management
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What do managers even do now?
→: What do managers even do now?I watched an IC have a lightbulb moment: they’re a manager now. Running agents in parallel, giving direction, deciding what’s worth doing. Being responsible for what ships, without doing it all themself. My job is giving them the pieces of management that are useful right now. Not how to run a 1:1. How to think…
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The Date – Blunt Implement or Forcing Function?
→: The Date – Blunt Implement or Forcing Function?On some of the worst run projects I’ve seen, leaders trying to get them back on track would set a date. Never, ever, in that circumstance, have I seen a date be met. No-one believes in it, no-one is willing to work overtime to meet it. It slips. Another one is set. And another. Maybe…
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What would make next week better?
→: What would make next week better?Just about everyone gets overwhelmed sometimes, and many of us deal with that by working harder. This is a reasonable response to a single unexpected thing, or a bad week, but it’s not the right response to systematic overwhelm. Then you need to stop asking the question “what do I do next” (or worse: “how…
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The Value of Getting Closer to the Work
→: The Value of Getting Closer to the WorkScaling The core problem of scaling a team is that not everyone can know everything. Scaling is the work of systematizing that – so that things are understandable, knowable. It’s turning “tribal knowledge” into documentation, automation, and process. It used to be that only the automation was for the machine, but now documentation is machine…
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Useful AI skills for Engineering Leaders
→: Useful AI skills for Engineering LeadersThe volume is up. More PRs, more pings, more incidents, more asks coming from more directions. I used to have 8 directs that dealt with most things, and organized and routed information to me for what I had to help them with, but since embarking on a new adventure, I’ve been rebuilding a different system…
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Making a New Plan
→: Making a New PlanOnce, I got an email. To paraphrase, it said: I ignored your recommendation, but new evidence arrived, and now I see that you were right. I won’t do that again. A rare enough thing that I can, years later, still quote it. Part of what made it so meaningful was this person didn’t have to…
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The New Realities of EM Lyfe
→: The New Realities of EM LyfeA fascinating thing is happening. EMs are saying it’s better to be an IC. ICs think being an EM is where it’s at. This is part of the AI shift. The industry seems to be in chaos, and wherever you are, somewhere else seems better. But below that, it’s not just the job that’s changing.…
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Force Multipliers
→: Force MultipliersIt’s harder than ever to be an engineering manager. Fewer resources, higher expectations, and a public conversation actively questioning whether the role should exist at all. Less support than ever, in a job that already often felt hard and lonely. That’s why Jean and I built the Engineering Manager Survival Guide – and I’m so…
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What’s Your Job as an Engineering Manager?
→: What’s Your Job as an Engineering Manager?As a manager, maybe you start your day looking at your calendar, or the pings that are already piling up. It can be easy to get caught up in what people are asking of you – but your job needs to look beyond the requests and into the causes underlying them. Here’s what I think…