Soft Skills Engineering

• Episode 451: Un-collaborative architect and who is my boss?

  In this episode, Dave and Jamison answer these questions: A listener named Scot asks, A new architect was hired at my company 6 months ago. I’m an engineer one rung lower on the hierarchy and have been here for 3.5 years. He hasn’t done much to learn about any of us who have been here for a while, so he is constantly undermining my skills and suggestions and assuming he’s smarter than me. On our most recent project we had a lot of issues due to his design, which departed from our best practices. He’s still acting like he knows best and is getting under my skin. Our company usually hires more collaborative people so I’ve not had to deal with this before. How can I stay calm, professional, and confident in my skills while working with this guy? Who is my boss? No, really. I need answers. I’m a Principal Developer with so many bosses, I’m starting to wonder if this is a multi-level marketing scheme. My team lead gives me work. His boss gives me work. Every project lead crashes into my inbox like the Kool-Aid Man screaming that their thing is the most urgent. My calendar is a cursed artifact, filled with 20+ hours of meetings a week, where I nod knowingly while my soul quietly exits my body. My team lead is a Designer and has no idea what I actually do or the expectations of a Principal Developer, which is convenient, because neither do I. When I asked his boss to help me prioritize, I was told, “It’s all important—just make sure mine is done first, and don’t tell the project leads.” Our product owner wants to be anything but a product owner, and our scrum master is treated like the office secretary, not a blocker remover. Top it off, I’m now being asked to weigh in on architecture decisions for our tech stack while not being invited to architecture meetings and being told to “just figure it out” when I asked how to structure the documents and diagrams they want. So now I’m behind on doing dev work, pretending to be an architect, and the team I’m meant to be mentoring never see me unless they’re in one of the same meetings I’m trapped in. How do I set boundaries and prioritize without causing a nuclear meltdown? Or should I just consult a Magic 8-Ball and let fate decide? Because honestly, I’m one email away from faking my own disappearance and leaving an out-of-office message that says, “No.”

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• Episode 450: I'm terrible at behavioral interviews and time zonessssssss

  In this episode, Dave and Jamison answer these questions: I struggle with behavioral interviews. I’ve gotten a little bit better as I’ve done more interviews, but it’s still a major pain point for me. I have some common behavioral question answers written out in a spreadsheet in SAR format, but I feel that not all of them are good examples for a mid-level developer. The main problem is that I can’t remember in detail all the things I’ve done at work in the past few years. For example, I can think of one time I had a small conflict with a coworker, but I can’t remember the details of what happened. I have a work diary of sorts, but unfortunately, I haven’t been regularly writing things down. Also, I usually just write down accomplishments and notable things that happened. Should I start writing down experiences that match up with these types of behavioral questions?? Do you have any advice on how I can jog my memory and reflect on all the things I’ve done during my career to craft good answers to behavioral questions? I also freeze up when I’m asked a “tell me about a time when…” question that I’ve never experienced. I’ve heard advice like “come up with a hypothetical scenario and explain what you would do” or “just lie and make up a story”. I’m the type of person who has a very hard time lying and making stuff up on the fly. I am one year into being promoted to a team lead at my company. We are made up of 4 devs, 2 QA, and a product owner. One challenge for our team has been differing time zones. Our 2 QA engineers are east coast while the rest of the team is on the west coast. Currently one of them signs off at 5pm EST and the other at 4pm EST. This means that if there’s any communication that needs to happen between dev and QA it has to happen in the morning since by 1pm PST they are headed out the door. This also constrains the times that I’m able to schedule meetings that involve QA. I’ve been thinking for awhile establishing a set of core hours from 9am-2pm PST but have been afraid of the pushback from our QA. I feel like making this adjustment is reasonable and other people I’ve asked have echoed that sentiment but my desire to people please and be looked at favorably is preventing me from making a change. In all honesty we can get by with the current set up, but I find myself getting bitter about not being able to schedule meetings in the afternoon and stories getting held up because QA is off the clock so early. What do?

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• Episode 449: My tech lead ignored my warnings and I don't know what my leadership style is

  In this episode, Dave and Jamison answer these questions: Hello, long time listener first time question asker. I work for a medium sized tech company and I recently moved teams. Right now my old team is attempting to refactor a bunch of code I wrote to use a library that’ll make life easier. I don’t blame them, I tried to do the same thing. It does not work. I asked the tech lead “did you run into the same framework bug I did when I tried this refactor”… “nope” he said. So out of curiosity I pulled down the branch and guess what I saw, the same bug when I tried this refactor 3 months ago. Now I am in a weird position. Do I tell the tech lead again (he was the tech lead when I tried this same refactor) that this does not work or do I ignore it because I am no longer on that team? I don’t want to overstep my bounds but I also know its a lot of work to refactor all this code, so much work they’d need to stop delivering features and add this to their roadmap. I have been interviewing for leadership roles and I keep getting asked “What is your Leadership Style”? I am honestly not quite sure how to answer this as I don’t really understand what they are asking. I have searched the internet for a clean, 5th normal form database that lists the available styles to no avail with no definitive tables. It seems this is truly a soft skill. From your experience, what is the interviewer really asking in this case, how can I better identify common styles, and what can I do to grow my skills in this area?

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• Episode 448: Title over salary and from figure skater to software developer

  In this episode, Dave and Jamison answer these questions: A listener named Steven says, Long-time listener of the podcast here—it always brings me so much joy! Should I prioritize title over salary? I’m currently based in Europe, working as a Senior Engineer at a big company that pays really well. The problem is, there’s almost no chance for promotion due to the economy and budget constraints. Plus, because of the organizational structure, I’m stuck solving small problems that don’t have a big impact. It’s frustrating—but again, the pay is great. Recently, I got an offer for a Staff Engineer position at another company. The catch is, the pay isn’t as good (30%+ cut), and I’m not sure about their culture or structure yet. However, the title could potentially open more doors for me in the future. Should I take the offer, accept the pay cut, and hope it’s a step forward for my career? Hello! Long time listener, first-time caller :-) I’m on the final stretch of classes to finish my BS in computer science at WGU, most of which I’ve done while working. I’m now 40, and I have had 3 previous occupations and employers: aircraft mechanic for 5 years at a small shop, figure skater with Disney on Ice for 6 years, and most recently a partner at an environmental remediation/heavy construction firm for 10 years where my primary responsibilities were field crew management and technical writing for ecology reports. I would love your advice on how I could use these experiences to stand out on a resume or in a job interview. How can I indicate that I’m a hard worker and that I know just enough to know that I know nothing and am ready to learn? Thank you for your time, keep up the good work!

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• Episode 447: Overleveled at FAANG and accidental draft feedback

  In this episode, Dave and Jamison answer these questions: I am a mid level engineer overleveled as a senior engineer in a FAANG company. I got super lucky landing this high paying remote job, but dang… I did underestimate the expectations for my senior level. I had no FAANG experience before, just working at startups, flat hierarchies, just doing the heavy lifting coding. Now it is all about impact and multiplying impact across the team. I am told I should do less IC work and more leading of projects and owning initiatives. Can you give me some general advice on what actions I can take to get from the mid-level to senior-level? I am not really sure, what taking ownership really means in practice… These just seem like empty phrases to me without a meaning… I have had a bit of time, while running a 40 minute build, so I looked into open pull requests. One PR caught my eye and I started to read through it and left a comment with a suggestion for a small change. All in all sounds good probably, but the caveat to this is, that the PR was marked as Draft. I was thinking that it would be useful for the author of the PR to already get some suggestions during development, but the response got me thinking. The author passive aggressively mentioned that the PR is in Draft and that there is more work to do. Am I the jerk for commenting on a draft PR? Second question, what other things should I pay attention to in code reviews to not be a jerk?

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