In this episode, Dave and Jamison answer these questions:

1. Hey Dave and Jamison,

   Big fan of the show — listening from Portugal! (Proof that even across the Atlantic, software politics are universal.)

   I’m a tech lead, and lately I’ve noticed a culture where people seem to care way more about how things look than what actually gets done. It’s like the appearance of productivity matters more than real impact. Honestly, it drives me nuts!!

   I know politics are part of any organization, and way more in a leadership role, but this feels excessive. As someone who values substance and solid engineering, how do I deal with or influence this kind of culture without losing my sanity (or turning into one of those “optics-first” people myself)?

   Thanks for all the insights and laughs. Kudos from Portugal!

2. Listener Charlie says,

   I’m fresh out of college at my first software engineering job. Several months ago I was appointed the accessibility champion for my team. I proposed a few items in the quarterly planning session, but I think it wasn’t enough. My project manager called out our whole team, but I think it was mostly aimed at me.

   I’ve been struggling with creating Jira cards, shaping with the team, writing a11y guidelines, etc. It’s tedious and I’m not really familiar with this kind of work. How can I get better at the “other stuff” besides just writing code?

   P.S. I volunteered for this responsibility 😩

In this episode, Dave and Jamison answer these questions:

1. “My manager insists on a weekly 1:1 with me, but he rarely pays attention. He’s often on his laptop, texting, checking email — basically anything but listening. I’ve tried sending agendas, rescheduling, reducing frequency, waiting until he’s less busy — nothing helps. I’ve even started sitting in silence until he notices I’ve stopped talking, but that only works for a minute. This has caused real problems. For example, he almost had me cancel a million-dollar project because he misheard me say “Java” instead of “JavaScript.” When he finally realized I was right, he said, “Every time I heard Java I automatically tuned out.” How do I handle a 1:1 with a manager who won’t pay attention, without risking my work or my relationship with him?”

2. “I’ve worked for a big retailer for 10 years now and I used to really enjoy it. I liked my team a lot, problems we worked on, technologies we used. Unfortunately the last few yours brought a few rounds of layoffs and my old team doesn’t exist anymore and the new team is pretty much awful. They’re all on the East Coast, while I’m on the West Coast. I’m required to work EST hours but also to commute to the office 5 days a week and sit there alone and talk to my team on zoom. I’m a staff software engineer and I haven’t been programming much for the past year. Most of my time is spent in calls, I start every day with the same 3 calls. I live 50 miles from the office and I take a company shuttle that leaves at 7am. I’m required to join the calls from my phone. I leave for work at 6:30am, I’m back at home at 6:30pm. A few times a week I need to do deployment at 10pm. I tried speaking to my manager and to my director. They don’t care. My every attempt to improve our processes is met with opposition. My manager is afraid of changes. I can’t believe this is where I am but I’m too tired to prepare for job hunting. I can’t afford to quit. I don’t know how to get myself on track and dust off my programming and interviewing skills. I’m praying they’ll lay me off so that I can use the severance to do all those things. But this isn’t really a plan, it’s wishful thinking, and I’m afraid that my career options are getting worse by the minute. Do you have any advice on how to get myself out of this hell hole?”

In this episode, Dave and Jamison answer these questions:

1. I work at a big tech company on a remote team of about 10 people, and most of them have been here for 5+ years. I’m in the “newer” half of the team with 4 years here. My problem is, in group meetings, absolutely NO ONE talks. I mean zero small talk, they have trouble responding to simple yes or no questions. Everyone participates thoroughly when it’s a technical discussion, but it’s clear no one has any interest in speaking more than necessary. We used to have one super talkative guy on our team, and even then it was mostly silence to his chats about his weekend. Is there anything I can do to get these people to speak at least a little bit? It feels insane how little I know about these people after 4 years.

   P.S. even in one on one chats, almost all of them shut down small talk

2. A coworker told me that I should be having quarterly one-on-one’s with my skip to make sure they’re aware of all the good stuff I’ve been up to and my goal of promotion. This sounds correct, but feels weird when I think about setting this up. I haven’t had much direct communication with my skip, just a few responses to his questions during design meetings, but nothing else really. How do I feel less weird about this?