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!)

In this episode, Dave and Jamison answer these questions:

1. I have been with my current organization for 5+ years. I like the company and have generally had a good experience working here. However, the last several years I have not really gotten a raise except for the standard “merit raise”, which does not cover inflation, so effectively the last several years I have made less money than the year before. I brought this up to my EM who said there is no chance of the company increasing the merit raises to meet inflation, unless I get a promotion. However, my EM also said there are no promotions available.

   I don’t know if this means the company knows the job market is tough and they don’t have to pay us as much, or if the company is in dire financial straits and unable to keep salaries up with inflation.

   This job market is tough and I don’t know how long it would take me to find a new job, but certainly I will look. My question is basically, how can I go about getting my manager to help me level up to make myself a more attractive candidate for a future job without necessarily tipping my hand that I am job searching.

   On one hand I assume he knows that I might be looking. On the other hand if the company is in a bad position and we have another round of layoffs (we have had several over the past few years), I don’t want to be first on the chopping block because it looks like I have my foot out the door.

   I’m just wondering how much I should make it clear what my goals are to have my EM work with me, or play it close to the vest.

2. I am a Software Engineering Manager with about 12 years of experience. I am a few months into a new role at a medium sized private company. The day I joined I found out that all ICs under Staff-level are international contractors! Surprise!

   My team is mostly contracted “Senior developers”. Nobody is anywhere near what I consider “Senior”. The company has a culture of aggressive performance reviews. However, I’m seeing ICs and other Managers around me who are all seriously below the bar compared to other places I’ve worked in the tech industry. I get a lot of vague pressure from the Director/CTO level to “raise the bar” and quickly exit people who aren’t meeting it. I already fired one person for performance and behavior issues, but I feel like I’m between a rock and a hard place.

   If I’m truly going to hold my team accountable to my and the company’s own published performance metrics, I should fire the whole team. That’s probably not good. Alternately, I can pad performance evaluations to convince my boss that everyone is meeting expectations. This also isn’t good, but feels like what everyone else is doing.

   Also, I’m a little queasy doing aggressive firing and performance reviews for contractors. The company treats them as full time employees (after hours on call expectations, etc) and I’m not sure how Earth lawyers would look at this situation.

   Help!

   Final wrinkle - my last two jobs I’ve lasted less than a year. I wasn’t fired but just haven’t been able to find a good fit for a little while. I’m worried that if I just leave this job 6 months in, it’ll start to look suspicious on my resume.

In this episode, Dave and Jamison answer these questions:

1. I’m a new listener to the podcast and work as the sole developer for a sports team, which is the only company I’ve worked for since graduating from university 8 years ago. I listened to episode 493 while clenching my teeth as you told a listener to absolutely not take the job with the European football club as a solo developer. Yikes! While I feel I have continued to grow my skillset in my role, I’m now feeling vulnerable about having no professional experience working alongside other developers or on large-scale applications.

   I feel very conflicted about leaving my current company. I have a respectable developer salary for the (non-American) low cost of living area I’m in, have a great manager, and have built up a ton of good will and trust within the organization. I get all the freedom I could ask for to make design decisions, implement devops practices, try out new technologies, and make mistakes. I also find the work interesting and there’s always something else to do! I’m a little scared of the horror stories that I hear about the real dev world and don’t want to take my current situation for granted.

   I would really appreciate guidance on what you think I should do. I have clear skill deficits in certain areas, but would have to give up a lot of liberties with a role change.

2. Listener Brian asks,

   My job is mostly okay, but could be better because of the people in it. I joined a greenfield project a few years ago as my first software engineer role after transitioning from other data work. I grew up with the project and improved my engineering skills. A year ago we hired two new people. They had relevant experience and seemed to know what they were talking about in the interview, and had five & ten years of experience (aka, more than me).

   Onboarding the first few months was whatever, BUT they’ve never really improved afterwards. They turn in work that has clearly not been tested or does not meet the ticket’s requirements, barely review PRs and have never (!) left any comments/feedback, and despite their level (senior+). I don’t really trust them to work on anything more than the smallest, simplest stories.

   I’ve provided specific feedback in PRs and in performance reviews (sometimes very low-level and specific, and sometimes very high-level about guiding questions or principles), but nothing’s changed. I’ve felt frustrated, drained, and confused - why is it such a struggle to get someone with an entire decade of development experience to turn in a straightforward PR? One other teammate has admitted (privately) that some work was sloppily done, which is consoling but otherwise I’m not sure if it’s bothering others as much as it does me.

   They’re offshore so maybe it’s just a communication thing? The rest of the team has been on the project since the beginning so maybe we’re poorly set up for new devs. I have high standards for myself and others and I’ve always been the most junior developer on the team and am new to the senior role.

   Am I just being a perfectionistic jerk? Is that a bad match for (essentially) junior teammates? Should I just reset my expectations and accept that their level and years of experience don’t translate into high performance? Thanks for any insights.