Soft Skills Engineering - Episode 495: What to do when my boss quits and moving to Romania?

Episode Date: January 12, 2026

In this episode, Dave and Jamison answer these questions: Hello gentlemen, long-time listener here, and I’d love your take on something that’s been keeping me up at night. The high powered boss that I report to is someone I genuinely like and respect.This manager is smart, kind, honest, and overall great to work with. We have a solid relationship. I also come from big tech, so I sometimes feel I have better experience around managing projects and keeping teams organized. However she recently shared in confidence that there’s a chance of resigning in the next few months. and when I asked what keeps her up at night, the headache did not seem so big of a deal to me. But ever since hearing this news, I’ve been catastrophizing the next few months. I’m not ready to job-hunt. At the same time, if this manager does leave, it could be a really good opportunity for me to step up. So here’s what I’m struggling with: 1.How do I position myself for a potential promotion without making it seem like I’m going behind my manager’s back or trying to undermine them? 2.Should I quietly start looking for an job anyways, just in case? 3.And how do I stay sane when this might all be for nothing and the manager might actually stay? Would really appreciate your wisdom on how to navigate this without losing more sleep. Thanks for everything you do! I’ve worked as an engineering manager in a few big companies in Berlin, but after too much corporate politics bs, I flipped the fingers and quit. In the 2025 economy, that wasn’t the smartest move — finding a new job has been harder than ever. I’ve been focusing on smaller companies, ideally under 100 people. Ideally less politics, more autonomy. But now I’ve got an offer from Google in Bucharest — nearly double the compensation what I could get in Germany. The catch? I’d have to leave my strong circle of friends in Berlin and start over in a new city, new country. What would you do in my place? Brainstorm with me please 🥺

it takes more than microwaving your laptop to unfreeze a frozen app to be a great engineer this is soft skills engineering episode 495 i'm your host dave smith i'm your host jameson dance soft skills engineering is a weekly advice podcast for software developers who have had to evolve their methods for unfreezing frozen apps over the years but frozen apps are here with us to stay it would appear all the advances in hardware speeds just make it so now more apps can freeze and they freeze faster and we get fancier animations when they're frozen yeah i was using a new piece of software to me and it it brought back the old black and white circle with the kind of alternating white and black oh yeah corners of it okay hold on this tells me something about your setup you

are on a mac yep and you are using software that was written using non-native mac sdk is probably like a linux or open source thing is that like a qt loading animation or something yeah like a qt or gtk or something we use audacity to record the show it has the same problem like when you run gimp on the mac it has the same problem it's basically i think it's like when you're using an app that was written for x x11 the uh unix graphical rendering system you get these old school cursor icon i just appreciate it it makes me feel like the app is working harder for some reason i don't know why you're so busy that you can't even render the little beach ball exactly the beach we need the computing power yeah we can't render those gradients are you

kidding me it's like it's like 80 000 colors i don't have time for liquid glass exactly this is generations before liquid glass yeah i'm i'm in the middle of a quadratic loop through 15 nested things do you know how much convolution i'm doing right now yeah there was a time back in the day i i don't know if this was dos era or maybe windows 3.1 era but there was a time when the operating system event loop at least the graphical part of the operating system event loop it would prioritize mouse movement events over any other kind of event which is you know for obvious reasons so the mouse always feels responsive but you could take advantage of this feature and certain apps when they got frozen you could wiggle the mouse really fast

and it would somehow unfreeze them like change the prioritization somewhere in the kernel yeah yeah exactly like there was something about it it would like change the nature of race conditions or something it's like change the state of things and to this day i still wiggle my mouse a lot just just like my idle stance is like wiggling my mouse back and forth i saw a tweet it's from chang lu who i think that's their name i think they were on the react team for a while and seemed to just be a generally smart engineer so therefore it must be true but they said there's still some stuff around prioritizing smoothness of mouse animation somewhere in the software stack oh yeah i can't find the tweet don't remember what it was if you know stuff about that please tell me because

i yeah please that's fascinating i would not be the least bit surprised if that's still the case and i would also not be the least bit surprised if no engineer who's professionally working today wants to touch that code wherever you work you're like oh crap that's the mouse stuff i don't want anywhere near that yeah like yeah it's a whole house of cards built on the software doesn't work that's one problem your software makes the mouse not move now you're in real trouble all right should i thank our patrons i was hoping you would i was just gonna passively aggressively suggest it but i'm glad you offered i'll aggressively suggest it thank you to these folks that contribute at the level where we shout them out every week thank you to let me just share

my screen okay can you see it is that supposed to simulate the weird audio compression that happens over zoom sometimes i that's a good interpretation i was thinking it was like where your your mouth slows down because you're trying to find buttons on the screen you're doing stuff oh okay and then finally like okay yeah okay we'll leave it up to you ci issues charpente.io does the subservice org do Rubens or is it just cold cut I like that Joel

learn how to test react apps at howtotestfrontend.com balance the parens but forgot the emoticon you can't fix stupid but you can put it in a container and hope for the best my actual name on LinkedIn is yammydebugginginthedarkcanny the mobile development ordinary first of his name

quote or one equals one drop table myomics jacob shandling hey dave and jamis on let's get our jams on record that soft skill saw that skill song soft skill nation everybody sing along the missing semicolon christy the world's okayest programmer my biggest fear is the fear of making a typo in one of these shout outs that completely ruins the joke well congrats i think you got it yeah happy mary nick molyneux embedded software engineers our software engineers too javier gonzalez chewy ted timbrel a single opening parenthesis dan from drone to play never is not just a crater on mars flamingo emoji i like chicken i like liver meowmix meowmix please deliver swiss python okay i'll measure text bandwidth beautiful is better

than ugly implicit is better than implicit or explicit sorry simple is better kyle boss ken c dodds pause for dramatic effect jenny kim the stochastic parrot ira chan jonathan king's beautiful functional user documentation neil breen is the best movie director of all time Will Angel from DroneDeploy, Ragnar, Brayden Keynes, John Grant, Brittany Ellick, and the words closed parenthesis followed by a single closing parenthesis. Thank you. Thank you. You make our lives complete.

We had a pretty good life before this, but now it's complete. If you want to join this group and support us on Patreon, go to softskills.audio and then click support us on Patreon. And then any amount gets you an invite to our Slack team and enough of an amount gets you a one time or a weekly shout out yeah and our eternal undying gratitude thank you my gratitude won't die even though i eventually will yeah that's because we use some of the money to fund a uh what would be a i don't know you know those those monuments they're researching about how to build around like radioactive waste storage zones that are supposed to warn people away in 10 000

years we're doing that with gratitude yeah whatever those are made out of yeah that's what that's what these names are getting engraved on this is not a place of honor also is the subservice organization of rubin or cold cut one it's very expensive but that patreon money isn't going to spend itself yep all right we have a listener follow-up i believe yeah i'll read this one so this comes from a listener named yakov about episode 493 which is about an engineer asking for advice on whether to go work for a sports team to work alone and take a pay cut or reduced pay listener yakov says regarding what you were discussing on 493 about getting paid less in certain jobs due to high demand to work in that industry the term you might be looking for is a passion tax love

your show oh thanks passion tax cool yeah i like that that's a great term i've not heard of it but it makes perfect sense i've only paid stupid tax but passion tax sounds good do you want to do you want to read our first question yes this comes from a listener named forever imposter hello gentlemen long time listener here and i'd love your take on something that's been keeping me up at night the high-powered boss that i report to is someone i genuinely like and respect this manager is smart kind honest and overall great to work with we have a solid relationship i also come from big tech so i sometimes feel i have better experience around managing projects and keeping teams organized however she recently shared in confidence that

there's a chance of resigning in the next few months and when i asked what keeps her up at night the headache did not seem so big of a deal to me i didn't quite get that sentence the headache did not seem so big of a deal to me like the things that really bother her and are leading her to resign maybe oh like you're resigning for dumb reason like for reasons yeah like i wouldn't resign about that okay or maybe the headache is this subsequent problem they're about to explain continuing on ever since hearing this news about your manager resigning i've been catastrophizing the next few months i'm not ready to job hunt at the same time if this manager does leave it could be a really good opportunity for me to step up so here's what i'm struggling with number one how do

i position myself for a potential promotion without making it seem like i'm going behind my manager's back or trying to undermine them number two should i quietly start looking for a job anyways just in case and number three how do i stay sane when this might all be for nothing and the manager might actually stay i would really appreciate your wisdom on how to navigate this without losing more sleep thanks for everything you do you're welcome preemptive you're why i do many things yeah that don't help you at all yeah this well yeah that's true that's not scoped to the show right everything i do yeah i don't think you want to say thank you to everything there are some really horrible things that i do i made oatmeal today for my children thank you james

they liked everything thank you for the oatmeal all right catastrophizing ready to job hunt oh i'm so glad you said the word catastrophizing that was my favorite word in the whole question yeah i'm an expert at that you're pretty good at it lots of practice yep i do it a lot not ready I think we all do. I once read a stat. It was some kind of social science stat, so you can definitely believe it. And it said, 85% of the things we worry about never come true. And I thought to myself, I don't even care if that number's right, but I know it's right for me. We asked five undergrads in a psychology class, and they said that 85% of the things they worry about don't come true. And we got a paper out of it.

The root of all social psychology facts. Yes. I'm not ready to job hunt. I mean, the job hunt here is, I guess, implicit, right? This would be if, I don't know. Are they going to get fired? I don't think they would get fired. This is, their manager quits and they maybe get a new manager and they don't like them and then they have to quit or something like that.

Yeah, but these are completely, in my opinion, completely disconnected ideas. You keeping your job and your manager leaving have nothing to do with each other. Yeah, you could argue your job security is higher now because you're going to get a new manager that needs experienced people although actually i'm gonna argue with myself i feel like it's it is somewhat common to have a new manager come in and make changes to the team so maybe not but you know i don't know do a good job but i guess do you do you think the only reason you have this job is because of a good relationship with your manager yeah hopefully not hopefully you do more than that yeah hopefully that's an outcome of your skills and qualities not

not the reason yeah it's like can you imagine the company being like well we would fire this person but they just have such a gosh darn good relationship with their manager we're gonna keep them yeah it's just not that's these things are not connected typically now that's not always the case like yeah it's like the wet roads cause rain type of yeah so i i mean i would just put that thought out of your mind unless you have some really interesting extenuating circumstance like i signed a contract that says my manager and i come in a pair it's like an ancient egyptian pharaoh where their their servants must be buried with them when they die oh my goodness i'm gonna negotiate that next time i join and if you fire me you have to fire the

whole team and and uh embalm them yeah and put them in terracotta yeah oh my goodness so yeah like that that one's easy i don't think you need to look for a new job i mean oh i mean like i said there might be some extenuating circumstance there where for some reason the nature of your work with this person is connected to their employment but it's just it's just probably not the case yeah you've done enormous illegal things and it's all like they've been covering it up for you and now it's all going to come out then yeah maybe look for a new job that would be a great example of an extenuating. Yeah. Also find a good lawyer. Yeah. So I would just put that one right out of your mind. You've definitely been catastrophizing

that it's a false catastrophe. It's a false worry. Just, I'm just saying as much as I can here as impassionately as I can to make you forget that stupid idea, because I really do think it's a stupid idea. You're not stupid, but many of your ideas are. How do I know that? Because I also have mostly stupid ideas. Okay. Promotion now. Number two, or sorry, actually getting to these questions oh man goodness did i answer these out of order question number one how do i position myself for a potential promotion if this person leaves i want to talk about that just because you report to someone does not mean you are next in line for their job and for software engineers this is especially true now in other i have noticed that

in other fields that is less true i don't know why but like in sales you know you if your sales manager is leaving, the next likely person they reach for to replace the sales manager is often one of the top performing salespeople, which then leads to reduced sales because you took your top sales producer and made them a manager. That's common. But in software engineering, it's just not. And I mean, I have theories as to why, but it's just not relevant here. I don't think you necessarily should be positioning yourself for this position, or even you might not even be eligible or qualified for it. And here's the key word that makes me say that. You said the high powered boss that I report to. This makes me sound like this is someone with long leadership

experience and is highly effective at that job. And you, I'm going to assume here, don't have formal management experience. And so if the company is looking to replace someone with long experience who is highly effective as a manager, that position is probably not going to be a good fit for someone who has no experience as a manager interesting i didn't go there at all i just sort of assumed okay how would you do it but that is uh we can do that we can do that too yeah i could i could imagine many scenarios in which that would not work at all maybe maybe you're a your boss is a director somewhere and you're kind of one of the staff engineers that reports directly to them unlikely to be a similar skill set or yeah be effective in a wildly different role just because

you report to them but right and i'll just look can i just give you two quick examples of that I have worked at a big tech company, and I reported to two directors in my time there. And when those directors left, there was like a 0% chance that anyone even considered me for that position. It's just not how that works. But maybe it's not as cut and dry as that. If you do want to make it happen, I would start by talking to your current high-powered boss about it. Because one of the things that an effective, I don't know, maybe they're just going to backstab people because high-powered could have this negative connotation of ruthless and cutthroat, but maybe not. Something that is important if you are especially a more senior manager or leader is succession planning.

And maybe they have some thoughts on what to do next. Maybe they don't. But it's possible that you could be the solution to one of their problems, which is, if I do leave, how do I leave on good terms? How do I set them up for success? If they have a report that they think could do the job well and is interested in the job, then that's an interesting thing to know that they could help shape and shift what happens afterwards for them. Yeah, I like that. And I really like the idea of talking to your manager. That's the safest person you could talk to. Because anyone else you talk to might lead to you being pressured to leak the fact that you know that your manager is leaving. Exactly. Yeah. I presume that information was shared in confidence. Yep. It says so in the question. Oh, yeah. I don't have to presume anymore. Yeah. If your relationship is good, then this is probably not a huge problem. But

you also don't want to say, make them think, well, you're trying to kick them out to steal spot right so hey i understand you might be leaving um i love working with you i'd love you to stay just selfishly because i think my life would be better but if you do leave i'm interested in this role and do you think i would be a good fit for it how yeah can we talk about what might happen if you do leave and how i can step up in that context and then you can watch your manager confirm everything i just said which is no you're not you're absolutely not being considered yeah if they say i don't know let me think about it then they don't get back to you then then you know there's your answer now you know they immediately quit the next day yeah and i think i think it is

you know you your manager dropped this bombshell on you and and shared a very big piece of secret news with you so of course it behooves you to keep it confidential but i do think it's appropriate to go back to this manager after some time has passed and say hey you mentioned that you might be leaving what what's your current thoughts on that i'm interested to know and that's how i would open that conversation and then they might just say oh i changed my mind decided to stay yeah and i've had a manager do that before where they were being they were being courted by another company aha and actually were making arrangements to leave and decided to stay and but in the interim they told me that they were leaving and then forgot to tell me that they

weren't leaving and so i was just kind of on pins and needles for months and finally i asked oh no and they were like oh yeah i decided to turn down that offer okay and you know what else that if a likely outcome here is that your manager goes pretty far with this other opportunity and then takes it back to your current company's leadership and says i have this opportunity to leave i'm thinking about taking it and your current company might counter and retain them and that would be very interesting to know too just kind of like what does a retention play look like yeah at this company because you that might be valuable information to you at some future point yeah Yeah. I think especially if you work somewhere for a long time, it's probably likely that you have thought about leaving a bunch and decided to stay.

So I don't think the fact that your manager is thinking about leaving is a catastrophe, which is kind of strange that they told you. I guess you do have a really close relationship, but I don't think I would share that with folks unless I was pretty sure I was leaving. And it was not an idle thought because it does impact other people, especially if they like working with you. which makes things feel less secure as you're feeling right now. And then I think we should address question three. How do I stay sane when this might all be for nothing and the manager might actually stay? This is a very important skill to develop.

You have fixated on one possible outcome here. And may I add, it is like the least likely outcome, which is that A, your manager will leave and B, that that will result in you getting fired. This is a vanishingly small chance, in my opinion, of that happening. now it's interesting to me when you consider the full universe of possible outcomes that could happen to you in the next say three months there's way more than this one why did you fix it on this one there's a million other things that could happen to you that you need to prepare for that

you're not thinking about and so there was a great i don't know if it was a mindfulness concept or something that i came upon a few years ago i think it was about decision making where basically that this person said, every time you choose something, you're never choosing between two options. You're choosing between one option that you chose and an infinite number of other options that you chose not to pursue. And I'm like, yeah, that's true. And that's exactly what's happening here, except you're choosing to worry about one thing. What you're saying is, okay, hang on. Are you saying worry about infinity things instead of this one thing? Well, that's kind of like the absurd interpretation but i'm trying to use math to make an absurd point you have chosen to worry

about one thing and you have totally ignored a million other things and that that point i'm hoping makes you realize that this one thing you've also chosen to worry about should also be ignored with the other million because you actually can't predict the future and and the more you try to predict it the worse off you're going to feel now of course i don't want to say like you shouldn't prepare for the future like that's silly if there's obvious bad things coming down the pike, you should prepare for them and make sure you're not in a bad place when they come down. But losing a job, that could literally happen. You could wake up any morning to an email saying you no longer work here. It just is the reality of existence. The impermanence of things

is just reality. So to pick one thing to worry about that might happen in a few months because you got a little glimpse of news is kind of absurd. So I hope that this line of reasoning helps your higher order reasoning recognize the absurdity and shut down the silly worrying that's coming from the part of your mind that is less capable of higher order reasoning. It might be worth thinking, well, are there a few small things

or easy things I could do to hedge against this risk? So how do I stay sane? It might be all for nothing. They might actually stay. Maybe you can say, I don't know, I'll try and have a skip level with my boss's boss just so if they do leave, they at least have a slightly better idea

of who I am and what I do. and that's an easy thing and it's good in general and probably wouldn't hurt and wouldn't cost a ton but maybe that'll give you some peace that you've at least done a little bit to prepare and then you can move on to doing more stuff that you can control yeah well have we answered this question i think so good luck and i i just want to say how valuable of a skill it is to learn to stop worrying about things and just focus on making the best possible choices you can make with the information you have right now. Yeah.

All right. Should I read our next question? Let's do it. I believe this is from an anonymous listener who says, I've worked as an engineering manager in a few big companies in Berlin, but after too much corporate politics BS, I flipped the fingers and quit.

In the 2025 economy, this wasn't the smartest move. Finding a new job has been harder than ever. I've been focusing on smaller companies, ideally under 100 people, ideally less politics, more autonomy. But now I've got an offer from Google in Bucharest, nearly double the compensation that I could get in Germany. The catch? I'd have to leave my strong circle of friends in Berlin and start over in a new city, new country. What would you do in my place? Brainstorm with me, please.

Oh, boy. Moving to a whole new country to take a job. That is so challenging. Yeah. There's a couple of assumptions I'll make here. The first one is you probably don't speak Romanian. i knew somebody who spoke romanian and i speak portuguese and i could squint enough to sort of understand them could not yeah communicate clearly but so a couple words though that's also a romance language and german is not a romance language it is a germanic language the og germanic i believe there's a class of languages called germanic isn't there no there is i was just okay because i think isn't english technically a germanic language it is anyways so that won't help you speak portuguese

and you can kind of understand them is not useful advice here and now i've gotten the unuseful advice out of the way yeah on to the useful advice is this where i'm supposed to come in uh it is interesting that you've been looking at smaller companies and you quit over corporate politics and then you're joining one of the largest corporations or potentially joining one of the largest corporations in the world yeah huh you will not be immune which will not be immune to politics yeah because it's google yeah might have politics might be even stronger yeah i think with google one of the interesting things you'll find is that there's so much money available to those that succeed at google that the politics it's possible for the politics to get even stronger

at higher levels in the org chart like the stakes are higher yes hmm that's what i think yeah i i It is tempting to compare a potential offer to work at Google against a non-existent offer to work at a small company with fewer people and less politics. But you're kind of comparing go work at Google against keep looking, which could be a long time. Leave my strong circle of friends in Berlin. You just drive. Listen, I'm in the US. I looked up how long it is to drive between Bucharest and Berlin. It's only 18 hours.

I've driven 18 hours a bunch of times. How hard could it be? right you're saying just commute yeah you probably have high speed rail of some kind in europe between those two right i don't know yeah if you have double the compensation you could fly back to berlin a bunch though with all that extra money actually i think that's that's quite a legitimate recommendation for the social scene now it might help it might prevent you from connecting with your new social scene which would be a little bit of a bummer but totally feasible And flights between European nations, as this listener knows, can be very inexpensive.

I know nothing about Bucharest. Do you know stuff about Bucharest? I don't know very much about Bucharest, the city, but I have been to Romania and spent about a week there in a smaller city in Romania that's a few hours away from Bucharest. Here's what I know about Bucharest itself. Absolutely beautiful city. But you're coming from Berlin, which is also a really beautiful city. So I think that kind of puts them on level playing field. I feel like Berlin is one of the cultural capitals of the world, kind of. And Bucharest feels on a different tier to me.

It's definitely... I haven't been to Berlin or Bucharest, but I've seen pictures of both of them. And I think that qualifies me to comment on what it's like to live there. Oh, perfect. So let us know. The vibe that I get from Berlin, just knowing what I know and knowing people there, is that it's kind of like the Austin of Europe. The vibe...

I don't know if that tracks, but it's... vaguely cool hipster kind of yeah like cool cool tech scene for sure not exactly known for like the deep rich cultural history that Bucharest is going to have like Bucharest has some just absolutely amazing buildings in it that are very old I think Berlin probably has some of those because it's in Europe but it's not it's I think Berlin is more modern as a general rule but but that doesn't really matter the fact is you are leaving your home country going to a country where you don't speak the language of the local population. And that's hard.

That's a big transition. And my guess is that working for Google, all your co-workers will be speaking English anyway. They will not be speaking Romanian to each other. And many of them will probably not be from Romania either. And so you will have a cohort of people that are in the same boat that you're in, the same metaphorical boat, meaning...

So it'd be kind of an expat community of some kind. Yeah. Yeah, but maybe not all from Germany, right? there will definitely be some germans there and that will probably help you to assimilate a little bit i assume berlin you have a bunch of friends that also aren't all i don't know it feels like a cosmopolitan city yeah yeah you probably have a bunch of friends that are learning german and but you already know germans that kind of puts you in a different you know it'll be different um personally i think it would be awesome to go take this opportunity it's not permanent it's not

like you're signing up for a lifetime in romania and like generations of your uh descendants will now come from Romania. That's just not the case here. You have the option to move back eventually or move somewhere else from there. And plus, I think probably the most important factor here is that you're going to be working for Google. Google is an American company with a strong culture. What that means is, and I've seen this at tech companies that are based in the US that have very strong cultures, that have operation centers in other countries, is that the culture of the company tends to be the predominant culture that you will live in day to day and so what you will what you will experience is a google culture in your romania experience and not a romania

culture as much you will experience it day to day like you'll go to the grocery store you'll go to social events and you'll walk on the streets and you'll meet your neighbors and things like that but like 80 of your time of your waking hours will probably be spent among google culture working in a google office talking to google people and so i think the fear of like assimilating into this culture if that is a fear for you at all is greatly reduced or at least the effort is greatly reduced because the culture you're actually assimilating into is your work culture the question asker does not mention family so i'm assuming they they don't have kids i think if i had kids i would be much more reluctant to do this because it also uproots

them but if you're a single person or it's you and a partner then hopefully that's easier to move around and go on an adventure a little bit and i do like the idea of of thinking of this as a maybe a temporary thing a temporary a temporary long-term thing not a not a few months long gig but maybe spend a few years in bucharest and then your life is richer in some way for having that experience yeah see and that's part of the reason i love this opportunity is you're gonna go work for google google is known for paying very well bucharest is a really cool city go spend a couple years there this sounds like awesome start over in a new city new country yeah that would be scary I would be I think I'd be scared of that yeah but if it was a cool opportunity maybe and I think

it's still true that in general Google is a pretty solid recommendation or a positive mark on a resume so if you're worried about kind of career prospects in in the future as well I think this could make things easier for you could open some doors oh yeah absolutely I also assume that Google has a Berlin office maybe they don't but maybe there's some internal transfer I think they do possibilities if you work there and some opportunities open up to move back and still work at google if you if you like it yeah this is this is actually a little surprising to me that you're not getting a job offer at the berlin office i and i know how the google interview process works because i did the google interview process and i made it all the way through

to team selection and they give you lots of options i think i had seven options once i got to the interview process they gave me like seven different teams that i could meet with and decide where i wanted to go within the company and they were in different locations around the country you know and this is unless this has changed in the last seven or eight years this is part of google's culture is the ability to move between teams maybe they've dialed that back recently but there are google berlin offices so i don't see why you couldn't necessarily make that move back and it might might be a great stepping stone so we sound in favor of it broadly i think the biggest downside is yeah potential for new and exciting dysfunction and politics in ways you have not

even seen before yeah in your previous big tech career but small orgs can also have their own dysfunction yeah you you might not call it politics as much it might be more directly interpersonal but i don't know you could explore that in the interview process as well i think maybe you'll just hear yep there are some politics but maybe if you're if you're worried about the specifics i don't think you can have a giant megacorp of tens of thousands of people working together without some form of politics but if there's a specific experience you had that you are keen to not repeat maybe you could explore that a little bit with with your potential new team and figure out what the yeah environment that they sit in is like what are their i don't know

what are their client teams who who has demands on their time what do they where do they sit in the org and at least get a feel for what you're signing up for yep and you know the beauty of of working for a huge company is that you can find examples of anything you want in a big enough population. And Google definitely has a big enough population.

So you can find good and bad examples. The best, highest functioning team in Google is probably pretty awesome. And maybe you can land on that one. Yeah. And they're probably in Bucharest. I assume they are. All right.

And by the way, I know some people from Romania and they are just absolutely wonderful people that I really enjoyed. So I can only recommend and endorse the entire country. based on those people you know perfect have we answered the question i think so good luck all right what can people do if they would like their own questions answered go to softskills.audio and

click the ask a question button where you can fill out our handy little form with as much or as little detailed information as you like we love getting these questions every week we really appreciate all of you who take the time to write the questions we read them we ponder over them we think about them tears fill my eyes when i read of the difficult experiences you've suffered and joy fills my heart when I read of the triumph that you share. So thank you for keeping us coming. Instead of listening to you,

I was just Googling stuff and maybe I'm aligning Bucharest by saying it's on a different tier. It's the ninth most populous city in Europe. Berlin is the highest. It's still pretty up there. All right. And also, thank you.

Thank you for listening. We'll catch you next week.