Soft Skills Engineering - Episode 242 (Episode 131 re-run): Stinky feet and high salary expectation

Episode Date: January 5, 2021

It’s one more re-run before we are back with new stuff! Enjoy this episode from November 2018, back when Tiger King didn’t yet exist. In this episode, Dave and Jamison answer these questions: Questions I sit in a desk with 3 other people. One of those people does a great job of personal hygiene…the other two not so much. I have dropped a couple of hints about it (I mentioned it is a good idea not to wear the same pair shoes/trainers every day so you’re feet don’t start to smell). Some days, my stomach will churn from the smells that inevitably waft over. What should I do - I am worried if I tell my boss to talk to them, he will mark me as a troublemaker/overly sensitive. To make things worse, one of them sits opposite and puts his feet under my desk, so the, let’s be frank, absolutely awful stench is right under my nose! :? It’s not just feet by the way, we are talking the full BO experience. I was at a interview recently. When being asked for expected salary. I mentioned a number lot more than what the company was expecting. It’s already been a week and I haven’t received a response from them. I really really love the company and the project they are working on. I would love to to contact the HR personal and tell that I am interested in the position even if it means less money. How do I approach the situation? I don’t want to mess it up more than I already have. 🙁

Hello there, this is Jameson Dance, one of the hosts of the Soft Skills Engineering Podcast. We are off again this week, so we are bringing you another rerun. This is a rerun of episode 131. In my head, I remember this as the foot guillotine episode. So enjoy, we'll be back next week with new episodes. It takes more than great right through caching skills to be a great engineer. This is episode 131 of the Soft Skills Engineering Podcast. I'm your host, Dave Smith. I'm your host, Jameson Dance. soft skills engineering is a weekly advice show for software engineers and other technical individuals about non-technical topics i have nothing to say about right through caching i'm

sorry i don't either the topic is is dry as dust there's no humor to be mined from it impossible but we have some other cool stuff to say i want to talk about our wonderful patrons thank you so much to the people that support us at the level where we thank them every week that's matthew matthew wodewicks okay i can pronounce wodewicks now but i can't pronounce matthew what's going on agile ventures charity zach grannon michael green david jackson nick kantar sean clayton thank you as well to uh some new donors that we have fedor rusak and steven james thank you so much for your support we really appreciate it you help keep the show going we actually a consequence of our growth is it costs money now we have ongoing costs for things that

we didn't used to have ongoing costs for when there were two people listening dave's mom and my mom so uh thank you so much you helped make this possible yes thanks very much oh i should i mean yeah i guess if if you aren't sponsoring if you aren't being a patron patronizing you aren't patronizing us and you would like to you can go to softskills.audio click the support us on patreon button all right should i read our first question please do okay this comes from a listener named leon who says i sit in a desk with three other people one of those people does a great job of personal hygiene the other two not so much i have dropped a couple of hints about it i mentioned that it is a good idea not to wear the same pair of shoes or trainers every day so

your feet don't start to smell and some days my stomach will churn from the smells that inevitably walked over what should i do okay i'll let you finish i have lots of questions what should i do i am worried if i tell my boss to talk to them he will mark me as a troublemaker or overly sensitive to make things worse one of them sits opposite and puts his feet under my desk so the let's be frank absolutely awful stench is right under my nose it's not just feet by the way we are talking the full bo experience what should i do oh man okay how do you just casually drop the hint that like hey it's a good idea to switch your shoes up sometimes so they don't smell I'm just wondering

You must be a master of subtlety Hey, random fact for you It's a good idea to change your shoes every day You know, no, just wanted to let you know I was reading the most fascinating article the other day And it said Anyway, see you later Okay, here's my suggestion

In your code reviews of these people's code Include comments about their personal hygiene okay like what pull pull requests can are great venues for you to just like put whatever is bothering you no matter how connected or disconnected it's like the ultimate passive aggressive forum yeah like someone dares touch a file in a directory you're like oh you need to fix this totally unrelated issue so i think you can extend that to general things like oh yeah as well yeah take it to the extreme yeah so wait like minus one stinky feet yeah i think just keep it short keep it sweet use emojis oh just drop like a drop like a random

foot emoji and like a nose emoji with no explanation okay link it to code smells that's a metaphor developers are familiar with you know how there are these things called code smells where the code is really bad and there's these easy ways to tell. There's this thing in real life called smells. And it's kind of like code smells. Yeah. Roses are red, violets are blue.

This code smells and so do you. You pulled that out of like the elementary school days. Foot guillotine. Oh, what's that? I have a bloody image in my mind, but. Yeah, I think it's that. You just, the feet go under your desk, chop. with like a little like a little sensor that just detects when an object it could be it could be uh

more manual than that too yeah this is i also like the comment about one of those people does a great job of personal hygiene you don't really hear much about personal hygiene when things are going well so i applaud you for looking at the positives in your situation yeah good job it's like operations is if you hear about it things are bad yeah so all those unsung personal hygiene heroes we salute you yeah salutes to you thank you for showering regularly i actually on my desk because we i pulled it out while we were talking about this i have a book right now called the dirt on clean and unsanitized history and it's a really interesting look at the history of hygiene and cleanliness in general across several different cultures and one of the big takeaways i got from

was that human odor and hygiene is to some extent cultural back in the day uh the fancy rich people used to change their shirts regularly like nobody bathed or showered or washed themselves in any way but they were very clean because they would switch their shirts out for new like freshly washed shirts so they were considered clean you mean yeah yeah and it was this extravagant luxury to do that and then they like caked gross makeup all over their face for weeks and months at a time and never wash their bodies and i don't know their broader point is there are some cultural things that we want to be sensitive to around expectations where like different cultures have different expectations for human odor and and hygiene and how you do it and what's what's

an okay smell and what's not an okay smell i do not know of any cultures where stinky feet are an okay smell that seems rough but like this is from our perspective as people who grow up in the states and yeah are expected to smell like deodorant and like cookie women smell like cookies like cinnamon cookies men smell like deodorant that's like the cultural expectation in the united states cinnamon cookies really yeah yeah i think so oh yeah so i'll have to start smelling some more women and well maybe don't maybe okay maybe not wow you smell so much like a cinnamon cookie great job so take it all with that context in mind what would you do though if if you had someone whose smell was distracting bad enough to be distracted oh it sucks to be the one to go and

tell open offices the best not only do you hear the conversations you smell the smells the ceo is laughing all the way to the bank in his private office yep oh man i don't know this is hard i i for i like cannot tell my co-workers if they stink i just i can't bring myself to do it so i mean there are some defensive measures you could put in place like maybe chewing uh spicy gum or something it might like waft its way into your olfactory senses and try to deaden some of the foot guillotine yeah that's a defense that's a defensive that's like a that's like a passive defensive offensive tactic yeah maybe you could like take some of that like vix vapo rub and put it on your upper lip so you can't smell anything else scented candles oh scented candle

that's actually not a bad idea um then you could actually get one that smells like cinnamon cookies that's like a pretty standard can you buy deodorant scented candles i don't know but if you could they would come in like a dark gray and green box because that's like the manly yeah hygiene and they could buy man soap they would be branded axe axe scented candles extreme active scented candles or something power scent yeah i don't i don't know i just i just wouldn't do it like would you have the guts to go tell someone their feet stink i work from home and i work in a small office with the door shut every day and it smells sometimes it gets a little stinky in here but it's my own fault so you know my own smell doesn't bother me yeah i just notice it but then i go

take a shower and then it's fine or i open up some scented candles or turn on my foot guillotine remove your own foot yeah one of them puts his feet under my desk that would bother me even if because i'm childish and petty that would bother me even if they didn't smell yeah i'd be like you're over my line like you're touching me you know that this could be an opportunity for you to go to your manager and say we just need a different layout we are too close to each other the smells and the noises and the motion in my peripheral vision it's all distracting and i think we'd be a lot more productive if we could just put a little space between us doesn't have to be private offices but maybe three or four feet between each team member i feel like this

is where it's good to not be a manager because i feel like you can talk to your manager about it and just pawn this off on them that's true there's this hard interpersonal thing and that's what your job is so please help me resolve this that extra money on your paycheck every week this is what it's for yeah have fun it is if it's causing you a distraction because it's bad enough i think that's worthwhile to bring to your manager and then we wait for them to email us and ask us what they should do in this situation yeah but i don't i don't think it's being overly sensitive if if it's really as bad as you say it is it's probably likely that they've noticed it as well probably If they work at a different desk or something, maybe it doesn't affect them as much.

But I think a part of management is being responsible for the productivity of your team. And if personal hygiene is affecting that productivity, then that's something they get to deal with. I got it. You don't have to tell your manager. What you do is you wait for the smell to be really bad, and then you call your manager over to look at something on your screen that's in a really small font. So they have to lean in there really close.

If you'll just take a look at this monitor I've mounted underneath my desk. you're gonna need a few minutes next to the floor be sure to breathe deeply while you're watching yeah and then they'll just figure it out on their own yeah or not maybe they'll just be like well that sucks boy am i glad i'm not at that table see ya i do honestly think though that you could tell your manager in a way that doesn't make you look like uh let's see what were the words overly sensitive or a troublemaker i mean i think you could go in and just say look i like this co-worker we get along they do good work uh but they just have i don't know if you've noticed a little bit of a smell that comes off their feet that's pretty pungent and it's distracting

at work is there anything you could do to help us out here you know and just leave it at that you don't have to go any any more detail in that and uh i would only ask once i probably wouldn't follow up yeah if you're not saying like i can't take it anymore and i'm gonna lose it if i smell these feet one more time and and if you're just saying hey this is a problem that's affecting my productivity can you help me resolve it that seems like a reasonable thing to say i feel like a rabble rousing troublemaker statement also never underestimate the power of baking soda you know like sprinkle it on there if their feet come under the desk i mean if you're if you're uncomfortable putting it directly on their feet you could just set an open container

of baking soda under your desk does that actually work i think so isn't there something with coffee beans too can't you like roast some coffee beans i feel like i've done that before when we burnt some popcorn oh yeah that's like back to the scented candle technique i think that works yeah you could just buy them a new pair of shoes be like merry christmas i got your shoes now they've got you though they can just bully you into yep getting free shoes all they all they have to do is just stink it up and then how much is how much is it worth to you i mean what like 100 bucks every few months uh it depends on how often they wash their feet good point i maybe they just throw the maybe they think shoes are disposable and they just throw like well that was a good day was

good day's worth of shoeing just toss them out if that was the case i don't think their feet would smell so bad time to pull back out my 40 year old birkenstocks i gotta let these puppies breathe oh boy well i had smelly feet in high school i'm thinking back i wore sandals all the time were they leather yeah they were leather sandals but like my i mean they were it was my feet's fault not the sandals nobody ever said anything to me but i was just shunned i had stinky feet too and i just eventually switched from leather leather shoes to canvas and uh all was right in the world i yeah i was just shunned yeah like and you didn't know why i mean there are a lot of

reasons pete was one of them yeah i think i think you are good to go to your manager and ask for their backup in or not their backup you want to make it their problem so don't ask for their backup say hey can you please resolve this problem you might even prefix it with i'm going to approach you with a slightly unorthodox problem that i want you to help me solve but which i mean i want you to solve as a manager this would be an uncomfortable conversation to have but it's way better than like performance isn't good enough or you're having this uh you're treating this other person unkindly i don't know they're yeah because it's pretty fixable it should be a cakewalk compared to many other things theoretically but but for whatever reason body odor is taboo and telling someone

they stink that's true hard to do yeah it's this thing that people identify with personally maybe that's an american thing i don't know yeah well it's all we got it's all we got yeah good luck good luck with best of luck tinky feet if you go the guillotine route um make it like a tickle guillotine yeah i'm gonna walk back my earlier statement that you should dismember them and change it to yeah just that was that was uncharacteristically violent for you yeah i like the tickle idea a tickle guillotine would get the message across all right do you want me to read the next question please do okay this is from an anonymous listener i was at an interview recently when being asked for an expected salary i mentioned a number that was a lot more

than what the company was expecting it's already been a week and i haven't received a response from them i really really love the company and the project they are working on i would love to contact the hr person and tell them that i'm interested in the position even if it means less money how do i approach this situation i don't want to mess it up more than i already have and there's a single frowny emoji no smiley face i don't know what the distinction is between those it's an unsmiling face yellow circle two dots arc you you can you get the picture i'm curious how they know that the number was a lot more than the company was expecting like what did the company say that was more than we were expecting we were expecting this number or did they oh my

gosh and then jump back from the table and i don't know like what what was the signal because to me this sounds like it could be the first step of a negotiation or it could be like this was a question they asked as part of the interview process and they're still evaluating whether they want to actually hire you or not like i don't know there's a it depends heavily how you approach it depends a lot on where you are in the process and if what how much information you have about whether they are moving forward and hiring you and are trying to agree on a number or whether they're still trying to decide if they want to hire you or not do you think this is some kind of siege tactic where they're trying to starve you out see how long they can go i've literally

never heard a candidate say a salary number and think if i wait it'll go down it's always like do we want to hire them at a lower number and then i will tell them what the lower number is that we would want to hire them at but if i just wait long enough yeah or we just don't want to hire them and we'll hire somebody else like yeah something i don't know so probably not they're probably not waiting you out i don't think so there's like a thousand reasons why a salary negotiation can be delayed though that don't have anything to do with the salary like someone went on vacation or someone just has too much on their plate yeah yeah but so how i would expect this to happen is you if you say a number that is higher than the range the company's willing to offer

they instead say that's too high i was thinking about something in this range and then you kind of yeah back and forth have a discussion about it instead of just you say a number and you somehow get a signal that it's too high but it's it's unclear what the signal was yeah like typically when you throw out a number like that in a negotiation, they'll come back and say, all right, I'll see what I can do. We probably can't get that high. And then they'll come back with something that is hopefully closer. But I got to tell you, as a manager who has extended offers in the past, it's kind of a pain going through the process of getting an offer approved only to have it rejected by the candidate. So like, I want to know verbally before I go to

the trouble of writing up the offer and getting all the approvals, whether you're going to accept that number. So typically I like to come to that agreement beforehand verbally. So if that has stalled out here, which it seems like it has, then it's time, I think, to jumpstart it again and re-engage. Yeah. There's the magic phrase of, if we were able to offer you this, would you accept? Yeah. And I feel like I've heard that on both sides of interviews that I've been in to try and nail it down before getting those approvals, like you said. So what do you mean by jumpstart it i mean reach out to the manager or the hr person whoever whoever you left the conversation with um reach back out to that person by phone or email or whatever it is probably phone

would be best so you don't get stuck just waiting for an email to come back again and uh and then say hey i just want to know where you're at i'm super interested love to come work for you what what we need to do to go to the next step yeah and then just leave it at that if they bring up salary then you can start talking and and you know maybe there's a point you would be willing to move down to and maybe they've got a point where they would be willing to make an offer but yeah you don't know yeah i haven't been in a situation ever where i say a number that's too high and they're just like uh too high or like this is over what else you got yeah yeah yeah it's always like there's always another step to it if if it gets that far um i i would be

cautious about calling up and saying hey i'd like to work there for less money please yeah i wouldn't leave with that yeah because like oh go ahead no that's all just agreeing with you like i always do ha thank you i've been saying dumb things the whole time and getting you on tape agreeing with but you're so confident um because there's a there's a chance that it's slowing but it's not stopped and by you might hurt yourself financially by by taking a hit you don't have to yeah exactly it might the conversation might not be stalled due to this salary issue so don't assume that it is yeah if if they didn't offer a number back i just can't i feel like it's either stalled or they're potentially not interested in hiring you i just can't it just

sounds weird the way it left off where they just said no or it gave you some signal that it was too high without giving you more information yeah it feels weird to me too i guess the meta advice is um i don't think you have messed anything up by asking for too much money no yeah probably not You don't, you don't have like a responsibility to the company to save them money. Like you want to find a job you like at a rate that you are happy with. And if this is a job you like, but there's not a rate that you'd be happy with there, that's then, I don't know. I don't think you have to work there.

If there is a rate that is maybe lower than what you said, I think you could explore that. But again, I don't think you have to, it weakens your position a lot to call, to call back or contact them again and say, Hey, I'll work for X minus 10 grand or whatever the number was. totally agree there is a there is another track you could take which we haven't discussed which is because they have delayed your hiring that has now cost you money presuming that they were going to pay you more than your current job so you could call them back and demand an even higher salary due to that interest yes okay yeah i mean back pay plus interest because you delayed this

process okay yeah i would like you to try that dave and get back to me there's oh man you could push this pretty far you could charge fees for interviewing at companies like yeah you could you could become a very entitled what if what if you require the company of a person yeah you absolutely could what if you require the company to give you vacation days in accordance with the time you took you took in vacation from your previous employer to come interview a disemployer Okay. I like it. What else? What else you got? I don't know. I'm not very good at going extreme. What if you make them sign intellectual property agreements to the code samples that you write for

them in the interview process? So they're like, write this fizzbuzz. And you're like, I'll need you to sign this NDA, please. also any money you make off this fizzbuzz will be mine yeah it's fine i've got i've i've got some boilerplate for this already oh you want my palindrome finder eh i'll license it to you yeah have to bring a lawyer with you to every interview yeah well did we answer it i think so i think i think you're good to go back don't lead with a reduced salary amount and just go in asking where

they are try just try to establish what the current state is before you start running your numbers down yeah yeah i mean tell me i think you said you say you really really love the company you know show them that i mean that sells i gotta tell you like as a hiring manager people who come to me and they demonstrate that they really really want to work with me i am way more attracted to those candidates than i am to the people who uh don't seem as enthusiastic yeah if you say i love this mission and the company and the projects and i want to make it work what would it take to make that happen that sounds pretty strong and then i think the key is you you want them to help you understand what the range should be instead of you saying it because it might be yeah if you ever go

below what the range is they're not going to be like oh well we would have given you five grand more but okay yeah so and you know this is another case where you as a candidate are at a disadvantage because you don't have some of the information that the employer has namely how much are they paying their other engineers who are going to do the same job you're applying for and so you just have no idea if you're like stratospherically off the charts or if you're way low or what they've told you that your your your expectation seems high but you don't really know how much higher it is like are you five percent off are you ten percent off are you fifty percent off and so you just you're just really shooting blind here and i hate that feeling as a candidate

because you just don't know um what you should be asking and that like never goes away you know because companies vary so much yeah i wish there was a way to figure that out beforehand when you go in i only know sneaky tricks i don't know actual ways if only there was websites where people post their salaries well we've talked about those before you gotta take those with a grain of salt yeah i did find a new one though that is called levels.fyi and what i learned from this is that the amount of money you can make goes a lot higher than i thought it did as usual yeah yeah i feel like i've had that realization a bunch and probably it's still in my future you keep wondering like where where it's gonna top out right like every every few

years i'm like oh people make that much and then the few years later oh people make that much and even more than last time yeah yeah well anything else we can talk about with this question i got nothing good luck all right best of luck i hope it works out for you i guess the one last piece of advice is um there are a lot of jobs out there and the best negotiating position to be in is to not need that job as much so if you're willing to explore other options that helps too and just take some of the stress off too fantastic it's not like will i get this job i love it's like which of these options do i pick yes that's that's a good spot all right good luck and what should people do if they want their own questions answered go to softskills.audio and click on

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