Soft Skills Engineering

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.

  1. 8 hr ago

    Episode 526: Why can't I get promoted so quickly after my last promotion and I got hired as a software engineer but ended up doing ops

    In this episode, Dave and Jamison answer these questions: Hi Dave & Jamison! I’ve been listening for almost a year now and have worked through nearly your entire back catalog in reverse. The podcast has genuinely helped me become a better engineer, so thank you! I’m two years into my software engineer career at a large infrastructure company. I was promoted to SWE II last year, and this year my manager told me she felt my work was promotion-worthy, but because I’d just been promoted and she had others on the team to consider, she wants to target me for next year’s cycle instead. She gave me a spot bonus and said she’d try to make up for it in my raise. I understand and appreciate the honesty, but I’m also a little disappointed because I’ve worked hard to hit every milestone on the roadmap she gave me, and career progression does matter to me. My question is: How should I navigate the next year? What should I focus my 1:1s on? Should I push for a mid-year promotion if that’s an option, or instead focus on building an undeniable case for next year? How would you approach this if you were in my shoes? Hey Dave and Jamison, Long time listener. First time question asker :). I recently joined a major tech company. Before this, I worked at a mid-sized company with about 200 engineers. In my old role, I built customer-facing products. The work was challenging and exciting, and I genuinely enjoyed it. I ended up moving to a new city to be closer to family and started looking for a job. The job search was brutal. Honestly, by the end of it, I would have accepted just about anything. Luckily, a major tech company extended an offer. The money was great, and I thought it would be a huge plus to have a major tech name on my resume. It is a fully remote role, but they did mention that they could go hybrid in the future. I knew ahead of time that the team built internal tools instead of customer-facing products. But after joining, I realized most of what we do is closer to operations than actual software engineering. I know I should have screened the team better. I was just so relieved to get a good offer from a top company that I accepted without thinking twice. I am not enjoying the work at all. I am not planning to quit immediately. However, I want to be ready to leave in about a year or earlier if they decide to lay us all off. I want to make sure I utilize my time here as best as possible. Do you have any suggestions on how I can best position myself for an internal transfer or an eventual external move? Also, I have been in this role for close to 2 months now. I did a 1-1 with the manager in my first week, but after that, have not had any 1-1s. He has not scheduled anything. I was thinking of scheduling it myself but not sure if that can be seen as too forward. Btw this is outside US, if that matters :) Thanks again for your advice and laughs.

  2. 10 Aug

    Episode 525: How do I save my company of 500 people and my new company is insane with AI

    In this episode, Dave and Jamison answer these questions: Hey Dave and Jamison, First, I love your show and it has now been part of my Monday evening routine for many years to listen to your podcast while cooking dinner. I recently joined a mid-sized software company (500 people) as a senior data engineer. The salary is a significant bump from my previous job and I really like the team on a personal level. Three months after I joined, the company laid off half its employees and announced a strategic pivot away from their previous core business to become an “AI-first company” and develop new products in novel, more profitable sectors. The product that my team had been working on until that point was scrapped and there are no new projects coming from the business side. In subsequent communications, it was revealed why: Management has no concrete ideas for the future strategy, neither on what products to develop nor on which sectors to target. Instead, our team (among others) is now tasked with coming up with new product ideas to “save the company”. I’m a data engineer, not a business development manager, and while I have dealt with high ambiguity from the business side in previous roles, it was never this extreme. I was looking forward to working on interesting technical challenges within a great, experienced team, but now I feel like I’m expected to become an “idea guy”, a role that doesn’t really match my personality. My question is: Should I be patient and try to turn this situation into “an opportunity for growth”, or should I start applying elsewhere? I’m a bit worried that the short length of stay at this company will leave a stain on my CV. Many thanks to my favorite space lawyers, an anonymous listener. Hi! My current job is at a 10k+ large risk-adverse company that currently has nil, none, nada, nichts ai tools available for coding. I of course did the only reasonable thing. I’ve gotten a new job at a middle-sized fintech company that’s going ”AI first”. I’m really excited about finally using ai outside hobby projects. I worry however, that my future colleagues will go too quickly ahead while vibecoding, vibearchitecting, vibetesting… leaving a mountain of tech debt behind. A lazy colleague would actually be better than an intellectually lazy colleague in this scenario. (I sincerely hope that I won’t be that coworker) Are my worries overblown or sane? Any gotch’as to avoid? Maybe you can give a brief survival guide to the brave new AI world?

  3. 3 Aug

    Episode 524: My CTO AI-codes big piles of slop and early mornings, late meetings

    In this episode, Dave and Jamison answer these questions: I work for a small software company on a team of about 7 or 8 engineers. I like working here. I like the people, the autonomy, the pay, my boss, and the stack among other things. I try to remind myself of this regularly so I don’t take it for granted. I’ve been here for about 2.5 years and would love to continue working here. Our CTO, like many, has become a big AI cowboy coder. Every few months, he vibe codes a new project and then decides to interrupt the full workloads that we have a limited number of engineers to do to hand his project off to be cleaned up, worked into the product, and solve all of the problems that remain once actually put into practice. This usually ends up going to a different engineer per project, who is then tied up with the CTO’s whims and is no longer available to do the work planned by product. Our EM knows this and knows the frustration and lost velocity, but what can he do? (rhetorical, not the question) Most recently, I was tasked with implementing some reporting dashboards he did into the product, but he specifically asked me to make it in such a way that he can continue to work on and add to because he can’t be bothered to run the actual product. This is very concerning to several of us. He has no clue what he’s writing or how bad it is. We’ve talked about perhaps making him do PRs, but a) who can make him, he’s the CTO, and b) he’ll have no clue what to do with PR pushback given that he has no clue what he wrote. And again, who can make him actually fix it if he asks us to rubber stamp it? (rhetorical, not the question) I’ve been listening to the show for years and I’ve talked to friends at other companies, so I know this is everywhere. Is it as everywhere as it seems? Is it worth finding a new place to work where the CTO isn’t running so rampant? As I stated before, I’d rather not leave, but if I talked about that as a concern, I don’t want it to sound like an ultimatum, even if maybe it is at some level. Is this just the new reality for us, or is there something that can be done? I am a senior software engineer at a big tech company. I live in central Europe but my team is in the US and I’m 9 hours ahead. I have 7:30 pm meetings and sometimes take an hour before and/or after this meeting to prep or follow up. Previously I slept in later and started later to deal with these meetings. However, now my daughter is starting kindergarten and I wake up early (5-6AM) to be with her, drop her off, etc. Now in the evening meetings my brain is fried and I can’t even articulate myself well. The next day I think about so many things I wish I had said in those meetings. I can’t quit as I make 160K right now and I would only be making 60-80K tops in my country and have some financial commitments. Relocation to the US is also not an option because I have kids and don’t want them to move. So far I have been skipping meetings and my manager has not expressed concern but I feel so detached from my team. I don’t even know what most of my peers are working on. It feels like I am out of ideas to make this better. Please share your space wisdom with me :)

  4. 27 Jul

    Episode 523: (Rerun of 331) Prickly ticket and title downgrade

    This is a rerun of episode 331. In this episode, Dave and Jamison answer these questions: Listener ninjamonkey says, I am a new grad who is half a year into the role now at a very large company. Recently, a senior engineer on my team asked me to create a ticket for an infra team for a problem with a service. I provided logs and steps to reproduce the issue and did a health check before submitting. Right after, the manager of the team put me into a group chat with their team, asked why I created the ticket and told me to start doing my job and they can’t debug for me. From these interactions and comments on the ticket, it feels the infra team will likely not work on the tickets I report or de-prioritize them. This has left me discouraged and hesitant. I will have to do lots of this kind of infrastructure work in the future. Additionally, one of the goals my manager set for me is to work with more external teams for the upcoming year. What do I do here? Do I tell my manager about these interactions? Do I tell my team lead, staff/seniors to swap out for different kind of story? I work for a small startup. I was the first employee other than the 2 founders. Being the first developer hired, naturally means I have the most knowledge about our application. I also have good organisational skills, which has led to me becoming and being referred to as the “Lead Developer”. I have recruited 2 of the 3 new developers, and have trained both of them and got them up to speed. At first I was pleased with the progression and was keen to grow into the position, and told the founders so. Since then, I have changed my mind, I don’t want to be the lead - due to the following: The communication is absolutely pitiful. Any questions we ask of the founders we get about a 30% reply rate no matter the form of communication. We get poorly defined tasks and requirements The CTO will just blast through some of our features over the weekend and say here I fixed it for you I don’t want to quit my job (just yet… its a comin though). I have actually discussed the above points with them, but I know these 2 founders will never change their ways. How do I tell them I just want to go back to being an Individual Contributor like my Employment contract states?

  5. 20 Jul

    Episode 522: I stayed too long at my first job and should I get a masters degree

    In this episode, Dave and Jamison answer these questions: I stayed too long at my first company and now my career is ruined? Hi both, long time listener. (Since I graduated university 4 years ago actually and felt I could never find a job but listening to you guys made me feel not like such an outcast in our field.) I graduated in 2022. Didn’t really apply around much and almost immediately accepted the full time offer from the company I did my internship with during my degree. And fast forward to middle of 2026… I am still here. I’ve long stopped growing as an engineer and have actually been stuck on a simple CLI tool for almost 4 years now with little to no cloud/backend/etcetera experience to show in my 5 year career. I don’t feel I am desirable in the job market at all due to this and waited way too long to look for a job because I was comfortable and happy. I feel paralyzed (no need to put on your space therapist hats BUT some career advice would be wonderful!) (Also did I mention I am in Canada and want to move to Europe and live the rest of my life there but visa sponsorship with my level of experience is impossible? Maybe that’ll be for my next question…) Thanks for all you do, cheers! I have a non-CS engineering degree, and am looking to transition into Software Engineering. I have the option of pursuing a degree with Tuition Reimbursement from my job, but am in a bit of a strange situation deciding which degree. Basically, I’ve figured that with my current Engineering background I could pursue either a second Bachelor’s degree through Universities offering a “Post-Baccalaureate” program in Computer Science, or a Master’s degree, with maybe only a slightly longer program to get the Master’s as opposed to the Bachelor’s. Otherwise the total length/cost of the programs would be roughly the same. I have heard though that it might not be a great idea to go into a Master’s program unless you know what specifically you want to study. I am curious what you think would be more “hire-able” between the two options for someone pursuing the career change into Software Engineering?

  6. 13 Jul

    Episode 521: negotiating . . . now? and doing good work is not enough for promotion?

    In this episode, Dave and Jamison answer these questions: Dwill Ainghell asks, During the golden era of software development, it was commonly stated that you should always negotiate job offers. The argument was that the company has invested significant time and resources into you as a candidate and there is always some wiggle room for negotiations. A popular article / podcast by Patrick McKenzie likened it to doing something slightly uncomfortable like “reciting poetry while simultaneously standing on one foot” with almost no downside. (https://www.complexsystemspodcast.com/episodes/how-to-negotiate-your-salary-package/) Does this still hold true in today’s environment? I’m a SWE with 10 years of experience and I’ve been unemployed for close to a year. I’m expecting an offer from a large company and I fear that I will look like a fool trying to negotiate in my current position and the current job market dynamics. Even worse, I fear that they might retract the offer and give it to someone else. That being said, I don’t want to leave money on the table. What’s the correct course of action in today’s environment? Listener Stu says, In episode 500, you said something to the effect of “working hard and doing a great job with the work you’ve been assigned is not the promotion track”. I’d love to hear you discuss what it does take to get promoted and how to do that. In my job, we have a jira queue and engineers are tasked with taking from the top of the queue and executing work. There’s also an expectation to lead pre-defined projects (define the scope, write the tickets, and shepherd it along). All of these projects have deadlines, so how do you recommend people get the defined work done, lead projects, and still find time to do whatever it is to get promoted? Why is doing an excellent job not enough?

  7. 6 Jul

    Episode 520: I came back to my former team and was shocked by AI and my team does not care at ALL about the code

    In this episode, Dave and Jamison answer these questions: Hey Dave & Jamison, Long time listener. Love the podcast. I recently rejoined a remote team that I worked with in the past. I was super stoked to rejoin this team because they were collectively one of the most competent and technically excellent teams I’ve ever worked with. And they’re all genuinely nice people as well. I left the team before AI coding had really caught on, but coming back to the team has been a huge shock to me. Almost everyone now exclusively writes code with AI. PR descriptions are all AI generated, and code review has become copy-pasting AI-generated comments into GitHub. Being a remote team it was already hard to connect, but now it feels like almost all interactions are their AI assistant talking to my AI assistant. I’m not anti-AI, and I get that writing code with AI can be much quicker. But I’m struggling with the loss of what made the team feel good to work on, specifically the craftsmanship, level of engagement, and the learning from eachother. The product itself is still high quality (even if the codebase is less-so), but the process itself is a lot less enjoyable now. I don’t want to be the person who shows up after being away and immediately makes it everyone else’s problem that I miss the old way of doing things. But I’m having doubts if I want to be a part of this team. Is this just what software engineering looks like in remote organisations now? And should I expect most teams are now operating like this? Hi Jamison and Dave, Love your podcast. I was recently hired as a mid-level full-stack developer with the promise of leading a new squad. On day one, I discovered management scrapped the squad idea and promoted an existing developer to sole lead instead. The team consists of this new lead, two 20-year VB6 veterans, and me. The codebase is lawless: direct DB access, fat controllers, 1-2K+ LOC classes everywhere (copy/pasted boilerplate) and severe Broken Access Control (OWASP #1) where authenticated users can extract anyone’s PII (full name, home address, phone number) via a simple email query string. My coworkers rely heavily on generative AI but do not review the output. They constantly commit “AI slop” that barely functions and introduces endless bugs. I used to clean it up, but I recently realized they care so little about the codebase that no one even notices if I stop. Add in a “Senior Product Manager” whose entire UX background is a three-month internship, who invents customer requirements to defend her inconsistent designs. I am already applying elsewhere. My questions: How do you handle a bait-and-switch of this magnitude? When the team cares so little that no one notices if you stop cleaning up their AI-generated bugs, how do you stay sane and professionally sharp while riding out the clock? Show Notes https://tombedor.dev/human-attention-and-human-effort/

  8. 29 Jun

    Episode 519: Why does my team not have a tech lead and rumors!

    In this episode, Dave and Jamison answer these questions: Hi D&J! Question from Sweden! I’m a senior dev that have seen a lot of orgs without tech lead and/or staff engineer roles. I know some companies have them, but mostly newer more techy companies. Bigger older less techy companies usually have non-coding “architects”. Though that’s one title I have no good experience of, just neutral ones or worse :) In particular I’ve been in many teams without a tech lead (all developers are equal, no tiebreaker vote). It’s often successful due to a leader and/or consensus emerging organically and peacefully. I loathe the failure modes however: consensus abuse through veto (we can’t move discussion forward because someone explicitly actively disagrees, a “keeping the meeting hostage” situation), disagreement on technical priorities and choices (lowest common denominator it is…) or that the team is bickering and bikeshedding during technical discussions. Is this just a regional/cultural thing, or is it more about the type of org? Also would you say it’s to the detriment of these orgs to not have these “technical leadership hierarchies”? Thanks! Hey Dave and Jameson, love the show. I’m a Software Engineer at a major tech company. The org is non technical. I consider myself pretty well rounded. I consistently hit my sprint goals, crush my story points, and even put in weekend commits when needed as well as talk but I dont look for conversations into work im too far away involved in. My direct manager thinks my output is good. He told me to work on communication, but the work and my drive is good. I have a relaxed demeanor in a high stress environment. Recently, I learned there are concerns that my “vibe” seems lazy and unengaged, and those concerns may have been shared with my skip-level manager. When my friend literally pulled up my raw metrics and story points to defend me, the friend had no answer, but just reiterated that it’s a “vibe thing.” It feels like a political target has been placed on my back by business people who don’t understand my work but hold corporate influence. I told my manager and he says im doing fine, and people will say what they say. Everyone talks, etc, and just to focus on his feedback. My question is: How do I fight a “vibe” complaint when the data says I’m crushing it? Should I cave and alter my lifestyle to play the corporate theater game, or do I double down on my metrics, lean on my manager, or dare them to try and figure out how valuable I am? Thanks, An Engineer Who Refuses to Look Bored

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Ratings & Reviews

5
out of 5
3 Ratings

About

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.

Information

  • Creator
    Jamison Dance and Dave Smith
  • Years Active
    2016 - 2026
  • Episodes
    527
  • Rating
    Clean
  • Copyright
    © 2016 Jamison Dance and Dave Smith
  • Show Website
    Soft Skills Engineering

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