Leadership
91 articles · all categories
Teams, mentoring, feedback, hiring — the people skills that turn a strong engineer into a force multiplier. No MBA required.
Leadership articles
13 articles from 2022 · show all
November 2022
Scaling teams is a technical challenge
A founder friend asked me about growing pains on his team. How do you avoid stepping on each other's toes?
What I learned from Staff Engineer by Will Larson
Staff Engineer was one of the more impactful books I've read in recent months. Went through the audiobook soon after becoming tech lead so the timing was perfect.
On becoming tech lead
A few weeks ago I made tech lead, a type of staff engineer. Here are my thoughts on what that means, how it happened, and why you'd want such a thing.
September 2022
The art of the cowboy merge 🤠
how do you catch a critical deadline that cannot be missed? We're talking external stakeholders, millions on the line, and it all hinges on *your* team getting it done on time. No overtime
August 2022
Reader Question: What do collaborative teams look like?
New members on our team invariably say 2 things: 1. Wow I've never seen a team move this fast 2. This approach feels weird. I'm uncomfortable Teams like this are not common.
What coding tutorials and teachers get wrong
Chatting about teaching and learning complex technical skills with an engineer I'm mentoring. She's a former chef. We shared the same frustration with online resources.
Reader question: So about that perfect burndown chart ...
If your approach works so well, why isn't every team doing this?
July 2022
Nobody is coming to save you
How do you react when you don't like The Process at work? Most programmers complain on social media, make a wry joke, and ... suffer. Not great
June 2022
A lesson on expertise from a great mafia movie
You cannot make something good until you understand who you're making it for.
April 2022
The role of a senior+ engineer
"Every product org should have a senior+ engineer whose job it is to run around and make everyone else more productive" 🤔 That IS the role of a senior+ engineer
How we made the best burndown chart you've ever seen
My entire career I've never seen a sprint finished on time. The new manager said "Oh I think we can fix that" ... 18 months later he proved me wrong
March 2022
How to give and receive feedback
Feedback can save an airplane from crashing, or upset everyone around you. But for you personally, honest feedback is the fastest way to become a better engineer. Fixing what you're bad at is where the gains hide.
February 2022
Be their shit umbrella
because if you go to bat for the team, the team goes to bat for you