Lead Time Chat
My friend Jean and I recorded a little video for her Lead Time Chat series on the topic of coaching. Some topics we covered… The difference between an external coach and a manager.Working with an...
View ArticleEmpowering your engineering team with an effective decision-making process
My latest for LeadDev… A common area where managers fail to scale is in decision-making.The two extremes are: being responsible means making all decisions and enabling a team means staying out of...
View ArticlePandemic Problems
Credit: Pixabay / mohamed_hassan For the past couple of months, I’ve kept a post it on my desk. It says: How are people doing?– Downtime– Social isolation– Perspective You can probably guess what it’s...
View ArticleThe culture of process
My latest in LeadDev… One of the challenges we face as engineering managers is how people react to process differently. Sometimes it’s like we’re talking about entirely different things – we propose...
View ArticleLeadTime – How teams work: DuckDuckGo’s engineering team
I did an interview with Range, talking about how the fully distributed teams I lead at DuckDuckGo work. Read it here
View ArticleEnergy Management for Newer Managers
Credit: darksouls1 / Pixabay When I coach new managers, or transition ICs into management, one of the key struggles initially (which I also remember myself) is overwhelm. For some, this ends up in...
View ArticleThe Anatomy of a 1:1
Broadly speaking, my overarching agenda for any 1:1 is as follows: It starts with the checkin, “how’s it going?”, an open ended question that some people respond with a status update, and some do not....
View ArticleMeta Problems and Where to Find Them
Credit: PxHere Meta-problem (n): root cause issues of a collection of symptom problems. One of the things I do as an engineering director, is live in the realm of the meta problem. The thing that is...
View ArticleEscaping The House Elf Management Trap
Credit: Keith Williams / Flickr / CC BY-NC-ND 2.0 I would love to find a new name for this, now that JK Rowling is cancelled, but in the Harry Potter books, house elves are powerful magical beings,...
View ArticleEnergy Management Exercise
My Energy Management for Newer Managers post has been turned into an exercise on Yerbo. You can find it here.
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