Knowledge shared by our community

Firing Someone When They Are No Longer A Good Fit

In this case, an employee in QA was not a good fit for the company's move to automation. After consulting with HR, the employee was let go in a respectful manner. This situation taught the importance of treating people fairly and with respect, and being willing to take the necessary steps to ensure the best outcome for the company.

Providing Feedback You Disagree With

A manager faced the challenge of presenting a lower review than recommended to a high performing direct report. The manager adjusted their mindset, looked for positives and ideas to address the feedback, and gave the direct report room to process their emotions. This resulted in the direct report crushing their next review and achieving an even higher rating than recommended. This is an example of how a positive outcome can be achieved even when faced with an organizational decision with which one disagrees.

How To Manage Toxic Employees

A team leader at Health Decisions had to manage a team member who was academically gifted but cocky and caused tension in the team. The leader had to address the issues as they arose and explain to the team member what was expected of him. After several attempts to help the team member, the leader had to let him go. The leader learned the importance of being persistent in addressing employee issues and understanding cultural differences.

How I Improved My Company’s Hiring Process

Three years ago, an Engineering Director at Betterment noticed a problem with their hiring process - a low acceptance rate and difficulty making decisions. To address this, they changed their technical vetting process from whiteboarding to peer-programming on a laptop, added an Ask Me Anything session, and changed the structure of the interview process. As a result, their acceptance rate more than doubled, and the hiring team reported feeling more confident in making decisions.

Instilling Agile Processes In An Organization

When the author joined their team, they noticed that the team was not following agile principles. To fix this, they implemented a process where engineers would code for five days, and then demo their work to the product owner and QA team. This created a sense of ownership and accountability, and also helped the team to have a better work-life balance. However, it was challenging to get the engineers to follow the process, and the author had to be persistent in order to get them to do so.

The Importance Of Relationship-Building

The author faced a challenge when they were promoted to engineering manager and had to manage a team of engineers based in Ukraine. They overcame the language barrier and cultural differences by getting to know the team personally, setting up English classes, and using video calls. Through building relationships and trust, the author was able to grow their team and see junior engineers develop into Architects and Engineering Managers.

Developing Leaders Using A Fail Fast Mentality

When looking to hire a manager, it is important to first consider developing leaders from within. To ensure the potential manager enjoys the role, a fail fast approach should be used, such as providing them with a new hire to manage for a small project. This allows the potential manager to decide if they want to stay in the role without much damage. Developing individual contributors into managers is a strength of good leaders.

How Personal Matters Can Affect An Engineer’s Work

A software developer on the team was having performance issues due to personal stressors. The manager learned the importance of the emotional side of managing people and gave the developer a week off to take care of his personal matters. The lesson learned was that a good emotional quotient (EQ) is essential for a manager and that understanding the personal situation of team members is important.

The True Value Of Data

Amazon used crowdsourcing to gain customer feedback, but realized customers were complaining about things already on the product page. To address this, they released a feature that allowed customers to search within the product page, which proved to be valuable. This experience taught the manager the importance of starting with customer needs and wants, and to always look at data to get a deeper understanding.

From Putting Out Fires To Preventing Them

VP of Engineering at Le Tote faced operational issues and was paged in the middle of the night. To reduce the number of issues, metrics were measured and integrated with the system to provide visibility and move from reactive to proactive work. This helped to drive change and showed the importance of reducing friction to embrace change.

Performance Management For Underperformers

When faced with performance issues, managers should start by evaluating team members based on their strengths and assigning them tasks they can excel in. Communication with the underperformer is key, and managers should provide them with feedback, opportunities, and visibility to help them succeed. If the team member still isn't improving, more specific goals and help should be provided. If they are ultimately not a good fit, performance management with HR should be put in place. People will usually be successful if given the right tools, and the bar should not be lowered to meet performance goals.

Structuring New Teams

When creating a new organization or reorganizing an existing team, it is important to meet with stakeholders to understand their pain points and the product portfolio. Additionally, it is important to understand the company's org structure and use this knowledge to structure the team and establish a charter and mission. Transparency and communication are key to success, and it is important to provide frequent updates and solicit feedback. Previous experience and perspective can be used to provide insights into what is best for the business.

Ensuring Teams Deliver Value

In order to address an issue of teams not knowing what they were doing, I identified how we could add value to the business, organized people and processes around that, and used Agile processes, stand-ups, duration planning, retros, and demos to encourage teams to think about their work and how they could get it done. This approach helped to increase morale and enabled teams to do work they were proud of. The lesson learned is that teams need to understand why they are doing the rituals and if they support the company's goals.

Sharing The Company’s Vision With Everyone

Neto faced a challenge in making the company's strategy relevant to individuals, so the CEO used Salesforce's V2MOM (Visions, Values, Methods, Obstacles, and Measures) to create a high-level strategy document. Each department head and team then built their own V2MOM that was relevant to them, but aligned with the CEO's vision. This gave purpose to individuals and teams, and helped them to become high-performing. Using V2MOM has been a productive mechanism for making the company's vision relevant at an individual level and helping teams understand how their work contributes to the business's success.

Gaining Team Insights During Restructuring

After Neto secured its third round of funding, the engineering team underwent a restructure to realign with business outcomes. To gauge how the team felt about the change, a temperature survey and word cloud were created. The results of the survey were higher than expected and the word cloud highlighted that while there was some frustration, people were enjoying new challenges and learning new things. This exercise showed that the problem was not as big as initially thought and that the team changes should be more consultative.

Growing With An Organization

This article discusses the difficulty of transitioning from an individual contributor to a manager. It explains that as a company grows, roles and responsibilities need to change and be delegated in order for the company to be successful. The article emphasizes the importance of recognizing why different roles are important and being willing to let go of certain roles and responsibilities as the company grows.

Decisive Firing

A reportee was an average performer, so a performance improvement plan was put in place to assess if he could sustain growth. However, the changes leveled off, so it was decided to let him go. The lesson learned was to find a balance between being hopeful and decisive when firing someone, and to have good evidence to support the decision.

An Amicable Firing

A manager gave an engineer feedback, discussed issues in one-on-one's, and gave her specific tasks to work on, but she still didn't meet the expected standard. A formal performance improvement plan was put in place, with goals and measurements, and the manager met with her for 3-4 hours a week to coach her. Despite improvements, sustained improvements were not seen, so the manager increased the urgency of feedback. It was realized the role was not a good fit for her, so the manager communicated that she should be let go and she was understanding.

Holding Out Too Long To Fire

In this situation, the engineer was not performing to the standard expected of them and was given feedback and incentives to try and change their behavior. However, after two years, the engineer's output started to affect other people on their team and team morale, so the manager ended up firing them. This situation taught the manager that two years is far too long to put up with bad performance and that there is a difference between barely meeting expectations and underperformance.

Rising Through The Ranks

The author started as the first engineer at Betterment and was responsible for shipping the next thing. As the engineering team grew, the author had to shift into a lead role and take on more responsibility for the output of the team and the growth of individuals. The author learned that they had to focus on helping their team be better and making sure people were making the best use of their skill set.

Firing Someone When They Are No Longer A Good Fit

In this case, an employee in QA was not a good fit for the company's move to automation. After consulting with HR, the employee was let go in a respectful manner. This situation taught the importance of treating people fairly and with respect, and being willing to take the necessary steps to ensure the best outcome for the company.

Providing Feedback You Disagree With

A manager faced the challenge of presenting a lower review than recommended to a high performing direct report. The manager adjusted their mindset, looked for positives and ideas to address the feedback, and gave the direct report room to process their emotions. This resulted in the direct report crushing their next review and achieving an even higher rating than recommended. This is an example of how a positive outcome can be achieved even when faced with an organizational decision with which one disagrees.

How To Manage Toxic Employees

A team leader at Health Decisions had to manage a team member who was academically gifted but cocky and caused tension in the team. The leader had to address the issues as they arose and explain to the team member what was expected of him. After several attempts to help the team member, the leader had to let him go. The leader learned the importance of being persistent in addressing employee issues and understanding cultural differences.

How I Improved My Company’s Hiring Process

Three years ago, an Engineering Director at Betterment noticed a problem with their hiring process - a low acceptance rate and difficulty making decisions. To address this, they changed their technical vetting process from whiteboarding to peer-programming on a laptop, added an Ask Me Anything session, and changed the structure of the interview process. As a result, their acceptance rate more than doubled, and the hiring team reported feeling more confident in making decisions.

Instilling Agile Processes In An Organization

When the author joined their team, they noticed that the team was not following agile principles. To fix this, they implemented a process where engineers would code for five days, and then demo their work to the product owner and QA team. This created a sense of ownership and accountability, and also helped the team to have a better work-life balance. However, it was challenging to get the engineers to follow the process, and the author had to be persistent in order to get them to do so.

The Importance Of Relationship-Building

The author faced a challenge when they were promoted to engineering manager and had to manage a team of engineers based in Ukraine. They overcame the language barrier and cultural differences by getting to know the team personally, setting up English classes, and using video calls. Through building relationships and trust, the author was able to grow their team and see junior engineers develop into Architects and Engineering Managers.

Developing Leaders Using A Fail Fast Mentality

When looking to hire a manager, it is important to first consider developing leaders from within. To ensure the potential manager enjoys the role, a fail fast approach should be used, such as providing them with a new hire to manage for a small project. This allows the potential manager to decide if they want to stay in the role without much damage. Developing individual contributors into managers is a strength of good leaders.

How Personal Matters Can Affect An Engineer’s Work

A software developer on the team was having performance issues due to personal stressors. The manager learned the importance of the emotional side of managing people and gave the developer a week off to take care of his personal matters. The lesson learned was that a good emotional quotient (EQ) is essential for a manager and that understanding the personal situation of team members is important.

The True Value Of Data

Amazon used crowdsourcing to gain customer feedback, but realized customers were complaining about things already on the product page. To address this, they released a feature that allowed customers to search within the product page, which proved to be valuable. This experience taught the manager the importance of starting with customer needs and wants, and to always look at data to get a deeper understanding.

From Putting Out Fires To Preventing Them

VP of Engineering at Le Tote faced operational issues and was paged in the middle of the night. To reduce the number of issues, metrics were measured and integrated with the system to provide visibility and move from reactive to proactive work. This helped to drive change and showed the importance of reducing friction to embrace change.

Performance Management For Underperformers

When faced with performance issues, managers should start by evaluating team members based on their strengths and assigning them tasks they can excel in. Communication with the underperformer is key, and managers should provide them with feedback, opportunities, and visibility to help them succeed. If the team member still isn't improving, more specific goals and help should be provided. If they are ultimately not a good fit, performance management with HR should be put in place. People will usually be successful if given the right tools, and the bar should not be lowered to meet performance goals.

Structuring New Teams

When creating a new organization or reorganizing an existing team, it is important to meet with stakeholders to understand their pain points and the product portfolio. Additionally, it is important to understand the company's org structure and use this knowledge to structure the team and establish a charter and mission. Transparency and communication are key to success, and it is important to provide frequent updates and solicit feedback. Previous experience and perspective can be used to provide insights into what is best for the business.

Ensuring Teams Deliver Value

In order to address an issue of teams not knowing what they were doing, I identified how we could add value to the business, organized people and processes around that, and used Agile processes, stand-ups, duration planning, retros, and demos to encourage teams to think about their work and how they could get it done. This approach helped to increase morale and enabled teams to do work they were proud of. The lesson learned is that teams need to understand why they are doing the rituals and if they support the company's goals.

Sharing The Company’s Vision With Everyone

Neto faced a challenge in making the company's strategy relevant to individuals, so the CEO used Salesforce's V2MOM (Visions, Values, Methods, Obstacles, and Measures) to create a high-level strategy document. Each department head and team then built their own V2MOM that was relevant to them, but aligned with the CEO's vision. This gave purpose to individuals and teams, and helped them to become high-performing. Using V2MOM has been a productive mechanism for making the company's vision relevant at an individual level and helping teams understand how their work contributes to the business's success.

Gaining Team Insights During Restructuring

After Neto secured its third round of funding, the engineering team underwent a restructure to realign with business outcomes. To gauge how the team felt about the change, a temperature survey and word cloud were created. The results of the survey were higher than expected and the word cloud highlighted that while there was some frustration, people were enjoying new challenges and learning new things. This exercise showed that the problem was not as big as initially thought and that the team changes should be more consultative.

Growing With An Organization

This article discusses the difficulty of transitioning from an individual contributor to a manager. It explains that as a company grows, roles and responsibilities need to change and be delegated in order for the company to be successful. The article emphasizes the importance of recognizing why different roles are important and being willing to let go of certain roles and responsibilities as the company grows.

Decisive Firing

A reportee was an average performer, so a performance improvement plan was put in place to assess if he could sustain growth. However, the changes leveled off, so it was decided to let him go. The lesson learned was to find a balance between being hopeful and decisive when firing someone, and to have good evidence to support the decision.

An Amicable Firing

A manager gave an engineer feedback, discussed issues in one-on-one's, and gave her specific tasks to work on, but she still didn't meet the expected standard. A formal performance improvement plan was put in place, with goals and measurements, and the manager met with her for 3-4 hours a week to coach her. Despite improvements, sustained improvements were not seen, so the manager increased the urgency of feedback. It was realized the role was not a good fit for her, so the manager communicated that she should be let go and she was understanding.

Holding Out Too Long To Fire

In this situation, the engineer was not performing to the standard expected of them and was given feedback and incentives to try and change their behavior. However, after two years, the engineer's output started to affect other people on their team and team morale, so the manager ended up firing them. This situation taught the manager that two years is far too long to put up with bad performance and that there is a difference between barely meeting expectations and underperformance.

Rising Through The Ranks

The author started as the first engineer at Betterment and was responsible for shipping the next thing. As the engineering team grew, the author had to shift into a lead role and take on more responsibility for the output of the team and the growth of individuals. The author learned that they had to focus on helping their team be better and making sure people were making the best use of their skill set.

Firing Someone When They Are No Longer A Good Fit

In this case, an employee in QA was not a good fit for the company's move to automation. After consulting with HR, the employee was let go in a respectful manner. This situation taught the importance of treating people fairly and with respect, and being willing to take the necessary steps to ensure the best outcome for the company.

Providing Feedback You Disagree With

A manager faced the challenge of presenting a lower review than recommended to a high performing direct report. The manager adjusted their mindset, looked for positives and ideas to address the feedback, and gave the direct report room to process their emotions. This resulted in the direct report crushing their next review and achieving an even higher rating than recommended. This is an example of how a positive outcome can be achieved even when faced with an organizational decision with which one disagrees.

How To Manage Toxic Employees

A team leader at Health Decisions had to manage a team member who was academically gifted but cocky and caused tension in the team. The leader had to address the issues as they arose and explain to the team member what was expected of him. After several attempts to help the team member, the leader had to let him go. The leader learned the importance of being persistent in addressing employee issues and understanding cultural differences.

How I Improved My Company’s Hiring Process

Three years ago, an Engineering Director at Betterment noticed a problem with their hiring process - a low acceptance rate and difficulty making decisions. To address this, they changed their technical vetting process from whiteboarding to peer-programming on a laptop, added an Ask Me Anything session, and changed the structure of the interview process. As a result, their acceptance rate more than doubled, and the hiring team reported feeling more confident in making decisions.

Instilling Agile Processes In An Organization

When the author joined their team, they noticed that the team was not following agile principles. To fix this, they implemented a process where engineers would code for five days, and then demo their work to the product owner and QA team. This created a sense of ownership and accountability, and also helped the team to have a better work-life balance. However, it was challenging to get the engineers to follow the process, and the author had to be persistent in order to get them to do so.

The Importance Of Relationship-Building

The author faced a challenge when they were promoted to engineering manager and had to manage a team of engineers based in Ukraine. They overcame the language barrier and cultural differences by getting to know the team personally, setting up English classes, and using video calls. Through building relationships and trust, the author was able to grow their team and see junior engineers develop into Architects and Engineering Managers.

Developing Leaders Using A Fail Fast Mentality

When looking to hire a manager, it is important to first consider developing leaders from within. To ensure the potential manager enjoys the role, a fail fast approach should be used, such as providing them with a new hire to manage for a small project. This allows the potential manager to decide if they want to stay in the role without much damage. Developing individual contributors into managers is a strength of good leaders.

How Personal Matters Can Affect An Engineer’s Work

A software developer on the team was having performance issues due to personal stressors. The manager learned the importance of the emotional side of managing people and gave the developer a week off to take care of his personal matters. The lesson learned was that a good emotional quotient (EQ) is essential for a manager and that understanding the personal situation of team members is important.

The True Value Of Data

Amazon used crowdsourcing to gain customer feedback, but realized customers were complaining about things already on the product page. To address this, they released a feature that allowed customers to search within the product page, which proved to be valuable. This experience taught the manager the importance of starting with customer needs and wants, and to always look at data to get a deeper understanding.

From Putting Out Fires To Preventing Them

VP of Engineering at Le Tote faced operational issues and was paged in the middle of the night. To reduce the number of issues, metrics were measured and integrated with the system to provide visibility and move from reactive to proactive work. This helped to drive change and showed the importance of reducing friction to embrace change.

Performance Management For Underperformers

When faced with performance issues, managers should start by evaluating team members based on their strengths and assigning them tasks they can excel in. Communication with the underperformer is key, and managers should provide them with feedback, opportunities, and visibility to help them succeed. If the team member still isn't improving, more specific goals and help should be provided. If they are ultimately not a good fit, performance management with HR should be put in place. People will usually be successful if given the right tools, and the bar should not be lowered to meet performance goals.

Structuring New Teams

When creating a new organization or reorganizing an existing team, it is important to meet with stakeholders to understand their pain points and the product portfolio. Additionally, it is important to understand the company's org structure and use this knowledge to structure the team and establish a charter and mission. Transparency and communication are key to success, and it is important to provide frequent updates and solicit feedback. Previous experience and perspective can be used to provide insights into what is best for the business.

Ensuring Teams Deliver Value

In order to address an issue of teams not knowing what they were doing, I identified how we could add value to the business, organized people and processes around that, and used Agile processes, stand-ups, duration planning, retros, and demos to encourage teams to think about their work and how they could get it done. This approach helped to increase morale and enabled teams to do work they were proud of. The lesson learned is that teams need to understand why they are doing the rituals and if they support the company's goals.

Sharing The Company’s Vision With Everyone

Neto faced a challenge in making the company's strategy relevant to individuals, so the CEO used Salesforce's V2MOM (Visions, Values, Methods, Obstacles, and Measures) to create a high-level strategy document. Each department head and team then built their own V2MOM that was relevant to them, but aligned with the CEO's vision. This gave purpose to individuals and teams, and helped them to become high-performing. Using V2MOM has been a productive mechanism for making the company's vision relevant at an individual level and helping teams understand how their work contributes to the business's success.

Gaining Team Insights During Restructuring

After Neto secured its third round of funding, the engineering team underwent a restructure to realign with business outcomes. To gauge how the team felt about the change, a temperature survey and word cloud were created. The results of the survey were higher than expected and the word cloud highlighted that while there was some frustration, people were enjoying new challenges and learning new things. This exercise showed that the problem was not as big as initially thought and that the team changes should be more consultative.

Growing With An Organization

This article discusses the difficulty of transitioning from an individual contributor to a manager. It explains that as a company grows, roles and responsibilities need to change and be delegated in order for the company to be successful. The article emphasizes the importance of recognizing why different roles are important and being willing to let go of certain roles and responsibilities as the company grows.

Decisive Firing

A reportee was an average performer, so a performance improvement plan was put in place to assess if he could sustain growth. However, the changes leveled off, so it was decided to let him go. The lesson learned was to find a balance between being hopeful and decisive when firing someone, and to have good evidence to support the decision.

An Amicable Firing

A manager gave an engineer feedback, discussed issues in one-on-one's, and gave her specific tasks to work on, but she still didn't meet the expected standard. A formal performance improvement plan was put in place, with goals and measurements, and the manager met with her for 3-4 hours a week to coach her. Despite improvements, sustained improvements were not seen, so the manager increased the urgency of feedback. It was realized the role was not a good fit for her, so the manager communicated that she should be let go and she was understanding.

Holding Out Too Long To Fire

In this situation, the engineer was not performing to the standard expected of them and was given feedback and incentives to try and change their behavior. However, after two years, the engineer's output started to affect other people on their team and team morale, so the manager ended up firing them. This situation taught the manager that two years is far too long to put up with bad performance and that there is a difference between barely meeting expectations and underperformance.

Rising Through The Ranks

The author started as the first engineer at Betterment and was responsible for shipping the next thing. As the engineering team grew, the author had to shift into a lead role and take on more responsibility for the output of the team and the growth of individuals. The author learned that they had to focus on helping their team be better and making sure people were making the best use of their skill set.

Firing Someone When They Are No Longer A Good Fit

In this case, an employee in QA was not a good fit for the company's move to automation. After consulting with HR, the employee was let go in a respectful manner. This situation taught the importance of treating people fairly and with respect, and being willing to take the necessary steps to ensure the best outcome for the company.

Providing Feedback You Disagree With

A manager faced the challenge of presenting a lower review than recommended to a high performing direct report. The manager adjusted their mindset, looked for positives and ideas to address the feedback, and gave the direct report room to process their emotions. This resulted in the direct report crushing their next review and achieving an even higher rating than recommended. This is an example of how a positive outcome can be achieved even when faced with an organizational decision with which one disagrees.

How To Manage Toxic Employees

A team leader at Health Decisions had to manage a team member who was academically gifted but cocky and caused tension in the team. The leader had to address the issues as they arose and explain to the team member what was expected of him. After several attempts to help the team member, the leader had to let him go. The leader learned the importance of being persistent in addressing employee issues and understanding cultural differences.

How I Improved My Company’s Hiring Process

Three years ago, an Engineering Director at Betterment noticed a problem with their hiring process - a low acceptance rate and difficulty making decisions. To address this, they changed their technical vetting process from whiteboarding to peer-programming on a laptop, added an Ask Me Anything session, and changed the structure of the interview process. As a result, their acceptance rate more than doubled, and the hiring team reported feeling more confident in making decisions.

Instilling Agile Processes In An Organization

When the author joined their team, they noticed that the team was not following agile principles. To fix this, they implemented a process where engineers would code for five days, and then demo their work to the product owner and QA team. This created a sense of ownership and accountability, and also helped the team to have a better work-life balance. However, it was challenging to get the engineers to follow the process, and the author had to be persistent in order to get them to do so.

The Importance Of Relationship-Building

The author faced a challenge when they were promoted to engineering manager and had to manage a team of engineers based in Ukraine. They overcame the language barrier and cultural differences by getting to know the team personally, setting up English classes, and using video calls. Through building relationships and trust, the author was able to grow their team and see junior engineers develop into Architects and Engineering Managers.

Developing Leaders Using A Fail Fast Mentality

When looking to hire a manager, it is important to first consider developing leaders from within. To ensure the potential manager enjoys the role, a fail fast approach should be used, such as providing them with a new hire to manage for a small project. This allows the potential manager to decide if they want to stay in the role without much damage. Developing individual contributors into managers is a strength of good leaders.

How Personal Matters Can Affect An Engineer’s Work

A software developer on the team was having performance issues due to personal stressors. The manager learned the importance of the emotional side of managing people and gave the developer a week off to take care of his personal matters. The lesson learned was that a good emotional quotient (EQ) is essential for a manager and that understanding the personal situation of team members is important.

The True Value Of Data

Amazon used crowdsourcing to gain customer feedback, but realized customers were complaining about things already on the product page. To address this, they released a feature that allowed customers to search within the product page, which proved to be valuable. This experience taught the manager the importance of starting with customer needs and wants, and to always look at data to get a deeper understanding.

From Putting Out Fires To Preventing Them

VP of Engineering at Le Tote faced operational issues and was paged in the middle of the night. To reduce the number of issues, metrics were measured and integrated with the system to provide visibility and move from reactive to proactive work. This helped to drive change and showed the importance of reducing friction to embrace change.

Performance Management For Underperformers

When faced with performance issues, managers should start by evaluating team members based on their strengths and assigning them tasks they can excel in. Communication with the underperformer is key, and managers should provide them with feedback, opportunities, and visibility to help them succeed. If the team member still isn't improving, more specific goals and help should be provided. If they are ultimately not a good fit, performance management with HR should be put in place. People will usually be successful if given the right tools, and the bar should not be lowered to meet performance goals.

Structuring New Teams

When creating a new organization or reorganizing an existing team, it is important to meet with stakeholders to understand their pain points and the product portfolio. Additionally, it is important to understand the company's org structure and use this knowledge to structure the team and establish a charter and mission. Transparency and communication are key to success, and it is important to provide frequent updates and solicit feedback. Previous experience and perspective can be used to provide insights into what is best for the business.

Ensuring Teams Deliver Value

In order to address an issue of teams not knowing what they were doing, I identified how we could add value to the business, organized people and processes around that, and used Agile processes, stand-ups, duration planning, retros, and demos to encourage teams to think about their work and how they could get it done. This approach helped to increase morale and enabled teams to do work they were proud of. The lesson learned is that teams need to understand why they are doing the rituals and if they support the company's goals.

Sharing The Company’s Vision With Everyone

Neto faced a challenge in making the company's strategy relevant to individuals, so the CEO used Salesforce's V2MOM (Visions, Values, Methods, Obstacles, and Measures) to create a high-level strategy document. Each department head and team then built their own V2MOM that was relevant to them, but aligned with the CEO's vision. This gave purpose to individuals and teams, and helped them to become high-performing. Using V2MOM has been a productive mechanism for making the company's vision relevant at an individual level and helping teams understand how their work contributes to the business's success.

Gaining Team Insights During Restructuring

After Neto secured its third round of funding, the engineering team underwent a restructure to realign with business outcomes. To gauge how the team felt about the change, a temperature survey and word cloud were created. The results of the survey were higher than expected and the word cloud highlighted that while there was some frustration, people were enjoying new challenges and learning new things. This exercise showed that the problem was not as big as initially thought and that the team changes should be more consultative.

Growing With An Organization

This article discusses the difficulty of transitioning from an individual contributor to a manager. It explains that as a company grows, roles and responsibilities need to change and be delegated in order for the company to be successful. The article emphasizes the importance of recognizing why different roles are important and being willing to let go of certain roles and responsibilities as the company grows.

Decisive Firing

A reportee was an average performer, so a performance improvement plan was put in place to assess if he could sustain growth. However, the changes leveled off, so it was decided to let him go. The lesson learned was to find a balance between being hopeful and decisive when firing someone, and to have good evidence to support the decision.

An Amicable Firing

A manager gave an engineer feedback, discussed issues in one-on-one's, and gave her specific tasks to work on, but she still didn't meet the expected standard. A formal performance improvement plan was put in place, with goals and measurements, and the manager met with her for 3-4 hours a week to coach her. Despite improvements, sustained improvements were not seen, so the manager increased the urgency of feedback. It was realized the role was not a good fit for her, so the manager communicated that she should be let go and she was understanding.

Holding Out Too Long To Fire

In this situation, the engineer was not performing to the standard expected of them and was given feedback and incentives to try and change their behavior. However, after two years, the engineer's output started to affect other people on their team and team morale, so the manager ended up firing them. This situation taught the manager that two years is far too long to put up with bad performance and that there is a difference between barely meeting expectations and underperformance.

Rising Through The Ranks

The author started as the first engineer at Betterment and was responsible for shipping the next thing. As the engineering team grew, the author had to shift into a lead role and take on more responsibility for the output of the team and the growth of individuals. The author learned that they had to focus on helping their team be better and making sure people were making the best use of their skill set.

Firing Someone When They Are No Longer A Good Fit

In this case, an employee in QA was not a good fit for the company's move to automation. After consulting with HR, the employee was let go in a respectful manner. This situation taught the importance of treating people fairly and with respect, and being willing to take the necessary steps to ensure the best outcome for the company.

Providing Feedback You Disagree With

A manager faced the challenge of presenting a lower review than recommended to a high performing direct report. The manager adjusted their mindset, looked for positives and ideas to address the feedback, and gave the direct report room to process their emotions. This resulted in the direct report crushing their next review and achieving an even higher rating than recommended. This is an example of how a positive outcome can be achieved even when faced with an organizational decision with which one disagrees.

How To Manage Toxic Employees

A team leader at Health Decisions had to manage a team member who was academically gifted but cocky and caused tension in the team. The leader had to address the issues as they arose and explain to the team member what was expected of him. After several attempts to help the team member, the leader had to let him go. The leader learned the importance of being persistent in addressing employee issues and understanding cultural differences.

How I Improved My Company’s Hiring Process

Three years ago, an Engineering Director at Betterment noticed a problem with their hiring process - a low acceptance rate and difficulty making decisions. To address this, they changed their technical vetting process from whiteboarding to peer-programming on a laptop, added an Ask Me Anything session, and changed the structure of the interview process. As a result, their acceptance rate more than doubled, and the hiring team reported feeling more confident in making decisions.

Instilling Agile Processes In An Organization

When the author joined their team, they noticed that the team was not following agile principles. To fix this, they implemented a process where engineers would code for five days, and then demo their work to the product owner and QA team. This created a sense of ownership and accountability, and also helped the team to have a better work-life balance. However, it was challenging to get the engineers to follow the process, and the author had to be persistent in order to get them to do so.

The Importance Of Relationship-Building

The author faced a challenge when they were promoted to engineering manager and had to manage a team of engineers based in Ukraine. They overcame the language barrier and cultural differences by getting to know the team personally, setting up English classes, and using video calls. Through building relationships and trust, the author was able to grow their team and see junior engineers develop into Architects and Engineering Managers.

Developing Leaders Using A Fail Fast Mentality

When looking to hire a manager, it is important to first consider developing leaders from within. To ensure the potential manager enjoys the role, a fail fast approach should be used, such as providing them with a new hire to manage for a small project. This allows the potential manager to decide if they want to stay in the role without much damage. Developing individual contributors into managers is a strength of good leaders.

How Personal Matters Can Affect An Engineer’s Work

A software developer on the team was having performance issues due to personal stressors. The manager learned the importance of the emotional side of managing people and gave the developer a week off to take care of his personal matters. The lesson learned was that a good emotional quotient (EQ) is essential for a manager and that understanding the personal situation of team members is important.

The True Value Of Data

Amazon used crowdsourcing to gain customer feedback, but realized customers were complaining about things already on the product page. To address this, they released a feature that allowed customers to search within the product page, which proved to be valuable. This experience taught the manager the importance of starting with customer needs and wants, and to always look at data to get a deeper understanding.

From Putting Out Fires To Preventing Them

VP of Engineering at Le Tote faced operational issues and was paged in the middle of the night. To reduce the number of issues, metrics were measured and integrated with the system to provide visibility and move from reactive to proactive work. This helped to drive change and showed the importance of reducing friction to embrace change.

Performance Management For Underperformers

When faced with performance issues, managers should start by evaluating team members based on their strengths and assigning them tasks they can excel in. Communication with the underperformer is key, and managers should provide them with feedback, opportunities, and visibility to help them succeed. If the team member still isn't improving, more specific goals and help should be provided. If they are ultimately not a good fit, performance management with HR should be put in place. People will usually be successful if given the right tools, and the bar should not be lowered to meet performance goals.

Structuring New Teams

When creating a new organization or reorganizing an existing team, it is important to meet with stakeholders to understand their pain points and the product portfolio. Additionally, it is important to understand the company's org structure and use this knowledge to structure the team and establish a charter and mission. Transparency and communication are key to success, and it is important to provide frequent updates and solicit feedback. Previous experience and perspective can be used to provide insights into what is best for the business.

Ensuring Teams Deliver Value

In order to address an issue of teams not knowing what they were doing, I identified how we could add value to the business, organized people and processes around that, and used Agile processes, stand-ups, duration planning, retros, and demos to encourage teams to think about their work and how they could get it done. This approach helped to increase morale and enabled teams to do work they were proud of. The lesson learned is that teams need to understand why they are doing the rituals and if they support the company's goals.

Sharing The Company’s Vision With Everyone

Neto faced a challenge in making the company's strategy relevant to individuals, so the CEO used Salesforce's V2MOM (Visions, Values, Methods, Obstacles, and Measures) to create a high-level strategy document. Each department head and team then built their own V2MOM that was relevant to them, but aligned with the CEO's vision. This gave purpose to individuals and teams, and helped them to become high-performing. Using V2MOM has been a productive mechanism for making the company's vision relevant at an individual level and helping teams understand how their work contributes to the business's success.

Gaining Team Insights During Restructuring

After Neto secured its third round of funding, the engineering team underwent a restructure to realign with business outcomes. To gauge how the team felt about the change, a temperature survey and word cloud were created. The results of the survey were higher than expected and the word cloud highlighted that while there was some frustration, people were enjoying new challenges and learning new things. This exercise showed that the problem was not as big as initially thought and that the team changes should be more consultative.

Growing With An Organization

This article discusses the difficulty of transitioning from an individual contributor to a manager. It explains that as a company grows, roles and responsibilities need to change and be delegated in order for the company to be successful. The article emphasizes the importance of recognizing why different roles are important and being willing to let go of certain roles and responsibilities as the company grows.

Decisive Firing

A reportee was an average performer, so a performance improvement plan was put in place to assess if he could sustain growth. However, the changes leveled off, so it was decided to let him go. The lesson learned was to find a balance between being hopeful and decisive when firing someone, and to have good evidence to support the decision.

An Amicable Firing

A manager gave an engineer feedback, discussed issues in one-on-one's, and gave her specific tasks to work on, but she still didn't meet the expected standard. A formal performance improvement plan was put in place, with goals and measurements, and the manager met with her for 3-4 hours a week to coach her. Despite improvements, sustained improvements were not seen, so the manager increased the urgency of feedback. It was realized the role was not a good fit for her, so the manager communicated that she should be let go and she was understanding.

Holding Out Too Long To Fire

In this situation, the engineer was not performing to the standard expected of them and was given feedback and incentives to try and change their behavior. However, after two years, the engineer's output started to affect other people on their team and team morale, so the manager ended up firing them. This situation taught the manager that two years is far too long to put up with bad performance and that there is a difference between barely meeting expectations and underperformance.

Rising Through The Ranks

The author started as the first engineer at Betterment and was responsible for shipping the next thing. As the engineering team grew, the author had to shift into a lead role and take on more responsibility for the output of the team and the growth of individuals. The author learned that they had to focus on helping their team be better and making sure people were making the best use of their skill set.

Firing Someone When They Are No Longer A Good Fit

In this case, an employee in QA was not a good fit for the company's move to automation. After consulting with HR, the employee was let go in a respectful manner. This situation taught the importance of treating people fairly and with respect, and being willing to take the necessary steps to ensure the best outcome for the company.

Providing Feedback You Disagree With

A manager faced the challenge of presenting a lower review than recommended to a high performing direct report. The manager adjusted their mindset, looked for positives and ideas to address the feedback, and gave the direct report room to process their emotions. This resulted in the direct report crushing their next review and achieving an even higher rating than recommended. This is an example of how a positive outcome can be achieved even when faced with an organizational decision with which one disagrees.

How To Manage Toxic Employees

A team leader at Health Decisions had to manage a team member who was academically gifted but cocky and caused tension in the team. The leader had to address the issues as they arose and explain to the team member what was expected of him. After several attempts to help the team member, the leader had to let him go. The leader learned the importance of being persistent in addressing employee issues and understanding cultural differences.

How I Improved My Company’s Hiring Process

Three years ago, an Engineering Director at Betterment noticed a problem with their hiring process - a low acceptance rate and difficulty making decisions. To address this, they changed their technical vetting process from whiteboarding to peer-programming on a laptop, added an Ask Me Anything session, and changed the structure of the interview process. As a result, their acceptance rate more than doubled, and the hiring team reported feeling more confident in making decisions.

Instilling Agile Processes In An Organization

When the author joined their team, they noticed that the team was not following agile principles. To fix this, they implemented a process where engineers would code for five days, and then demo their work to the product owner and QA team. This created a sense of ownership and accountability, and also helped the team to have a better work-life balance. However, it was challenging to get the engineers to follow the process, and the author had to be persistent in order to get them to do so.

The Importance Of Relationship-Building

The author faced a challenge when they were promoted to engineering manager and had to manage a team of engineers based in Ukraine. They overcame the language barrier and cultural differences by getting to know the team personally, setting up English classes, and using video calls. Through building relationships and trust, the author was able to grow their team and see junior engineers develop into Architects and Engineering Managers.

Developing Leaders Using A Fail Fast Mentality

When looking to hire a manager, it is important to first consider developing leaders from within. To ensure the potential manager enjoys the role, a fail fast approach should be used, such as providing them with a new hire to manage for a small project. This allows the potential manager to decide if they want to stay in the role without much damage. Developing individual contributors into managers is a strength of good leaders.

How Personal Matters Can Affect An Engineer’s Work

A software developer on the team was having performance issues due to personal stressors. The manager learned the importance of the emotional side of managing people and gave the developer a week off to take care of his personal matters. The lesson learned was that a good emotional quotient (EQ) is essential for a manager and that understanding the personal situation of team members is important.

The True Value Of Data

Amazon used crowdsourcing to gain customer feedback, but realized customers were complaining about things already on the product page. To address this, they released a feature that allowed customers to search within the product page, which proved to be valuable. This experience taught the manager the importance of starting with customer needs and wants, and to always look at data to get a deeper understanding.

From Putting Out Fires To Preventing Them

VP of Engineering at Le Tote faced operational issues and was paged in the middle of the night. To reduce the number of issues, metrics were measured and integrated with the system to provide visibility and move from reactive to proactive work. This helped to drive change and showed the importance of reducing friction to embrace change.

Performance Management For Underperformers

When faced with performance issues, managers should start by evaluating team members based on their strengths and assigning them tasks they can excel in. Communication with the underperformer is key, and managers should provide them with feedback, opportunities, and visibility to help them succeed. If the team member still isn't improving, more specific goals and help should be provided. If they are ultimately not a good fit, performance management with HR should be put in place. People will usually be successful if given the right tools, and the bar should not be lowered to meet performance goals.

Structuring New Teams

When creating a new organization or reorganizing an existing team, it is important to meet with stakeholders to understand their pain points and the product portfolio. Additionally, it is important to understand the company's org structure and use this knowledge to structure the team and establish a charter and mission. Transparency and communication are key to success, and it is important to provide frequent updates and solicit feedback. Previous experience and perspective can be used to provide insights into what is best for the business.

Ensuring Teams Deliver Value

In order to address an issue of teams not knowing what they were doing, I identified how we could add value to the business, organized people and processes around that, and used Agile processes, stand-ups, duration planning, retros, and demos to encourage teams to think about their work and how they could get it done. This approach helped to increase morale and enabled teams to do work they were proud of. The lesson learned is that teams need to understand why they are doing the rituals and if they support the company's goals.

Sharing The Company’s Vision With Everyone

Neto faced a challenge in making the company's strategy relevant to individuals, so the CEO used Salesforce's V2MOM (Visions, Values, Methods, Obstacles, and Measures) to create a high-level strategy document. Each department head and team then built their own V2MOM that was relevant to them, but aligned with the CEO's vision. This gave purpose to individuals and teams, and helped them to become high-performing. Using V2MOM has been a productive mechanism for making the company's vision relevant at an individual level and helping teams understand how their work contributes to the business's success.

Gaining Team Insights During Restructuring

After Neto secured its third round of funding, the engineering team underwent a restructure to realign with business outcomes. To gauge how the team felt about the change, a temperature survey and word cloud were created. The results of the survey were higher than expected and the word cloud highlighted that while there was some frustration, people were enjoying new challenges and learning new things. This exercise showed that the problem was not as big as initially thought and that the team changes should be more consultative.

Growing With An Organization

This article discusses the difficulty of transitioning from an individual contributor to a manager. It explains that as a company grows, roles and responsibilities need to change and be delegated in order for the company to be successful. The article emphasizes the importance of recognizing why different roles are important and being willing to let go of certain roles and responsibilities as the company grows.

Decisive Firing

A reportee was an average performer, so a performance improvement plan was put in place to assess if he could sustain growth. However, the changes leveled off, so it was decided to let him go. The lesson learned was to find a balance between being hopeful and decisive when firing someone, and to have good evidence to support the decision.

An Amicable Firing

A manager gave an engineer feedback, discussed issues in one-on-one's, and gave her specific tasks to work on, but she still didn't meet the expected standard. A formal performance improvement plan was put in place, with goals and measurements, and the manager met with her for 3-4 hours a week to coach her. Despite improvements, sustained improvements were not seen, so the manager increased the urgency of feedback. It was realized the role was not a good fit for her, so the manager communicated that she should be let go and she was understanding.

Holding Out Too Long To Fire

In this situation, the engineer was not performing to the standard expected of them and was given feedback and incentives to try and change their behavior. However, after two years, the engineer's output started to affect other people on their team and team morale, so the manager ended up firing them. This situation taught the manager that two years is far too long to put up with bad performance and that there is a difference between barely meeting expectations and underperformance.

Rising Through The Ranks

The author started as the first engineer at Betterment and was responsible for shipping the next thing. As the engineering team grew, the author had to shift into a lead role and take on more responsibility for the output of the team and the growth of individuals. The author learned that they had to focus on helping their team be better and making sure people were making the best use of their skill set.