It takes more than great code
to be a great engineer.

In this episode, Dave and Jamison answer these questions:

1. Thank you for this podcast it’s the only tech podcast I listen to these days, I think it’s more relevant than ever, and it has definitely helped me in my career.

   I am a Staff Software Engineer in a multi-national software company based in Germany (Where I’m also based). I have been working on a very important project that’s pretty visible and has the potential to make a ton of money, I have been very happy working on it.

   Recently however, I got into a politically weird situation, a recent restructuring moved this project under a new manager. I don’t really get a long with the new manager. This person is known for being toxic, a colleague heard him recently say that everyone working with him is stupid, but when talking to him I don’t exactly remember him saying anything bright tbh.

   In my initial conversations with him, he told me that I don’t have a chance for any career progress working in his team, and that I wouldn’t have much freedom either, he would like to be the final word on pretty much anything.

   So I decided to speak to his supervisor, who directly ignored my complains and offered me to move to a different team. I accepted the change since for me working with a bad manager is the worst thing that can happen. The new manager is good, but the product is quite niche and rarely get’s mentioned anywhere, and it has a very few customers

   I’m concerned about where my career is heading, since what I’m working on seems quite unimportant, I’m afraid the company could decide to drop this product at any point and fire the team (that can also happen in Germany these days btw, it just costs them a bit more severance)

   what would you do in my situation? would you try to seek a different opportunity internally, externally or just wait? Thank you in advance!

2. Infinite listener, zero time caller.

   A year ago, I got promoted to staff engineer in our 25-person startup where I’ve been for 7 years. One month later, a re-org happened and my team dwindled to just me and one other person, reporting directly to the founder - who also went full Founder Mode and now run our tiny team pretty top-down.

   The rest of the broader engineering org is focused on machine learning and data scientist thingies I don’t really understand or feel like I can contribute to.

   I’m struggling to do actual staff-level work and I’m starting to wonder if pushing for that fancy title was even a good idea, especially if I cannot show up at a new place and tell them “I am worthy of many moneys because I did X, Y, Z”.

   Help, should I quit and go elsewhere - and if yes, can I even aim for a staff-level role or do I have to go lower and take the (substantial in my area) pay cut? 🥲

   Ooooor, would it hurt to stick around longer and see if things change? At least until my small kids are less small, and I have more time to read books about what a staff engineer is supposed to do so I can pretend in an interview that I do those things.

   Love for the soft skillet nation and thanks for all the laughs over the years <3

In this episode, Dave and Jamison answer these questions:

1. Middle Management in the Midwest says,

   I recently accepted a new position at work, bumping up into an Assistant Director role. At our company this means I’ll have at least two teams, ICs directly reporting at first, potentially managers later.

   I am in the process of working with an Earth Psychologist and Psychiatrist to figure out potential ADHD I’ve been living with. Previously I just thought I was a bad person and couldn’t focus. I want to succeed at this role and do what I can to overcome or work through the distraction, inability to start, and the lack of follow through I’ve been struggling with.

   I know you can only speak about Space ADHD with your Space Psychology and Psychiatry degrees, but I’m wondering if anything could transfer. What have you seen work for people? How would you suggest someone who has big ideas learn to follow through on those ideas?

2. I’m been a software engineer at a tech scale-up (is that still a term?) for about 1.5 years. When I first joined, I felt buzzing energy, and one of the main selling points of working here was the “minimal organizational overhead”. We grew fast and got acquired end of last year by a large tech company. Since then, process has creeped its way slowly but surely, partly because of natural headcount growth, partly because of the acquisition.

   This has been especially apparent on my current project, in which I feel like we need to make a strong pivot. People largely agree, but it’s been difficult to actualize this. And I can’t help but think back to when I first joined - a pivot like this would’ve been a much easier endeavor.

   With that context to set the table, my question is: How can I fight this, to try to preserve the agility of the startup days of before? Even if it is a losing battle, how do I lose less badly? In these ever-changing crazy times, I feel agility is at a premium.

In this episode, Dave and Jamison answer these questions:

1. Dave and Jamison, long time listener first time caller. I appreciate everything you do, I look forward to my Monday morning commute because of this podcast.

   I’ve been a software developer for about 4 years. I’m a career changer and graduated from a boot camp. I was fortunate enough to earn a junior developer position at a non software company and have been promoted during my tenure. I work on a small team and enjoy what I do and the level of impact I have. I am one of the most senior developers. My only concern is that I do not receive direct mentorship from more experienced developers.

   Am I limiting my future prospects by not job hopping? When is the right time to leave a company and seek new opportunities?

2. Hello Mr. 💃 and Mr. Smith. I’ve been working in software ~6 years. In the same company (don’t judge). And about a year ago I advanced in the position of a team lead of 4 developers. I would actually like to attribute this advancement, at least partially, to listening to your podcast. Although luck was involved as well. ANYWAY. There were quite a few questions on how to keep your soul intact while working with Claude. And your advice was to focus on product side, and\or to focus on improving the processes. Now my question is - how can I help my teammates to not lose their soul? How can I help them to not turn into meat proxies? We work in the startup, so tasks are not defined in details. Which does give them some agency over whatever they are building. But I don’t think it’s enough anymore. I think one specific teammate leans toward copying the task description, throwing it at Claude and making a PR out of it. With very few iteration over the quality of the code. Can i blame them? Not really. But how can I help? It’s like the ownership of the code was taken from them. And from me, but at least i can do other stuff. For the context - I am reviewing the PRs manually. Please spam me with idea. Saying to the team - just don’t use AI is not an option, because the speed will go down. A lot. Plus we all are 100% addicted.

   PS Most of my developers have experience of +2 years in the field. One is completely fresh and started half a year ago. Maybe for him the approach should be different? He is pretty good at not generating complete slop. But I think for him it’s even harder to learn and to read all this code.