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

Soft Skills Engineering is a weekly advice podcast for software developers.

The show's hosts are experienced developers who answer your questions about topics like:

  • pay raises
  • hiring and firing developers
  • technical leadership
  • learning new technologies
  • quitting your job
  • getting promoted
  • code review etiquette
  • and much more...

Soft Skills Engineering is made possible through generous donations from listeners. A heart with a striped shadowSupport us on Patreon

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Recent Episodes

Latest Episode

Episode 180: Inspiring attention to detail and moving

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In this episode, Dave and Jamison answer these questions:

  1. How do I inspire attention to detail in my co-workers?

    I’ve been frustrated with another developer on my team who pays a lot less attention to detail and it results in many bugs that I end up fixing, and sloppy commit history which makes debugging issues more difficult. I received a suggestion from a mentor to reframe my thinking from: I failed to enforce good practices, to, I failed to inspire good practices.

    Having approached the zen master, I’m hopeful for your additional advice / humour, what are some actions that I can take to help me on this path of inspiring vs enforcing?

  2. I am planning to move to a new city for my significant other to get another job, and will likely need to leave my current job to do so. Should I tell my manager up front when we start looking for new jobs or wait until we are actually moving?

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Episode 179: Pushing preemptive promotion and de-motivated by promotion

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In this episode, Dave and Jamison answer these questions:

  1. Hello! I love listening to your show. I often relisten to old episodes. I’m a Front End Developer at an IT consulting company. I will be reaching my 1 year anniversary at the company in March (it’s September right now). How do I talk to my manager about a promotion? I would like to become a Sr front end Developer. I have never had to have this conversation because I have always changed jobs before reaching 1 year with the company. I need help on how to start the conversation. Thank you!

  2. A member of my team asked for a promotion; we discussed and it was decided that if we worked on a set of core skills we could push for the promotion in a few months time. Since this conversion they have lacked motivation and productivity has dropped. What should I do now?

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Episode 178: Procrastinating colleague and working remotely for an on-site company

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In this episode, Dave and Jamison answer these questions:

  1. One of my co-workers never does their job in time and always postpones things. We are both leaders in the company. Especially when we depend on each other, it becomes really difficult.

    I tried many things like taking over their tasks, reminding them (in person, in Slack), escalating to their manager etc. None of these worked.

    As a different strategy, I organized a workshop with leaders to brainstorm how to collaborate and work together. That was really positive. We talked about each other’s responsibilities. This person was active in the workshop. Contributed and also agreed on many things. I felt really positive after this. :)

    But then shortly after, I ended up with frustration again. Nothing actually changed. Agreeing is easy but taking actions is not.

    Please give me recommendations other than quitting my job or waiting this person to quit. 😅

  2. I work remotely for an on-site company. How do you manage that relationship?