Soft Skills Engineering

• 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

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• 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

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• 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!

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• 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!!!

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• 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?

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