488: How do I survive in a culture of optics and jira slacker

In this episode, Dave and Jamison answer these questions:

 1. 

“My manager insists on a weekly 1:1 with me, but he rarely pays attention. He’s often on his laptop, texting, checking email — basically anything but listening. I’ve tried sending agendas, rescheduling, reducing frequency, waiting until he’s less busy — nothing helps. I’ve even started sitting in silence until he notices I’ve stopped talking, but that only works for a minute.
This has caused real problems. For example, he almost had me cancel a million-dollar project because he misheard me say “Java” instead of “JavaScript.” When he finally realized I was right, he said, “Every time I heard Java I automatically tuned out.”
How do I handle a 1:1 with a manager who won’t pay attention, without risking my work or my relationship with him?”
 2. 

 3. 

“I’ve worked for a big retailer for 10 years now and I used to really enjoy it. I liked my team a lot, problems we worked on, technologies we used. Unfortunately the last few yours brought a few rounds of layoffs and my old team doesn’t exist anymore and the new team is pretty much awful. They’re all on the East Coast, while I’m on the West Coast. I’m required to work EST hours but also to commute to the office 5 days a week and sit there alone and talk to my team on zoom. I’m a staff software engineer and I haven’t been programming much for the past year. Most of my time is spent in calls, I start every day with the same 3 calls. I live 50 miles from the office and I take a company shuttle that leaves at 7am. I’m required to join the calls from my phone. I leave for work at 6:30am, I’m back at home at 6:30pm. A few times a week I need to do deployment at 10pm. I tried speaking to my manager and to my director. They don’t care. My every attempt to improve our processes is met with opposition. My manager is afraid of changes. I can’t believe this is where I am but I’m too tired to prepare for job hunting. I can’t afford to quit. I don’t know how to get myself on track and dust off my programming and interviewing skills. I’m praying they’ll lay me off so that I can use the severance to do all those things. But this isn’t really a plan, it’s wishful thinking, and I’m afraid that my career options are getting worse by the minute. Do you have any advice on how to get myself out of this hell hole?”
 4.

Episode 487: My manager ignores me during 1:1's and I am required to work in an empty office

In this episode, Dave and Jamison answer these questions:

 1. 

I work at a big tech company on a remote team of about 10 people, and most of them have been here for 5+ years. I’m in the “newer” half of the team with 4 years here. My problem is, in group meetings, absolutely NO ONE talks. I mean zero small talk, they have trouble responding to simple yes or no questions. Everyone participates thoroughly when it’s a technical discussion, but it’s clear no one has any interest in speaking more than necessary. We used to have one super talkative guy on our team, and even then it was mostly silence to his chats about his weekend. Is there anything I can do to get these people to speak at least a little bit? It feels insane how little I know about these people after 4 years.
 2. 

P.S. even in one on one chats, almost all of them shut down small talk
 3. 

 4. 

A coworker told me that I should be having quarterly one-on-one’s with my skip to make sure they’re aware of all the good stuff I’ve been up to and my goal of promotion. This sounds correct, but feels weird when I think about setting this up. I haven’t had much direct communication with my skip, just a few responses to his questions during design meetings, but nothing else really. How do I feel less weird about this?
 5.

Episode 486: No one on my team talks and skip level meetings

In this episode, Dave and Jamison answer these questions:

 1. 

What signals do you look for when interviewing candidates? I’ve helped interview many people at this point and almost all of the engineers that I marked as “hire” that we brought on board ended up being low performers and were eventually managed out. I wasn’t the only one who approved them either, so not all the blame falls on me, but I’m really doubting my ability to assess talent.
 2. 

Is hiring inherently just this difficult?
Is there anything I can do to improve my judgement or screening approach?
 3. 

 4. 

Hi Dave and Jamison,
 5. 

A coworker on my team won’t stop creating AI generated memes.
 6. 

We’re a remote team and every meeting he shares memes in the chat whilst we’re trying to have productive conversations. He does this in any type of meeting, including all-hands meetings with C-level execs. On smaller calls he often hijacks it to share his screen and show us a meme he just created about something that was just said.
 7. 

It started off funny at first. But it’s now a constant distraction.
 8. 

I find it frustrating because I don’t see how he can be paying attention and contributing to discussions when he’s busy making memes. And, I also don’t appreciate seeing AI versions of my own face being shared into public Slack channels.
 9. 

How can I address this without sounding like I am anti-fun?
 10. 

Love the show, been listening for many years, keep up the good work!
 11.

Episode 485: I'm terrible at hiring decisions and my coworker spams us with AI-generated memes

In this episode, Dave and Jamison answer these questions:

 1. 

Hi! Love your show and how casually you talk and make fun of everything! I started my career as a freelancer and then joined a mid-size software development company to learn how the sausage is really made, salary wasn’t that important back then. A few kids and a lot more expensive lifestyle later the compensation has become more motivating, but I’m not sure how to sell myself to my manager if I don’t feel like I deserve a high salary myself. (The manager decides the salaries for all our team members.) For years I’ve been focusing on my family and other life stuff, so I’ve spent a looot of working hours not working and basically doing the minimum progress acceptable. Slow progress has come up once with my manager, from which I wiggled out of with various excuses. I’ve realised that this way of working isn’t really fair for the company and my teammates and I’ve started to take this job and my career seriously in the last few months. The company and everyone working there are super supportive and it’s been a terrific experience for all of those years. I’ve gotten a raise multiple times with always me initiating that conversation. There aren’t any clear metrics to improve that directly ties to the salary: I’ve asked my manager about it and the answer was vague like “we have this local salary survey that we take as the base and work from there”. So long story short: how to ask for a raise while not feeling like a criminal since I feel like I haven’t earned the salary I had thus far?
 2. 

 3. 

I’m a team lead who’s growing increasingly frustrated with my project manager. Every planning conversation ends up in my private DMs, no matter how many times I’ve asked him to move these discussions to the team chat.
 4. 

When he messages me one-on-one, my team loses visibility into decisions, questions don’t get addressed openly, and important context just evaporates. It’s not only slowing us down, it also makes me feel like the burden of relaying everything falls squarely on me.
 5. 

I’ve tried gently redirecting him back to the shared space, but he keeps defaulting to my DMs. How can I get him to respect the boundaries of team communication without damaging our working relationship?
 6. 

Sincerely,
Lost in the PM’s DMs
 7.

Episode 484: How to get a raise after slacking off for YEARS and my PM won't stop DM'ing me

In this episode, Dave and Jamison answer these questions:

 1. 

How would you handle a situation where a team forms a negative opinion about you from day one — without any clear reason and without ever giving you a real chance to prove yourself?
 2. 

Even when you contribute technically, your suggestions are ignored… until someone else repeats the same thing and suddenly it’s considered valid.
 3. 

Is it possible to stay in that kind of environment without becoming bitter or burned out?
 4. 

Can you keep contributing professionally — or is it healthier to just walk away?
 5. 

 6. 

You guys are awesome. Jamison, I interviewed with you and it was lots of fun and productive. Which is really rad.
 7. 

Now… I just landed a 12-month contract in big tech role. It’s perfectly aligned with my long-term career goals. My current fintech FTE is perfectly opposed to my long-term career goals.
 8. 

The question — how unethical / despicable would it be to start one week of PTO at my FTE on the same day as Day One at my contract role so that I can onboard without distractions and then put in my resignation upon returning to my FTE? What about two, three, or four weeks of PTO?
 9. 

Also… are two-week notices still the default still in 2025?
 10. 

Also also… I promise I’m not AI — I’ve been using em dashes since the 20th century.
 11.

Episode 483: My team hated me from day one and should I stack PTO before my resignation

In this episode, Dave and Jamison answer these questions:

 1. 

After a year of trying, I recently got promoted to staff engineer!
 2. 

It’s great to receive recognition for my work, but i’m not actually very happy, because I only got a 4% raise! I spoke with a former coworker about how much a staff engineer in my role should expect, and he said that he would be insulted by less than . My comp is now slightly below !
 3. 

In addition to this, times are tough for the business, so it seems unlikely that we’ll get annual bonuses, meaning I likely won’t even get to appreciate the larger target staff bonus! What a bummer!
 4. 

How should I approach this? A year and a half ago after getting a below inflation raise, I was told I was at the top of my level’s pay band and would need to get promoted if I wanted to go much higher. Now that I’ve gotten promoted, it seems like that wasn’t true! I should be grateful that I still have a job and got promoted and got any increase, but I feel like I’m being short changed! How can I talk to my manager to see about getting more money?
 5. 

 6. 

My company does not address complaints. Here are two examples.
 7. 

On my first day, the lead engineer told me not to participate in the project. He was impossible to work with: He’d hold up PR’s for 3 months because of linting and prettier rules. Eventually, I figured out he was exceptionally insecure and wanted no feedback or anyone to expose his technical weaknesses. I conflicted with him a lot and got shuffled to another department.
 8. 

My 2nd example comes from a trainee. I helped him out everyday after standup for 30 minutes. How he passed his interview, I don’t know. He didn’t know what a semicolon was after a 4 years bachelor in computer science and 6 months of being a trainee. I complained to a friend at work who had, I didn’t know, interviewed the trainee. My friend was surprised, and so we hopped on a call with the trainee who didn’t recognize my friend. After snooping around on social media, we found the guy who had done the interview, the trainee’s brother. I told HR & my department head. Nothing happened.
 9. 

Here’s the question: Getting kicked out of a department ruined my confidence. I have a safe, secure job where there’s no pressure. But my firm doesn’t address complaints properly. Time and time again, people will complain about the linting/prettier guy or other issues like the trainee and nothing is done. Should I leave? I work on a greenfield project here. Switching to a (likely) legacy codebase I didn’t build and dealing with higher pay/expectations is very daunting.
 10.

Episode 482: I got a promotion, but a tiny raise and an imposter interviewed for my team

In this episode, Dave and Jamison answer these questions:

 1. 

Hi Dave and Jamison,
 2. 

After fleeing a sinking ship of a startup, I became a solo developer at a medium sized college. This role has really allowed me to expand and grow in ways that I haven’t imagined, but I have encountered an interesting issue I didn’t have in the startup world: there isn’t much to do.
 3. 

At my one year mark, I was promoted into a management position, but with no direct report. I will soon have an employee under me doing data integrations. My manager has been reluctant to give me data integrations work despite knowing that I want to understand what my employee will be working with.
 4. 

I’ve found some of my own projects, but I’ve completed them all. I’m getting bored. I’m a competent developer, learn fast, and get things done quickly. Recently I’ve been planning an upgrade to some of our legacy code, but it will take probably a year or more to complete.
 5. 

Some former colleagues reached out about working with them for a substantial pay bump, but I don’t like the idea of leaving after just over a year and a half. Do I keep riding it out here, or is it time to start looking else where?
 6. 

Thank you both for this wonderful podcast. Its a joy to listen to on my walks. I’m sure I get stared at when I try to hide a laugh or grin from the amazing list of Patron names and your commentary.
 7. 

 8. 

I was recently terminated a few months before my 1 year vesting cliff as an IC2 for being days (not weeks) late on 3 or 4 stories. The late ones were defined incorrectly by management, or were for paying technical debt created by senior engineers, and my manager knew this. I had no IC2 or IC1 peers on my team for comparison. My performance review for the first half of 2025 was not released to me, I was fired when I would have seen it. This means the only reasoning that management has shared with me was my late work. In 1 on 1s before, my lateness has been something my manager has mentioned, but never a warning of termination (or a “pip” as some call it) and no indication that it’s anything more than an area to improve. The org has made poor decisions that left them tight on funds, and I feel the most financially responsible thing for them to do was fire me rather than give me a warning which would let me hit my cliff or lay me off where they’d give more on my way out.
 9. 

Had I been pipped or laid off, I would not be asking about this. Should I go with the confusing justification that my boss was truthful in his attribution of my firing without warning to my lateness (and can you help me understand why that’s professionally justified)? Should I go with the disheartening approach and brainstorm other shortcomings that would better justify an unwarned firing, possibly spurring professional growth or a career change? Or should I say I got instafired because of penny pinching and opaque management?
 10.

Episode 481: I'm bored and will I ever find out why I was fired?

Literally the only episode that the advice “quit your job and get a better one” doesn’t apply.

Dave and Jamison answer the question:

 
What should I do when starting a new job?

Episode 29: What Should I Do When Starting A New Job?

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