In this episode, Dave and Jamison answer these questions:

1. Happy Birthday Dave and congrats on the 400 episode milestone!

   Last year I was recruited away from my cushy Sr Dev role at Chill MegaCorp to an exciting technical leadership role at Fast-Paced MegaCorp. It felt like a huge level up since I had always wanted to pick up some of the softer communication and leadership skills to add to my arsenal while still working on technical problems. The 30% pay raise sealed the deal. Fast-foreward one year and I am burnt out, feeling disengaged and thinking about quitting.

   Compared to my previous role, everything here is urgent and high priority. There is little structure on my team, no planning or intake, and we just react to emails and pings from other teams about things not working. Our Sr Dev is very knowledgable but often gets short and impatient with me. My Sr Manager has said things like “sleep is for the weak” and frequently sends emails in the middle of the night. We have weekly evening releases that have gone till 4am. We are expected to always be around in case of a production incident – which happen very frequently because of the sheer complexity of everything and high dependency between internal services.

   I have considered moving to another team, but unfortunately this seems to be a company wide culture. I am considering cutting my losses with this company and moving back to an IC role with better work-life-balance. I am grateful for all the leadership skills I have picked up this past year and learned a ton in such a fast paced environment, but its been a whole year and I still haven’t gotten used to the “always on” culture and overall chaos.

   Is it normal form someone to shift between management and IC like this? What do you guys recommend?

2. Hi Dave and Jamison, thank you for the show. It is the engineering podcast I look forward to most every week.

   I work at a company that, maybe like many others, has lots of title inflation. As a result, my title is much higher than it would be at a larger (and public) tech company. For example, “senior” may be one or two levels below senior elsewhere, and “staff” would be “senior” elsewhere. We also have “senior staff”, which might be “staff” elsewhere, but more likely that might just be a more senior “senior” engineer, too.

   My question is: How should I consider approaching a job search where I am knowingly (and reasonably) down-leveling myself in title? Should I include the relative level on my resume (for example, “L5”)? Should I not address it unless a recruiter or interviewer asks about it? Briefly mention the seeming down-level in a cover letter as comparable responsibilities and scope as my current role?

   I have worked hard for my promotions, because salary bands required the title change for the money I wanted, but now I am worried it will complicate applying to other companies.

   (Thank you for selecting my question!)

In this episode, Dave and Jamison answer these questions:

1. A listener named Metal Mario asks,

   A few weeks back in Episode 395 you talked about working with a superstar teammate. I feel like for our team, I’m the superstar.

   We’re a small software team in a large non-software company. I joined a year ago and very quickly took on a lot of responsibility. I think I’m a fantastic fit for the team, received *outstanding* feedback in my annual review as well as during the course of the year, and I get along great with my teammates. However, there are two problems.

   I joined the team on a lower salary compared to the rest of the team. I was initial ok with it because I changed to a completely new tech stack as well as a new role. Now I strongly feel like I should earn more than my colleagues. My boss hinted that he agreed in my annual review.

   I fear that by me joining the team and demanding a substantial pay raise, the cake gets smaller for the rest of the team, and that they feel like me joining the team prevented them to rising through the ranks.

   The second problem is related: a colleague of mine (mildly) complained that he lost responsibilities to me since I’ve joined the team. I talked to my boss about that, but given that things have been going very well, my boss would like me to keep doing the tasks. Again- I’m worried that my colleagues might get spiteful with me.

   Would it be better to take it down a notch (in order not to endanger team happiness and keep things stable for the company), or should I perform to the best of my abilities all the time?

2. Impoverished By Pro-ration asks,

   Is it reasonable for a company to pro-rate raises for new employees?

   I recently received a raise that was smaller than expected as part of a promotion I got 9 months after joining the company. I joined halfway through the year and was under-leveled, so I quickly was put up for promotion, and got it! My raise was about half what I expected, and when I asked HR, they told me that the policy is to prorate raises, so because I joined halfway through the year, I only get half the raise that the promotion should come with, so instead of the 20% I was expecting to bring me up to the salary range of the job level I originally applied for, I only got 10% and am now making less than I think I should.

   Have I permanently crippled my lifetime earnings?!?

   What can I do to get the company to pay me appropriately? I understand if bonuses are pro-rotated, but why would raises also be pro-rated?

In this episode, Dave and Jamison answer these questions:

1. I’m a junior software engineer who has been placed in charge of a handful of graduates and interns who have joined my team. The project is fairly technical.

   For the first two weeks, the new starters were pair programming. That went well, and after talking to each new starter they were eager to start working individually.

   We’re one month in and I’m concerned about the performance of one of the engineers, “Morgan” (fake name). Morgan has completed a degree from a good university we often hire from but appears to lack any knowledge of software development. As a result, Morgan seems to struggle with researching and working through problems beyond following tutorials. I got the impression that while pair programming Morgan didn’t contribute much.

   Is there anything I could do to give Morgan the boost needed to start rolling? I’m sure I could spoon feed Morgan, but it would monopolize my time when I’m already spending time with the other new starters on top of my own tasks.

   I want to give Morgan a shot, but I don’t know what to do. At what point do I tell my manager about my concerns?

   Things I’ve encountered:

   • When told to insert a colon to fix a syntax error, Morgan didn’t know what a colon was.
   • Morgan didn’t take any subjects at university on data structures or algorithms, which made it hard to explain the tree used for caching.
   • Morgan wanted to do some DevOps having done some at university. Morgan appears to have no understanding of Docker.
   • Morgan said they studied React at university but has demonstrated a lack of understanding to write React code.
   • The last issue Morgan worked on required them to read some source code of a library to verify its behavior. Even after explanation Morgan didn’t understand how to find the calling ancestor of a given function.
   • Morgan has never heard about concurrency.

   Even all these issues in aggregate would be fine with me, but the continual resemblance and behavior of a stunned mullet isn’t encouraging. After being told to research a concept, Morgan must be told the specific Google query to type in.

   Thanks, and apologies for the essay!

2. Listener Confused Cat asks,

   I spent just over four years on a team where technical growth was lacking. Recently, I transitioned to a new team within the same company, and I’m enjoying the atmosphere, the team dynamics, and the opportunity to engage in more challenging software development tasks. Fortunately, my motivation is beginning to resurface.

   However, I’ve noticed that my technical skills have become somewhat rusty. While I can still deliver systems and features, I feel like I’m falling behind compared to some of my peers. This self-awareness is causing me to doubt myself, despite receiving no negative feedback from my current team or supervisor. It’s not just imposter syndrome; I genuinely feel the need to upskill.

   How can I navigate this situation effectively? What strategies would you suggest for advancing my skills while holding a senior position and preventing feelings of inadequacy from affecting my performance?