Knowledge shared by our community

Managing The Unexpected Doubling Of Your Team’s Size

The author was faced with the challenge of taking on double the amount of direct reports in a day when their peer manager decided to transition from a manager to an individual contributor. The author took a few approaches to ensure their team's well-being and success, such as structuring their week around "themes" of the ways they spend their time, scheduling one-on-ones with their team, and enabling the ICs in the team to take more of a leadership role. The author learned that it is important to take a step back and allow other people to stretch themselves, and that management is all about people and relationships.

How I Moved Away From A Flat Organizational Structure

When the CTO of Narrative Science took over, the company was flat-structured with 14 engineers and 40 employees in total. To prepare for growth, the CTO implemented a QA and DevOps team, created a career ladder with five levels, and set up a program to hire recent graduates. He also had to explain the reasoning behind the changes to the existing organization and train people in having difficult conversations. He learned that it is important to make sure the requirements for each level are clear and that he should deliver on any promises made to employees.

Providing Vision To Keep Projects On Track

This company had a mission to make data accessible for human beings through natural language generation. To do this, they needed to develop a software package. However, due to a lack of clarity on what the product was going to do, they were continually missing the mark. To fix this, the executive team had to take a step back and define a vision for the product in three to five years time. They then determined the five steps needed to push towards that goal and communicated it to the product owners and engineers. This helped reduce conflict and improve their prioritization. Going forward, they need to communicate their vision and steps more often to ensure everyone is on the same page.

Firing A Popular But Underperforming Manager

A manager had been working at an organization for four years and was well-liked, but had received feedback that he avoided delivering bad news and having tough conversations. When a more senior person applied for a job, it became clear that the manager was underperforming. The CTO had to make the difficult decision to let him go, and had to explain the decision to the rest of the organization. It turned out to be the right decision, and the CTO learned the importance of having trust and accountability among peers.

Why I Made My Company’s Compensation More Structured

Pilot has implemented a new compensation process that eliminates negotiation components and rewards employees based on their skills. The company has also taken steps to ensure that employees are not discriminated against based on their location, by benchmarking salaries to the most expensive country they are comfortable hiring in. The key lesson learned is to focus on creating a fair compensation scheme that does not rely on negotiation skills.

A New Process To Improve Shipping Output

This article discusses two approaches to solving the problem of teams struggling to ship products and features. The first approach involves creating a structured process with multiple steps, where points are only awarded for a sprint when something is shipped. The second approach involves making the team accountable for features and stopping tracking engineering tasks, with everyone working on the feature jointly responsible for getting the product out of the door. Incentives matter, so it's important to understand what employees are driven by and how they are being rewarded for doing their job.

Letting Go Of Half My Employees

The CEO of a company with around sixty to seventy people had to let go of half of their staff. To ensure everyone was in the loop, they set up a Google Hangout and presented the changes. They also spoke one-on-one with each individual affected by the changes. The CEO learned that clear communication is key in difficult situations, and was proud of how they handled the situation and communicated it to their employees.

Traffic Light Performance Management

An Engineering Manager at InVision used a performance management model to communicate with an underperforming engineer. After a discussion and follow-up email, the engineer identified the steps he needed to take to improve and was able to successfully execute on his plan. The manager learned that clear, compassionate feedback is important, and that people need to own their own success for the best results.

How I Approached Managing Up

A Senior Software Architect at a startup experienced a co-founder who was overstepping his bounds and not being held accountable by the CEO. The Architect invested in building trust and had informal chats with people across the company to get a better feel for the problem. They then addressed the problem with the co-founder directly and gave feedback to other people and the CEO. The lesson learned was that building trust and strong relationships with people across the organization is important, but ultimately people have to want to change and grow.

Getting Buy-in From Teams When Restructuring

Haptik faced a difficult business situation and needed to reorganize. To do this, the CEO and VP's held management meetings and discussed a plan of action. However, this time they decided to talk to each team and get their buy-in and feedback. This allowed them to come up with solutions together and when the reorganization was announced, everyone was ready and welcoming of the changes. This taught the lesson that when faced with a difficult business situation, it is important to get buy-in from the people affected and to come up with solutions together.

A Gap In Communication Between Sales And Engineering

When a client asked the company to build a voice chat bot in six to eight weeks, the engineering team had to strike a balance between simplicity and quality. The project was broken down into four phases and ultimately completed in nine weeks. The lesson learned was that there needs to be clear communication between sales and engineering, and between what the salespeople think is achievable and what is actually achievable.

The Importance Of Aligning Expectations

iQMetrix was working on a custom enhancement to their product for an enterprise client, but the project went sideways due to incorrect steps in the requirements document and unrealistic deadlines. The project was eventually pulled by the client due to the cost. The lesson learned was to align expectations from the beginning and be aware of the risk of not having enough experience.

Hiring For Your Product Team

When tasked with expanding the Product Team for an enterprise project at iQMetrix in Vancouver, a Senior Business Analyst found a whiteboard test to be an effective way to challenge candidates and gauge their ability to break down abstract ideas into smaller chunks. This process proved successful and five people were hired.

When Your Team Constantly Misses Deadlines

The product manager at MediaValet faced a problem of missing deadlines and delivering work late. To solve this, they moved to a lean approach and sliced the overall scope into smaller pieces of work. They also decoupled pushing code into a production environment from public releases and decoupled feature launches from marketing launches. The product manager learned the importance of having a good relationship with the engineering manager and the importance of separating concerns.

Following Your Career Passions

This individual took a non-traditional career path, founding two software companies and then working as a Project Manager, System Architect, Technical Consultant, Mobile Tech Lead, and Mobile Development Manager. Through self-learning and personal projects, they gained the skills necessary to become a Technology Lead - AI/Cloud and then Director of Analytics, focusing on their true passion of data analytics, ML, and AI. The lesson learned is that if you have a passion, you can accomplish anything with the right objectives and dedication to learning.

Dealing with Reorganizations

Our company was growing and needed to reorganize its structure to better align teams. To reduce anxiety, clear communication was provided to explain the changes and their impacts. Additionally, individual conversations were had with new teams to gain their trust. So far, the reorganization has been successful and has improved cross team collaboration. Key lessons learned include the importance of multiple lines of communication and a gradual approach to integrating new teams.

Prioritizing Complex Products For Your Team

When I joined the company, I inherited a team with a large backlog of work and difficulty with prioritizing tasks. To solve this problem, I took the time to understand the team's strengths, the current landscape, and the requirements of other stakeholders. I then prioritized feature and service development based on urgency, business priority, effort, and impact. This improved relationships with stakeholders, gave the team a roadmap with proper priorities, and improved team morale, velocity, and perceived effectiveness. I learned that engineering leadership is not just about building great technology, but also about fostering strong relationships across teams and departments.

Keeping The Bar High When Hiring

Managers should not lower their bar when hiring to fill vacancies quickly. Instead, they should have a methodical approach to selecting candidates, looking at resumes and conducting technical interviews. Reference interviews and back-channel references can also be useful. If any gaps are identified, there should be a remediation to address the risk. Following these best practices will help to identify and hire high-quality candidates, improving the caliber of the team.

Trying To Hire Too Rapidly

In this article, the author reflects on their experience as a Senior Director at Paypal, where they were asked to rapidly hire 50 people per quarter. Despite their best efforts, they were only able to hire 15-20 people per quarter due to a lack of candidates, the location they were hiring in, and an inadequate interview process. The author learned that it takes time, luck, and a great process to hire good candidates, and that they would never let themselves get talked into this type of situation again.

Be Upfront About Product Delivery Constraints

The CTO of Paypal Credit was under pressure to scale a successful proof of concept product, but needed to replatform, restructure and rewrite it first. He had a one-on-one with the business owner to explain the situation and then went to the President of the business unit to get permission to spend nine months on the replatforming. Despite engineers not liking the fixed timeframe, the product launch was successful and the business leader was very complimentary. The CTO learned to start conversations with business leaders earlier to avoid difficult conversations.

Managing The Unexpected Doubling Of Your Team’s Size

The author was faced with the challenge of taking on double the amount of direct reports in a day when their peer manager decided to transition from a manager to an individual contributor. The author took a few approaches to ensure their team's well-being and success, such as structuring their week around "themes" of the ways they spend their time, scheduling one-on-ones with their team, and enabling the ICs in the team to take more of a leadership role. The author learned that it is important to take a step back and allow other people to stretch themselves, and that management is all about people and relationships.

How I Moved Away From A Flat Organizational Structure

When the CTO of Narrative Science took over, the company was flat-structured with 14 engineers and 40 employees in total. To prepare for growth, the CTO implemented a QA and DevOps team, created a career ladder with five levels, and set up a program to hire recent graduates. He also had to explain the reasoning behind the changes to the existing organization and train people in having difficult conversations. He learned that it is important to make sure the requirements for each level are clear and that he should deliver on any promises made to employees.

Providing Vision To Keep Projects On Track

This company had a mission to make data accessible for human beings through natural language generation. To do this, they needed to develop a software package. However, due to a lack of clarity on what the product was going to do, they were continually missing the mark. To fix this, the executive team had to take a step back and define a vision for the product in three to five years time. They then determined the five steps needed to push towards that goal and communicated it to the product owners and engineers. This helped reduce conflict and improve their prioritization. Going forward, they need to communicate their vision and steps more often to ensure everyone is on the same page.

Firing A Popular But Underperforming Manager

A manager had been working at an organization for four years and was well-liked, but had received feedback that he avoided delivering bad news and having tough conversations. When a more senior person applied for a job, it became clear that the manager was underperforming. The CTO had to make the difficult decision to let him go, and had to explain the decision to the rest of the organization. It turned out to be the right decision, and the CTO learned the importance of having trust and accountability among peers.

Why I Made My Company’s Compensation More Structured

Pilot has implemented a new compensation process that eliminates negotiation components and rewards employees based on their skills. The company has also taken steps to ensure that employees are not discriminated against based on their location, by benchmarking salaries to the most expensive country they are comfortable hiring in. The key lesson learned is to focus on creating a fair compensation scheme that does not rely on negotiation skills.

A New Process To Improve Shipping Output

This article discusses two approaches to solving the problem of teams struggling to ship products and features. The first approach involves creating a structured process with multiple steps, where points are only awarded for a sprint when something is shipped. The second approach involves making the team accountable for features and stopping tracking engineering tasks, with everyone working on the feature jointly responsible for getting the product out of the door. Incentives matter, so it's important to understand what employees are driven by and how they are being rewarded for doing their job.

Letting Go Of Half My Employees

The CEO of a company with around sixty to seventy people had to let go of half of their staff. To ensure everyone was in the loop, they set up a Google Hangout and presented the changes. They also spoke one-on-one with each individual affected by the changes. The CEO learned that clear communication is key in difficult situations, and was proud of how they handled the situation and communicated it to their employees.

Traffic Light Performance Management

An Engineering Manager at InVision used a performance management model to communicate with an underperforming engineer. After a discussion and follow-up email, the engineer identified the steps he needed to take to improve and was able to successfully execute on his plan. The manager learned that clear, compassionate feedback is important, and that people need to own their own success for the best results.

How I Approached Managing Up

A Senior Software Architect at a startup experienced a co-founder who was overstepping his bounds and not being held accountable by the CEO. The Architect invested in building trust and had informal chats with people across the company to get a better feel for the problem. They then addressed the problem with the co-founder directly and gave feedback to other people and the CEO. The lesson learned was that building trust and strong relationships with people across the organization is important, but ultimately people have to want to change and grow.

Getting Buy-in From Teams When Restructuring

Haptik faced a difficult business situation and needed to reorganize. To do this, the CEO and VP's held management meetings and discussed a plan of action. However, this time they decided to talk to each team and get their buy-in and feedback. This allowed them to come up with solutions together and when the reorganization was announced, everyone was ready and welcoming of the changes. This taught the lesson that when faced with a difficult business situation, it is important to get buy-in from the people affected and to come up with solutions together.

A Gap In Communication Between Sales And Engineering

When a client asked the company to build a voice chat bot in six to eight weeks, the engineering team had to strike a balance between simplicity and quality. The project was broken down into four phases and ultimately completed in nine weeks. The lesson learned was that there needs to be clear communication between sales and engineering, and between what the salespeople think is achievable and what is actually achievable.

The Importance Of Aligning Expectations

iQMetrix was working on a custom enhancement to their product for an enterprise client, but the project went sideways due to incorrect steps in the requirements document and unrealistic deadlines. The project was eventually pulled by the client due to the cost. The lesson learned was to align expectations from the beginning and be aware of the risk of not having enough experience.

Hiring For Your Product Team

When tasked with expanding the Product Team for an enterprise project at iQMetrix in Vancouver, a Senior Business Analyst found a whiteboard test to be an effective way to challenge candidates and gauge their ability to break down abstract ideas into smaller chunks. This process proved successful and five people were hired.

When Your Team Constantly Misses Deadlines

The product manager at MediaValet faced a problem of missing deadlines and delivering work late. To solve this, they moved to a lean approach and sliced the overall scope into smaller pieces of work. They also decoupled pushing code into a production environment from public releases and decoupled feature launches from marketing launches. The product manager learned the importance of having a good relationship with the engineering manager and the importance of separating concerns.

Following Your Career Passions

This individual took a non-traditional career path, founding two software companies and then working as a Project Manager, System Architect, Technical Consultant, Mobile Tech Lead, and Mobile Development Manager. Through self-learning and personal projects, they gained the skills necessary to become a Technology Lead - AI/Cloud and then Director of Analytics, focusing on their true passion of data analytics, ML, and AI. The lesson learned is that if you have a passion, you can accomplish anything with the right objectives and dedication to learning.

Dealing with Reorganizations

Our company was growing and needed to reorganize its structure to better align teams. To reduce anxiety, clear communication was provided to explain the changes and their impacts. Additionally, individual conversations were had with new teams to gain their trust. So far, the reorganization has been successful and has improved cross team collaboration. Key lessons learned include the importance of multiple lines of communication and a gradual approach to integrating new teams.

Prioritizing Complex Products For Your Team

When I joined the company, I inherited a team with a large backlog of work and difficulty with prioritizing tasks. To solve this problem, I took the time to understand the team's strengths, the current landscape, and the requirements of other stakeholders. I then prioritized feature and service development based on urgency, business priority, effort, and impact. This improved relationships with stakeholders, gave the team a roadmap with proper priorities, and improved team morale, velocity, and perceived effectiveness. I learned that engineering leadership is not just about building great technology, but also about fostering strong relationships across teams and departments.

Keeping The Bar High When Hiring

Managers should not lower their bar when hiring to fill vacancies quickly. Instead, they should have a methodical approach to selecting candidates, looking at resumes and conducting technical interviews. Reference interviews and back-channel references can also be useful. If any gaps are identified, there should be a remediation to address the risk. Following these best practices will help to identify and hire high-quality candidates, improving the caliber of the team.

Trying To Hire Too Rapidly

In this article, the author reflects on their experience as a Senior Director at Paypal, where they were asked to rapidly hire 50 people per quarter. Despite their best efforts, they were only able to hire 15-20 people per quarter due to a lack of candidates, the location they were hiring in, and an inadequate interview process. The author learned that it takes time, luck, and a great process to hire good candidates, and that they would never let themselves get talked into this type of situation again.

Be Upfront About Product Delivery Constraints

The CTO of Paypal Credit was under pressure to scale a successful proof of concept product, but needed to replatform, restructure and rewrite it first. He had a one-on-one with the business owner to explain the situation and then went to the President of the business unit to get permission to spend nine months on the replatforming. Despite engineers not liking the fixed timeframe, the product launch was successful and the business leader was very complimentary. The CTO learned to start conversations with business leaders earlier to avoid difficult conversations.

Managing The Unexpected Doubling Of Your Team’s Size

The author was faced with the challenge of taking on double the amount of direct reports in a day when their peer manager decided to transition from a manager to an individual contributor. The author took a few approaches to ensure their team's well-being and success, such as structuring their week around "themes" of the ways they spend their time, scheduling one-on-ones with their team, and enabling the ICs in the team to take more of a leadership role. The author learned that it is important to take a step back and allow other people to stretch themselves, and that management is all about people and relationships.

How I Moved Away From A Flat Organizational Structure

When the CTO of Narrative Science took over, the company was flat-structured with 14 engineers and 40 employees in total. To prepare for growth, the CTO implemented a QA and DevOps team, created a career ladder with five levels, and set up a program to hire recent graduates. He also had to explain the reasoning behind the changes to the existing organization and train people in having difficult conversations. He learned that it is important to make sure the requirements for each level are clear and that he should deliver on any promises made to employees.

Providing Vision To Keep Projects On Track

This company had a mission to make data accessible for human beings through natural language generation. To do this, they needed to develop a software package. However, due to a lack of clarity on what the product was going to do, they were continually missing the mark. To fix this, the executive team had to take a step back and define a vision for the product in three to five years time. They then determined the five steps needed to push towards that goal and communicated it to the product owners and engineers. This helped reduce conflict and improve their prioritization. Going forward, they need to communicate their vision and steps more often to ensure everyone is on the same page.

Firing A Popular But Underperforming Manager

A manager had been working at an organization for four years and was well-liked, but had received feedback that he avoided delivering bad news and having tough conversations. When a more senior person applied for a job, it became clear that the manager was underperforming. The CTO had to make the difficult decision to let him go, and had to explain the decision to the rest of the organization. It turned out to be the right decision, and the CTO learned the importance of having trust and accountability among peers.

Why I Made My Company’s Compensation More Structured

Pilot has implemented a new compensation process that eliminates negotiation components and rewards employees based on their skills. The company has also taken steps to ensure that employees are not discriminated against based on their location, by benchmarking salaries to the most expensive country they are comfortable hiring in. The key lesson learned is to focus on creating a fair compensation scheme that does not rely on negotiation skills.

A New Process To Improve Shipping Output

This article discusses two approaches to solving the problem of teams struggling to ship products and features. The first approach involves creating a structured process with multiple steps, where points are only awarded for a sprint when something is shipped. The second approach involves making the team accountable for features and stopping tracking engineering tasks, with everyone working on the feature jointly responsible for getting the product out of the door. Incentives matter, so it's important to understand what employees are driven by and how they are being rewarded for doing their job.

Letting Go Of Half My Employees

The CEO of a company with around sixty to seventy people had to let go of half of their staff. To ensure everyone was in the loop, they set up a Google Hangout and presented the changes. They also spoke one-on-one with each individual affected by the changes. The CEO learned that clear communication is key in difficult situations, and was proud of how they handled the situation and communicated it to their employees.

Traffic Light Performance Management

An Engineering Manager at InVision used a performance management model to communicate with an underperforming engineer. After a discussion and follow-up email, the engineer identified the steps he needed to take to improve and was able to successfully execute on his plan. The manager learned that clear, compassionate feedback is important, and that people need to own their own success for the best results.

How I Approached Managing Up

A Senior Software Architect at a startup experienced a co-founder who was overstepping his bounds and not being held accountable by the CEO. The Architect invested in building trust and had informal chats with people across the company to get a better feel for the problem. They then addressed the problem with the co-founder directly and gave feedback to other people and the CEO. The lesson learned was that building trust and strong relationships with people across the organization is important, but ultimately people have to want to change and grow.

Getting Buy-in From Teams When Restructuring

Haptik faced a difficult business situation and needed to reorganize. To do this, the CEO and VP's held management meetings and discussed a plan of action. However, this time they decided to talk to each team and get their buy-in and feedback. This allowed them to come up with solutions together and when the reorganization was announced, everyone was ready and welcoming of the changes. This taught the lesson that when faced with a difficult business situation, it is important to get buy-in from the people affected and to come up with solutions together.

A Gap In Communication Between Sales And Engineering

When a client asked the company to build a voice chat bot in six to eight weeks, the engineering team had to strike a balance between simplicity and quality. The project was broken down into four phases and ultimately completed in nine weeks. The lesson learned was that there needs to be clear communication between sales and engineering, and between what the salespeople think is achievable and what is actually achievable.

The Importance Of Aligning Expectations

iQMetrix was working on a custom enhancement to their product for an enterprise client, but the project went sideways due to incorrect steps in the requirements document and unrealistic deadlines. The project was eventually pulled by the client due to the cost. The lesson learned was to align expectations from the beginning and be aware of the risk of not having enough experience.

Hiring For Your Product Team

When tasked with expanding the Product Team for an enterprise project at iQMetrix in Vancouver, a Senior Business Analyst found a whiteboard test to be an effective way to challenge candidates and gauge their ability to break down abstract ideas into smaller chunks. This process proved successful and five people were hired.

When Your Team Constantly Misses Deadlines

The product manager at MediaValet faced a problem of missing deadlines and delivering work late. To solve this, they moved to a lean approach and sliced the overall scope into smaller pieces of work. They also decoupled pushing code into a production environment from public releases and decoupled feature launches from marketing launches. The product manager learned the importance of having a good relationship with the engineering manager and the importance of separating concerns.

Following Your Career Passions

This individual took a non-traditional career path, founding two software companies and then working as a Project Manager, System Architect, Technical Consultant, Mobile Tech Lead, and Mobile Development Manager. Through self-learning and personal projects, they gained the skills necessary to become a Technology Lead - AI/Cloud and then Director of Analytics, focusing on their true passion of data analytics, ML, and AI. The lesson learned is that if you have a passion, you can accomplish anything with the right objectives and dedication to learning.

Dealing with Reorganizations

Our company was growing and needed to reorganize its structure to better align teams. To reduce anxiety, clear communication was provided to explain the changes and their impacts. Additionally, individual conversations were had with new teams to gain their trust. So far, the reorganization has been successful and has improved cross team collaboration. Key lessons learned include the importance of multiple lines of communication and a gradual approach to integrating new teams.

Prioritizing Complex Products For Your Team

When I joined the company, I inherited a team with a large backlog of work and difficulty with prioritizing tasks. To solve this problem, I took the time to understand the team's strengths, the current landscape, and the requirements of other stakeholders. I then prioritized feature and service development based on urgency, business priority, effort, and impact. This improved relationships with stakeholders, gave the team a roadmap with proper priorities, and improved team morale, velocity, and perceived effectiveness. I learned that engineering leadership is not just about building great technology, but also about fostering strong relationships across teams and departments.

Keeping The Bar High When Hiring

Managers should not lower their bar when hiring to fill vacancies quickly. Instead, they should have a methodical approach to selecting candidates, looking at resumes and conducting technical interviews. Reference interviews and back-channel references can also be useful. If any gaps are identified, there should be a remediation to address the risk. Following these best practices will help to identify and hire high-quality candidates, improving the caliber of the team.

Trying To Hire Too Rapidly

In this article, the author reflects on their experience as a Senior Director at Paypal, where they were asked to rapidly hire 50 people per quarter. Despite their best efforts, they were only able to hire 15-20 people per quarter due to a lack of candidates, the location they were hiring in, and an inadequate interview process. The author learned that it takes time, luck, and a great process to hire good candidates, and that they would never let themselves get talked into this type of situation again.

Be Upfront About Product Delivery Constraints

The CTO of Paypal Credit was under pressure to scale a successful proof of concept product, but needed to replatform, restructure and rewrite it first. He had a one-on-one with the business owner to explain the situation and then went to the President of the business unit to get permission to spend nine months on the replatforming. Despite engineers not liking the fixed timeframe, the product launch was successful and the business leader was very complimentary. The CTO learned to start conversations with business leaders earlier to avoid difficult conversations.

Managing The Unexpected Doubling Of Your Team’s Size

The author was faced with the challenge of taking on double the amount of direct reports in a day when their peer manager decided to transition from a manager to an individual contributor. The author took a few approaches to ensure their team's well-being and success, such as structuring their week around "themes" of the ways they spend their time, scheduling one-on-ones with their team, and enabling the ICs in the team to take more of a leadership role. The author learned that it is important to take a step back and allow other people to stretch themselves, and that management is all about people and relationships.

How I Moved Away From A Flat Organizational Structure

When the CTO of Narrative Science took over, the company was flat-structured with 14 engineers and 40 employees in total. To prepare for growth, the CTO implemented a QA and DevOps team, created a career ladder with five levels, and set up a program to hire recent graduates. He also had to explain the reasoning behind the changes to the existing organization and train people in having difficult conversations. He learned that it is important to make sure the requirements for each level are clear and that he should deliver on any promises made to employees.

Providing Vision To Keep Projects On Track

This company had a mission to make data accessible for human beings through natural language generation. To do this, they needed to develop a software package. However, due to a lack of clarity on what the product was going to do, they were continually missing the mark. To fix this, the executive team had to take a step back and define a vision for the product in three to five years time. They then determined the five steps needed to push towards that goal and communicated it to the product owners and engineers. This helped reduce conflict and improve their prioritization. Going forward, they need to communicate their vision and steps more often to ensure everyone is on the same page.

Firing A Popular But Underperforming Manager

A manager had been working at an organization for four years and was well-liked, but had received feedback that he avoided delivering bad news and having tough conversations. When a more senior person applied for a job, it became clear that the manager was underperforming. The CTO had to make the difficult decision to let him go, and had to explain the decision to the rest of the organization. It turned out to be the right decision, and the CTO learned the importance of having trust and accountability among peers.

Why I Made My Company’s Compensation More Structured

Pilot has implemented a new compensation process that eliminates negotiation components and rewards employees based on their skills. The company has also taken steps to ensure that employees are not discriminated against based on their location, by benchmarking salaries to the most expensive country they are comfortable hiring in. The key lesson learned is to focus on creating a fair compensation scheme that does not rely on negotiation skills.

A New Process To Improve Shipping Output

This article discusses two approaches to solving the problem of teams struggling to ship products and features. The first approach involves creating a structured process with multiple steps, where points are only awarded for a sprint when something is shipped. The second approach involves making the team accountable for features and stopping tracking engineering tasks, with everyone working on the feature jointly responsible for getting the product out of the door. Incentives matter, so it's important to understand what employees are driven by and how they are being rewarded for doing their job.

Letting Go Of Half My Employees

The CEO of a company with around sixty to seventy people had to let go of half of their staff. To ensure everyone was in the loop, they set up a Google Hangout and presented the changes. They also spoke one-on-one with each individual affected by the changes. The CEO learned that clear communication is key in difficult situations, and was proud of how they handled the situation and communicated it to their employees.

Traffic Light Performance Management

An Engineering Manager at InVision used a performance management model to communicate with an underperforming engineer. After a discussion and follow-up email, the engineer identified the steps he needed to take to improve and was able to successfully execute on his plan. The manager learned that clear, compassionate feedback is important, and that people need to own their own success for the best results.

How I Approached Managing Up

A Senior Software Architect at a startup experienced a co-founder who was overstepping his bounds and not being held accountable by the CEO. The Architect invested in building trust and had informal chats with people across the company to get a better feel for the problem. They then addressed the problem with the co-founder directly and gave feedback to other people and the CEO. The lesson learned was that building trust and strong relationships with people across the organization is important, but ultimately people have to want to change and grow.

Getting Buy-in From Teams When Restructuring

Haptik faced a difficult business situation and needed to reorganize. To do this, the CEO and VP's held management meetings and discussed a plan of action. However, this time they decided to talk to each team and get their buy-in and feedback. This allowed them to come up with solutions together and when the reorganization was announced, everyone was ready and welcoming of the changes. This taught the lesson that when faced with a difficult business situation, it is important to get buy-in from the people affected and to come up with solutions together.

A Gap In Communication Between Sales And Engineering

When a client asked the company to build a voice chat bot in six to eight weeks, the engineering team had to strike a balance between simplicity and quality. The project was broken down into four phases and ultimately completed in nine weeks. The lesson learned was that there needs to be clear communication between sales and engineering, and between what the salespeople think is achievable and what is actually achievable.

The Importance Of Aligning Expectations

iQMetrix was working on a custom enhancement to their product for an enterprise client, but the project went sideways due to incorrect steps in the requirements document and unrealistic deadlines. The project was eventually pulled by the client due to the cost. The lesson learned was to align expectations from the beginning and be aware of the risk of not having enough experience.

Hiring For Your Product Team

When tasked with expanding the Product Team for an enterprise project at iQMetrix in Vancouver, a Senior Business Analyst found a whiteboard test to be an effective way to challenge candidates and gauge their ability to break down abstract ideas into smaller chunks. This process proved successful and five people were hired.

When Your Team Constantly Misses Deadlines

The product manager at MediaValet faced a problem of missing deadlines and delivering work late. To solve this, they moved to a lean approach and sliced the overall scope into smaller pieces of work. They also decoupled pushing code into a production environment from public releases and decoupled feature launches from marketing launches. The product manager learned the importance of having a good relationship with the engineering manager and the importance of separating concerns.

Following Your Career Passions

This individual took a non-traditional career path, founding two software companies and then working as a Project Manager, System Architect, Technical Consultant, Mobile Tech Lead, and Mobile Development Manager. Through self-learning and personal projects, they gained the skills necessary to become a Technology Lead - AI/Cloud and then Director of Analytics, focusing on their true passion of data analytics, ML, and AI. The lesson learned is that if you have a passion, you can accomplish anything with the right objectives and dedication to learning.

Dealing with Reorganizations

Our company was growing and needed to reorganize its structure to better align teams. To reduce anxiety, clear communication was provided to explain the changes and their impacts. Additionally, individual conversations were had with new teams to gain their trust. So far, the reorganization has been successful and has improved cross team collaboration. Key lessons learned include the importance of multiple lines of communication and a gradual approach to integrating new teams.

Prioritizing Complex Products For Your Team

When I joined the company, I inherited a team with a large backlog of work and difficulty with prioritizing tasks. To solve this problem, I took the time to understand the team's strengths, the current landscape, and the requirements of other stakeholders. I then prioritized feature and service development based on urgency, business priority, effort, and impact. This improved relationships with stakeholders, gave the team a roadmap with proper priorities, and improved team morale, velocity, and perceived effectiveness. I learned that engineering leadership is not just about building great technology, but also about fostering strong relationships across teams and departments.

Keeping The Bar High When Hiring

Managers should not lower their bar when hiring to fill vacancies quickly. Instead, they should have a methodical approach to selecting candidates, looking at resumes and conducting technical interviews. Reference interviews and back-channel references can also be useful. If any gaps are identified, there should be a remediation to address the risk. Following these best practices will help to identify and hire high-quality candidates, improving the caliber of the team.

Trying To Hire Too Rapidly

In this article, the author reflects on their experience as a Senior Director at Paypal, where they were asked to rapidly hire 50 people per quarter. Despite their best efforts, they were only able to hire 15-20 people per quarter due to a lack of candidates, the location they were hiring in, and an inadequate interview process. The author learned that it takes time, luck, and a great process to hire good candidates, and that they would never let themselves get talked into this type of situation again.

Be Upfront About Product Delivery Constraints

The CTO of Paypal Credit was under pressure to scale a successful proof of concept product, but needed to replatform, restructure and rewrite it first. He had a one-on-one with the business owner to explain the situation and then went to the President of the business unit to get permission to spend nine months on the replatforming. Despite engineers not liking the fixed timeframe, the product launch was successful and the business leader was very complimentary. The CTO learned to start conversations with business leaders earlier to avoid difficult conversations.

Managing The Unexpected Doubling Of Your Team’s Size

The author was faced with the challenge of taking on double the amount of direct reports in a day when their peer manager decided to transition from a manager to an individual contributor. The author took a few approaches to ensure their team's well-being and success, such as structuring their week around "themes" of the ways they spend their time, scheduling one-on-ones with their team, and enabling the ICs in the team to take more of a leadership role. The author learned that it is important to take a step back and allow other people to stretch themselves, and that management is all about people and relationships.

How I Moved Away From A Flat Organizational Structure

When the CTO of Narrative Science took over, the company was flat-structured with 14 engineers and 40 employees in total. To prepare for growth, the CTO implemented a QA and DevOps team, created a career ladder with five levels, and set up a program to hire recent graduates. He also had to explain the reasoning behind the changes to the existing organization and train people in having difficult conversations. He learned that it is important to make sure the requirements for each level are clear and that he should deliver on any promises made to employees.

Providing Vision To Keep Projects On Track

This company had a mission to make data accessible for human beings through natural language generation. To do this, they needed to develop a software package. However, due to a lack of clarity on what the product was going to do, they were continually missing the mark. To fix this, the executive team had to take a step back and define a vision for the product in three to five years time. They then determined the five steps needed to push towards that goal and communicated it to the product owners and engineers. This helped reduce conflict and improve their prioritization. Going forward, they need to communicate their vision and steps more often to ensure everyone is on the same page.

Firing A Popular But Underperforming Manager

A manager had been working at an organization for four years and was well-liked, but had received feedback that he avoided delivering bad news and having tough conversations. When a more senior person applied for a job, it became clear that the manager was underperforming. The CTO had to make the difficult decision to let him go, and had to explain the decision to the rest of the organization. It turned out to be the right decision, and the CTO learned the importance of having trust and accountability among peers.

Why I Made My Company’s Compensation More Structured

Pilot has implemented a new compensation process that eliminates negotiation components and rewards employees based on their skills. The company has also taken steps to ensure that employees are not discriminated against based on their location, by benchmarking salaries to the most expensive country they are comfortable hiring in. The key lesson learned is to focus on creating a fair compensation scheme that does not rely on negotiation skills.

A New Process To Improve Shipping Output

This article discusses two approaches to solving the problem of teams struggling to ship products and features. The first approach involves creating a structured process with multiple steps, where points are only awarded for a sprint when something is shipped. The second approach involves making the team accountable for features and stopping tracking engineering tasks, with everyone working on the feature jointly responsible for getting the product out of the door. Incentives matter, so it's important to understand what employees are driven by and how they are being rewarded for doing their job.

Letting Go Of Half My Employees

The CEO of a company with around sixty to seventy people had to let go of half of their staff. To ensure everyone was in the loop, they set up a Google Hangout and presented the changes. They also spoke one-on-one with each individual affected by the changes. The CEO learned that clear communication is key in difficult situations, and was proud of how they handled the situation and communicated it to their employees.

Traffic Light Performance Management

An Engineering Manager at InVision used a performance management model to communicate with an underperforming engineer. After a discussion and follow-up email, the engineer identified the steps he needed to take to improve and was able to successfully execute on his plan. The manager learned that clear, compassionate feedback is important, and that people need to own their own success for the best results.

How I Approached Managing Up

A Senior Software Architect at a startup experienced a co-founder who was overstepping his bounds and not being held accountable by the CEO. The Architect invested in building trust and had informal chats with people across the company to get a better feel for the problem. They then addressed the problem with the co-founder directly and gave feedback to other people and the CEO. The lesson learned was that building trust and strong relationships with people across the organization is important, but ultimately people have to want to change and grow.

Getting Buy-in From Teams When Restructuring

Haptik faced a difficult business situation and needed to reorganize. To do this, the CEO and VP's held management meetings and discussed a plan of action. However, this time they decided to talk to each team and get their buy-in and feedback. This allowed them to come up with solutions together and when the reorganization was announced, everyone was ready and welcoming of the changes. This taught the lesson that when faced with a difficult business situation, it is important to get buy-in from the people affected and to come up with solutions together.

A Gap In Communication Between Sales And Engineering

When a client asked the company to build a voice chat bot in six to eight weeks, the engineering team had to strike a balance between simplicity and quality. The project was broken down into four phases and ultimately completed in nine weeks. The lesson learned was that there needs to be clear communication between sales and engineering, and between what the salespeople think is achievable and what is actually achievable.

The Importance Of Aligning Expectations

iQMetrix was working on a custom enhancement to their product for an enterprise client, but the project went sideways due to incorrect steps in the requirements document and unrealistic deadlines. The project was eventually pulled by the client due to the cost. The lesson learned was to align expectations from the beginning and be aware of the risk of not having enough experience.

Hiring For Your Product Team

When tasked with expanding the Product Team for an enterprise project at iQMetrix in Vancouver, a Senior Business Analyst found a whiteboard test to be an effective way to challenge candidates and gauge their ability to break down abstract ideas into smaller chunks. This process proved successful and five people were hired.

When Your Team Constantly Misses Deadlines

The product manager at MediaValet faced a problem of missing deadlines and delivering work late. To solve this, they moved to a lean approach and sliced the overall scope into smaller pieces of work. They also decoupled pushing code into a production environment from public releases and decoupled feature launches from marketing launches. The product manager learned the importance of having a good relationship with the engineering manager and the importance of separating concerns.

Following Your Career Passions

This individual took a non-traditional career path, founding two software companies and then working as a Project Manager, System Architect, Technical Consultant, Mobile Tech Lead, and Mobile Development Manager. Through self-learning and personal projects, they gained the skills necessary to become a Technology Lead - AI/Cloud and then Director of Analytics, focusing on their true passion of data analytics, ML, and AI. The lesson learned is that if you have a passion, you can accomplish anything with the right objectives and dedication to learning.

Dealing with Reorganizations

Our company was growing and needed to reorganize its structure to better align teams. To reduce anxiety, clear communication was provided to explain the changes and their impacts. Additionally, individual conversations were had with new teams to gain their trust. So far, the reorganization has been successful and has improved cross team collaboration. Key lessons learned include the importance of multiple lines of communication and a gradual approach to integrating new teams.

Prioritizing Complex Products For Your Team

When I joined the company, I inherited a team with a large backlog of work and difficulty with prioritizing tasks. To solve this problem, I took the time to understand the team's strengths, the current landscape, and the requirements of other stakeholders. I then prioritized feature and service development based on urgency, business priority, effort, and impact. This improved relationships with stakeholders, gave the team a roadmap with proper priorities, and improved team morale, velocity, and perceived effectiveness. I learned that engineering leadership is not just about building great technology, but also about fostering strong relationships across teams and departments.

Keeping The Bar High When Hiring

Managers should not lower their bar when hiring to fill vacancies quickly. Instead, they should have a methodical approach to selecting candidates, looking at resumes and conducting technical interviews. Reference interviews and back-channel references can also be useful. If any gaps are identified, there should be a remediation to address the risk. Following these best practices will help to identify and hire high-quality candidates, improving the caliber of the team.

Trying To Hire Too Rapidly

In this article, the author reflects on their experience as a Senior Director at Paypal, where they were asked to rapidly hire 50 people per quarter. Despite their best efforts, they were only able to hire 15-20 people per quarter due to a lack of candidates, the location they were hiring in, and an inadequate interview process. The author learned that it takes time, luck, and a great process to hire good candidates, and that they would never let themselves get talked into this type of situation again.

Be Upfront About Product Delivery Constraints

The CTO of Paypal Credit was under pressure to scale a successful proof of concept product, but needed to replatform, restructure and rewrite it first. He had a one-on-one with the business owner to explain the situation and then went to the President of the business unit to get permission to spend nine months on the replatforming. Despite engineers not liking the fixed timeframe, the product launch was successful and the business leader was very complimentary. The CTO learned to start conversations with business leaders earlier to avoid difficult conversations.

Managing The Unexpected Doubling Of Your Team’s Size

The author was faced with the challenge of taking on double the amount of direct reports in a day when their peer manager decided to transition from a manager to an individual contributor. The author took a few approaches to ensure their team's well-being and success, such as structuring their week around "themes" of the ways they spend their time, scheduling one-on-ones with their team, and enabling the ICs in the team to take more of a leadership role. The author learned that it is important to take a step back and allow other people to stretch themselves, and that management is all about people and relationships.

How I Moved Away From A Flat Organizational Structure

When the CTO of Narrative Science took over, the company was flat-structured with 14 engineers and 40 employees in total. To prepare for growth, the CTO implemented a QA and DevOps team, created a career ladder with five levels, and set up a program to hire recent graduates. He also had to explain the reasoning behind the changes to the existing organization and train people in having difficult conversations. He learned that it is important to make sure the requirements for each level are clear and that he should deliver on any promises made to employees.

Providing Vision To Keep Projects On Track

This company had a mission to make data accessible for human beings through natural language generation. To do this, they needed to develop a software package. However, due to a lack of clarity on what the product was going to do, they were continually missing the mark. To fix this, the executive team had to take a step back and define a vision for the product in three to five years time. They then determined the five steps needed to push towards that goal and communicated it to the product owners and engineers. This helped reduce conflict and improve their prioritization. Going forward, they need to communicate their vision and steps more often to ensure everyone is on the same page.

Firing A Popular But Underperforming Manager

A manager had been working at an organization for four years and was well-liked, but had received feedback that he avoided delivering bad news and having tough conversations. When a more senior person applied for a job, it became clear that the manager was underperforming. The CTO had to make the difficult decision to let him go, and had to explain the decision to the rest of the organization. It turned out to be the right decision, and the CTO learned the importance of having trust and accountability among peers.

Why I Made My Company’s Compensation More Structured

Pilot has implemented a new compensation process that eliminates negotiation components and rewards employees based on their skills. The company has also taken steps to ensure that employees are not discriminated against based on their location, by benchmarking salaries to the most expensive country they are comfortable hiring in. The key lesson learned is to focus on creating a fair compensation scheme that does not rely on negotiation skills.

A New Process To Improve Shipping Output

This article discusses two approaches to solving the problem of teams struggling to ship products and features. The first approach involves creating a structured process with multiple steps, where points are only awarded for a sprint when something is shipped. The second approach involves making the team accountable for features and stopping tracking engineering tasks, with everyone working on the feature jointly responsible for getting the product out of the door. Incentives matter, so it's important to understand what employees are driven by and how they are being rewarded for doing their job.

Letting Go Of Half My Employees

The CEO of a company with around sixty to seventy people had to let go of half of their staff. To ensure everyone was in the loop, they set up a Google Hangout and presented the changes. They also spoke one-on-one with each individual affected by the changes. The CEO learned that clear communication is key in difficult situations, and was proud of how they handled the situation and communicated it to their employees.

Traffic Light Performance Management

An Engineering Manager at InVision used a performance management model to communicate with an underperforming engineer. After a discussion and follow-up email, the engineer identified the steps he needed to take to improve and was able to successfully execute on his plan. The manager learned that clear, compassionate feedback is important, and that people need to own their own success for the best results.

How I Approached Managing Up

A Senior Software Architect at a startup experienced a co-founder who was overstepping his bounds and not being held accountable by the CEO. The Architect invested in building trust and had informal chats with people across the company to get a better feel for the problem. They then addressed the problem with the co-founder directly and gave feedback to other people and the CEO. The lesson learned was that building trust and strong relationships with people across the organization is important, but ultimately people have to want to change and grow.

Getting Buy-in From Teams When Restructuring

Haptik faced a difficult business situation and needed to reorganize. To do this, the CEO and VP's held management meetings and discussed a plan of action. However, this time they decided to talk to each team and get their buy-in and feedback. This allowed them to come up with solutions together and when the reorganization was announced, everyone was ready and welcoming of the changes. This taught the lesson that when faced with a difficult business situation, it is important to get buy-in from the people affected and to come up with solutions together.

A Gap In Communication Between Sales And Engineering

When a client asked the company to build a voice chat bot in six to eight weeks, the engineering team had to strike a balance between simplicity and quality. The project was broken down into four phases and ultimately completed in nine weeks. The lesson learned was that there needs to be clear communication between sales and engineering, and between what the salespeople think is achievable and what is actually achievable.

The Importance Of Aligning Expectations

iQMetrix was working on a custom enhancement to their product for an enterprise client, but the project went sideways due to incorrect steps in the requirements document and unrealistic deadlines. The project was eventually pulled by the client due to the cost. The lesson learned was to align expectations from the beginning and be aware of the risk of not having enough experience.

Hiring For Your Product Team

When tasked with expanding the Product Team for an enterprise project at iQMetrix in Vancouver, a Senior Business Analyst found a whiteboard test to be an effective way to challenge candidates and gauge their ability to break down abstract ideas into smaller chunks. This process proved successful and five people were hired.

When Your Team Constantly Misses Deadlines

The product manager at MediaValet faced a problem of missing deadlines and delivering work late. To solve this, they moved to a lean approach and sliced the overall scope into smaller pieces of work. They also decoupled pushing code into a production environment from public releases and decoupled feature launches from marketing launches. The product manager learned the importance of having a good relationship with the engineering manager and the importance of separating concerns.

Following Your Career Passions

This individual took a non-traditional career path, founding two software companies and then working as a Project Manager, System Architect, Technical Consultant, Mobile Tech Lead, and Mobile Development Manager. Through self-learning and personal projects, they gained the skills necessary to become a Technology Lead - AI/Cloud and then Director of Analytics, focusing on their true passion of data analytics, ML, and AI. The lesson learned is that if you have a passion, you can accomplish anything with the right objectives and dedication to learning.

Dealing with Reorganizations

Our company was growing and needed to reorganize its structure to better align teams. To reduce anxiety, clear communication was provided to explain the changes and their impacts. Additionally, individual conversations were had with new teams to gain their trust. So far, the reorganization has been successful and has improved cross team collaboration. Key lessons learned include the importance of multiple lines of communication and a gradual approach to integrating new teams.

Prioritizing Complex Products For Your Team

When I joined the company, I inherited a team with a large backlog of work and difficulty with prioritizing tasks. To solve this problem, I took the time to understand the team's strengths, the current landscape, and the requirements of other stakeholders. I then prioritized feature and service development based on urgency, business priority, effort, and impact. This improved relationships with stakeholders, gave the team a roadmap with proper priorities, and improved team morale, velocity, and perceived effectiveness. I learned that engineering leadership is not just about building great technology, but also about fostering strong relationships across teams and departments.

Keeping The Bar High When Hiring

Managers should not lower their bar when hiring to fill vacancies quickly. Instead, they should have a methodical approach to selecting candidates, looking at resumes and conducting technical interviews. Reference interviews and back-channel references can also be useful. If any gaps are identified, there should be a remediation to address the risk. Following these best practices will help to identify and hire high-quality candidates, improving the caliber of the team.

Trying To Hire Too Rapidly

In this article, the author reflects on their experience as a Senior Director at Paypal, where they were asked to rapidly hire 50 people per quarter. Despite their best efforts, they were only able to hire 15-20 people per quarter due to a lack of candidates, the location they were hiring in, and an inadequate interview process. The author learned that it takes time, luck, and a great process to hire good candidates, and that they would never let themselves get talked into this type of situation again.

Be Upfront About Product Delivery Constraints

The CTO of Paypal Credit was under pressure to scale a successful proof of concept product, but needed to replatform, restructure and rewrite it first. He had a one-on-one with the business owner to explain the situation and then went to the President of the business unit to get permission to spend nine months on the replatforming. Despite engineers not liking the fixed timeframe, the product launch was successful and the business leader was very complimentary. The CTO learned to start conversations with business leaders earlier to avoid difficult conversations.