Episode 29: What Should I Do When Starting A New Job?
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?
Oct 07, 2016•21 min
Soft Skills Engineering
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.
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Episodes
Episode 28: How Long Should I Stay At My Job and How Do I Help Junior Developers Improve
In episode 28, Jamison and Dave answer these questions: How long should I stay before I quit my job? Two to three years seems fairly normal. Dave sees people with less than 12 months regularly. Staying at a job means you experience things you wouldn’t if you hopped around a lot. It is much easier to see the hype cycle play out if you stick around. You get to see the outcome of your own decisions. Quitting usually == raise. Chronic job hopping might result in a reputation of not sticking with thi...
Sep 26, 2016•35 min
Episode 27: Writing Great Resumes and Pushing Back on Non-Engineering Tasks
In episode 27, Jamison and Dave answer these questions: How do I write a great resume? Do you really need a resume these days? How important is formatting and good design? What content should be on your resume? Should I push back on non-engineering tasks like PowerPoint presentations? From listener samspot: I am a Sr. Developer and I am often asked to spend time on PowerPoint presentations for funding and other business stuff. I want to ask why the managers, analysts, etc can’t handle these task...
Sep 19, 2016•43 min
Episode 26: Communicate Your Efforts and I Told You So
In episode 26, Jamison and Dave answer these question: How do you make sure people know about your good work? See Matt Zabriskie’s great post for background on this. We also mentioned Do Things, Write About It . How do you get your point across effectively so you don’t have to say “I told you so” later?...
Sep 12, 2016•41 min
Episode 25: Understanding the Business and Managing Without Being a Developer
In episode 25, Jamison and Dave answer these question: How do I understand the business side better? Analysis of tabs vs spaces How does your business make money? Just ask your CEO/manager Kill the myth of the pointy-haired boss Smaller companies expose you to this more Just ask questions: What was our revenue last month? How much did we spend last month? Who are our biggest customers? How does the sales process work? The Dave Smith Method® for learning business jargon. Be kind and have empathy ...
Sep 05, 2016•39 min
Episode 24: Should I be a generalist or specialist developer?
In episode 24, Jamison and Dave answer this question: As a software developer, should I be a generalist or a specialist? This was inspired by a Twitter conversation here: https://twitter.com/iam_preethi/status/766758679743954944
Aug 29, 2016•38 min
Episode 23: Joining a startup as a CTO and asking for a raise
In episode 23, Jamison and Dave answer these questions: You are asked to be a CTO of a start-up. What questions would you ask in order to decide whether to join, and what things would you give most attention to, if you do join? I REALLY want and deserve a raise so I hope you two discuss how a nerdy introvert gets the CFO of a small privately owned business to want to give her more money when she’s already happily donating an additional 10-20 hours a week.
Aug 22, 2016•38 min
Episode 22: Health insurance and contributing to open source projects
In episode 21, Jamison and Dave answer these questions: What’s up with all this health insurance jargon? How do I get started contributing to open source?
Aug 15, 2016•41 min
Episode 21: Giving work to interns and dealing with "dead weight" developers
In episode 21, Jamison and Dave answer these questions: What kind of work should interns be given? How do you handle developers who are dead weight?
Aug 08, 2016•34 min
Episode 20: Stories from people who got fired and doing effective code reviews
In episode 20, Jamison and Dave share some stories from people who have been fired. We also answer this question: How do I make code reviews more effective? It feels like reviewers fit into 2 categories: either they are too quick and superficial, or they get bogged down in nit picks.
Aug 01, 2016•31 min
Episode 19: Firing someone for a coding mistake and getting demoted
In episode 19, Jamison and Dave answer these questions: Would you ever fire someone over a coding mistake? For example, should you empathize with ignorance and explain how SQL injection works or is the mistake so basic as to be intolerable. Would you change your answer if the mistake was found during a code review or found as the source of a data breach? How do you positively represent the desire to be demoted? I am called a ‘senior engineer’, but I got that way because of null instead of actual...
Jul 25, 2016•26 min
Episode 18: Dropping out of college and preparing for interviews
In episode 18, Jamison and Dave answer these questions: I’m a computer science major who still has a couple years of school left. I also have a part time job doing web development. I love what I’m learning and doing at work to the point that I question if it’s worth investing two more years into school. How would you counsel someone in my position? From listener Antonio: How do I prepare for an interview?
Jul 18, 2016•26 min
Episode 17: Side project ideas and getting fired
In episode 17, Jamison and Dave answer these questions: From listener Greg Harrison: I want to build a side-project, but my lack of coming up with a good idea saps my motivation. Do you guys have any tips? Have you ever been fired? What happened? How do you bounce back?
Jul 04, 2016•26 min
Episode 16: Dealing with recruiters and learning new things without frustration
In episode 16, Jamison and Dave answer these questions: From listener David Renne: What’s the best way to talk to random LinkedIn recruiters, recruiter calls and emails? I prefer the reverse lookup apps to determine if an unrecognized phone number looks like a recruiter it goes straight to voice mail during business hours. As a mid-level dev, i sometimes get frustrated when i try learning new things. how can i be more comfortable as a beginner? Sometimes i get frustrated with myself when i don’t...
Jun 27, 2016•26 min
Episode 15: Working with non-technical people and keeping up with the latest technology (with Brad Green)
In episode 15, Jamison and Dave join Brad Green, engineering director at Google and Angular team manager, to answer these questions: How do I deal with non-technical people at work? I often get questions that put me into a position where I have to explain really basic concepts to non-technical people like sales and marketing. They seem to rely on me like a crutch, and it gets tiring to have to explain things over and over. How do I strike the right balance of being helpful, but not so helpful th...
Jun 20, 2016•26 min
Episode 14: Web developer prejudice and legacy code
In episode 14, Jamison and Dave answer these questions: Since I am primarily a web developer, I often find there is a bit of developer prejudice, against web developers from software engineers of other categories. Often I find they think I am not capable of anything other than jquery dom manipulations, and talk down at me like I wouldn’t understand their expertly setup mysql queries. As it turns out, I too have my CS degree, and start new projects in all kinds of programming languages just to le...
Jun 07, 2016•26 min
Episode 13: Dealing with a 'yes' boss and the difference between contract and permanent positions
In episode 13, Jamison and Dave answer these questions: What should you do about a boss, or in my case ‘solution architect’, who won’t push back to the client and just keeps sacrificing quality of the product to push more features out? What’s the difference between contract and permanent positions?
May 30, 2016•26 min
Episode 12: Making friends at work and how to be good at being managed
In episode 12, Jamison, Dave, and special guest Ann Harter answer these questions: How do I make friends at work? Should I? I hear a lot about being a good manager but not much about being managed. How do I do that?
May 23, 2016•26 min
Episode 11: Negotiating offers and dealing with an oblivious boss
In episode 11, Jamison and Dave answer these questions: I’m looking for a new job. How do I negotiate to get a better offer? How do you deal constructively with a boss who is well-intentioned, reasonably nice and intelligent, but incompetent, oblivious, and who has minimal to no oversight on their work performance?
May 16, 2016•26 min
Episode 10: Mentors and Stock Options
In episode 10, Jamison and Dave answer these questions: How about an episode about mentoring? Why is it important, how do we do it, and how do we find the right mentor for us? How do stock options work? How can I tell whether an offer with stock options is any good?
May 09, 2016•26 min
Episode 9: Deadlines and Titles
In episode 9, Jamison, Dave, and special guest Layne Mosely answer these questions: As a software developer, is it better to put an aggressive deadline on myself? Or should I let it be open ended? What are the effects of these two approaches on me and my team? What do all these titles mean? Technical lead. Senior software engineer. Director of engineering. VP of engineering. CTO.
May 02, 2016•26 min
Episode 8: Work life balance and on-boarding new engineers
In episode 8, Jamison and Dave answer these questions: How do you achieve work life balance? Do you have any strategies that work for you? Any bad examples from your own lives? How do you on-board new engineers?
Apr 25, 2016•26 min
Episode 7: Finding meaning and quitting your job
In episode 7, Jamison and Dave answer these questions: How do I quit my job? What’s the process? How do I avoid burning bridges? What will my employer expect from me? How do benefits work? I’m worried my job is not meaningful? Am I just cranking out code for “the man”? What can I do to get more meaning out of my job?
Apr 18, 2016•26 min
Episode 6: Speaking at Conferences
In episode 6, Jamison and Dave answer this question: I’d like to do some public speaking. How do I get accepted to speak at conferences? How do I give good talks once I’m there?
Apr 11, 2016•26 min
Episode 5: Developer Compensation
In episode 5, Jamison and Dave answer this question: What are common ways developers are compensated? Do developers usually get a bonus? Stock options?
Apr 04, 2016•26 min
Episode 4: Should I build my personal brand?
In episode 4, Jamison and Dave answer this question: I have heard a lot about “marketing myself” and my “personal brand”. For example, some people say I should be writing a blog post every week or creating lots of YouTube content. They talk about being a “thought leader”. I love building stuff as an engineer, and obviously I want to have a great job, so how important is this stuff?
Mar 31, 2016•26 min
Episode 3: What to look for in a dev team
In episode 3, Jamison and Dave answer two questions: What should I look for in a dev team? I don’t get enough done at work. I work on a small team that has aggressive plans for developing its product, but I don’t feel like I get enough work done or move fast enough for the company.
Mar 21, 2016•26 min
Episode 2: Influencing your team and dealing with anger
In episode 2, Jamison and Dave answer two questions: I work on a team, and I am not the team lead. I have lots of ideas for how to do things better. How can I influence my team without being the team lead, or without stepping on his or her shoes? How do you deal with anger at work, both on the receiving and giving end?
Mar 14, 2016•26 min
Episode 1: Startup Opportunities and Switching Jobs
Welcome to Soft Skills Engineering, where we answer your questions about non-technical topics in software engineering. Come get some wisdom, or at least some wise cracks. In episode 1, Dave and Jamison answer two questions: I’m a developer who gets approached from time to time to work on new software ideas. While I find working on something new and intriguing I have no experience with business. How do I determine how legitimate these opportunities are? At my current job, our codebase is a few ye...
Mar 07, 2016•26 min
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