Soft Skills Engineering - Episode 445: Staying at my first job and my coworker is insulting other departments

Episode Date: January 27, 2025

In this episode, Dave and Jamison answer these questions: A listener named Kevin asks, Hey, found the show and really enjoy it! Been listening from the beginning and have noticed that one of the pieces of advice given is that you should not stay at your first job for too long, because it’s more likely that you’ve not found the best job for you. I think The Secretary Problem is the closest thing being cited. I tend to agree with the math, but I’m still at my first software engineering job after 5 years and don’t really want to leave. There are obviously things I don’t particularly like or people I find challenging, but for the most part, I work on interesting projects with smart people, it’s fully remote, the benefits are great, and my salary is comfortable. There have been times where I started to look for another job, only to have my current circumstances improve enough that I stopped the search. What advice do you have for someone like me? I don’t know if it’s relevant, but I’ve managed to get married, buy a house, and just recently had our first baby. The pressure to provide and be conservative with my career is building. Again, love the show and I hope you’ll get to answering this before I catch up. I started from the beginning in late 2024, and in mid Jan 2025, I’m just past episode 50. I’ll let you do the math. As a tech lead, I joined a project two years in the making which had only one engineer doing everything, including management. In the two years, only a POC has been completed and a “pre MVP-MVP” build is in progress. There is a hangup though, the funding for the project is supposed to come from another departments budget that doesn’t want it, and work was committed by the department I am in, and a third department intended to be completed by the end of the quarter. I have been trying to finesse my teammate into cancelling the project or at least allow a resetting of expectations. My manager agrees with me. There seems to be a tug of war between AVPs and Directors. This has led my teammate to make some corporate aggressive comments. These are being directed in many directions, including department heads opposing the project. In your professional space experience, how can I help my teammate with understanding that his tactics are potentially damaging to his reputation and the project?

it takes more than issuing git status every other command to be a great engineer this is soft skills engineering episode 445 i'm your host git status dave smith i'm your host jameson dance git status soft skills engineering is a weekly advice podcast for software engineers who obsessively check the status of their git and others as well i do do that maybe it's changed since i last did nothing i know exactly why it's like just in case i think it's because you've been bitten so many times by unexpected get things that you just it's like you keep one eye on your code and one eye on the get status yeah i aliased it to get st probably some gooey that's a subversion thing right subversion st i don't know yeah it was svn

st i learned subversion first and it's svn co instead of checkout i think and so i have those set up and i always get them wrong every time i go to a machine i uh haven't used subversion in about 15 years i think most people also have not i think that's about about when it died dave should i read our patrons i would but i'd like you to check your get status between each one i will do it mentally but not out loud just to save time okay okay one time shout out to jayro and a whole bunch of weekly shout outs. Toy boat, toy boat, toy boat. You know, I'm not as patient as Dave.

I'm not going to read all those toy boats. It keeps saying that for a long time. Uncover the disturbing truth about Dave and Jameson on softskillsconspiracy.com. Dave, stop spoiling. No, okay. And then it cuts off. We've got a listener update here.

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watch the trailer it's not good cody set all right and then he died i'm that's like that scene in monty python and the holy grail yeah it just says ah it just says cody set yeah one of these days everyone is going to get together and they're going to overcome the patreon name field character limit by creating one unified like sonnet where everyone agrees to put their name as like one line of the sonnet and we're just gonna have this beautiful artwork yeah it's an exercise in in distributed collaboration yeah it's gonna be beautiful uh right now the sonnet starts with toy boat a bunch of times so work that one work with that yeah all right thank you we appreciate your support and if you would like to join them and support us you can go to soft

skills.audio click support us on patreon and get an invite to our slack slack unit i'm gonna call it i haven't called it a unit yet and get a shout out if you uh contribute enough sounds like military actually yeah it does a slack conglomerate yes i read this story once about these towns that formed themselves into giant people giant giant like monsters made out of people it was just like a bunch of people crammed together to make up the limbs and arms and legs and torso and stuff so maybe we can form one of those i'm trying to think if there was a name for it it was a horror story though so the the outcome was not good for the individual people yeah okay because they came became part of a sinew of a giant monster yeah and then they just yeah yeah let's get out of here

sounds right let's ask our first question do you want to ask do you want to read this i will i'll read it this comes from a listener named kevin who says hey found the show and really enjoy it been listening from the beginning and have noticed that one of the pieces of advice given is that you should not stay at your first job for too long because it's more likely that you've not found the best job for you i think the secretary problem is the closest thing being cited thank you kevin i i went to wikipedia read the secretary problem and that's pretty much it i like it it's great math also great way to choose food at a restaurant using natural logs and other fun theorems bring me another okay let me keep reading i tend to agree with the math but i'm still at my first software

engineering job after five years and don't really want to leave there are obviously things i don't particularly like or people i find challenging but for the most part i work on interesting projects with smart people it's fully remote and the benefits are great that my salary is comfortable there have been times when i started looking i started to look for another job only to have my current circumstances improve enough that i stopped the search what advice do you have for someone like me i don't know if it's relevant but i've managed to get married by a house and just recently had our first baby the pressure to provide and be conservative with my career is building again love the show and i hope you'll get to answering this before i catch up i started from

the beginning in late 2024 and in mid-january 2025 i'm just past episode 50 i'll let you do the math oh boy we did it we got to it yeah we got to it and you're gonna find out in like two years yeah oh so the math applies if you know how many options there are and if you can rate them all which neither of those are really true for a job search right it's not like you know how many potential jobs are out there in front of you to take right now. And it's pretty hard to just assign them a ranking. Yeah, the math probably breaks down completely when n is really big on the job size, job count. I mean, it doesn't. But what I'm saying is you don't know what n is. I think you have to know n. I was gonna say like, you could assume a reasonable value of

n is like a million or something. And then I think you would have to do a lot of work to find the ideal job but it but it's not a million right because n is like the number of jobs that would accept you that you could go work at right now ah yeah so it's not determinist it's not determinable because you don't know how many job offers you will get yeah yeah so i guess it's an interesting wikipedia article and i understand it more than i understand most wikipedia articles about math or related to math like when there's a big sigma in them yeah well there's there's plenty of sigmas further down yeah oh wait no there's some epsilons sorry see that's how good i am at math i don't even remember the names of the symbols anyways what was i talking

about yeah screw the math it doesn't apply here so you don't have to feel convinced by the math but some dilemma that you are not following the math because you can't follow the math. You don't have perfect information on either things. You don't know how any N is and you don't have a ranking one to N of these jobs assuming that you did know N. I mean, you could probably roughly order them

in some kind of preference, but it's going to be very vague. Also, the math suggests the way to maximize your chances of success. but it doesn't mean it's the only way to get success. Yeah, this isn't like how to guarantee that you pick the best thing. This is like, if we do this enough times,

this approach will give you the highest probability. Right, on average across all attempts, you know? Yeah. But there will be attempts that are way better than the average, and there'll be attempts that are way worse. The optimal policy for the problem is simple and selects the single best candidate

about 37% of the time. Okay. Which is pretty low. Yeah, that's like not great. Yeah. Assuming if we ignore all the assumptions that don't hold in here. So, I don't know. I think you're doing okay. Yeah. I mean, I think the advice to not stay at your first job for too long has a couple of motivations behind it for me. Number one is that you probably chose a bad job. So, that's like maybe not the case for this caller or this listener. Number two is that if you stay too long, there is a good chance that you will not be able to get a second job that's also good. And the reason is because your skills become highly concentrated on the

company that you're with and not transferable skills like, I'm really good at learning new things because you haven't had to as much, or I'm really good at adapting to new circumstances because you haven't had to as much. And I've just known a few people in my career who have done something where they stay at the same company for like a couple of decades and then suddenly they're they have a really hard time finding their next job when that company goes out of business you've built up so much domain expertise where the domain is that job and the domain disappears maybe yeah hmm interesting that's the risk i think and or or it could yeah i mean i don't know i mean it there's all kinds of exceptions to this rule though like if that

first job was google you know and you stayed there for 20 years you're probably fine you know Like, you learned a lot of new stuff. You probably moved around to different teams. Google in and of itself is almost like a whole job market, you know? So it's not like one job, usually. You might be okay. I can see your point about it being harder to get a second job. I haven't thought about that.

I think you could overcome that, though, by being a bit more seen. Well, what am I saying? No, I don't know what I'm saying. Ignore all that. All right, done. there is another reason not to stay at your first job which is purely financial which is that you can typically increase your pay by changing jobs more so than staying at the same job for a given time period so that the chance is like let's just take two software engineers one goes to a

company right out of you know as their first job and they spend five years there the other one spends two years at one company then jumps to another company then spends two years at a second company, then jumps to a third company. I would be willing to bet a nickel that nine times out of 10, that the job hopper has a higher salary at the end of the five years. Yeah. The question asker says they're comfortable with their salary, but it's possible you could be leaving something on the table. I think you're doing the right thing by interviewing periodically and keeping your options open. And I'm not sure if you tell the company you're interviewing and they change things on purpose to improve your circumstances or it's just coincidence if it's coincidence then

it might not keep happening i guess but if if you've been able to change things that bother you that's that's good that doesn't always happen at jobs often the only way you can change something that bothers you at a job is you have to quit and get a different one so i think that that's a mark in your favor yeah for sure and it might be a great job you know it could be yeah i wouldn't leave because i feel bad about not having worked anywhere else yet i i feel like i would leave if i had some tangible concerns and a better opportunity which sounds very pithy when i say it out loud but yeah i i haven't gotten a different job yet or i haven't worked anywhere else so i'm leaving this place probably not the best reason yeah i mean it's a it's a risk too

right you you might land at a worse place yeah most people's careers are not just a steady march upward where each job they get is is better and better all the time right there's trade-offs often so that's why i agree jameson just because a certain amount of time has elapsed that is a bad reason to leave a job and probably an even worse reason to leave a job is because two dudes on the internet said you should yeah plus we were different people back then we're more mature now and times have changed a little bit yeah also that you probably i probably would not recommend even after five years i would not not recommend leaving your first job right now i certainly i think the days of me yolo quitting a job and then saying i guess i need another job are are behind

me yes i think so probably behind you by a good i don't know eight or nine years i don't i don't think that would work very well now yeah i don't know i think we're just saying don't worry about it yeah i think interview if you are interested in other stuff but don't feel like you have to leave just because you you haven't yet you will definitely learn stuff by going somewhere else but the things you could learn could be painful lessons about how good you had it that you you didn't know the learnings there is some downside you might learn some really painful learnings yeah also probably don't listen to 2018 us you know it's like not great yeah what's the half-life on our advice i don't know it's got to be days at best right i was hoping it would be

lifetime but i'm starting to wonder yeah well we didn't specify what lifetime it's the lifetime of house flies fruit fly yeah yeah it's evergreen for house flies yes well okay good luck yeah you want to read our next question i do this is from an anonymous listener who said as a tech lead i joined a project two years in the making which had only one engineer doing everything including management in the two years only a proof of concept has been completed and a pre-mvp mvp build is in progress. I don't know what that means. I guess we can dig into that. There is a hangup though. The funding for the project is supposed to come from another department's budget that doesn't want it. And work was committed by the department I am in and a third department

intended to be completed by the end of the quarter. I have been trying to finesse my teammate into canceling the project, or at least allow a resetting of expectations. My manager agrees with me there seems to be a tug of war between vps and directors this has led my teammate to make some corporate aggressive comments these are being directed in many directions including department heads opposing the project in your professional space bracket job title experience our space job title so i think we get to insert any job title space lawyer space psychologist space space neurosurgeon i have a 100 success rate on neurosurgery in space how can i help my teammate with understanding that his tactics are potentially damaging to his reputation and

the project yeah okay so that this is a bit of a complicated sounds like a nightmare yeah yeah the setup is a nightmare and the the core of the question though is kind of like how do i tell my coworker to stop saying rude crap to people in positions of authority that are going to destroy his career yeah i mean does this project sound doomed to you no matter what it sounds doomed to me i'm surprised it's still alive nothing has happened for two years it's funded by one department that doesn't want it anymore and then two other departments are contributing the work to it if i understand yeah the description right like there's no winners yeah why would any okay yeah just don't well whatever that's not the question your project is doomed though yeah

i do think there was a there was an implicit question buried in there which is i'm trying to advise my teammate to cancel this project and i'm like yeah i agree with you i i mean unless there's something amazing about this project that is unknown to everyone including those that are funding it and don't want it and those that are funding the the development bandwidth working on it and resent it this feels like this feels like that riddle where the answer is coffin you know the person who pays for it doesn't use it the person who use it doesn't know it and the person who buys it doesn't want it i can't remember anyway this is this is that department or this is that project yeah and like a coffin it is where dead things go

the project is dead we may as well acknowledge that yeah but how can i help my teammate with the understanding so corporate aggressive comments i i assume that they are kind of flailing around trying to drum up support for somehow or prevail i don't know like that sounds productive i think what's happening is this person has internalized two years of corporate frustration due to misaligned expectations bad funding incentives and just overall not being appreciated and it's now finally it's like a pot that's been rising its temperature to a boil for two years and now finally that pot is boiling over and i gotta say i'm the the stamina on this guy is like amazing i'm reading the first sentence again the project has been going on for two years which only had

one engineer doing everything i thought that meant there's one engineer it's their project they do everything they run it i'm pretty sure that means there are a bunch of people involved and this engineer is the only person doing any of the work ah well i did edit that part down a little bit and the original question said that this engineer was doing even doing the marketing for the project which oh my god i didn't totally understand since this project seems to be pre-launch but yeah so the the original question said okay yeah so here it is that the engineer was doing they were heading it pushing which i think probably means like pushing code marketing and developing Well, I don't know, maybe pushing means like advocating. So basically, this engineer was the

product manager, the marketing manager, the developer, and the internal evangelist. That tells me that this engineer probably has some skin in the game and wants this project to succeed and has probably attached ego to it and would be devastated if it had to be canceled. All of that combined with a really nasty love triangle, or maybe this is more like a hate triangle of these three departments. And you got yourself a pretty frustrating situation. And yeah, I think if this person doesn't change course, it's going to be career damaging, if not career ending. Yeah. I could see you trying to ask myself, why does it bother you? I mean, you are on the project. So I guess it's bad if the person most responsible for the project

is behaving quite unprofessionally because you're kind of affiliated with that in a way. and there's also just the goodness of your heart you don't want someone to just suffer how can i help them with understanding his tactics i don't know i mean you could tell them i mean the question was how can i help my team understand that his tactics are potentially damaging to his reputation and the project well one way to do that is to sit down with them and say your tactics are potentially damaging to your reputation and the project it sounds so obvious when you say it like that could it be said though could these words be spoken yeah could they be said and could they be understood i i predict that no is the answer to the second question i but you could certainly

try it the thing i'm wrestling with is what does a good outcome look like for you here because say you do this you go through probably some awkwardness get your teammate to understand they're they're causing harm to the project great this thing that everyone hates continues on that you're now on it and cool i guess i don't know that sounds bad overall except that now there's less drama about it look this project is doomed i think we're very clear on that and if this co-worker has hitched their career to this project, then this co-worker's career is doomed at this company as well. And so I think that you can either say nothing and let this project die because it will, it's just a matter of time, and this person will probably leave.

Or if you're feeling humanitarian and you want a better outcome for this person, then you could try to course correct and say, hey, let's get you productively engaged on something else that's more meaningful more impactful and won't be hated by count them three departments yeah i think that's why i'm struggling with this question is because i don't think the answer matters because i keep focusing on but what next and and so i yeah i think i'm struggling to answer the question at hand like yeah you could you could help them and and what then I joined a project two years in the making. I mean, maybe there's something good here and you're excited about it. Dave and I have been pretty negative about the possibilities of this

project, but we don't know what it is. We don't know the circumstances or anything. We're just looking at a couple sentences describing the corporate structure and inferring a bunch. So maybe there's something worth salvaging here. At the very least, I think it is probably worth saying hey i i don't think your comments are helping here's what i'm seeing in response to to the comments you're making because i expect i i don't know if it's a corporate environment this is all probably like back channels and this person is probably not hopping into the public slack channel and saying i declare the vp that opposes this project a scallywag and a scoundrel and then the vp puts in like a little sad emoji reaction like it's all back channel stuff so

i would not be surprised if the reactions to their comments are not very open or public or clear to them either i don't know so that that could be helpful i guess i guess i'm just elaborating on what you said dave that you just tell them hey this might be damaging if you if you see anything about how it could be damaging that is useful and is easier to bring up than like i think you're doing the wrong thing you could actually say hey this person seems pretty offended by what you said and we really need them to be not offended if we want our project to succeed or i don't know the more specific you can make it the better yeah yeah i would try to not work on this project if i were you that's my overall summary though maybe that's not an option

i don't know i don't think i have any other advice i don't either anything else i don't either. I think this problem solves itself if you do nothing in a kind of a morbid, sad, unfavorable way for multiple people. But I do think I would intervene here, especially since you're in a tech lead role. And I think it's an important job for someone who sees someone who's kind of accidentally sabotaging their professional life through negative comments. I mean, it's something people generally tend to regret later, that I think I would step in and offer some kind, carefully worded advice to say, hey, look, you've been... Try to empathize. You've been in a tough situation. This project has not turned out the way that you wanted. It's been going slow. It's

got a lot of frustrating political and corporate mixed... I don't even know what the right word is here, but... Dynamics. Yeah. A lot of corporate dynamics here. Corporate dynamics are never good. And so, you seem like you're frustrated and I fear that you're going to say or do something you regret if you stay on this course so you know my advice is to put a lid on that at the very least and maybe maybe unhitch your career from this project at most and hey happy to support you there's also a this depends on your level of responsibility it's not great to be on a doomed project it's kind of demoralizing and feels like a pain if you're low level enough it doesn't necessarily

reflect that poorly on you. And you could go above and beyond to try to contribute in some way to its success or its swift ending, I guess, but it's not expected of you. But maybe if you're a tech lead, there's a bit more responsibility to oversee a humane end of life to the project. So again, I'm jumping to the conclusion that this should not exist. If that's wrong, and ignore all this. But if it shouldn't exist, then you might have some responsibility to say, hey, I think we shouldn't do this. And I think it's a waste of our time. We could spend our time better somewhere else. And I want to help wrap this up smoothly instead of just like bounce out of it or stay in it and watch it all burn down around you. It's a very useful skill to be

able to recognize when something that used to make sense doesn't make sense anymore. And most places tend to continue investing way longer than they should have on something that is failing. Yeah. So it can be helpful overall if you can have that skill. All right. I agree. Have we answered the question? I'm afraid so. Good luck.

This sounds tricky. I am interested to hear how it turns out and also how wrong we were. Yeah. I'm always interested in that, though, I guess. Well, what can people do if they want their own questions answered? Go over to softskills.audio and click the Ask a Question button where you can fill out our form that we've put for the express purpose of you to ask questions of us, for which we are eternally grateful.

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