Soft Skills Engineering · Jamison Dance and Dave Smith

Episode 465: Talking to your report's previous manager and how to replace a 30-year-old ticketing system

·30 min·2 clips

Dave reveals a Sherlock quote that reframes how to handle an employee's baggage: 'The problems of your past are your business.'

This episode of Soft Skills Engineering offers advice on handling managerial feedback about transferred employees and modernizing a legacy company system. Hosts Dave Smith and Jamison Vance respond to listener questions with their characteristic blend of technical insight and workplace humor. Mike, a manager, asks how to handle critical feedback from a previous manager about an employee who recently joined his team. Dave advocates for gathering as much information as possible, even if it's biased, to be aware of potential patterns. Jamison takes the opposite stance, preferring to let the employee reinvent themselves unless the past issues are extremely serious, like a "killdozer" incident. They discuss the difference between external hiring, where reference checks are standard, and internal transfers. Jamison references a line from the Sherlock series about not letting someone's past define their future. The hosts ultimately agree to disagree on the best approach. Another listener describes working at a company reliant on a 30-year-old, in-house ticketing and time-reporting system that lacks basic features. Everyone dislikes it, but replacing it is seen as difficult and costly, with a requirement that any new system also handle time reporting. The hosts are surprised no team has independently adopted a modern tool, suggesting a bottom-up rebellion by having one team start using a new system. They propose building an integration layer to sync data between the old and a new system as a proof of concept. They compare the situation to a historical migration from Subversion to Git, where incremental adoption demonstrated clear wins. The discussion covers the paralysis of choosing a new system, with the suggestion to create a feature matrix for evaluation. They note that championing such a change could become a massive, career-defining project, with the new system potentially being cursed by future employees 30 years later. The tone is conversational, humorous, and pragmatic, blending personal anecdotes with practical, if sometimes conflicting, strategies. Listeners who enjoy workplace problem-solving, managerial dilemmas, and stories of navigating bureaucratic legacy systems will find this episode engaging. Those seeking highly technical deep dives or definitive, unanimous answers might find the advice too broad or the style too anecdotal.

As heard by us

A grounded look at modernizing a ticket system that survives because the old process still has defenders.

Soft Skills Engineering episode 465 stays close to a familiar workplace snag: a 30-year-old in-house ticket system that also handles time reporting, annoys the people who use it, and keeps living because the old guard knows it well.

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Why you'd press play

You want a grounded way to nudge a 30-year-old in-house ticket-and-time system toward something less lost-in-the-shuffle.

Read the full recommendation in PlayNext →

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