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. 17 HR AGO

    Episode 474: I hate the idea of firing a low performer and cheaper context switching

    In this episode, Dave and Jamison answer these questions: Hi Dave & Jamison, Long time listener, first time google-form filler outer! I work in a hybrid role as a lead developer and manager of a small team (less than 5). I’m new to management and most of ny experience so far has been with smart, motivated engineers. . . UNTIL! My new recruit is driving me crazy, they are clearly very capable, but just do not do the work. They are frequently late for work, frequently sign off early, and constantly evasive when I ask for updates. I have spoken to them about these issues a bunch, and everytime they are apologetic and say they “have some personal issues but are working on it” - and nothing changes. Urgh! I am pretty sure I will have to fire them, but I feel terrible about it! I know I can’t keep them on and pay them to do nothing, but what’s the best way to let somebody go? How do I break the news to the rest of the team? How do I avoid feeling bad for the rest of my life? Yours guiltily, Anon A listener named “erm what the sigma” asks, Do you have any advice on how to reduce the ramp-up time when context switching? I’ve always felt like context switching comes at a high cost for me—it just takes so long for me to mentally shift between tasks. This wasn’t much of a problem before, but I’ve recently become a tech lead and now my calendar is cluttered with meetings (why did I ask for this again??). I’m struggling to complete my coding stories because just as I hit my stride, I get pinged by someone on my team to help them or have to jump into yet another meeting. pls send help

    38 min

  2. 11 AUG

    Episode 473: Mental health support and overcoming FOMO of taking a break from work

    In this episode, Dave and Jamison answer these questions: Hi Jamison and Dave! I am not a developer, but my question is hopefully transferable. I sit in between lawyers and developers. I advise on technology that can be applied to legal processes and I support our teams in using a range of platforms and AI tools to be more efficient across their work. I have ADHD (late diagnosis at 22) and often have trouble with executive function, remembering details, progressing large projects with no deadlines, and remembering verbal instructions. Have either of you ever had a neurodivergent person on your team? If so, how did you support them? What environment helped them to work best? Also, what frustrations did you have and how could they have mitigated them? Any help would be appreciated to help me avoid driving my manager insane (I live in constant fear that one day she will snap and I’ll be fired even multiple years in). 😂 Hi Dave and Jamison, you’ve made my runs very enjoyable over the last years, thank you so much for that - even though I doubt that laughing out all the time is great for my performance. I’ve been in web development for 7 years now and a Lead Fullstack Engineer at a consulting firm. Being a “lead” currently only means that my team mates seek my opinion and guidance on topics, without me having any increased responsibility. In September, I’ll move countries (Europe to Australia) and will be on parental leave until mid ‘26 when I’ll have to look for a new job down under. I feel quite stressed by recent developments (AI), already have the feeling of not being able to keep up with all the new things (ask my 300 open tabs of articles I want to read), and fear that I could loose touch in my time off. How can I deal with this FOMO? And which topics would you look into in the upcoming months if you were in my place? Show Notes https://blog.jsbarretto.com/post/software-is-joy https://medium.com/@djsmith42/the-3-highest-roi-technical-skills-for-software-developers-21b412d79aff

    36 min

  3. 4 AUG

    Episode 472: Should my junior dev use AI and thrown in to ETL

    In this episode, Dave and Jamison answer these questions: I’m the CTO of a small startup. We’re 3 devs including me and one of them is a junior developer. My current policy is to discourage the use of AI tools for the junior dev to make sure they build actual skills and don’t just prompt their way through tasks. However I’m more and more questioning my stance as AI skills will be in demand for jobs to come and I want to prepare this junior dev for a life after my startup. How would you do this? What’s the AI coding assistant policy in your companies. Is it the same for all seniority levels? Hi everyone! Long-time listener here, and I really appreciate all the insights you share. Greetings from Brazil! I recently joined a large company (5,000 employees) that hired around 500 developers in a short time. It seems like they didn’t have enough projects aligned with everyone’s expertise, so many of us, myself included, were placed in roles that don’t match our skill sets. I’m a web developer with experience in Java and TypeScript, but I was assigned to a data-focused project involving Python and ETL pipelines, which is far from my area of interest or strength. I’ve already mentioned to my manager that I don’t have experience in this stack, but the response was that the priority is to place people in projects. He told me to “keep [him] in the loop if you don’t feel comfortable”, but I’m not sure that should I do. The company culture is chill, and I don’t want to come across as unwilling to work or ungrateful. But I also want to grow in the right direction for my career. How can I ask for a project change, ideally one that aligns with my web development background, without sounding negative or uncooperative? Maybe wait for like 3 months inside of this project and then ask for a change? Thanks so much for your thoughts!

    27 min

  4. 28 JUL

    Episode 471: Why does my junior engineer do so little and I fell asleep in a Zoom meeting

    In this episode, Dave and Jamison answer these questions: I’m a senior developer on a small team, and I’m feeling frustrated with a junior developer I work with. They’re smart and perfectly capable, but they stick very strictly to the confines of their assigned work. They’ll finish their tickets, but unless they’re directly asked, they don’t offer to help with other areas, pitch in on shared responsibilities, or step up when the team is trying to work cross functionally. This engineer seems content to stay in their lane and do “just enough.” I know they’re junior, so I don’t expect miracles, but I expect some initiative. This is most frustrating because it’s a small team and it often feels like we’re working with half of an engineer when they disappear into a corner and leave the pressing issues for the senior developers to handle. How can I encourage them (or maybe push them a bit) to see the bigger picture and contribute more to the team’s success without coming across as bossy or micromanaging? Is this really my responsibility to fix, and am I expecting too much of a junior? I had my first day yesterday as a senior developer and dozed off at an hour meeting at the end of the day today. The meeting was about planning the next year on a zoom call with the leadership I was following in the beginning but at some point they started to talk in something I can‘t really understand(to excuse myself, I had had mant meetings throughout the day and still new to their product). I should’ve turned off my camera but I kept it on while I was definitely zoning out and got my eyes closed few times. I am so embarrassed and don’t know what should I do and feel. I like this new workplace and people so far but should I already look for another job? Help!!!

    29 min

  5. 21 JUL

    Episode 470: I said something stupid in a meeting and just want to code

    In this episode, Dave and Jamison answer these questions: I was on a meeting with a team generally regarded to be pretty annoying to deal with and not particularly useful. The meeting was pretty annoying and not particularly useful. I audibly said to myself after leaving “holy crap what a waste of time.” Turns out I hadn’t left and may not have been muted (?) but I’m really not sure. I left immediately without checking due to cringe overload, so I have no way of knowing. How do I even go about this? I have to meet with this team regularly. My spirit has left my body, this question was typed by the husk that remained. I am almost 2 years into my software development career. A few months ago, I was moved to a team where I was the only frontend developer. My team responsible for maintaining a large, legacy angular project and building a new internal in React tool to support the ML engineers at our organization. Our organization hired some contractors to help with building the new tool, all of which have the same or less dev experience as me. Our project manager is not engaged in our project. He is on multiple teams. I have to communicate with our customer, gather requirements, create user stories, and QA the contractors’ work. This is not the type of work I am particularly good at or enjoy. This is on top of me being the de-facto frontend tech lead. I am STRUGGLING to keep up. I can only do a little bit of work on our project each iteration and doing required maintenance of the legacy application has become very difficult to do because of how little attention I am able to give it. I don’t want to do all the other stuff, I just want to write code. What should I do?

    30 min

  6. 14 JUL

    Episode 469: Passed over for lead role and perhaps I'm the jerk

    In this episode, Dave and Jamison answer these questions: I’m a long time listener to the podcast. Thanks for reading and answering my question! I have over 20+ yrs experience as a manual QA and 6+ yrs experience as a SDET. I’m in a new role as a hybrid manual QA / SDET for a company that hasn’t had QA for a few years. After a couple of months a new hire was added to support a new project in non-development or QA tasks. While waiting for the launch of the new project, senior leadership decided to have this new hire to help me with QA. They have no experience in QA or coding. I spent a considerable amount of time training them, and found it difficult. After a few months my manager told me the hire will transition to lead QA. They will NOT be my supervisor or manager. I will be answering directly to the manager as before. I feel sidelined since I didn’t get hired on as a Sr. or Lead role. I’ve already been left out of numerous meetings catered to team leads only. The new hire is very vocal in meetings. They repeat my ideas as their own, and speak for me when I don’t agree. It’s exhausting to hold back ideas from the new hire or correct them and add context to the rest of the team when I disagree. I’m worried I’m training this new QA lead to be my replacement. What are your thoughts? I feel like the company culture is chaotic for the long term. Any thoughts what I should do in the short term and long term? Hi Dave and Jamison (as a unit would you answer to Davison?). Long time listener, first time caller. I recently joined a data-engineering team at chill 90s multi-national tech company. My boss and I are based in the UK, and two more junior engineers who do the bulk of the IC work are based in India. These two engineers seem to work hard, have far more domain knowledge and technical ability than me, and generally seem to do most of the work. There’s also a senior engineer who’s kind of absent. My boss is a ‘red personality’ who’s been at the org for at least a decade, who doesn’t seem as close to the technical detail. He cares about the destination and wants to get there yesterday, but discussions about ‘ways of working’ or the specifics of achieving the output seem to bore him. He characterizes such talk as risk-aversion. I’m shocked by some of the technical details. Tooling chosen specifically to bypass version control, editing Jupyter Notebooks to deploy changes to ‘production’, dashboards that seem to have totally wrong data, etc. It seems like they will do the minimum required to make things ‘work’ and then move on. Scalability or making things interpret-able for others just doesn’t seem to weigh on their mind. It’s then me as the new-joiner navigating their hacky code who inevitably wanders into all the pitfalls and gotchas. I’ve tried to advocate for better practices and lead by example. They nod along, but ultimately seem resistant to change. I need their help and experience with the codebase, but I also have this creeping sense that their working style is too sloppy and unprofessional. They don’t report to me, and our mutual boss seems happy with the work. I feel a bit like the guy in Twilight Zone: I can see a gremlin wrecking the plane, but nobody else can see it, and my attempts to address the situation just seem a bit hysterical. What’s worse, my gentle attempts at flagging the issues with my boss haven’t gone down well. In my first performance review my boss mentioned something about a ‘us versus them attitude’ and ‘assuming good intent’. What do you make of this situation? Am I the a-hole? Have you faced this sort of thing in the past? Is it time to consider old-reliable? Is 4 months too soon to quit a job?

    36 min

  7. 7 JUL

    Episode 468: Should I take a mini-retirement and doubling down on anachronisms

    In this episode, Dave and Jamison answer these questions: Hi Dave and Jamison, Long-time listener, first-time question asker. Thank you both for the wisdom, perspective, and jokes you bring to the podcast. I recently received an inheritance of around $500,000. It’s not “quit your job and buy a yacht” money, but it is enough to reshape my life. I’m in my late 30s, currently working in a senior engineering role. I’ve had a solid run in the world of code, but I’m ready to walk away from it, zero regrets, just done. What’s pulling me now is UX and product design: more creative, human-centered, systems-aware work. I’ve applied for a one year master’s program in UX design, starting in 2026. I’m planning a sabbatical before that to travel, reset, and explore - think trains across Canada, a design conference in Vienna, a food tour in Greece. I’m also investing in short courses and portfolio work during that time. Financially, I’ve been careful: I paid off my mortgage, invested part of the inheritance, and set up a buffer. So I’m not winging it… but I am stepping away from a six-figure salary, a career my friends and family have supported me to build, and am will have no income for the next 18 months, and that’s a little scary. I want to use this opportunity well, not just coast, or panic-spend, or accidentally put myself in a worse position five years from now. How would you approach this kind of mid-career pivot with a windfall cushion? Any mental models, risk assessments, or “soft skills” wisdom to help me stay brave and smart? Thanks again for everything you put out into the world. Hi Soft Skills Engineering Team, I’m the oldest person on my team (by a respectable margin), and I’ve been taking great delight in gently baffling my younger colleagues with expressions like “I’ll get that done in two ticks,” “give me a bell if you need help,” and “stay on the line after stand-up” (even though we’re on Teams, not a landline). It has become a bit of a sport for me to see how many retro, obscure, or regionally-specific phrases I can sneak into our chats and meetings before someone finally asks, “What are you even saying?” My question is: What other delightfully old-school and vaguely professional expressions can I deploy to maintain my status as the team’s resident linguistic cryptid? Thanks for all the great advice you give, and for validating my mission to keep corporate life interesting! Warmest regards, Resident Old Person

    31 min

  8. 30 JUN

    Episode 467: I can't get promoted if I do my job and should I get a degree to get a job in this economy

    In this episode, Dave and Jamison answer these questions: I am a data scientist and was recently passed over for promotion to senior because my projects weren’t “senior level” enough, and I do too many ad hoc requests that delay delivery of my bigger projects. I am a go to for VP and C suite level execs in my company and am commonly asked to help with incidents, all of which are main reasons my projects get delayed. At the same time, I am told by my manager that requests from these stakeholders/incidents are more important than my projects. Every time I try to push back and let stakeholders know that a project will be pushed back due to incidents, they all agree it’s the right prioritization. And yet, every single performance review I get the same feedback about too much as hoc work. I would really like to try again for promotion but I feel like I haven’t been able to change my balance of ad hoc work at all (this is actually getting worse), and support from my manager is lackluster - I don’t feel like it’s even worth trying again in a few months. What can I do to change this dynamic? (Besides quitting!) or is this a poor management/process problem that I cannot solve myself? A listener named Bob says, I want to transition into web development at the least. I have been teaching myself, but I also know that the dev world is more about connections than anything else. I have reached out to multiple people but really have not gotten far. I really want a career transition. I have found a Bachelor of Science degree in web development at Full Sail University. I would graduate in 2.5 years. Is it worth it to take this program or keep self-learning and building out projects? I would be taking this degree all while making time for my family.

    41 min
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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 - 2025
  • Episodes
    475
  • Rating
    Clean
  • Copyright
    © 2016 Jamison Dance and Dave Smith
  • Show Website
    Soft Skills Engineering

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