What? The idea of the 1,2,3 is simple.?I didn’t invent it – someone mentioned it’s used at maybe… npm? But I couldn’t find anything about it so on our team we defined it as this: What I must get done today. What I’m hopeful of. What I’m filling in the gaps with. Why? I’ve never […]
It’s a truth universally acknowledged that 1:1s are one of the most important activities of being a manager. And yet we all know of managers who don’t do them, or do them so badly that they can hardly be called 1:1s at all. I’ve heard about managers who show up to the 1:1 and talk […]
The final part of interviewing for my last job involved coming to Colombia for 3 days and having 21 1:1s. FYI, this is the kind of thing that immigration finds very suspicious and resulted in me being detained and searched for drugs in Canada. But I digress. I firmly believe that people should interview their […]
Generally, I’ve really focused on doing technical interviews, but towards the end of last year and start of this I did a bunch of hiring manager interviews. This was a new and scary thing for me – whilst some things (like seeming warm) remained the same, the things I was evaluating were different. It was […]
For 8 months, from the start of December to the start of August, I was a manager. This was in many ways incredibly rewarding – now that I’m no longer a manager my favourite thing is being friends with the people who used to report to me. But it was also at times crushingly lonely. […]
My adored Camille is writing a book on management, which will no doubt be amazing, and asked me to contribute a section on being an organised manager. She says, “Managing people is hard, and and as an industry we’re bad it. We lack the experience, the tools, the texts, and the frameworks to do it […]
Last year I spoke at the Lead Developer, and this year I was excited to come back as an attendee. It was really great last year, but speaking is super stressful and always my priority is to give a good performance, so I sometimes don’t get to enjoy events I’m speaking at that much. Or I’m […]
One of the things that I write about in my lessons learned from 6 months of managing blogpost was about my realisation that intentions do actually matter. “I’ve long found discussion of “intentions” completely worthless. I just don’t want to hear about it. Especially in the context that it invariably is – men who tell […]
I was on another podcast! This time, creative coding with @seb_ly [listen]. We talked about managing coders, color theory, side projects, lasers, being homeless, interviewing (and applied humaning). It was really fun (but cold!) to record, and I hope you enjoy it.
Last week marked my six-month anniversary at Ride, which also marks six months of being a manager. It coincided with my team being in Medellin all together for our offsite. It was amazing to have everyone here, and this was part of something I have been thinking about since I started this job – how […]