Leadership

The office debate seems to never end, with lots of companies now demanding on-site work, both established corporations and fast-growing AI and tech startups. I see posts on social media from people who don’t understand why people want to work from home, while others state that they would quit immediately if their employer forced them back to the office full time. Companies face a difficult trade-off between the benefits of in-person collaboration and the assumption that being in the office leads to higher productivity, on the one hand, and employees’ work–life balance, focus, stress levels, and personal freedom on the other. For many engineers, working from home enables greater productivity through fewer interruptions and more time for focused work. ...

I vividly remember most of my own journey into engineering management over the years. Throughout my career, I’ve also mentored several people taking the step from engineer to engineering manager. It’s a challenging and often lonely journey, and here are a few truths most new managers realize the hard way. (If you aren’t a manager yourself, you might just learn a bit about your manager’s situation.) The things no one tells you about being a manager: You’ll bring work home with you more often than not. The difficult conversation you’re dreading, the “stupid” business decision you will need to explain to your team, the office politics you need to handle, or the team member struggling silently with a personal crises. You will need to learn how to manage stress and rumination – and you’ll need to learn it fast. ...

We need to talk about feedback loops. Short feedback loops are the heartbeat of Agile. Once, cutting development cycles to two weeks was a massive achievement (and for many, it still is). But the core principle, learning quickly from what we build, seems to have been lost, even though the tools to do it are better than ever. Continuous delivery, continuous discovery, and releasing features to users early and often are now standard for many web-based products. Some ship dozens of times a day, others test with users early and often. Even for teams dealing with hardware or complex deployment cycles, the potential for rapid feedback exists. ...

Here are some blog posts and articles I thought found interesting the last month. (Books will be covered separately.) AI related Bob has written two good blog posts with scathing critique on how many organisations adopt AI and neglect solving their real issues. I found them very interesting and funny, even though I don’t agree with everything. AI won’t save your dysfunctional organisation “I recently watched a team use AI to generate a comprehensive competitive analysis. The document was impressive: well-structured, extensively detailed, professionally formatted. It was also built entirely on the team’s flawed assumptions about their market position, which the AI had helpfully elaborated into fifty pages of confident wrongness.” Ouch. I don’t fully agree with point 4, there are lots of good managers as well and in a best case scenario, they get to spend more time doing valuable things - spread knowledge, improve clarity, solving problems, coordinating, helping their teams grow and develop. ...

The urgency gap Over the last few months, I’ve sat across from product leaders and engineers in different companies and they all told me the same story: a frustration from product managers and the leadship team about lack of urgency in dev teams and whether they truly care about the company’s success. Product leaders and managers are super eager to deliver new features and to fulfill commitments to customers, but feel that the development teams are slow and don’t care if a feature gets pushed. “Why don’t the engineers feel a sense of urgency? They don’t care if a feature gets delayed for weeks!” “It feels like they don’t care about the success of the company!”. ...

I’ve been a manager for about 11 years now and a team lead for a few years before that. Two of the most important leadership responsibilities, in my opinion, are setting clear expectations and giving feedback. When I’ve mentored new engineering managers and team leads, this is usually where they struggle most. I’ve seen countless managers struggle to give feedback and feel unsure about how to do it effectively. I’ve also repeatedly seen the consequences of missing feedback, how one person’s behavior can sink a whole team. Across all the companies I’ve worked at, only one has offered any kind of feedback training. I’ve read and learned a lot by myself and by experience. Here are some of my tips and thoughts, because feedback can be an incredibly valuable gift if done right. ...

I love books. I usually read 30–55 books a year. It’s usually a mix between non-fiction and work related books: leadership, neuroscience, communication and engineering, and books just for fun, mostly fantasy and science-fiction. Last year I read (and finished) 36+ books, mostly fantasy, since I decided to get my mind off work more during my free time. My favorite work related book last year was Supercommunicators by Charles Duhigg. I found it interesting and a good reminder of what to think about when having conversations. I often tell my colleagues that what you say and the other person hears, can be two very different things. Charles Duhigg also describes how two people might be in the same conversation but with completely different goals and view of what the conversation is about. Is it a conversation where you’re trying to solve a problem and come up with actions, or just vent and rant? ...