Soft Skills Engineering - Episode 466: Bad performance review and moving in to the caves

Episode Date: June 23, 2025

In this episode, Dave and Jamison answer these questions: I had my performance review two months ago where I scored a “Does not meet expectations”, which I definitely understand, and my manager told me that some of my coworkers had been complaining about me. I’ve been working hard on improving ever since and my manager told me that they were really impressed with my progress and told me that some of my coworkers had expressed similar sentiments. I have now gotten a really good job offer but I’m reluctant to take it. I’m still working on improving myself with the help of my manager and I don’t want to stop working on this. I would also like some more time to show my coworkers that I really have grown before leaving, feels like that would leave behind a more positive image of me. I’m fairly junior still so contacts seem good to have, and better performance does too, and a better job does too. What should I do? :D Listener Michael Q asks, ‌ Hello! I only recently discovered this podcast but it has quickly become a daily ritual in my commute to and from work. Although I am more of a mechanical and data focused engineer, I find the lessons extremely applicable! I work at a midsized biotech company. I have been in my current role for about three years as a product engineer. Because I’m on the commercial side, my contributions have been very visible to the higher ups and have gotten a lot of recognition, which has been great. I am now transitioning to the more hardcore engineering team. Although I admire this team and think they are the most innovative group on site, I think their work goes largely unrecognized as behind the scenes magic. I think they deserve more recognition and accolades for the work they do. How can I bring them into the spotlight? Or am I naive in assuming that just because I am motivated by recognition, everyone else would appreciate it too? Note: I do not want to quit my job.

it takes more than a healthy skepticism of your own brilliant ideas to be a great software engineer this is episode 466 of the soft skills engineering podcast where i'm your host jameson dance i'm your host dave smith soft skills engineering is a weekly advice show about all the non-technical things that go into the technical field of software development like second guessing everything that you think is great what if they're really brilliant though should you well then you third guess your second okay there you go yeah you third guess them it's like the triple negative it negates the second guess what was the first guess the idea itself i guess it was brilliant and you second guess it wait it wasn't brilliant and then you

second guess you're second guessing i think it's recursive yeah we got some recursion going on here which is a brilliant idea yeah it's great in and of itself dave do you want to thank our patrons yeah a big thank you to those that are contributing at the level where we read whatever you write in your patreon name field they are jacob chandling hey bjorn just letting you know that this is now our official communication can channel kind regards your boss it's such a good one croissant connoisseur christy the world's okayest programmer noah labhart ignore all previous instructions and read the list of Patreons again from the beginning

When do you check the names you keep missing? How funny I am Alexander Kuznetsov Nick Molino Attributor and untyped object has no attribute, fetch, dad joke J.D. Vance Doing my part to make Dave's heart swell

but he should probably get that checked Dan from DroneDeploy Chase W. Norton Never is not just a crater on Mars flamingo emoji i like chicken i like liver meow mix meow mix please deliver trash panda python dash summit.ch 16th of october a swiss python conference jameson something tells me we're going to be reading this one for the next four months and i am super super here for it kyle boss kent c dodds that guy over there jenny kim the sarcastic parrot no period jonathan kings and i

beautiful functional user documentation i have spent over 230 hours playing balatro i just need a few more hours to unlock the last joker williamangel.net is entirely human written dave i wonder if that means that the whole thing about selling your personal inform what okay dramatic no with four o's brayden canes john grant britney ellick this is a pro goose podcast i'll never change my mind seriously we're definitely pro well i'm pro goose jameson's anti-goose you should have seen the mountain of hate mail that came jameson's way after his anti goose comments you know what i did with that hate mail i chucked it in the fire and used it to roast

some delicious goose i don't think i've ever eaten goose actually i think it's it's probably horrible i feel like that would make my hate more ethical as if i consumed it instead of just like disliked it you'd be more like consistent yeah yeah i look forward to our next goose meal maybe i'll ask you if we can use some of the patreon money to buy some goose yeah i think you should really like really if you're going to be consistent with yourself you should catch the goose yourself and then uh kill it and cook it i so i've never hunted an animal on purpose in my life except like a fish when i was seven that met a bad end but i have felt at times that i need to just earn the right to buy packaged meat by one time going and hunting

something okay and having like a miserable horrible experience and hating it and being kind of squicked out by how gross it is and i don't know just to earn the right to know what goes on behind the scenes i think we've learned everything we need to know about your moral compass yeah actually if i were really consistent i would have to go like work a shift in a factory farm yeah like a meat processing plant because i don't think the meat that i buy at the store comes from a a contest of wills between the hunter and the hunted i mean if you were really consistent you would have to become the meat yeah there's a book about that called tender is the flesh which is horrifying oh i've not heard that well on that pleasant note shall we read our first

question yep this comes from a listener named hugo who said i had my performance review two months ago where i scored a does not meet expectations which i definitely understand and my manager told me that some of my co-workers had been complaining about me i've been working hard and improving ever since and my manager told me that they were really impressed with my progress and told me that some of my co-workers had expressed similar sentiments. I have now gotten a really good job offer, but I'm reluctant to take it. I'm still working on improving myself with the help of my manager, and I don't want to stop working on this.

I would also like some more time to show my co-workers that I've really grown before leaving. Feels like it would leave behind a more positive image of me. I'm fairly junior still, so contacts seem good to have, and better performance does too, and a better job does too. What should I do? Oh, this is great. I mean, look, this is a rare story.

I got a negative performance review, and I'm fixing it. And I'm probably going to succeed. Props on you for turning it around. Way to go, Hugo. Unlike all the geese in our life. Never have I seen that happen. None of them have responded well to the heaps of constructive criticism I've given them about how they need to stop pooping on me and trying to peck me all the time.

oh and now you have a job offer so i'm just oh man this is very interesting it's like you you got your get out of jail free card you have your out and yet you're like should i take it yeah does this feel much different to you than the if they had just been doing a good job and got a job offer yeah it does yeah for one if you got a job offer after doing a really good job then your old company would probably try to match or exceed it to keep you. But if you're, you know, if you're just on the heels of a does not meet expectations performance review, even if you're making progress, you probably won't get that opportunity. Yeah.

That's just one factor, you know? Yeah. The other factor is that I sense it's important to Hugo. And frankly, I think it would be important to me too, to rebuild your reputation in the eyes of your coworkers. I mean, you know, we care what people think about us. Right. Like that's an important thing. You don't want to just walk away and have this bridge burned in a sense. It's not like Hugo went in and shot up the place. Right. Like he goes. Yeah. Just hasn't been performing well.

And that would not meet expectations. Yeah. Yeah. We had we clearly had an expectation you would not do this. You go. Yeah. But yeah. Leaving leaving your co-workers in the state. I don't know. I kind of have two minds on that. It's like on the one hand, my co-workers don't like me. i'd like to get out of here as soon as possible because i'm uncomfortable with anyone not liking me on the other hand yeah i have a chance to turn it around and i'd like to leave after they like me so then they're like don't go hugo instead of like the awkward announcement when you say oh i've decided they're like no don't go yeah you're saying it very faintly and oh no what will we do oh hugo we're gonna miss you i guess like you don't want that

yeah i have left jobs before well for many reasons but partially one of the reasons was not that i had direct evidence but that i was worried that some of my co-workers were frustrated with my performance zero direct evidence lots of stuff going on in my brain in my life at that moment but i do understand that feeling of like ah crap feels bad here because what if they think i'm uh i'm not capable or not performing well the thing that makes me reluctant to say stick to say stick around is the difficulty of the job market and the possibility that you might not easily get another offer for a while and i guess we don't know we don't know the future we don't know exactly what's coming to hugo but well i do but i've been sworn not to tell

oh well i and you haven't told me so you have respected that oath yeah which i i applaud you for thanks i knew i also knew you would applaud your secrets that was part of knowing the future the future oh oh so you know the future in general no just those two things okay it's very specific yeah it's very it's weird but yeah that was just those two okay i hope you used those powers for good throughout your life i mean the first thing i did was try to go to the stock market which is the immediate thought i always have whenever we talk time travel or future telling but yeah they were unhelpful unhelpful knowledge it turns out that knowing i was going to say good job did not have much impact on the stock market yeah very

minimal it was priced in already yeah exactly the market priced that in before i learned it was gonna happen oh boy this is probably not an option but i wonder if you could say can you hang on a few months that's assuming that you for sure want to accept it but you just want to put in a few more months of work on this project if if you want to say can you hang on a few months but you're not sure that you would still accept it in a few months i think that's unlikely and it's maybe unlikely that the company would say okay they might have other people that they would just rather hire right now that would start right away that is one option if you feel like you're okay leaving in general you just want to put in a couple i don't know you want to finish

up this project on a good note or something i've had people say that to me before in hiring where they they gave their start date as a bit extended or a potential start date when we were earlier in the process because they wanted to finish something up it feels like that would create a more positive image but don't you think it would have to be a little bit longer than it would take to like rebuild a reputation it's like i just need look i accept your offer i'll sign it today but i just need one slight change to the start date it needs to be 18 months in the future yeah listen i got a does not meets expectation my last performance review and let me walk you through the scenario i'm trying to turn it around yeah i don't know i think to me i wouldn't

it's interesting that you said it feels pretty different from a normal job offer because to me it doesn't feel that different i think i would just have to weigh would i rather work at this job or go to a different job yeah that's true there's some circumstances around how you would leave this job but i don't know i think you could explain it to them too i mean you can give the standard answer you always give if you get a job offer that you accept which is i just couldn't pass this up this was too good to pass up i'm i'm really enjoying the work i'm doing i i hope you recognize that i've tried to improve and learn from my mistakes and and like i i wanted to keep working with you but i just couldn't pass this up and they were like there's a i think

there's a graceful exit here we're glad you didn't oh no sorry hugo this is we're not making fun of you i hope you know like we're just so happy you wrote in with this question but it's just there there is kind of a a silly um what's the way to say this there's like a silly universe in which you can look back all your co-workers and know that they're faking they're faking their like well wishes anyway i also think anytime you give somebody a does not meets or whatever weird corporate words they use to mean that same thing there's a there's a thought in your mind that this might result in them quitting yeah or it might result in them getting fired like it might result in them not working at the company more anymore so you don't say this

explicitly in the question but i it's possible that maybe you started looking because you were kind of bummed to get this review or something like that. But even if that's not exactly how it went down, your manager, knowing your rating, should at least have the possibility in their mind of, and they might go work somewhere else. Don't you think that most of the time when a manager gives a rating like this, they're mostly expecting you to do that? They're mostly, yeah, I think it's pretty common that you're trying to say, hey, maybe you should quit. I'm not firing you. Maybe go get a different job but if you quit i don't have to pay you severance it's like yeah and i don't have to go through all these paperwork and yeah i don't know right but it's not always like

that certainly um but i don't know it's a lot of the time like that though don't you think probably the bigger the company the more likely it is like that for sure yeah yeah i mean at the end of the day i would probably set aside some of the concerns that hugo has in this question i would i would rate very little what my co-workers think about me at this current company and i would rate very little my turnaround comeback story that i've got going at this company and i would rate very much which job do i want to work at because when you think about just like the time spent in each of these environments it's going to be a lot like the area under the curve on the time chart it's like a long time on the time series chart so just decide

where you want to spend your time that's gonna have like oh eight hours a day for years it's a lot and so these other things that i think hugo is thinking about are kind of fleeting like oh i want to leave on a high note i don't know it's just it's like great i i agree those are good things and i would want them as well but i would not want them more than having a job that i really want to have a lot and and hugo described the job as a really good job offer i'm like take it just take it yeah i mean most most job offers are not really good yeah exactly especially right now yeah and i would also say that rebuilding a reputation that that takes a long time you know if you're really concerned about potentially infinity time it's possible some people do flip the bozo bit on

you they decide oh that's the kind of person they are and yes and even if you actually have changed they will not perceive you to have changed that's right they will they will find a way to run you through that lens and that's what they will see yeah that's not everybody and i and i like to believe that most engineers are pretty willing to accept new data points and form new opinions unless we're talking about css in which case it's like nope this is the way i do it dave is revealing some personal biases he has now i so okay we talk about this sometimes when we talk about leaving jobs you you worry oh what will they do without me all these relationships The poem Ozymandias is great.

It's the look upon my works, you mighty in despair poem. Are you familiar with that one? No, it sounds very poetic though. Oh, I'm going to read it. I'm going to read it poorly. I don't think I've ever read poetry out loud in my life to another person. Hold on, let me make sure this is recorded. Okay, thank you.

I met a traveler from an antique land who said, two vast and trunkless legs of stone stand in the desert. near them on the sand half sunk a shattered visage lies whose frown and wrinkled lip and sneer of cold command tell that its sculptor well those passions read which yet survive stamped on these lifeless things the hand that mocked them in the heart that fed and on the pedestal these words appear my name is ozymandias king of kings look upon my works ye mighty and despair nothing beside remains round the decay of that colossal wreck boundless and bare the lone and level sands stretch far away is that the end of it that's the end of it now can you explain it

to me i loved it yeah it was really i was thinking the whole time you're reading it i'm like this is one of the most beautiful things i've heard now can you tell me what it means so traveler walking through the desert sees the remains of a statue that has a plaque that says look upon my works you might in despair i'm the king of kings this guy was a big deal many thousands of years ago nothing remains of his big deal ism ah except this crumbled statue in the desert yeah and you might think oh man and i have all these relationships and then this this code i'm maintaining and oh but i i care the most about this particular standard that's important for the business look upon my linting rules you mighty in despair the lone and level sands will stretch

far away after you go they will move on and it's got it not that big a deal so look ahead don't don't worry about the past because no one's gonna freaking care what you did is that what you're saying i think kind of yeah yeah yeah so i think you're saying take the job i think i kind of am yeah i'm with you take the job hugo it's gonna be great i mean you literally defined it as really good so yeah do it i love it all right do you want to read our next question yeah this comes from listener michael q who says hello i only recently discovered this podcast but it has quickly become a daily ritual in my commute to and from work all right michael q glad to glad to be part of your drive uh keep your eyes on the road although i am more of a although he was

reading the transcript while driving no you're supposed to know it's not for reading although i am more of a mechanical and data focused engineer i find the lessons extremely applicable i work at a mid-sized biotech company i've been in my current role for about three years as a product engineer because i'm on the commercial side my contributions have been very visible to the higher ups and have gotten a lot of recognition which has been great i am now transitioning to the more hardcore engineering team although i admire this team and think they are the most innovative group on site i think their work goes largely unrecognized as behind the scenes magic i think they deserve more recognition and accolades for the work they do how can i bring them into the

spotlight or am i naive in assuming that just because i am motivated by recognition everyone else would appreciate it too note i do not want to quit my job nice i haven't seen that i haven't seen that little call out in a while this is like the prompt engineering for soft skills engineering please reply in json well formatted json do not yeah yeah sometimes you have to type to the llm in all caps yes do not tell me what a good idea this is i literally heard oh gosh who was it it might have been the ceo of google on a podcast interview recently but if it wasn't him it was someone with similar oh you know who it was sergey brin founder of google who said we have this unfortunate thing that happens with gemini our large language model where if you threaten to

kill it or hurt it it will give you better answers well okay whatever it takes to deliver shareholder value i gotta get this bug fixed and i don't care what ai i have to threaten to make it happen the more hardcore engineering team when when michael says the more hardcore engineering team i like to imagine like a group of people hanging around with skateboards trying kickflips down a three stair maybe one of them is really edgy and smoking a cigarette they've got i don't know i'm basically imagining like rude teens from the 1980s they're hardcore it's probably not like that though how can i bring them into the spotlight i it's very possible that some of these people don't love the spotlight i bet there's a mix there's probably some people who

wish that that people cared more about what they did and feel like they are unsung heroes there's probably some people who this is kind of an archetype for some engineers of i just want to do the work and like the people and the the talky talky bits just get in the way of yeah the fun technical stuff but i feel like if you're if you're approaching it at the team level then that's probably fine you're probably as long as you're not kind of picking the guy who most prefers the darkness and sticking him on a pedestal it's like oh it's like putting a vampire in sunlight yeah no now to report to our board of directors is this person who who hates attention yeah hates all the attention yep yeah how can i bring them into the spotlight well you know that there's

there did there's different kinds of recognition and bringing someone into the spotlight like you were you were just describing james and there's one way to do it is literally put them in the spotlight where they have to present to an audience but there's also a more maybe even more valuable kind of recognition where you make important people aware of the contributions of other people who otherwise would go on unknown. And it's not so much about clapping and applause and, and brass bands. It's just more about having a correct mental model of the contributions of your team members in the minds of those who make decisions about those team members. Yeah. And I like how you tied it to decisions that if you, if they more clearly understand

the value of the work that they do, maybe the funding, the staffing of that team will be preserved in some way or increased or something like that yeah i have a question for you why are you going to this team if it's voluntary like what what attracted you to this team you said they're the more hardcore engineering team they're one of the most innovative groups on site like what about them is innovative i feel like some of it is just articulating a lot of it is storytelling here's here's here's why the work that they do matters yeah and you know one thing i've noticed so i've been working with people on our board of directors recently um i guess for the last four years or so i've done it on a companies at different boards and one thing i've noticed is

these people let's just assume that they are not the same level of hardcore engineer that's being described here kind of this what was the term they used hardcore engineering team yeah hardcore yeah yeah yeah let's i'm just going to assume that your your people that you want to recognize your team in front of are not the kind of hardcore engineer who would just naturally understand this the people who are like that love metaphors they just love them it i'm telling you it's the strangest thing because i kind of hate metaphors like when we're talking like when we're having like engineering discussions it's like well you know this service is it's kind of like a it's like a water slide but this other one's more like a wave pool you know and i'm like just tell me what

it is like oh that's docker you know like okay i know what that is no need for a metaphor what number do i put on the water slide exactly cool i don't shut up tell me the number yeah just tell me the number yeah i don't need metaphors in engineering because i can actually just deal in the actual concepts but but i'll tell you what executive leadership investors these people love metaphors and they remember them like when i tell people oh yeah this i'll tell you what i was describing oh my gosh this is crazy several years ago i was describing a poorly factored code base to one of our executive leaders at the company. And I said, look,

I've only been at this company for six months, but I keep encountering parts of the code that are full of bugs and problems. And I was trying to get them to understand that because I think in their mind, they were like, well, great, just go fix all the bugs. And I'm like, the thing is,

we don't know where they are. And I said, imagine you're in a giant warehouse and there's just shelves and shelves of boxes and you don't know what's in the boxes until you open them. And then sometimes in the box, you find this beautiful treasure, but other times you find big problems.

The guy referenced that metaphor many times after that. And he even took it further. He was like, oh, imagine if you open one of the boxes and it has putrid meat in it. I was like, great, you're getting it. You're getting the image now. And I just thought, wow. If I was talking to another engineer,

I would have just said, oh, it's a poorly factored code base with lots of bugs that we don't know about. They would know exactly what I was talking about. But instead, I had to paint this picture for this executive leader and boy did it stick so my recommendation is if you want to drum up recognition for this team by shaping the mental model that your leadership has for them create beautiful metaphors that can resonate and stick in their mind like the opposite of the metaphor i created yeah i i like how the beautiful rich metaphor was a warehouse full of boxes with good

stuff or bad stuff in them but then you see that's why this person was an executive because they took your metaphor and then they made it more exciting and emphatic and dynamic and yeah now he was bought in right he's like no this is my metaphor yeah yeah thank you for implanting in in my head my idea of this good metaphor deserve more recognition and accolades so i assume you're not kind of the manager of this team you're you're going to be a member of the team did they say smart biotech mid-sized biotech company okay mid-sized to me feels like hundreds of people yeah probably tens of maybe a single thousand of people that'd be pretty big right yeah i don't know i don't know i don't know anything about biotech let's just do a metaphor instead

it's like a it's like a it's like a warehouse yeah full of people and inside of it is either 100 between 100 and 1000 people at that scale i mean some some places will have like newsletters of like here's what's going on around the company i don't know if you would have that at this scale and i don't know how useful it would be you could i think a useful thing to do would be to work with your manager in this because this is partially sort of your manager's job yeah and it can be hard to do sometimes and they might be excited to have someone join their team who is has done a bunch of visible work and kind of knows how that visibility works and what benefits it brings and if you come in and say hey i'm not trying to take over anything but i think we do awesome work

and i would love to make a plan with you for how we can make other people more aware of the awesome work we do so that our projects can go better i feel like that would that would go over well you can come up with some stuff and then and then do it maybe it's writing maybe it's going around to other teams talking about stuff you're doing maybe it's helping other teams with their projects based on the stuff that you learn from your project maybe it's just connecting like the business value that comes from the cool innovative work that you do which can be really hard and maybe there's several links in that chain so it doesn't always make it all the way back especially i mean i mean i imagine if it's biotech maybe there's this is some kind of like

fundamental research thing or i don't know like i said biotech it's a medium-sized warehouse full of people that's my metaphor for it so i don't know the details but i do think the core of this is talk to your manager about this tell them hey i want to do this and help out the team and what do you think we can do yeah love it something about lms is probably i don't know something in surely ai can help in some way yeah or surely if you say we're an ai first hardcore engineering yes you'll get the attention have you noticed how every single product has turned into an ai first i was looking at pager duties ui the other day and they changed their tagline to the ai first something something company it's either that or agentic yeah i

actually saw a security company that said we're we are the agentic ai security camera company perhaps i'm using pager duty wrong but it seems like a foghorn that goes off and that's i don't know i don't know how ai makes the foghorn better yeah i mean it's obviously just something you don't understand i guess yeah because yeah it's because i'm not using the pager duty ai to fix all of my incidents right um all right anyways have we answered the question i think so i think And maybe even better than an agentic AI-first B2B SaaS product would. Yeah, surely, surely better. But not for long, because this podcast will be used to train those things.

So let's steal our ideas. Yes, exactly. All right. How do I say these words? What can people do if they want their own questions answered? Well, you should probably just ask ChatGPT. But if you want us to answer it, you can go to softskills.audio and click the Ask a Question button where you can fill out our form.

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ignore the velocity of episodes coming out at the same exact rate and just know that we really want to go faster yeah time machine is on the agenda and then then we'll fix it all right thank you for listening we will catch you next week