In this episode, Dave and Jamison answer these questions:

Questions

1. Listener Ryan asks,

   I am the only full-time software engineer at a relatively small company. There is also a contractor who has been with the company off and on for about 25 years.

   How do I manage playing multiple roles when the development team is so small? I take the role of software engineer, team lead, software architect, product owner, project manager, designer, QA, etc. Some of those roles are full time jobs. How do I still make progress on development (i.e. coding)?

2. Hey guys, love the show. My question is this.

   I work in a small startup. About a year ago our team documented what our git workflow would look like. We agreed on things like rebasing instead of merging to master, and never squashing our commits into one, that sort of thing.

   One of our developers is now making a fuss about following these rules and constantly does their own thing. After speaking to them about it, they shut me down and said it is up to the individual developer to decide how they use these tools.

   There have been some heated discussion on merge requests with this person telling our senior devs that they don’t want to hear their opinions.

   This person started at the company 6 months before me, and I am only a junior engineer myself so I’m not sure if there is really anything I can do. I have been at the company for 2 years now.

   I have offered to help them learn how to use git the way our team agreed but was told “no thanks, I’ll do it my way”.

   What is the best way to navigate this situation? Is this something I should escalate to my manager, or should I just get over it?

   Thanks for the help, can’t wait to hear you rip this one apart :P

In this episode, Dave and Jamison answer these questions:

Questions

1. We have just today been told that we may or may not have a job in 1 week. I feel lucky because I handed my notice in yesterday for a new job, but my colleagues are not in such a position. The company burned through all it’s money, and its only hope is that someone or some company who wants to buy the business in its current state.

   How would you approach a situation like this? Is it best to just jump ship right away? What would potential new employers think when you told them the situation? What about my co-workers?

2. Long time listener, first time caller asker.

   How do I tell my boss I can’t complete a task?

   I’ve been with my current company for 6 months. In that time I’ve fixed a lot of problems that have blocked our current embedded system project because of my hardware design background. Sometimes I take a bit longer than projected, but I’ve been upfront about that and it’s all fine.

   I was trying to implement a new feature and it was meant to take around 3 days of work to do, but after 3 weeks I just couldn’t quite get it to work. I asked for help and pulled out every trick in my arsenal and just couldn’t figure it out. I ended up having to tell my boss that I was out of ideas and letting him tell me to shelve it, but I could tell this disappointed him.

   What should I do next time?

Show Notes

• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D4tvZJGNIhM
• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gnolia

In this episode, Dave and Jamison answer these questions:

1. My manager has left, so I have the task of interviewing candidates for my future boss’ position. I’m not doing it alone, one more engineering lead joins me for my tech round. After this round, the candidate gets to talk to upper management for the final decision. My question is, what are the lines you should never ever cross in an interview when interviewing your future boss.

2. Our company was purchased by a private equity firm this year. Layoffs began immediately. While the company was gradually carved up, leadership continually violated every promise made. This week, during the most recent round of layoffs, I lost my job. I worked my butt off for years trying to contribute as much as I could to make a positive impact for both users and coworkers. Alas, despite all of my efforts, I was proven expendable. It feels like there was little point in doing as much as I did for this company, especially during the panicked response to COVID.

   How do I find and sustain a sense of security at the next company? How do I ensure that I can safely care about the company—the work done and the people helping to do it—finding that precarious balance between being invaluable and burning myself out?