In this episode, Dave and Jamison answer these questions:

1. I’m a software developer with about 15 years in the industry, and I am soon starting as the CTO of a robotics company with about 50 employees.

   Though I have years of experience and an academic background within the field of robotics, I have always been focused on the software side of things. In my new role, I am ultimately responsible for the hardware team as well.

   How do I go about earning the respect, and becoming an effective leader, of my new colleagues working in a field in which I am not an expert myself?

2. Hi, I’m meowmeow, and I’ve enjoyed your podcast for a long time.

   I’m working at a small engineering company which don’t have lots of profit.

   Recently, the PMs at my company(including the CEO) have started “vibe coding” directly on our product. They’ve even added PMs to the project planning list as contributors.

   Whenever they open a PR, the code is AI-generated and reflects their personal working style. The code quality is fairly low and engineers end up spending a lot of time reviewing and fixing it, even though we’re already under a heavy workload.

   Our CEO comes from a product management background. He believes PMs should write code and deploy their own implementations, and that engineers are not fast enough and should simply move faster.

   I’ve already been feeling stressed due to the workload, and this situation seems to be making it worse. Engineering leadership doesn’t seem able to push back effectively.

   What should I do?

In this episode, Dave and Jamison answer these questions:

1. Hi, thank you for the podcast, I am long time listener, first time asker. Something weird is going on at my company. A colleague of my always wanted to get promoted to management, he got the opportunity, but after multiple preparatory meeting for this new promotion, HE QUIT! He did not tell what happened there, only that “it was time for something new”. Now several months later my skip level declared that he wants to be a developer again. Another manager was offered his position, which is a significant promotion (basically head of engineering), which he accepted, but after being included into high level meetings he declared that he is also QUITTING! We now have an interim Head of engineering, who declared that he is only doing this until a replacement is found. Why does no one wants to be in the management? What is happening at these meetings that people leave? Btw. the financial state of the company is not great, but not horrible, the CEO even declared that there won’t be layoffs this year. So what’s going on? I really like working at this company, but I can’t shake the feeling after these events that I am up for a big surprise soon.

2. Hi,

   I’m a senior dev at a megacorp. I’m struggling with AI. We’ve got a lot of initiatives around it and are expected to be using it with our work. The problem is every time I try to use it I get really frustrated. It feels like working with a junior dev who doesn’t know the codebase well but knows lots of language/framework trivia. I also feel displeasure in my work turning into just reviewing some generated code and fixing it up. Especially, when you have to be very thorough because we all know that a single line of code can cause an outage. I just find no joy in this kind of work and am starting to have an aversion to it even when I just try to learn more about it.

   I’m also having a hard time teasing apart the hype from the reality. I’m either hearing that “the models are so great, this is the future, coding isn’t a career anymore” or “this is hype, the bubble will burst soon and ruin everything.” Both of these outcomes seem kinda catastrophic but I have no idea which one to believe in (or maybe there’s a 3rd option?).

   So, how do I overcome this aversion? How do I make sense of the hype vs. reality? How do I learn to stop worrying and love the slop?

   Thanks, Dr. Strangecode

In this episode, Dave and Jamison answer these questions:

1. A listener named Derek asks,

   I am the CTO and cofounder of a startup. Now that vibecoding is a thing, our CEO has kind of gone rogue, and and he’s vibecoding a bunch of random stuff, one of which he bought a domain for and has pushed a potential customer to pay for, without talking to our team. I feel like this is fragmenting our focus, but I don’t want to ban our CEO from vibecoding and being creative. how should I handle this without damaging relationships?

2. AdmiralFox asks,

   Hi Dave and Jamison!

   Longtime listener, first-time question asker here.

   After 14 years at a consultancy firm, I’m moving to a major retailer to become their Java Learning and Community Lead. Instead of shipping code, my new role will be shipping knowledge. I will be managing learning paths, organizing internal knowledge sharing events, and help managers screen candidates. Basically, I’m moving from a ‘Maker’ role to a ‘Multiplier’ role.

   I have 13 weeks of notice period (Standard European “I’m not leaving yet after 14 years” protocol) and I want to use my free evenings to prepare.

   My questions for you:

   How do I transition from “the guy with the technical answers” to “the guy who helps everyone else find the answers”?

   How can I use the remaining time of my notice period to prepare for the people side of this role?

   Love the show! Keep up the ‘quit-your-job’ advice coming (although I’ve already taken it!)