This episode is sponsored by the O’Reilly Velocity conference. Register today and use discount code SKILLS for a 20% discount: http://velocityconf.com/skills.

In this episode, Dave and Jamison answer these questions:

1. I was unhappy at my job despite having a great manager, so I started interviewing around. Then my manager helped improve things considerably, but I ended up getting a job offer that was for a much higher amount than I’m currently paid. My company gave me a counter offer that I accepted, but now I feel like I somehow betrayed my manager and don’t know how to stop feeling guilty. How do I come back from a touchy salary negotiation incident like this and make things feel like they’re normal again?

2. Compared to a smaller company which I used to work at, this new big company I’m working at seems to require more storytelling around the work that I do. I see people getting rewarded for exaggerating the effects of their work and being excused for their missed deadlines when they complain and blame the codebase. I hate to play this kind of game and would rather divert my energy on improving as an engineer and getting more code written. </rant>

   With all that said, I do understand the need for this and think it’s a valuable skill.

This episode is sponsored by the O’Reilly Velocity conference. Register today and use discount code SKILLS for a 20% discount: http://velocityconf.com/skills.

In this episode, Dave and Jamison answer these questions:

1. I became a manager a year go. I took over someone as my direct report who was not performing well at the time. On my first day, I gave a motivational chat to welcome him again to the team and continued to motivate him. But after 1 year, he is not improving at all. I give him clear feedback and set expectations but he just doesn’t change. This got to a point where it is stressful for both of us. And since I spent so much time on just for this issue, I fear that it adds to the stress and may affect my decisions. What should I do?

2. I’ve just join the company as a Ruby/RoR developer. After half a year the architect presented new way of developing the product and said that from now all new features will be writen in Java/Spring Boot and we switch to micriservice architecture. But I don’t like Java, don’t want to switch (I have 6 year expirience with Ruby), what should I do?

This episode is sponsored by the O’Reilly Velocity conference. Register today and use discount code SKILLS for a 20% discount: http://velocityconf.com/skills.

In this episode, Dave and Jamison answer these questions:

1. Hey! I love your podcast, you have definitely helped me improve my soft skills in my career.

   I am a full stack web developer and I have been pretty much loving it. Web development was not my original career plan though, I graduated with a Bachelor’s in Computational Mathematics & Computer Science, and I knew I wanted to be a software dev since working with robotics in middle school. I kinda fell into Web Development from my IT work study job in college.

   I have been doing this for 4 years, and I am ready to transition over to applying for Software Engineering jobs. How do I get over this scary feeling of leaving my safety net? How can I encourage myself that I can make this new career transition? There will be jobs I see posted, and I just wanna go for it, but I always get scared at the thought of leaving since it’s just so intimidating, especially coding interviews and interacting with new people, new workplace, etc. What if I end up regretting my choice? Any advice is appreciated!

   Thanks guys! I always look forward to your episodes every week - I share your podcast with my fellow nerd friends!

2. I work at a bureaucratic company where we move fairly slow. Recently, I’ve been getting more and more frustrated with our code review process, but I’m not sure if this has to do with my quality of code.

   It can take weeks for one of my pull requests to actually get merged. Someone will review my work, I will make some changes, then they will come back some days later with a new truckload of very nitpicky details that they want changed.

   This makes me long for the days of me working at a startup where we had no code review, and no testing process, and it’s making me sad. How do you draw the line over what is reasonable code review and what is too much?