In this episode, Dave and Jamison answer these questions:

1. Is it weird to have 1-1s but not with my ‘manager’?

   Management is planning to start holding ‘1-1s’ every 6-8 weeks for the development team.

   The purpose of these 1-1s: ~ ‘So you can talk about non-technical things, any issues with the team or things that are making you unhappy.’ But these 1-1s be with someone who is nominally ‘HR’, not our manager. Since it’s a tiny company, their responsibilities cover things like accounting and sales support.

   This person doesn’t have any people management or software product development experience, nor any experience in our product domain, and won’t really be our ‘manager’ going forward.

   Maybe I should just 🎶 quit my job 🎶 🕺. Then I’ll have new and unfamiliar problems to worry about 😅

2. Hello Jamison and Dave, I have a question on career progression, tech skills and moving into a new role.

   I’m a career switcher who has spent the last four years studying to move into a developer role.

   Over the last year I’ve been working on a technical project that has been delivered on time, under budget and ahead of schedule, a huge win for me and the team. However, now that it’s done my manager’s manager is looking at how the team is structured and who we need to hire.

   He has come to me and my manager to ask if I would like to move in to more of a Project Manager / Business Analyst role as I have done such a good job of the project roll out this year.

   I’m good at that kind of work, I do get a kick out of it, but if I don’t push forward to move into a developer role have I wasted the last four years retraining? Should I take the role and continue to push to be a full time developer on the team, or accept my fate but use the skills I’ve gained to be a better BA?

In this episode, Dave and Jamison answer these questions:

1. I’m a hiring manager and sometimes have to say no to candidates who interview with us. How do I reject them kindly?

2. In my current company, they only care about reputation of the company. They don’t care about their employees or values, they prefer to invest in other things. One time the CEO asked everyone in the company to create fake accounts in order to vote for the company for an Award. By the way, we received the award. But I don’t know how to feel about this company non-existing values.

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.