Off the VPN

While Jasmine is enjoying her office sauna, our friend, “Hank” is ready to burn bridges. So the heat is high across the board, but while one situation has vacation vibes, the other is centered around an overqualified engineer.
 
This week, we’re getting into the chaos of tech teams, where legacy systems, ego battles, and one very opinionated senior dev threaten to tear it all down. From the drama of refactoring a hot mess of code to meetings derailed by a team member who just can’t help but feel strongly opinionated, the struggle is real.

Want to ask us something or share your own work drama? Hit us up at jellyfish.co/offthevpn. And don’t worry—we’ll keep it Off the VPN.

Highlights:
  • Egos on Fire: When one dev’s talent causes a maelstrom of team-wide burnout.
  • Spaghetti Code & Sabotaged Meetings: How a single codebase becomes the stuff of nightmares.
  • The Price of Talent: What happens when you let one person dominate the team’s rhythm?
Jump into the conversation:
(00:00) Intro
(03:52) The Tale of Maria
(05:54) Legacy systems built by one person
(06:30) No documentation or code reviews
(09:01) Refactoring an old convoluted system
(11:20) Balancing tech debt and new features
(17:36) Maria managing more than just Hank’s KPIs
(21:36) Psychological safety with Hank
(24:47) Hank’s behavior impacts team morale
(28:54) Leadership challenges for Maria
(32:22) Emotional toll of managing Han

What is Off the VPN?

Is bringing up your software engineering salary a dating red flag? How do you strike a balance between career ambition and incendiary burnout? Is it ever okay to hold your code hostage in escrow? Navigating a career in tech raises a lot of tricky questions that aren’t exactly appropriate for the daily stand-up. So let’s take this off the VPN.

In this new podcast from Jellyfish, work besties Jasmine and Allison scour the internet to find the real questions engineers and developers are whispering over drinks and posting about anonymously. Together, they’ll tackle the most troubling of inquiries with authenticity, humor, and absolutely no holding back.