I have been working for distributed companies for over 5 years – long before this pandemic malarkey and everyone becoming a “remote work expert”. The reality of the past 18 months for many people has been a lot of terrible remote work. Including for me at times – I love remote work in “normal times”, […]
My latest in LeadDev… How do your reports respond to feedback? As managers, it’s our job to grow the people we work with. This is how we build a bench, and scale ourselves and the organization. Of course, this is easy to say and hard to do, and we’ve all encountered a spectrum of people: […]
There has been Much Discourse over the past few days on forcing people to return to offices, and judgement of those who may not want to. Has Remote Work… Worked? I always wonder what’s on the other side of these edicts about returning to the office. How do the people writing them think the last […]
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 for – it’s a reminder of the core struggles I’ve been noticing from people. Downtime: downtime is lower quality, and people struggle to recharge. […]
I recorded a podcast based on my Living By the Code interview, and got spicy talking about inclusion, equity, and sponsorship. We also talked about Glowforge, books I love, and what new managers need. [iTunes] [Spotify]
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 details and letting them make decisions. Both of these are bad. One is controlling and fails to scale for obvious reasons. The other fails to […]
Following on from our recent video, my friend Jean and I did a little AMA on the same topic – coaching. You can read the write up here.
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 external coach across multiple jobs. Finding a good fit with a coach. Whether an engineering background is what you […]
Last month I put together a panel for the Lead Dev on recognizing and rectifying your mistakes as an engineering leader. I rarely moderate panels, but for this audience and this topic I was in! The big failure of most panels is that they are full of abstract platitudes. To avoid that – especially on […]
I recorded an episode of Contravariance podcast, on the topic of moving into management – the expected, and unexpected, the hard and the extra hard. [Listen] [Download]