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 79: Story Point Misses and Measuring Productivity

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This week Jamison and Dave answer these questions:

  1. It seems like my teams always miss their story point commitments. Is this normal? How do you change it?
  2. How do you actually measure developer productivity?

The article comparing research on productivity in static and dynamic type systems is here. It is a great read.

Jamison also mentions Goodhart’s Law. Read more about it here.

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Episode 78: Endless Rewrites and Fake Deadlines

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This week Jamison and Dave answer these questions:

  1. We’ve re-written the project I’m on 10 times without launching. What should I do?
  2. I worked hard to hit a deadline, only to find out the deadline was moved. How do I avoid this in the future?

We talked a bit about the value of deadlines way back in episode nine if you want to hear some positive things about deadlines.

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Episode 77: Boss Wants Me To Speak and The 2% Raise

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This week Jamison and Dave answer these questions:

  1. My boss wants me to speak at conferences, but I’m very new to software. What should I do?
  2. How do I get more than a 2% raise? That is the company average.

We talked about conferences a bit more way back in episode 6.

We also talked more about playing the salary game in episode 23, which is a technique for sharing salary information with your co-workers.