Soft Skills Engineering - Episode 530: Product engineering and why does my team never challenge my ideas?

Episode Date: September 14, 2026

In this episode, Dave and Jamison answer these questions: Listener Myamax myamax says, I just listened to episode 527 and could really use some advice on being good at interviews. I was recently laid off with a decent severance package, so I have some breathing space. I’ve had several interviews, and I usually get past the initial screenings, but I don’t shine in technical rounds. I’m a career switcher, and most of my tech career has been in analytics at a big company. I’m good at distilling things, very good at debugging and navigating mazes of corporate legacy, but I haven’t really built things from scratch. I’m not a pure individual contributor, not a product manager but some technical-product hybrid, and it was a fun place to be. I stole good ideas from different teams and stitched them together adding common sense on top. I spent a lot of time with users and stakeholders to understand their data and their processes. Most of the time they needed common sense and decent data foundations. Only in rare cases it came to fancy algorithms. How can I sell myself better? Should I be looking for more product-oriented roles? Maybe spending my severance building tiny end-to-end systems to get better at take home assignments is a good idea? I’d be grateful for any thoughts and your general interview advice for the software folk! Hi, this is Mental Mario from Episode 395, where i was asking about being “the new hotshot in town”, as you put it. I took your advice, performed to the best of my abilities while trying to stump on my collegues work, and two years in think it worked out pretty well! I got my raises and will become the second in command after my boss. But wait- there is trouble in paradise! With more money obviously comes more responsibilities, but i can’t shake the feeling that recently I’m doing the majority of the work in my team of five. From refinements to troubleshooting, from code reviews to releases, tasks just come hurling to me. The team has a lot of confidence in me, but this leads to situations where they don’t challenge my ideas and approaches, which causes problems since obviously I make mistakes too- but I don’t have the teams safety net any more. This dynamic feels unhealthy to me. Is this feeling justified, or is this just the way it is when moving up the corporate ladder? Given that I’ll be the senior of the team, do i need to delegate more task and supervise them, when I’m feeling overwhelmed with tasks? Thank you so much for the show!

It takes more than accidentally clicking leave meeting instead of unmute to be a great engineer. This is Soft Skills Engineering episode 530. I'm your host, Dave Smith. I'm your host, Jameson Dance. Soft Skills Engineering is a weekly advice podcast for software engineers who, even after all these years, still struggle to click the right button in your Zoom meeting. It's even better if you click end meeting instead of unmute. And meeting for all. Yeah, you boot everybody.

Or when you accidentally click. remove and report participant. I didn't know that was a button. Oh, it is. Maybe we don't pay enough money for that button. Oh, maybe not. Report to who? The same person that the pseudo reports go to when you can't put the password.

Yeah. This is also, it goes on their permanent record. Right. It's the secret LinkedIn back channel where their next employer can search. Yes. It says number of times they've been removed from Zoom meetings. Yeah, you thought that ended in. elementary school. Nope. It's actually probably in real life just the NSA dossier they have on a

person. That's actually a great idea for background checks. Just do a freedom of information act to the NSA on someone. Like what do you got on this guy? Yeah. I think they can just say no. I'm no earth lawyer, but I'm pretty sure they can just say no thank you. You mean they don't hand over their top secret intelligence just because of someone did a FOIA request? That's too bad. That's a shame. Man, not yet. I guess it depends on if you think hack the NSA with a swarm of thousands of agents is just a really involved FOIA request or not. Freedom of information. Yeah.

I mean... The act I'm taking is pressing the button and swiping this credit card for millions of dollars in tokens. That's the act, the Freedom of Information Act. Yep. Do I have this definition right? I think I do. Swipe the card. Yep.

All right. Dave, should I thank our wonderful patrons? I hope you will. Thank you to the folks who contribute at the level that we shout them out every single week. And oh no, there's non-asky characters. Thank you so much to Yurekulev. I'm sorry, I'll have to Google that and pronounce it better next time.

I'm sure that's wrong. Plan your next trip with walla. Travel. W-A-Y-L-A-D-Travel. I just joined to play the name game. Nice. Oh, Bucharestuskarawas, Patis. I'm not going to kick.

Kinnikina, Piqua, Gannanthuten, Skiotto, Guaga. Oh. Have you looked at this one yet, Jameson? Have you figured this one out? Yeah, it's just, it's towns in Ohio, right? Yes. These are the names of actual towns in Ohio. With the word Ohio baked into it.

Yeah. We have our own Gnangan Fair, whatever that long name. Is it Wales? Is that the place? Yeah. landfaire whatever. Yeah, go, go, go. Look at what it takes to mimic that whole town.

We have like five different town names. Yeah, exactly. The whole state of Ohio conspired to combine their names. Yes. All right. Anyways, Will Wood What? Latest Washroom, Seth, Jenny Kim, The Stochastic Parrot, Irochan, Jonathan King.

That's one person. Wow. To show you love AI, put an upside-down pineapple on your cubicle or office door. Who even knows what their actual names are? My actual name on LinkedIn is Yami Debugging that in the dark. in the dark canny token limit reached Jacob Shandling A tingle frozen barrel bees

Patreon names broke and are limited to 50 character Will corner Angel No Javier Gonzalez Space chewy open paren salted fries semi cold

Lost episode 100 Jameson's Nordic Country Corner Iceland is the one with Ragnar Won't Angel Dan from drone to play Never is not just a crater on Mars Flamingo emoji I like chicken I like liver

Miamics please deliver I can see diet Dodds. Kyle Boss. The person hearing this is probably not Will Angel, but is still really great. Can't see Dodds. Closed parenthesis. Please go home. Jenny Kim, the stochastic parrot. Ira Chan, Jonathan King, deny beautiful functional user documentation. Adrian at kappa.a.i. In parenz, empty name to protest the new name length limit. Oh, no. Is this a new thing Patreon did? Oh, they crushed us. I wonder if we caused them to introduce name limits. Oh. Yes, this corporation bends to our whims. Will Angel has relapsed in his playing factorial.

Ra? I think that used to say Ragnar, but is now, I believe, that's an Egyptian. The sun god. Right? Yeah. Braden Keynes, John Grant, Brittany Ellick, closed parenthesis, followed by a literal closed parenthesis, followed by closing parenthesis. I said that wrong, but too bad. Thank you. Thank you to everybody who contributes at the level where we shout them out. every single week. If you want to join them, go to Patreon. Nope, don't. Well, eventually. Go to Soft Skills. Audio, click support us on Patreon. Do the thing it says. You get the stuff it says, including a shout-out and an invite to our Slack team. That's right. Dave, you want to read our first question.

Yes, this comes from a listener named Maya Max, Maya Max. Did I say that right, you think? It's a company. Yeah. I don't know. Okay. I declare, yes. You said it right. Okay. Nice work. And if this is that listener's name and they say it differently, I have bad news you have been saying your name wrong that's really unfortunate that you had to find out this way yep okay this is better now than never that's true okay this listener says i just listened to episode 527 and could really use some advice on being good at interviews i was recently laid off with a decent severance package so i have some breathing space i've had several interviews and i usually get past the initial screenings, but I don't shine in technical rounds. I'm a career switcher,

and most of my tech career has been in analytics at a big company. I'm good at distilling things, very good at debugging and navigating mazes of corporate legacy, but I haven't really built things from scratch. I'm not a pure individual contributor, not a product manager, but some technical product hybrid, and it was a fun place to be. I stole good ideas from different teams and stitched them together, adding common sense on top. I spent a lot of time with users and stakeholders to understand their data and their processes. Most of the time they needed common sense and decent data foundations, only in rare cases it came to fancy algorithms. How can I sell myself better? Should I be looking for more product-oriented roles? Maybe spending my severance building

tiny end-to-end systems to get better at take-home assignments is a good idea. I'd be grateful for any thoughts and your general interview advice for the software folk. Oh boy. I just looked back at 527 and there were actually two questions. This could have been related to, but they were both about job changes. Yeah. One person lost their job. Another person was switching into security at an advanced age.

Oh, yeah, yeah. Probably the first one, though, I guess. Yeah. Hmm. Yeah. If you were in analytics at a big company, I mean, this sounds like it could be a bunch of different things. This could be data engineering stuff.

This could be like A-B testing, that kind of. I think it's possible that you, you were the person who pointed at the line and said, line go up and we make more money. There's a way you can, with the right experience, I guess, there's a way that this is incredibly valuable experience. If it is connected to saying we have all this data, how do we figure out what makes the metrics we care about go up

or what the metrics we care about even are? That feels much more closely tied to revenue than much of engineering work in general. So I don't think it's just your skills are bad, I guess. That's my point. I mean, yeah, I think that's probably true. But what, I mean, oh, boy, there's just so many things that interviews can ask about these days. And I often lean to these, I go right to these like behavioral question styles where you talk about a situation, what you did and what the results were. And that's fine.

That's like actually really great. You know, a lot of people love hearing that stuff. But if someone's going to say, I need you to basically lead code this. or I need you to answer this esoterica about something, then it doesn't help. Like, you can have all the results in the world and all the great experiences in the world, but if you can't solve their little puzzle at that moment,

you might be stuck. And that's what it sounds like might be happening here. Yeah, this is a tricky place to be because in the real world, every technical problem someone sits down and types their understanding of that technical problem into a prompt and then, like, works with AI on it. But we're still in this intermediate,

period where there are many people in software who have built stuff without AI and have some squishy human knowledge. And I think we all are convinced that, and obviously it's better that we have this knowledge. And clearly this is important. So we're sort of expecting other people to have this knowledge and hoping that that means the AI output you get is better. I think that's true, but it's also kind of biased, right? And then, I don't know, 20 years from now, the amount of people with hand-grown non-AI-related knowledge will be much smaller, and I'm sure they'll still be able to do great stuff. So, yeah, it feels like, what's my point?

My point is there's a world in which you say, great, the technical portion. Let me just pop open Claude Code, and then the technical portion is like, you showing how good you are at working with AI at things. You may not be there. Have you interviewed in this age in the last, I don't know, call it six to 12 months? I have given interviews. I have not gone an interview. Yeah, yeah, that's what I meant.

Like, have you been on the other side? Oh, yes. And, I mean, are you actually having people pop open AI tools and use them in front of you? Absolutely. Yeah, we had to totally change our interview process to account for AI because it used to be build some stuff. And now you can just type, hey, build this thing for me. Right. We changed our code sample questions that we send to be more amenable to using AI.

and we changed the stuff afterwards when we're actually writing code to be focused on collaborating with AI. Yeah. So, I mean, that's going to become an indispensable interview skill, I think. That's just only going to be more and more true. But the good news is that skill is, I mean, if you're a good writer, that's a lot of what the skill is. If you can clearly express your thoughts in text and assuming you wrote this and not an AI, then good news. You got it. I think you wrote this.

This doesn't look like AI. And I'll tell you what. So I'm looking at this person's career profile. They're a career switcher. They've done a lot of analysis. They've done a lot of working across different teams and gathering requirements and stuff. Almost borderline product management. You know, these people shine in this new world I've found.

In fact, on my teams, I'm seeing an upside down effect where the people who 18 months ago were the slowest code writers and the least production. are now the highest productivity code writers. And I don't know, it's inverted from what it used to be. And of course, that's from AI tools. And it's like the people who can now explain things clearly, understand the product requirements. Well, they're the ones cranking out the product right now, getting things done. That's really interesting.

Yeah, maybe you used to, if you very carefully thought through things and had a clear, I don't know, information architecture in your brain of how the system works and like I could see that leading to you then going and very carefully implementing really solid stuff, but it is a bit slower versus just Yolo Cowboy coding. But now you can go just as fast as the Yolo Cowboy Coters. Even with your thoughtful care. Yeah, be very thoughtful. And then you say, now you Yolo Cowboy Code for me.

That's exactly. Careful thoughtful stuff I have given you. Everyone has a Yolo Cowboy Coder at their beck and call now. Armies of them, yes. Armies of them. I think I agree with. you that if you had lots of product, taste, and ideas, you were always very limited by how hard it was to build. And it's less limited now.

Yeah, way less. There's still certainly a case for it being hard and the code being important and stuff. But I guess the question is, do you need to go back and, like, earn your stripes to say, well, I don't know, I went through the algorithms and data structures course. or I built a database from scratch to figure out how they work. I know, these are all things you might squint at and say, these are good, like, hardcore technical projects to develop my chops. And it's never been easier to do that stuff now. Yeah.

I guess is it worth it? And the assumption is you would do better in these technical interviews because you knew some technical stuff better yourself. But the universe of technical stuff they could quiz you on is so huge that it's, I think it's basically impossible to pick the right set of things that will get you the gold star in the interview. Yeah, I get the sense this is someone a little bit differently shaped than maybe your middle of the bell curve software engineer. And it sounds a lot more like product engineering is a phrase of or a term I've heard to describe this where, yeah, you're technical and like you could go build stuff and maybe you do sometimes. But really you are in service of figuring out what the.

the product should be in helping that happen. And before maybe the helping it happen part was partially you writing code and partially kind of working with other people and other engineers. But now you could marshal this army of juniors again. So this almost feels like you finding the right fit for your skill set. I think in this case, it sucks you're not having success. Your success rate does not sound off to me. It's rough out there.

So I wouldn't go from not getting, farther after a couple of interviews. But also, it's possible you would do better with a more product-focused role. And there are definitely places looking for stuff like that. Yeah. You mean more product-focused and less code writing? Well, I'm thinking about one of my friends that I worked with who is an engineer, but told me basically I don't want to be anymore.

I don't care. I can just get stuff done with AI, and it's so much more interesting to think about the product. and do just enough technically to build it. But that's much less than I have to now, or much less now than I had to earlier. Yeah, maybe. My thoughts on this situation are similar to yours, especially the success rate.

There's a lot of people doing interviews right now and getting somewhat far and then just not getting the final offer. Very, very common. Or not getting through, you know, phase two or three. But my thinking is that given this background of this person, you have some really nice distinctive advantages over other people, and that is you've probably got a better ability to tell a story about what you've accomplished at other companies.

It sounds like you're more plugged into the business and to results. So you can probably tell really compelling stories about what you've gotten done and how you've contributed and why that actually mattered, more so than a lot of engineers who are maybe better on the technical side, but harder to tell a good story about why their work actually made a difference. So my advice is double down on that, that advantage by telling stories so compelling and impressive that it's okay that your technical stuff is a little bit weaker. Yeah, I think the storytelling bit is useful for selling yourself, and it's also useful to indicate, and the stuff I do matters, right?

Sometimes engineering can generate a lot of effort. And you could do a lot of stuff. And it's really hard to point it back to here's what happened in the user's brain or in these company metrics or whatever because of that. And I think you telling a story is both indicating, I'm entertaining and smart and you should hire me. And also I choose to work on things that are impactful. And that's part of how I scale my impact, not just because I have these really intense technical skills.

Like that's kind of another axis that you can scale impact on. But it doesn't always work too. Exactly. And then, I don't know, I think it would be good to hone your skills with AI tools. And, you know, we have a severance situation here. Yeah, so we've got some time. You know, use that time to become really good at using AI tools. And you know what I always do when I'm trying to really, really deep dive on a new tool is built.

my own version of the tool. I want to understand how it's working from the inside out and you can become a real expert on it. Is that the new build a blog? I remember when I first started in programming. That was the project. You write your own blog engine or whatever. And then Rails came out and kind of killed that. But now you write your own agent harness or something. Yep. I think it'd be cool. I think so. Yeah, it's like to build your own to-do list, build your own blog, build your own JavaScript framework. Now you can be more ambitious. You can build your own operating system, build your own hardware, computer from scratch, from like rocks and strings. You can be really ambitious now. It's kind of fun. Well, I think we've answered it. I think you are not in a bad spot.

It'd be great if you had a job right now, and so it does suck you don't. But I think you'll find something that fits your shape, and that's just as much a part of it as changing your shape. Yeah, and changing your shape might not be a good idea. If you're already really great at this, find a company that needs exactly what you already are. You'll be happier, you'll be more successful, rather than contorting yourself into what some company needs. And I'm only saying that because this person has some time on their side. You got a severance package, you've got time to go find that perfect fit.

And then when you get to the nearer, like when you're nearing the end of your severance package, maybe now you need to contort yourself into what a company needs instead of, Finding the perfect fit. Yeah. Well, good luck. I think it'll work out. You have the good judgment to listen to the show. Yeah, clearly, everything's going to be roses.

You deserve good things. Yeah. Dave, should I read our next question? Yes, go for it. Okay, this is from a listener who says their name is Mental Mario. Huh. From episode, this is Mental Mario from episode 395, where I was asking about being, quote, the new hot shot in town, as you put it.

I took your advice, performed to the best of my abilities while trying to stump on my colleague's work, and two years in, I think it worked out pretty well. I got my raises and will become the second in command after my boss. But wait, there's trouble in paradise. With more money, obviously comes more responsibilities. I can't shake the feeling that recently I've been doing the majority of the work in my team of five. From refinements to troubleshooting, from code reviews to releases, tasks just come hurling to me. The team has a lot of confidence in me, but this leads to.

situations where they don't challenge my ideas and approaches, which causes problems since I obviously make mistakes too. I don't have the team's safety net anymore. This dynamic feels unhealthy to me. Is this feeling justified? Or is this just the way it is when moving up the corporate ladder? Given that I'll be the senior of the team, do I need to delegate more tasks and supervise them when I'm feeling overwhelmed with tasks? Thank you so much for the show. Okay, I did some searching. and I think we had a metal Mario, not a mental Mario, right in on episode 401, not episode what did this person say? 395?

Yeah. Have we been duped? I don't know. Is there a secret other episode 395? Wait, it says a few weeks back in episode 395, you talked about working with it. I feel, yes. So this person, oh, wow. Okay, this is a complicated web of soft skills engineering lore that we need to untouching.

angle. Oh, good. I'm ready. Episode 395, we did talk about someone who was like a superstar teammate. And then in episode 401, someone who called themselves a metal Mario wrote in and said, that's me. I'm the superstar teammate. And now here we are years later. Let's see what year was this. Episode 401 was two and a half years ago, March of 2024. Now we're hearing again from Metal Mario, but this time calling himself Mental Mario. I assume that that is purpose and I approve. I love it. Okay, with that very important piece of important lore behind us. Yes. So we delved through the archives. We consulted the sacred histories. The official soft-kows-enduring librarian is very persnickety about letting us get into the archives.

Yeah, yeah. Takes their job very serious. As they should. Yeah. So, okay, summarizing, this person is highly capable. has grown into more of a team lead role here and is now worried that the team is just happy to do whatever this person says. No challenges, no pushback, just, sure, we'll do that. Am I summarizing this right? I think so. I think there's the added dimension that they're also feeling kind of overwhelmed. Yeah, yeah. Got a lot on their plate. And worrying that this is an unhealthy situation. I guess we can just, yeah. When does it change from a summary to the question? Let's just reread it. Yeah.

Okay, with that summary behind us, my immediate advice is you've got a team who will do anything you say without challenge. You've got to test to see how far they'll go. I mean, you could start with the very obvious paradox of saying, I need you to push back on my ideas. No, too easy. And they say, yes. Yes, we do. And then you say, wait. Wait a minute.

You didn't. I totally missed the paradox when you said it. Oh, you got me with that one. That was a good one. They say, no, we'll never push back. Yeah, start there. Are you saying try to slip in more and more ridiculous ideas? I'm saying, like, I need you to mow my lawn.

It's an important part of this new architecture for the software system we're working on. We have this new mentoring program where you come wash my car. and I have a washed car you go out into the company parking lot and you mark reserved for mental Mario on the closest spot in white paint yes that is a good sprint this week good work

do I need to delegate more tasks and supervise them I think it seems like you kind of know the answer if you said this but yes is the answer obviously yes I can see shades of myself in this question where I think I'm pretty capable I like to do stuff I like to get a lot of things done and sometimes that results in

me sucking a lot of things into I don't know my orbit and then I end up with too many things and I can't get them all done and then the planet explodes what's this metaphor? Yeah that's where it goes yeah I think then the planet explodes

I do have a great team and they more than they should have to will say, hey, I'm going to do this thing that you said you were going to do, which I really appreciate. Wait, they say that? There are times where I delegate. They say that to you about tasks

you said you would take that? Yeah. Oh, yeah, where I say, I'm going to do this thing and it's on the list of 100 other things. And then, yeah, it is really nice. It also indicates that I should be doing more delegation. Oh, yeah, but that's a great indicator

that your team isn't like, they don't consider you, your task list to be so sacrosanct that there is, They can't just say... Only I could do it. Yeah. Yeah.

They're like, I'll just pick it up for Jameson. I know he takes on too much and he won't be... He won't fire me or yell at me if I do this thing. That's great. Yeah. I mean, yes, you should do that. Sometimes it's hard to delegate because you care a lot about the way in which things are done and you want them done the way you would do them.

Yeah, you got to let go with that. Mostly, it doesn't matter. Yeah. You got to let go of that. Yeah, you got to say, here are the outcomes I want. However you achieve them, no matter how different it is from the way I would achieve them, is probably fine. Assuming you're a reasonable person and you're operating within, I don't know, the bounds of the law, I guess. Space law, of course.

Make this, yeah, make this system never go down no matter what. First, I will hack in to the NSA again. My second time in one day. Yes, okay. They've given us an impossible task. We must take. over the government. Yes.

I definitely think you're right, Jameson. When someone says, do I need to delegate more? The answer is almost always yes. Yep, yep, yeah. Very rarely is it no. The question is how? How do you effectively delegate? And I have a technique I want to share with you that I think works really well.

And it's all based on this concept called common knowledge. And I heard just the greatest podcast interview sometime this year, maybe last year, where someone wrote a book, I think, about common knowledge. It might have been Malcolm Gladwell. It just sounds like something he would write, but it might not have been him. Maybe it was. Maybe not. I don't know.

The fact, oh, Steve Pinker, maybe? I don't know. Yeah, it might have been Stephen Pinker. It says Stephen Pinker when I Google. That is it. Common Knowledge book. Okay. I must have listened to an interview with him because I've definitely not read this book.

And you know how sometimes you listen to an interview with the author of a book? And you're like, thanks. Now I don't need to read the book. Yeah. Yeah. Oh, good. An audiobook, a condensed audio book for free. That's exactly what I experienced. Anyway, common knowledge. What is common knowledge? Common knowledge is when you know something and someone else knows something too. And then that's not common knowledge yet. That's just individual knowledge. But then when you both find out that the other person knows that thing, that's common knowledge.

Okay. So like, for example, my boss puts me in charge of some part of the system, but doesn't tell anyone else. Right? That's not common knowledge. That's knowledge you have. That's knowledge your boss has, but the rest of the team doesn't have it. And so here's how I do delegation is I create common knowledge by making it so crystal clear to every single person. So for example, let's say I want to delegate ownership of a system or technical design or product feature or some area of the software to an individual. What I do is I talk to them about owning it. I tell them what that entails. And then I invite them, to give a presentation to the whole team about their plan for owning this thing. And now I know that they own the thing.

They know they own the thing. The rest of the team knows they own the thing. And every single team member, including me, the owner and all the rest of the team, knows that everyone else on the team also knows. Because they have, that's common knowledge. And I really think delegation and engineering team does not work without common knowledge. Why? because people it's I think it I don't know it's a I think it's a psychological thing where people feel unwilling to fully commit to their ownership of something or to fully exercise their ownership unless they oh okay you're saying the the fact that everyone knows everyone else knows that they own it that gives them kind of the yes the gumption that's right it gives them the complete empowerment that's what empowerment actually looks like it's like a psychological empowerment where you are like everyone knows we're like everyone knows we're

the guardrails are. I'm safe. I'm in those guardrails. I'm not going rogue. I'm not some renegade mutiny leader on this team. I'm doing this all. Here are my credentials. I know you've seen my credentials. You know, I have the credentials and I know you know I have the credentials. You know what I mean? Like, it's all authorized. Yeah. It almost sounds like you're saying part of the goal here is prevent someone from feeling like they're just seconds away from someone stumbling in and saying, you're doing what? Yes. You? That's exactly. I can't believe you are. doing this thing in this way. All those are wrong. No, to be fair, the best leaders on earth, they don't have that fear. They just take the

ownership and do it. But for the rest of us, we need to be given permission. Yeah. So you're saying do that. Yeah, do that. So here's what I'm saying. Do delegate. So you ask should you delegate, the answer is almost always yes. So here's how you delegate. You tell someone they own something. You tell them the results you're looking for. And then you go make sure the rest of the team and them all create this common knowledge experience by and to me the best mechanism is put them in charge of it and tell them to do a presentation to the whole team tell the team you invited them to present hey we've got a new leader or new this person's going to own this area of the product or the software or the service or whatever and i've asked them to give us a presentation on how this works and what

their plans are for the next six months on this thing it's like awesome now you just sit back and oh and by the way you go to that meeting to that presentation because now what does that do more common knowledge. Now all the team members know that I know that this person's in charge. It's such an effective mechanism. It's one of my, it's one of my all-time phase. Interesting. That's cool. Well, I like that. Okay. Dave, you're raising the bar and I don't like it because I can't keep up, but really good answer. Well, no, okay, no, just to, I know I've already convinced you it's a good idea. But now, now just think about how your executive team works at your company or your board of directors works. Think about how your CEO operates. And think about the times when your CEO

violates this principle. So, and I think it all becomes clear. You could probably have examples of this. But like, you know, I'll tell you how my CEO operates. When it comes to board meetings, my CEO says, okay, we're now going to hear from our chief technical officer, Dave Smith, and he's going to present the roadmap to the board of directors. And the board of directors looks at me, and I present the roadmap. And now I'm like, every single person in this room knows, including myself, that I'm in charge of the roadmap. And the CEO has now delegated that to me. Now, great. That's a great example of delegation. Now, what would happen if the CEO presented the roadmap? And I was in the room just watching. And now the board members are going to be looking at the CEO. They're going to be looking at me.

And they're going to be like, hmm, I wonder what Dave owns. And suddenly I feel disempowered. Because I'm like, oh, I actually don't own this because the CEO won't even let me talk about it to the board of directors. Yeah. He owns it. Yeah. You know? Hmm. So that's how I do it. And I think it works great. You kind of circled around this point where sometimes someone really capable can make it harder for other people to take on work because they're just, they're doing it all themselves. Yes. And it kind of, you just step back and say, all right, they've got it, I guess. I'm not, okay, whatever. Yep. So you could be contributing to this by doing all the things yourself. By being too great. People are kind of stepping back. Yeah. But if you say,

I've brought you these problems to solve. I think people will step up generally. There are, I think you're right on with this one. This is the other dynamic that I think is going on here is you are so capable and you're charismatic and you're smart and you're good at looking two, three steps ahead. And also, maybe most importantly, you care and you're willing to do those things. And I think a lot of engineers, when they get a leader like that, it's actually very relaxing to them.

and they're just happy that someone else is taking the reins and running this thing forward and they can kind of relax a little. I don't know. Maybe it's not a lot of people, but I've seen it. I think you need to take a step back from that. And so we've already talked about one way to do it, which is give ownership. But the other way you can do it is strategic absenteeism. And I have been very surprised when, because I'm, by the way, I don't know, this is probably

coming across implicitly, but I'm guilty of this as well. I tend to come into a team. I'm very vocal. I'm very opinionated. Yeah. Oh, sweet. Problems. Stuff for me to do. Yeah. This is fun. Yeah. I love doing stuff. Yeah, cool. And everyone's like, I'm so glad Dave likes this because I just want to go back to my desk. You know? Yeah. And so people I think are just happy to be like, well, I'm sure Dave's got it under control. And so I have a tendency to create disengagement because of that. And that is a problem. That's a big problem. So you fix it with ownership delegation. And then you also fix it by just disappearing sometimes. That's when I've thrived. I don't know about you, Jameson, but in my career, some of my most successful and happiest times are when my boss was basically an absentee. Yeah. And I'm like, awesome. But they also weren't like unpredictable and crazy, you know, where they would disappear and then come back and be like, what have you done? They would just be like, no comment. It's just like, cool.

Dave's got it under. You got it. Yeah. Good work. That's when I thrive. And I think a lot of people will rise to that occasion when they feel the full weight. But if they think you're going to come in and rescue them and be like, don't worry. I'll figure this out.

Then they can't. They can't thrive as much. So strategic absenteeism. Take a two-week vacation. I love it. Take a two-week vacation during a major release. Oh, yeah. And then you just get to chill.

Fair. Tell people, I will be unavailable. Yeah. Go to the Sahara Desert. Yeah, I mean, this is a good argument for positive argument for PTO beyond. It's just good to not be at work sometimes. But it builds resilience in your team. Yeah.

Yeah. As long as people feel like they kind of know what to do or how to do. approach a problem. If you're just abandoning them, abandoning, that word had more syllables in it than I said. You're just compressing tokens. Yes, yes. All about efficiency. If you just are leaving them to their fate and they just can't even figure out where to start or what success even looks like, then that's really stressful. But if it's something that they can sort of just do, yeah, yeah, it feels great. Yeah, don't do strategic absenteeism. when catastrophic failure is on the table.

You know? Yeah. Choose your absentee moments. Well, have we answered this question? I think so. Good luck. Mental Mario or Metal Mario, whoever you are. Yeah, I want to see your next evolution.

Yeah. What will you become after? Meat Mario. I don't know. Lentil Mario. I mean, it feels like they're going the opposite direction. Metal Mario is tangible physical. Mental Mario is now a concept.

And what's beyond that? Galaxy Mario. Yeah, I guess. All right. What can people do if they want their own questions answer? Go to softskills. Audio and click the Ask a Question button where you can fill out our handy little form. We thank each of you who do this every week. The questions flow in. It's actually my alarm clock is now programmed to read the questions aloud to wake me up in the morning. It's the most wonderful part of my day.

Yes. It used to be classical music now. It's robots reading help. Classic question. Yes, it's so much better. Well, thank you for listening. We will catch you next week.