In this episode, Dave and Jamison answer these questions:

1. I have been at a small startup company for 5 years now. It’s a very small technical team, 4 devs and a tech lead that contributes code & architecture. I am getting a small raise this week for my 5 years but it’s a smaller raise than I was expecting. We’re an all remote team across the globe but I had a dev co worker in the same city as me just leave the company. This has put more pressure on me as I’m the only dev in the primary time zone we operate in, everyone else is east coast or opposite side of the world. With the added pressure and some forward comments from me in one on ones with my tech lead I expected much more that I’m being offered.

   I think I’m supposed to quit my job but I’m terrified of that idea. This is my first job in the field and I love the work. The full stack startup experience is fun and I’ve learned so much, and I like my team a lot. I’ve never even applied to another position in tech yet, I got this one with the first application I sent out. That’s not even considering the current state of the field rapidly changing with AI and the general lack of jobs I am constantly hearing about in tech.

   Is there a world where I should tell my boss I’m thinking about leaving? I’ve become an integral part of the team I think that would result in movement upwards, but that sounds so risky if I haven’t even put in an application anywhere else. Should I take the old quit your job advice even when the field is so shaky?

   Thanks guys! And you reading the patreon names is the best part of my week too.

2. Hi there, I’m about 4 years into my career. I’m at my second job after leaving university. The first was at a firm under 50 employees and the current is at a firm with a global footprint and several thousand employees. Both are in Europe.

   I moved to Europe on a work visa as a pathway to citizenship. I’ve never felt like either my past or current employer has taken advantage of my situation, but it’s important that I keep my job.

   At both employers, I generally work one weekend day a week to meet expectations and keep on the promotion train. I’m not the only one; several of my colleagues do the same.

   For now I have the time to work late, as my significant other is back home. Soon they’ll be moving over, however, and they have made clear they will not be okay with me going into work every Saturday.

   Maybe I’m paranoid. Maybe the expectations at work aren’t clear. Maybe this is part of software. But basically, how do I get to a point where I can checkout on weekends and not feel guilty or like I’m falling behind?

   Do I need to work longer weekdays? Do I need to sacrifice promotions? Do I need to get better at saying no?

In this episode, Dave and Jamison answer these questions:

1. Hey guys. This question comes all the way from New Zealand. Recently discovered your podcast about a month ago, and have been catching up with older episodes on morning walks ever since - you guys are awesome. Anyway - the question: Is it more beneficial to work for a company where the software itself is the product (SaaS etc) or does it no longer matter given the rise of the robots anyway? For context - I’ve been working for a telco/internet company for just over five year. Initially when I joined there was a huge roadmap of software to develop internally - things like customer facing portals, diagnostic tools, and of course internal tooling. However over the past couple of years, it has just been cost cutting and downsizing. Given that the company is not in the business of selling software, our department has been stripped to skeletal level just to ‘keep the lights on’. So, I’ve started applying for jobs at SaaS companies on the basis that even with AI, there will at least be a continuous roadmap to work on. Or, is this a case of ‘snakes in the greener grass’… or whatever the idiom is. Keen to hear your thoughts!

2. I’m an EM about 7 months into a role at a larger private software company. When I joined, the explicit expectation was 1 team (~8 direct reports). I’m happy to say my team has crushed it: award-winning product launch, clear monetization path, company IPO positioning. I made some bold headcount decisions, reduced spend, built the team’s trust back up, and things are now actually quite great. I’m generally a cynical person and so I don’t say that lightly :)

   Last week my boss told me I’m taking on a second team, bringing me to 16 direct reports. When I asked if this was a promotion track, he said no. Apparently the expectation is now ALL EMs manage 2+ teams.

   Problem: the internal HR leveling rubric still says 2+ teams is a Sr. EM expectation, which I didn’t apply for… precisely because I didn’t want it. When I pointed this out, he said “that’s out of date, and you’re behind your peers because you only have been running one team”. I did the job I was hired to do, did it well, and the goalposts moved without anyone telling me.

   The kicker: the team I’m absorbing used to be run by a Sr. EM, who now has just one team!!

   So a Sr. EM is shrinking scope while I’m handed their struggling team and told I’m behind. It wasn’t framed as a vote of confidence. It felt like a quiet reassignment.

   Three questions: Am I being oversensitive to just poor communication (it’s possible the senior EM is being managed out and I shouldn’t use that as a benchmark)? Should I push for a comp increase since I’m now doing 2x the scope I was hired for? And how hard do I push back?

   One constraint: I’m a couple months from planned medical leave and can’t afford to leave before then, so I have limited leverage.

In this episode, Dave and Jamison answer these questions:

1. My company follows scrum, with daily standups. We got a new scrum master. He is very formal and procedural and I struggle with our daily meetings.

   He goes through a long list of assigned tickets, asking each ticket owner about status and info on progress. We are all engineers with many years of experience but it feels like we are in the kindergarten. We don’t have deep expertise about each others work. It is important to know what each of us is doing more or less, but going deep in these issues makes me disconnect, and I think these meetings are above all very good to signal blocking points and ask for help. A recitation of tickets and work being done is not their purpose. On top of that, most days it takes 25-30 mins to go through all the issues.

   Am I being difficult complaining about this? I tried to be polite when I raised the issue but I was told more or less that this way is better for the company. Is it common in the industry to go through dailys like this?

   Thanks a lot, guys, you do great work and I look forward to the SW/industry podcast that makes me laugh the most!

2. Hi! Long-time listener here, I remember Jamison mentioning this podcast on JS Jabber and I’ve been listening ever since. Best part of my week!

   In my current organisation I have a tech lead role on a small, internal platform team. Our “customers” are mainly other engineers. Due to several re-orgs, I have over the years worked with a number of Product Managers and Engineering Managers who have all had one thing in common: they don’t understand the technical domain we work in very well. You could say we have “Product Managers” who do not understand the “Product”.

   At the same time, these people are expected to interact with stakeholders, set the platform vision, manage the roadmap and backlog, prioritise risks, write documentation, do demos, etc. In the end, a lot of this work falls through to me. I do the work, but have also received negative feedback from my skip level that I need to do a better job keeping the product manager and engineering manager in the loop.

   I just got a new EM and am heading into our first expectations setting meeting. How can best express that my expectation is that the roadmap for a technical platform team should be managed by someone technical? Do you think product managers have a role on internal platform teams?