Soft Skills Engineering

In this episode, Dave and Jamison answer these questions:


I work for a small software company on a team of about 7 or 8 engineers. I like working here. I like the people, the autonomy, the pay, my boss, and the stack among other things. I try to remind myself of this regularly so I don’t take it for granted. I’ve been here for about 2.5 years and would love to continue working here.

Our CTO, like many, has become a big AI cowboy coder. Every few months, he vibe codes a new project and then decides to interrupt the full workloads that we have a limited number of engineers to do to hand his project off to be cleaned up, worked into the product, and solve all of the problems that remain once actually put into practice. This usually ends up going to a different engineer per project, who is then tied up with the CTO’s whims and is no longer available to do the work planned by product. Our EM knows this and knows the frustration and lost velocity, but what can he do? (rhetorical, not the question)

Most recently, I was tasked with implementing some reporting dashboards he did into the product, but he specifically asked me to make it in such a way that he can continue to work on and add to because he can’t be bothered to run the actual product. This is very concerning to several of us. He has no clue what he’s writing or how bad it is. We’ve talked about perhaps making him do PRs, but a) who can make him, he’s the CTO, and b) he’ll have no clue what to do with PR pushback given that he has no clue what he wrote. And again, who can make him actually fix it if he asks us to rubber stamp it? (rhetorical, not the question)

I’ve been listening to the show for years and I’ve talked to friends at other companies, so I know this is everywhere. Is it as everywhere as it seems? Is it worth finding a new place to work where the CTO isn’t running so rampant? As I stated before, I’d rather not leave, but if I talked about that as a concern, I don’t want it to sound like an ultimatum, even if maybe it is at some level. Is this just the new reality for us, or is there something that can be done?




I am a senior software engineer at a big tech company. I live in central Europe but my team is in the US and I’m 9 hours ahead. I have 7:30 pm meetings and sometimes take an hour before and/or after this meeting to prep or follow up. Previously I slept in later and started later to deal with these meetings.
However, now my daughter is starting kindergarten and I wake up early (5-6AM) to be with her, drop her off, etc. Now in the evening meetings my brain is fried and I can’t even articulate myself well. The next day I think about so many things I wish I had said in those meetings.

I can’t quit as I make 160K right now and I would only be making 60-80K tops in my country and have some financial commitments. Relocation to the US is also not an option because I have kids and don’t want them to move.

So far I have been skipping meetings and my manager has not expressed concern but I feel so detached from my team. I don’t even know what most of my peers are working on.

It feels like I am out of ideas to make this better. Please share your space wisdom with me :)

This is a rerun of episode 331.

In this episode, Dave and Jamison answer these questions:


Listener ninjamonkey says,

I am a new grad who is half a year into the role now at a very large company. Recently, a senior engineer on my team asked me to create a ticket for an infra team for a problem with a service. I provided logs and steps to reproduce the issue and did a health check before submitting.

Right after, the manager of the team put me into a group chat with their team, asked why I created the ticket and told me to start doing my job and they can’t debug for me.

From these interactions and comments on the ticket, it feels the infra team will likely not work on the tickets I report or de-prioritize them. This has left me discouraged and hesitant.

I will have to do lots of this kind of infrastructure work in the future. Additionally, one of the goals my manager set for me is to work with more external teams for the upcoming year.

What do I do here? Do I tell my manager about these interactions? Do I tell my team lead, staff/seniors to swap out for different kind of story?




I work for a small startup. I was the first employee other than the 2 founders.

Being the first developer hired, naturally means I have the most knowledge about our application. I also have good organisational skills, which has led to me becoming and being referred to as the “Lead Developer”.

I have recruited 2 of the 3 new developers, and have trained both of them and got them up to speed.

At first I was pleased with the progression and was keen to grow into the position, and told the founders so.

Since then, I have changed my mind, I don’t want to be the lead - due to the following:


The communication is absolutely pitiful. Any questions we ask of the founders we get about a 30% reply rate no matter the form of communication.

We get poorly defined tasks and requirements

The CTO will just blast through some of our features over the weekend and say here I fixed it for you



I don’t want to quit my job (just yet… its a comin though).

I have actually discussed the above points with them, but I know these 2 founders will never change their ways.

How do I tell them I just want to go back to being an Individual Contributor like my Employment contract states?

In this episode, Dave and Jamison answer these questions:


I stayed too long at my first company and now my career is ruined?

Hi both, long time listener. (Since I graduated university 4 years ago actually and felt I could never find a job but listening to you guys made me feel not like such an outcast in our field.)

I graduated in 2022. Didn’t really apply around much and almost immediately accepted the full time offer from the company I did my internship with during my degree. And fast forward to middle of 2026… I am still here.

I’ve long stopped growing as an engineer and have actually been stuck on a simple CLI tool for almost 4 years now with little to no cloud/backend/etcetera experience to show in my 5 year career. I don’t feel I am desirable in the job market at all due to this and waited way too long to look for a job because I was comfortable and happy. I feel paralyzed (no need to put on your space therapist hats BUT some career advice would be wonderful!)

(Also did I mention I am in Canada and want to move to Europe and live the rest of my life there but visa sponsorship with my level of experience is impossible? Maybe that’ll be for my next question…)

Thanks for all you do, cheers!




I have a non-CS engineering degree, and am looking to transition into Software Engineering. I have the option of pursuing a degree with Tuition Reimbursement from my job, but am in a bit of a strange situation deciding which degree. Basically, I’ve figured that with my current Engineering background I could pursue either a second Bachelor’s degree through Universities offering a “Post-Baccalaureate” program in Computer Science, or a Master’s degree, with maybe only a slightly longer program to get the Master’s as opposed to the Bachelor’s. Otherwise the total length/cost of the programs would be roughly the same.

I have heard though that it might not be a great idea to go into a Master’s program unless you know what specifically you want to study.

I am curious what you think would be more “hire-able” between the two options for someone pursuing the career change into Software Engineering?

In this episode, Dave and Jamison answer these questions:


Dwill Ainghell asks,

During the golden era of software development, it was commonly stated that you should always negotiate job offers. The argument was that the company has invested significant time and resources into you as a candidate and there is always some wiggle room for negotiations. A popular article / podcast by Patrick McKenzie likened it to doing something slightly uncomfortable like “reciting poetry while simultaneously standing on one foot” with almost no downside. (https://www.complexsystemspodcast.com/episodes/how-to-negotiate-your-salary-package/)

Does this still hold true in today’s environment? I’m a SWE with 10 years of experience and I’ve been unemployed for close to a year. I’m expecting an offer from a large company and I fear that I will look like a fool trying to negotiate in my current position and the current job market dynamics. Even worse, I fear that they might retract the offer and give it to someone else. That being said, I don’t want to leave money on the table.

What’s the correct course of action in today’s environment?




Listener Stu says,

In episode 500, you said something to the effect of “working hard and doing a great job with the work you’ve been assigned is not the promotion track”. I’d love to hear you discuss what it does take to get promoted and how to do that.

In my job, we have a jira queue and engineers are tasked with taking from the top of the queue and executing work. There’s also an expectation to lead pre-defined projects (define the scope, write the tickets, and shepherd it along).

All of these projects have deadlines, so how do you recommend people get the defined work done, lead projects, and still find time to do whatever it is to get promoted?

Why is doing an excellent job not enough?

In this episode, Dave and Jamison answer these questions:


Hey Dave & Jamison,

Long time listener. Love the podcast.

I recently rejoined a remote team that I worked with in the past. I was super stoked to rejoin this team because they were collectively one of the most competent and technically excellent teams I’ve ever worked with. And they’re all genuinely nice people as well.

I left the team before AI coding had really caught on, but coming back to the team has been a huge shock to me. Almost everyone now exclusively writes code with AI. PR descriptions are all AI generated, and code review has become copy-pasting AI-generated comments into GitHub.

Being a remote team it was already hard to connect, but now it feels like almost all interactions are their AI assistant talking to my AI assistant.

I’m not anti-AI, and I get that writing code with AI can be much quicker. But I’m struggling with the loss of what made the team feel good to work on, specifically the craftsmanship, level of engagement, and the learning from eachother. The product itself is still high quality (even if the codebase is less-so), but the process itself is a lot less enjoyable now.

I don’t want to be the person who shows up after being away and immediately makes it everyone else’s problem that I miss the old way of doing things. But I’m having doubts if I want to be a part of this team.

Is this just what software engineering looks like in remote organisations now? And should I expect most teams are now operating like this?




Hi Jamison and Dave,

Love your podcast.

I was recently hired as a mid-level full-stack developer with the promise of leading a new squad. On day one, I discovered management scrapped the squad idea and promoted an existing developer to sole lead instead.

The team consists of this new lead, two 20-year VB6 veterans, and me. The codebase is lawless: direct DB access, fat controllers, 1-2K+ LOC classes everywhere (copy/pasted boilerplate) and severe Broken Access Control (OWASP #1) where authenticated users can extract anyone’s PII (full name, home address, phone number) via a simple email query string.

My coworkers rely heavily on generative AI but do not review the output. They constantly commit “AI slop” that barely functions and introduces endless bugs. I used to clean it up, but I recently realized they care so little about the codebase that no one even notices if I stop. Add in a “Senior Product Manager” whose entire UX background is a three-month internship, who invents customer requirements to defend her inconsistent designs.

I am already applying elsewhere.

My questions:

How do you handle a bait-and-switch of this magnitude?

When the team cares so little that no one notices if you stop cleaning up their AI-generated bugs, how do you stay sane and professionally sharp while riding out the clock?



Show Notes

https://tombedor.dev/human-attention-and-human-effort/