SS Soft Skills Engineering

Podcast

Soft Skills Engineering

It takes more than great code to be a great engineer. Soft Skills Engineering is a weekly advice podcast for software developers about the non-technical stuff that goes into being a great software developer.

Website ↗ Last published 2 November 2026 538 posts collected by Sputnik

Said on Soft Skills Engineering

“I also learned that you can just win by writing it down. If you write down, here is the decision, we are all doing it, that can get this ball rolling faster.” — Jamison Dance, Soft Skills Engineering
Jamison Dance · 2 Nov 2026 Listen →
“The less I know the code, the more I say, yeah, it's probably fine. And the more I know it, the more I have that interaction of, no, this will be bad for us. We do not want it that way.” — Jamison Dance, Soft Skills Engineering
Jamison Dance · 26 Oct 2026 Listen →
“Throughout my career, the things that fall into the category of things I shouldn't have to do are actually where I've found the most success. And I think it's because most people won't do things they shouldn't have to do. They'll look at it and be like, I shouldn't have to do that. And then they don't. And then they don't get the benefits.” — Dave Smith, Soft Skills Engineering
Dave Smith · 19 Oct 2026 Listen →
“This is the classic don't be a meat proxy problem. Don't make someone else talk to your AI through you.” — Jamison Dance, Soft Skills Engineering
Jamison Dance · 5 Oct 2026 Listen →
“We are walking into a tidal wave right now that is washing up on shore. And that tidal wave is AI-generated code. And I am convinced that we cannot oppose this tidal wave. We have to find a way to live with this volume, with this new way of writing code. And we cannot insist on the old way of carefully reviewing every line.” — Dave Smith, Soft Skills Engineering
Dave Smith · 5 Oct 2026 Listen →
“There's one really simple heuristic, which is how many prompts did it take to get the document to its current state? And if the answer is less than, I don't know, 20, then you probably have a crap document when it comes to design docs, planning docs, large ticket planning docs, things like that.” — Dave Smith, Soft Skills Engineering
Dave Smith · 5 Oct 2026 Listen →
“It also just feels bad to be surrounded by enemies that you have kind of invented.” — Jamison Dance, Soft Skills Engineering
Jamison Dance · 31 Aug 2026 Listen →

Hosts

Soft Skills Engineering is hosted by Dave Smith and Jamison Dance .

Recent Episodes

  1. 2 Nov 2026

    Episode 537: Is my ADHD affecting my work and my startup got acquired

  2. 26 Oct 2026

    Episode 536: Mentoring and how to help my team not lose their soul to AI?

  3. 19 Oct 2026

    Episode 535: Manager externalities and should I fight stupid processes

  4. 12 Oct 2026

    Episode 534: I'm so bad at my job and I've inherited a huge slop pile

  5. 5 Oct 2026

    Episode 533: I'm drowning in AI slop from lazy coworkers

  6. 28 Sep 2026

    Episode 532: My new company is an absolute mess and should I get an English-speaking job as a Japanese engineer?

  7. 21 Sep 2026

    Episode 531: Shallow feedback and my coworker is a huge sloperator

  8. 14 Sep 2026

    Episode 530: Product engineering and why does my team never challenge my ideas?

  9. 7 Sep 2026

    Episode 529: Zoom calls on my open floor plan and laconic staff engineer

  10. 31 Aug 2026

    Episode 528: Sleepy family software business and leaving after an acquisition

  11. 24 Aug 2026

    Episode 527: I lost my job after 10 years and am I too old to switch to a security career?

  12. 17 Aug 2026

    Episode 526: Why can't I get promoted so quickly after my last promotion and I got hired as a software engineer but ended up doing ops

Guests

Jeff Leiken , Nedda Amini , Charity Majors , Ann Harter , Layne Mosely , Jonathan Cutrell , Brad Green .