Knowledge shared by our community

Define what you can gamble on when hiring.

When hiring a graphic engineer, the author took a gamble on a candidate with a strong personality, which turned out to be a mistake. The author learned that it is important to define must-haves and deal-breakers ahead of time when hiring, and to be careful not to gamble on these attributes. The author also learned that the must-haves and deal-breakers can vary depending on the company culture, situation, and team dynamics.

Being proactive when my manager took all the credit for the work of me and my team

In order to handle a difficult manager, the author took proactive steps to increase their visibility and influence. They had a talk with their manager's manager, created opportunities for themselves and their team, and eventually got promoted. The lesson learned was to be proactive in finding solutions, pull people up as you rise, and don't burn bridges.

Implementing a culture of communication

When taking over a large engineering team with sub-teams, the manager noticed a lack of consistency in team management and communication. To address this, the manager introduced regular one-on-one meetings, provided resources for further learning, and mentored the existing leadership to help them gain the tools to tackle the team's problems. This resulted in improved communication and collaboration within the team in a short timeframe.

Rethinking your whole project structure to work with contractors

Motorola faced a dilemma of hiring two people in San Francisco or six contractors in India for the same cost. To get the best of both worlds, they restructured the project to have one person in San Francisco working on an API layer and an offshore team of contractors working on the UI components. This allowed them to have people in-house working on the core value of the product and leverage a skilled workforce on the UI part. The key to successful outsourced projects is to have a well-defined start and end, no ramp up time, and no IP related tasks.

Driving your team to a higher shipping velocity

When the author first started working at Dropbox, the company was going through a change of mission and the values were getting in the way of rapidly updating and modernizing products. To encourage the team to free their minds and just ship, the author started talking about impact on customers and rewarding teams that shipped, learnt their customers, and did the most herculean work. Through this process, the author learned that culture is stronger than process, and creating a fun and happy team creates a more productive team.

Building a team while your company is in hyper-growth.

When Blablacar needed to rapidly grow, the company's founders put pressure on the engineering team to double in size every year while maintaining quality. To do this, the team adapted the company's structure, divided the engineering team into three, and used Scrum to improve efficiencies. Hiring so quickly in a hyper growth company is difficult, and the company's ways of doing things will change every six months. The speaker's advice is to be enthusiastic, authentic, and open to change.

Taking care of your direct reports’ career growth.

This story is about a manager who had an engineer in their team who had been at the same level for a long time. The manager took action to help the engineer realize they needed to focus on their career growth and gave them a project to prove themselves. Through this experience, the manager learned the importance of being proactive and providing clear expectations to ensure the engineer can focus on their challenge.

A great engineer as a bad manager

A VP at Blackhawk Network promised an engineer a promotion to manager, but she was not given any mentorship or guidance in the role. After three months of coaching, it was determined that she was not suited for the management role and she was moved back to a team lead. She was later promoted to Principal Engineer and the company learned the importance of having multiple career paths and being transparent with employees about budget constraints.

What to take into account when choosing between technical debt and new features

Technical debt can be difficult to manage, and it can be hard to decide when to prioritize it. A team faced with the challenge of managing technical debt while also building new features found that they were unable to do either. This caused stability and scalability issues, and the team had to focus on firefighting instead of being proactive. The lesson learned is that technical debt should be prioritized, and it is important to consider the specific situation when making decisions.

How to scale a company?

Stripe's rapid growth led to an organizational structure that was no longer suitable, resulting in unclear ownership of projects, delayed work, and a lack of clear boundaries for each employee's tasks. To adapt to this growth, changes were implemented, but they started to irritate people. To remedy this, the focus was shifted to talking to people and gathering feedback, while preparing future managers for their positions. It is important to keep in mind that the organizational structure of a startup has to change as the company grows, and that the most important thing is to implement the process smoothly and to involve people in the changes.

Transitioning to dedicated agile coaches (scrum masters)

When the engineering team at a previous company grew to 35+ engineers, they encountered issues with agile coaching. To solve this, they decided to hire a freelance scrum master for a trial period, and then hired a full-time agile coach. This proved to be successful, and the team of agile coaches grew to five people. Benefits of having an in-house team of agile coaches include having experts who can own the process, having someone with team performance and improving methodology as their main metric and objective, and having no hierarchical relationship between scrum masters and EMs.

How to implement new work processes in a tech team?

When transitioning to a managerial role, the author found it necessary to introduce new processes and tools to optimize workloads and communication within the team. To ensure successful implementation of status reports, the author looked for well-designed tools, communicated the need for the process, and made sure the team felt they were part of the decision-making process. This ultimately resulted in a successful implementation of the status reports.

I helped a direct report get out of “Hero” mode

A "Hero" employee was struggling to get out of their default mode of solving any problem that arose. The manager took action by offering the employee opportunities to grow and fill the space left by them moving to a new team with new hires and training. The lesson learned was that most "Heroes" end up in these situations due to bad onboarding and insufficient training, and it is the manager's role to guide them out of it.

Handling someone who ignores company policies

When employees ignore company policies, the most effective way to handle the situation is to point it out directly. Coaching employees is not helpful and could be counterproductive. Before deciding on how to handle a problem with an employee, determine if it is a mindset or skill set problem.

How to detect a potential problem within your team

During a one-on-one, a direct report expressed concern that some people were not aware of the time requirements associated with a process. After further investigation, it was found that the problem was due to one person not being prompt in responding to others. To solve the problem, clearer, quantitative language was used to match everyone's expectations. This experience taught the importance of being alert during one-on-ones, digging deeper if there is a sense of frustration, and watching out for patterns in stories across time.

How to encourage people to make the most of retrospectives

A senior engineer on a team was initially skeptical of the value of sprint retrospectives, but eventually came to understand their importance. It is important to listen to team members, create a safe space for them to share, and be flexible and adjust when necessary. There are lots of activities available to help identify areas of improvement in retrospectives.

The Push to Production Process Not Respected

When errors were occurring during the push to production process, a checklist was created to help the developers. However, people started to bypass the checklist, so an "production push algorithm" was created instead. This algorithm was more explicit and efficient, and now it is used for tasks beyond just development.

How to handle tension caused by cultural differences

A team split between Buenos Aires and Dallas had a negative impression of an engineer in Dallas due to his lack of knowledge of industry standards and his direct, even mean, attitude towards the Argentinian engineers. After discussing cultural differences, the engineer changed his behavior and the team was able to work together. It is important to set expectations for different cultures to interact and to discuss cultural differences in order to prevent misunderstandings.

What to do with an employee who wants to step-up

A good engineer was interested in becoming a senior engineer, so the manager discussed the criteria for promotion with him line-by-line. They had several follow-up conversations and the manager made it clear that the promotion was up to the employee's work. This showed the importance of setting clear expectations when promoting an employee.

How I improved at giving negative feedback

This article discusses the importance of giving negative feedback, even to people you care about. It suggests starting with your top performers and emphasizes that feedback is a gift. It also highlights the importance of giving feedback early on, rather than waiting until someone is on a performance plan and in line to be dismissed.

Define what you can gamble on when hiring.

When hiring a graphic engineer, the author took a gamble on a candidate with a strong personality, which turned out to be a mistake. The author learned that it is important to define must-haves and deal-breakers ahead of time when hiring, and to be careful not to gamble on these attributes. The author also learned that the must-haves and deal-breakers can vary depending on the company culture, situation, and team dynamics.

Being proactive when my manager took all the credit for the work of me and my team

In order to handle a difficult manager, the author took proactive steps to increase their visibility and influence. They had a talk with their manager's manager, created opportunities for themselves and their team, and eventually got promoted. The lesson learned was to be proactive in finding solutions, pull people up as you rise, and don't burn bridges.

Implementing a culture of communication

When taking over a large engineering team with sub-teams, the manager noticed a lack of consistency in team management and communication. To address this, the manager introduced regular one-on-one meetings, provided resources for further learning, and mentored the existing leadership to help them gain the tools to tackle the team's problems. This resulted in improved communication and collaboration within the team in a short timeframe.

Rethinking your whole project structure to work with contractors

Motorola faced a dilemma of hiring two people in San Francisco or six contractors in India for the same cost. To get the best of both worlds, they restructured the project to have one person in San Francisco working on an API layer and an offshore team of contractors working on the UI components. This allowed them to have people in-house working on the core value of the product and leverage a skilled workforce on the UI part. The key to successful outsourced projects is to have a well-defined start and end, no ramp up time, and no IP related tasks.

Driving your team to a higher shipping velocity

When the author first started working at Dropbox, the company was going through a change of mission and the values were getting in the way of rapidly updating and modernizing products. To encourage the team to free their minds and just ship, the author started talking about impact on customers and rewarding teams that shipped, learnt their customers, and did the most herculean work. Through this process, the author learned that culture is stronger than process, and creating a fun and happy team creates a more productive team.

Building a team while your company is in hyper-growth.

When Blablacar needed to rapidly grow, the company's founders put pressure on the engineering team to double in size every year while maintaining quality. To do this, the team adapted the company's structure, divided the engineering team into three, and used Scrum to improve efficiencies. Hiring so quickly in a hyper growth company is difficult, and the company's ways of doing things will change every six months. The speaker's advice is to be enthusiastic, authentic, and open to change.

Taking care of your direct reports’ career growth.

This story is about a manager who had an engineer in their team who had been at the same level for a long time. The manager took action to help the engineer realize they needed to focus on their career growth and gave them a project to prove themselves. Through this experience, the manager learned the importance of being proactive and providing clear expectations to ensure the engineer can focus on their challenge.

A great engineer as a bad manager

A VP at Blackhawk Network promised an engineer a promotion to manager, but she was not given any mentorship or guidance in the role. After three months of coaching, it was determined that she was not suited for the management role and she was moved back to a team lead. She was later promoted to Principal Engineer and the company learned the importance of having multiple career paths and being transparent with employees about budget constraints.

What to take into account when choosing between technical debt and new features

Technical debt can be difficult to manage, and it can be hard to decide when to prioritize it. A team faced with the challenge of managing technical debt while also building new features found that they were unable to do either. This caused stability and scalability issues, and the team had to focus on firefighting instead of being proactive. The lesson learned is that technical debt should be prioritized, and it is important to consider the specific situation when making decisions.

How to scale a company?

Stripe's rapid growth led to an organizational structure that was no longer suitable, resulting in unclear ownership of projects, delayed work, and a lack of clear boundaries for each employee's tasks. To adapt to this growth, changes were implemented, but they started to irritate people. To remedy this, the focus was shifted to talking to people and gathering feedback, while preparing future managers for their positions. It is important to keep in mind that the organizational structure of a startup has to change as the company grows, and that the most important thing is to implement the process smoothly and to involve people in the changes.

Transitioning to dedicated agile coaches (scrum masters)

When the engineering team at a previous company grew to 35+ engineers, they encountered issues with agile coaching. To solve this, they decided to hire a freelance scrum master for a trial period, and then hired a full-time agile coach. This proved to be successful, and the team of agile coaches grew to five people. Benefits of having an in-house team of agile coaches include having experts who can own the process, having someone with team performance and improving methodology as their main metric and objective, and having no hierarchical relationship between scrum masters and EMs.

How to implement new work processes in a tech team?

When transitioning to a managerial role, the author found it necessary to introduce new processes and tools to optimize workloads and communication within the team. To ensure successful implementation of status reports, the author looked for well-designed tools, communicated the need for the process, and made sure the team felt they were part of the decision-making process. This ultimately resulted in a successful implementation of the status reports.

I helped a direct report get out of “Hero” mode

A "Hero" employee was struggling to get out of their default mode of solving any problem that arose. The manager took action by offering the employee opportunities to grow and fill the space left by them moving to a new team with new hires and training. The lesson learned was that most "Heroes" end up in these situations due to bad onboarding and insufficient training, and it is the manager's role to guide them out of it.

Handling someone who ignores company policies

When employees ignore company policies, the most effective way to handle the situation is to point it out directly. Coaching employees is not helpful and could be counterproductive. Before deciding on how to handle a problem with an employee, determine if it is a mindset or skill set problem.

How to detect a potential problem within your team

During a one-on-one, a direct report expressed concern that some people were not aware of the time requirements associated with a process. After further investigation, it was found that the problem was due to one person not being prompt in responding to others. To solve the problem, clearer, quantitative language was used to match everyone's expectations. This experience taught the importance of being alert during one-on-ones, digging deeper if there is a sense of frustration, and watching out for patterns in stories across time.

How to encourage people to make the most of retrospectives

A senior engineer on a team was initially skeptical of the value of sprint retrospectives, but eventually came to understand their importance. It is important to listen to team members, create a safe space for them to share, and be flexible and adjust when necessary. There are lots of activities available to help identify areas of improvement in retrospectives.

The Push to Production Process Not Respected

When errors were occurring during the push to production process, a checklist was created to help the developers. However, people started to bypass the checklist, so an "production push algorithm" was created instead. This algorithm was more explicit and efficient, and now it is used for tasks beyond just development.

How to handle tension caused by cultural differences

A team split between Buenos Aires and Dallas had a negative impression of an engineer in Dallas due to his lack of knowledge of industry standards and his direct, even mean, attitude towards the Argentinian engineers. After discussing cultural differences, the engineer changed his behavior and the team was able to work together. It is important to set expectations for different cultures to interact and to discuss cultural differences in order to prevent misunderstandings.

What to do with an employee who wants to step-up

A good engineer was interested in becoming a senior engineer, so the manager discussed the criteria for promotion with him line-by-line. They had several follow-up conversations and the manager made it clear that the promotion was up to the employee's work. This showed the importance of setting clear expectations when promoting an employee.

How I improved at giving negative feedback

This article discusses the importance of giving negative feedback, even to people you care about. It suggests starting with your top performers and emphasizes that feedback is a gift. It also highlights the importance of giving feedback early on, rather than waiting until someone is on a performance plan and in line to be dismissed.

Define what you can gamble on when hiring.

When hiring a graphic engineer, the author took a gamble on a candidate with a strong personality, which turned out to be a mistake. The author learned that it is important to define must-haves and deal-breakers ahead of time when hiring, and to be careful not to gamble on these attributes. The author also learned that the must-haves and deal-breakers can vary depending on the company culture, situation, and team dynamics.

Being proactive when my manager took all the credit for the work of me and my team

In order to handle a difficult manager, the author took proactive steps to increase their visibility and influence. They had a talk with their manager's manager, created opportunities for themselves and their team, and eventually got promoted. The lesson learned was to be proactive in finding solutions, pull people up as you rise, and don't burn bridges.

Implementing a culture of communication

When taking over a large engineering team with sub-teams, the manager noticed a lack of consistency in team management and communication. To address this, the manager introduced regular one-on-one meetings, provided resources for further learning, and mentored the existing leadership to help them gain the tools to tackle the team's problems. This resulted in improved communication and collaboration within the team in a short timeframe.

Rethinking your whole project structure to work with contractors

Motorola faced a dilemma of hiring two people in San Francisco or six contractors in India for the same cost. To get the best of both worlds, they restructured the project to have one person in San Francisco working on an API layer and an offshore team of contractors working on the UI components. This allowed them to have people in-house working on the core value of the product and leverage a skilled workforce on the UI part. The key to successful outsourced projects is to have a well-defined start and end, no ramp up time, and no IP related tasks.

Driving your team to a higher shipping velocity

When the author first started working at Dropbox, the company was going through a change of mission and the values were getting in the way of rapidly updating and modernizing products. To encourage the team to free their minds and just ship, the author started talking about impact on customers and rewarding teams that shipped, learnt their customers, and did the most herculean work. Through this process, the author learned that culture is stronger than process, and creating a fun and happy team creates a more productive team.

Building a team while your company is in hyper-growth.

When Blablacar needed to rapidly grow, the company's founders put pressure on the engineering team to double in size every year while maintaining quality. To do this, the team adapted the company's structure, divided the engineering team into three, and used Scrum to improve efficiencies. Hiring so quickly in a hyper growth company is difficult, and the company's ways of doing things will change every six months. The speaker's advice is to be enthusiastic, authentic, and open to change.

Taking care of your direct reports’ career growth.

This story is about a manager who had an engineer in their team who had been at the same level for a long time. The manager took action to help the engineer realize they needed to focus on their career growth and gave them a project to prove themselves. Through this experience, the manager learned the importance of being proactive and providing clear expectations to ensure the engineer can focus on their challenge.

A great engineer as a bad manager

A VP at Blackhawk Network promised an engineer a promotion to manager, but she was not given any mentorship or guidance in the role. After three months of coaching, it was determined that she was not suited for the management role and she was moved back to a team lead. She was later promoted to Principal Engineer and the company learned the importance of having multiple career paths and being transparent with employees about budget constraints.

What to take into account when choosing between technical debt and new features

Technical debt can be difficult to manage, and it can be hard to decide when to prioritize it. A team faced with the challenge of managing technical debt while also building new features found that they were unable to do either. This caused stability and scalability issues, and the team had to focus on firefighting instead of being proactive. The lesson learned is that technical debt should be prioritized, and it is important to consider the specific situation when making decisions.

How to scale a company?

Stripe's rapid growth led to an organizational structure that was no longer suitable, resulting in unclear ownership of projects, delayed work, and a lack of clear boundaries for each employee's tasks. To adapt to this growth, changes were implemented, but they started to irritate people. To remedy this, the focus was shifted to talking to people and gathering feedback, while preparing future managers for their positions. It is important to keep in mind that the organizational structure of a startup has to change as the company grows, and that the most important thing is to implement the process smoothly and to involve people in the changes.

Transitioning to dedicated agile coaches (scrum masters)

When the engineering team at a previous company grew to 35+ engineers, they encountered issues with agile coaching. To solve this, they decided to hire a freelance scrum master for a trial period, and then hired a full-time agile coach. This proved to be successful, and the team of agile coaches grew to five people. Benefits of having an in-house team of agile coaches include having experts who can own the process, having someone with team performance and improving methodology as their main metric and objective, and having no hierarchical relationship between scrum masters and EMs.

How to implement new work processes in a tech team?

When transitioning to a managerial role, the author found it necessary to introduce new processes and tools to optimize workloads and communication within the team. To ensure successful implementation of status reports, the author looked for well-designed tools, communicated the need for the process, and made sure the team felt they were part of the decision-making process. This ultimately resulted in a successful implementation of the status reports.

I helped a direct report get out of “Hero” mode

A "Hero" employee was struggling to get out of their default mode of solving any problem that arose. The manager took action by offering the employee opportunities to grow and fill the space left by them moving to a new team with new hires and training. The lesson learned was that most "Heroes" end up in these situations due to bad onboarding and insufficient training, and it is the manager's role to guide them out of it.

Handling someone who ignores company policies

When employees ignore company policies, the most effective way to handle the situation is to point it out directly. Coaching employees is not helpful and could be counterproductive. Before deciding on how to handle a problem with an employee, determine if it is a mindset or skill set problem.

How to detect a potential problem within your team

During a one-on-one, a direct report expressed concern that some people were not aware of the time requirements associated with a process. After further investigation, it was found that the problem was due to one person not being prompt in responding to others. To solve the problem, clearer, quantitative language was used to match everyone's expectations. This experience taught the importance of being alert during one-on-ones, digging deeper if there is a sense of frustration, and watching out for patterns in stories across time.

How to encourage people to make the most of retrospectives

A senior engineer on a team was initially skeptical of the value of sprint retrospectives, but eventually came to understand their importance. It is important to listen to team members, create a safe space for them to share, and be flexible and adjust when necessary. There are lots of activities available to help identify areas of improvement in retrospectives.

The Push to Production Process Not Respected

When errors were occurring during the push to production process, a checklist was created to help the developers. However, people started to bypass the checklist, so an "production push algorithm" was created instead. This algorithm was more explicit and efficient, and now it is used for tasks beyond just development.

How to handle tension caused by cultural differences

A team split between Buenos Aires and Dallas had a negative impression of an engineer in Dallas due to his lack of knowledge of industry standards and his direct, even mean, attitude towards the Argentinian engineers. After discussing cultural differences, the engineer changed his behavior and the team was able to work together. It is important to set expectations for different cultures to interact and to discuss cultural differences in order to prevent misunderstandings.

What to do with an employee who wants to step-up

A good engineer was interested in becoming a senior engineer, so the manager discussed the criteria for promotion with him line-by-line. They had several follow-up conversations and the manager made it clear that the promotion was up to the employee's work. This showed the importance of setting clear expectations when promoting an employee.

How I improved at giving negative feedback

This article discusses the importance of giving negative feedback, even to people you care about. It suggests starting with your top performers and emphasizes that feedback is a gift. It also highlights the importance of giving feedback early on, rather than waiting until someone is on a performance plan and in line to be dismissed.

Define what you can gamble on when hiring.

When hiring a graphic engineer, the author took a gamble on a candidate with a strong personality, which turned out to be a mistake. The author learned that it is important to define must-haves and deal-breakers ahead of time when hiring, and to be careful not to gamble on these attributes. The author also learned that the must-haves and deal-breakers can vary depending on the company culture, situation, and team dynamics.

Being proactive when my manager took all the credit for the work of me and my team

In order to handle a difficult manager, the author took proactive steps to increase their visibility and influence. They had a talk with their manager's manager, created opportunities for themselves and their team, and eventually got promoted. The lesson learned was to be proactive in finding solutions, pull people up as you rise, and don't burn bridges.

Implementing a culture of communication

When taking over a large engineering team with sub-teams, the manager noticed a lack of consistency in team management and communication. To address this, the manager introduced regular one-on-one meetings, provided resources for further learning, and mentored the existing leadership to help them gain the tools to tackle the team's problems. This resulted in improved communication and collaboration within the team in a short timeframe.

Rethinking your whole project structure to work with contractors

Motorola faced a dilemma of hiring two people in San Francisco or six contractors in India for the same cost. To get the best of both worlds, they restructured the project to have one person in San Francisco working on an API layer and an offshore team of contractors working on the UI components. This allowed them to have people in-house working on the core value of the product and leverage a skilled workforce on the UI part. The key to successful outsourced projects is to have a well-defined start and end, no ramp up time, and no IP related tasks.

Driving your team to a higher shipping velocity

When the author first started working at Dropbox, the company was going through a change of mission and the values were getting in the way of rapidly updating and modernizing products. To encourage the team to free their minds and just ship, the author started talking about impact on customers and rewarding teams that shipped, learnt their customers, and did the most herculean work. Through this process, the author learned that culture is stronger than process, and creating a fun and happy team creates a more productive team.

Building a team while your company is in hyper-growth.

When Blablacar needed to rapidly grow, the company's founders put pressure on the engineering team to double in size every year while maintaining quality. To do this, the team adapted the company's structure, divided the engineering team into three, and used Scrum to improve efficiencies. Hiring so quickly in a hyper growth company is difficult, and the company's ways of doing things will change every six months. The speaker's advice is to be enthusiastic, authentic, and open to change.

Taking care of your direct reports’ career growth.

This story is about a manager who had an engineer in their team who had been at the same level for a long time. The manager took action to help the engineer realize they needed to focus on their career growth and gave them a project to prove themselves. Through this experience, the manager learned the importance of being proactive and providing clear expectations to ensure the engineer can focus on their challenge.

A great engineer as a bad manager

A VP at Blackhawk Network promised an engineer a promotion to manager, but she was not given any mentorship or guidance in the role. After three months of coaching, it was determined that she was not suited for the management role and she was moved back to a team lead. She was later promoted to Principal Engineer and the company learned the importance of having multiple career paths and being transparent with employees about budget constraints.

What to take into account when choosing between technical debt and new features

Technical debt can be difficult to manage, and it can be hard to decide when to prioritize it. A team faced with the challenge of managing technical debt while also building new features found that they were unable to do either. This caused stability and scalability issues, and the team had to focus on firefighting instead of being proactive. The lesson learned is that technical debt should be prioritized, and it is important to consider the specific situation when making decisions.

How to scale a company?

Stripe's rapid growth led to an organizational structure that was no longer suitable, resulting in unclear ownership of projects, delayed work, and a lack of clear boundaries for each employee's tasks. To adapt to this growth, changes were implemented, but they started to irritate people. To remedy this, the focus was shifted to talking to people and gathering feedback, while preparing future managers for their positions. It is important to keep in mind that the organizational structure of a startup has to change as the company grows, and that the most important thing is to implement the process smoothly and to involve people in the changes.

Transitioning to dedicated agile coaches (scrum masters)

When the engineering team at a previous company grew to 35+ engineers, they encountered issues with agile coaching. To solve this, they decided to hire a freelance scrum master for a trial period, and then hired a full-time agile coach. This proved to be successful, and the team of agile coaches grew to five people. Benefits of having an in-house team of agile coaches include having experts who can own the process, having someone with team performance and improving methodology as their main metric and objective, and having no hierarchical relationship between scrum masters and EMs.

How to implement new work processes in a tech team?

When transitioning to a managerial role, the author found it necessary to introduce new processes and tools to optimize workloads and communication within the team. To ensure successful implementation of status reports, the author looked for well-designed tools, communicated the need for the process, and made sure the team felt they were part of the decision-making process. This ultimately resulted in a successful implementation of the status reports.

I helped a direct report get out of “Hero” mode

A "Hero" employee was struggling to get out of their default mode of solving any problem that arose. The manager took action by offering the employee opportunities to grow and fill the space left by them moving to a new team with new hires and training. The lesson learned was that most "Heroes" end up in these situations due to bad onboarding and insufficient training, and it is the manager's role to guide them out of it.

Handling someone who ignores company policies

When employees ignore company policies, the most effective way to handle the situation is to point it out directly. Coaching employees is not helpful and could be counterproductive. Before deciding on how to handle a problem with an employee, determine if it is a mindset or skill set problem.

How to detect a potential problem within your team

During a one-on-one, a direct report expressed concern that some people were not aware of the time requirements associated with a process. After further investigation, it was found that the problem was due to one person not being prompt in responding to others. To solve the problem, clearer, quantitative language was used to match everyone's expectations. This experience taught the importance of being alert during one-on-ones, digging deeper if there is a sense of frustration, and watching out for patterns in stories across time.

How to encourage people to make the most of retrospectives

A senior engineer on a team was initially skeptical of the value of sprint retrospectives, but eventually came to understand their importance. It is important to listen to team members, create a safe space for them to share, and be flexible and adjust when necessary. There are lots of activities available to help identify areas of improvement in retrospectives.

The Push to Production Process Not Respected

When errors were occurring during the push to production process, a checklist was created to help the developers. However, people started to bypass the checklist, so an "production push algorithm" was created instead. This algorithm was more explicit and efficient, and now it is used for tasks beyond just development.

How to handle tension caused by cultural differences

A team split between Buenos Aires and Dallas had a negative impression of an engineer in Dallas due to his lack of knowledge of industry standards and his direct, even mean, attitude towards the Argentinian engineers. After discussing cultural differences, the engineer changed his behavior and the team was able to work together. It is important to set expectations for different cultures to interact and to discuss cultural differences in order to prevent misunderstandings.

What to do with an employee who wants to step-up

A good engineer was interested in becoming a senior engineer, so the manager discussed the criteria for promotion with him line-by-line. They had several follow-up conversations and the manager made it clear that the promotion was up to the employee's work. This showed the importance of setting clear expectations when promoting an employee.

How I improved at giving negative feedback

This article discusses the importance of giving negative feedback, even to people you care about. It suggests starting with your top performers and emphasizes that feedback is a gift. It also highlights the importance of giving feedback early on, rather than waiting until someone is on a performance plan and in line to be dismissed.

Define what you can gamble on when hiring.

When hiring a graphic engineer, the author took a gamble on a candidate with a strong personality, which turned out to be a mistake. The author learned that it is important to define must-haves and deal-breakers ahead of time when hiring, and to be careful not to gamble on these attributes. The author also learned that the must-haves and deal-breakers can vary depending on the company culture, situation, and team dynamics.

Being proactive when my manager took all the credit for the work of me and my team

In order to handle a difficult manager, the author took proactive steps to increase their visibility and influence. They had a talk with their manager's manager, created opportunities for themselves and their team, and eventually got promoted. The lesson learned was to be proactive in finding solutions, pull people up as you rise, and don't burn bridges.

Implementing a culture of communication

When taking over a large engineering team with sub-teams, the manager noticed a lack of consistency in team management and communication. To address this, the manager introduced regular one-on-one meetings, provided resources for further learning, and mentored the existing leadership to help them gain the tools to tackle the team's problems. This resulted in improved communication and collaboration within the team in a short timeframe.

Rethinking your whole project structure to work with contractors

Motorola faced a dilemma of hiring two people in San Francisco or six contractors in India for the same cost. To get the best of both worlds, they restructured the project to have one person in San Francisco working on an API layer and an offshore team of contractors working on the UI components. This allowed them to have people in-house working on the core value of the product and leverage a skilled workforce on the UI part. The key to successful outsourced projects is to have a well-defined start and end, no ramp up time, and no IP related tasks.

Driving your team to a higher shipping velocity

When the author first started working at Dropbox, the company was going through a change of mission and the values were getting in the way of rapidly updating and modernizing products. To encourage the team to free their minds and just ship, the author started talking about impact on customers and rewarding teams that shipped, learnt their customers, and did the most herculean work. Through this process, the author learned that culture is stronger than process, and creating a fun and happy team creates a more productive team.

Building a team while your company is in hyper-growth.

When Blablacar needed to rapidly grow, the company's founders put pressure on the engineering team to double in size every year while maintaining quality. To do this, the team adapted the company's structure, divided the engineering team into three, and used Scrum to improve efficiencies. Hiring so quickly in a hyper growth company is difficult, and the company's ways of doing things will change every six months. The speaker's advice is to be enthusiastic, authentic, and open to change.

Taking care of your direct reports’ career growth.

This story is about a manager who had an engineer in their team who had been at the same level for a long time. The manager took action to help the engineer realize they needed to focus on their career growth and gave them a project to prove themselves. Through this experience, the manager learned the importance of being proactive and providing clear expectations to ensure the engineer can focus on their challenge.

A great engineer as a bad manager

A VP at Blackhawk Network promised an engineer a promotion to manager, but she was not given any mentorship or guidance in the role. After three months of coaching, it was determined that she was not suited for the management role and she was moved back to a team lead. She was later promoted to Principal Engineer and the company learned the importance of having multiple career paths and being transparent with employees about budget constraints.

What to take into account when choosing between technical debt and new features

Technical debt can be difficult to manage, and it can be hard to decide when to prioritize it. A team faced with the challenge of managing technical debt while also building new features found that they were unable to do either. This caused stability and scalability issues, and the team had to focus on firefighting instead of being proactive. The lesson learned is that technical debt should be prioritized, and it is important to consider the specific situation when making decisions.

How to scale a company?

Stripe's rapid growth led to an organizational structure that was no longer suitable, resulting in unclear ownership of projects, delayed work, and a lack of clear boundaries for each employee's tasks. To adapt to this growth, changes were implemented, but they started to irritate people. To remedy this, the focus was shifted to talking to people and gathering feedback, while preparing future managers for their positions. It is important to keep in mind that the organizational structure of a startup has to change as the company grows, and that the most important thing is to implement the process smoothly and to involve people in the changes.

Transitioning to dedicated agile coaches (scrum masters)

When the engineering team at a previous company grew to 35+ engineers, they encountered issues with agile coaching. To solve this, they decided to hire a freelance scrum master for a trial period, and then hired a full-time agile coach. This proved to be successful, and the team of agile coaches grew to five people. Benefits of having an in-house team of agile coaches include having experts who can own the process, having someone with team performance and improving methodology as their main metric and objective, and having no hierarchical relationship between scrum masters and EMs.

How to implement new work processes in a tech team?

When transitioning to a managerial role, the author found it necessary to introduce new processes and tools to optimize workloads and communication within the team. To ensure successful implementation of status reports, the author looked for well-designed tools, communicated the need for the process, and made sure the team felt they were part of the decision-making process. This ultimately resulted in a successful implementation of the status reports.

I helped a direct report get out of “Hero” mode

A "Hero" employee was struggling to get out of their default mode of solving any problem that arose. The manager took action by offering the employee opportunities to grow and fill the space left by them moving to a new team with new hires and training. The lesson learned was that most "Heroes" end up in these situations due to bad onboarding and insufficient training, and it is the manager's role to guide them out of it.

Handling someone who ignores company policies

When employees ignore company policies, the most effective way to handle the situation is to point it out directly. Coaching employees is not helpful and could be counterproductive. Before deciding on how to handle a problem with an employee, determine if it is a mindset or skill set problem.

How to detect a potential problem within your team

During a one-on-one, a direct report expressed concern that some people were not aware of the time requirements associated with a process. After further investigation, it was found that the problem was due to one person not being prompt in responding to others. To solve the problem, clearer, quantitative language was used to match everyone's expectations. This experience taught the importance of being alert during one-on-ones, digging deeper if there is a sense of frustration, and watching out for patterns in stories across time.

How to encourage people to make the most of retrospectives

A senior engineer on a team was initially skeptical of the value of sprint retrospectives, but eventually came to understand their importance. It is important to listen to team members, create a safe space for them to share, and be flexible and adjust when necessary. There are lots of activities available to help identify areas of improvement in retrospectives.

The Push to Production Process Not Respected

When errors were occurring during the push to production process, a checklist was created to help the developers. However, people started to bypass the checklist, so an "production push algorithm" was created instead. This algorithm was more explicit and efficient, and now it is used for tasks beyond just development.

How to handle tension caused by cultural differences

A team split between Buenos Aires and Dallas had a negative impression of an engineer in Dallas due to his lack of knowledge of industry standards and his direct, even mean, attitude towards the Argentinian engineers. After discussing cultural differences, the engineer changed his behavior and the team was able to work together. It is important to set expectations for different cultures to interact and to discuss cultural differences in order to prevent misunderstandings.

What to do with an employee who wants to step-up

A good engineer was interested in becoming a senior engineer, so the manager discussed the criteria for promotion with him line-by-line. They had several follow-up conversations and the manager made it clear that the promotion was up to the employee's work. This showed the importance of setting clear expectations when promoting an employee.

How I improved at giving negative feedback

This article discusses the importance of giving negative feedback, even to people you care about. It suggests starting with your top performers and emphasizes that feedback is a gift. It also highlights the importance of giving feedback early on, rather than waiting until someone is on a performance plan and in line to be dismissed.

Define what you can gamble on when hiring.

When hiring a graphic engineer, the author took a gamble on a candidate with a strong personality, which turned out to be a mistake. The author learned that it is important to define must-haves and deal-breakers ahead of time when hiring, and to be careful not to gamble on these attributes. The author also learned that the must-haves and deal-breakers can vary depending on the company culture, situation, and team dynamics.

Being proactive when my manager took all the credit for the work of me and my team

In order to handle a difficult manager, the author took proactive steps to increase their visibility and influence. They had a talk with their manager's manager, created opportunities for themselves and their team, and eventually got promoted. The lesson learned was to be proactive in finding solutions, pull people up as you rise, and don't burn bridges.

Implementing a culture of communication

When taking over a large engineering team with sub-teams, the manager noticed a lack of consistency in team management and communication. To address this, the manager introduced regular one-on-one meetings, provided resources for further learning, and mentored the existing leadership to help them gain the tools to tackle the team's problems. This resulted in improved communication and collaboration within the team in a short timeframe.

Rethinking your whole project structure to work with contractors

Motorola faced a dilemma of hiring two people in San Francisco or six contractors in India for the same cost. To get the best of both worlds, they restructured the project to have one person in San Francisco working on an API layer and an offshore team of contractors working on the UI components. This allowed them to have people in-house working on the core value of the product and leverage a skilled workforce on the UI part. The key to successful outsourced projects is to have a well-defined start and end, no ramp up time, and no IP related tasks.

Driving your team to a higher shipping velocity

When the author first started working at Dropbox, the company was going through a change of mission and the values were getting in the way of rapidly updating and modernizing products. To encourage the team to free their minds and just ship, the author started talking about impact on customers and rewarding teams that shipped, learnt their customers, and did the most herculean work. Through this process, the author learned that culture is stronger than process, and creating a fun and happy team creates a more productive team.

Building a team while your company is in hyper-growth.

When Blablacar needed to rapidly grow, the company's founders put pressure on the engineering team to double in size every year while maintaining quality. To do this, the team adapted the company's structure, divided the engineering team into three, and used Scrum to improve efficiencies. Hiring so quickly in a hyper growth company is difficult, and the company's ways of doing things will change every six months. The speaker's advice is to be enthusiastic, authentic, and open to change.

Taking care of your direct reports’ career growth.

This story is about a manager who had an engineer in their team who had been at the same level for a long time. The manager took action to help the engineer realize they needed to focus on their career growth and gave them a project to prove themselves. Through this experience, the manager learned the importance of being proactive and providing clear expectations to ensure the engineer can focus on their challenge.

A great engineer as a bad manager

A VP at Blackhawk Network promised an engineer a promotion to manager, but she was not given any mentorship or guidance in the role. After three months of coaching, it was determined that she was not suited for the management role and she was moved back to a team lead. She was later promoted to Principal Engineer and the company learned the importance of having multiple career paths and being transparent with employees about budget constraints.

What to take into account when choosing between technical debt and new features

Technical debt can be difficult to manage, and it can be hard to decide when to prioritize it. A team faced with the challenge of managing technical debt while also building new features found that they were unable to do either. This caused stability and scalability issues, and the team had to focus on firefighting instead of being proactive. The lesson learned is that technical debt should be prioritized, and it is important to consider the specific situation when making decisions.

How to scale a company?

Stripe's rapid growth led to an organizational structure that was no longer suitable, resulting in unclear ownership of projects, delayed work, and a lack of clear boundaries for each employee's tasks. To adapt to this growth, changes were implemented, but they started to irritate people. To remedy this, the focus was shifted to talking to people and gathering feedback, while preparing future managers for their positions. It is important to keep in mind that the organizational structure of a startup has to change as the company grows, and that the most important thing is to implement the process smoothly and to involve people in the changes.

Transitioning to dedicated agile coaches (scrum masters)

When the engineering team at a previous company grew to 35+ engineers, they encountered issues with agile coaching. To solve this, they decided to hire a freelance scrum master for a trial period, and then hired a full-time agile coach. This proved to be successful, and the team of agile coaches grew to five people. Benefits of having an in-house team of agile coaches include having experts who can own the process, having someone with team performance and improving methodology as their main metric and objective, and having no hierarchical relationship between scrum masters and EMs.

How to implement new work processes in a tech team?

When transitioning to a managerial role, the author found it necessary to introduce new processes and tools to optimize workloads and communication within the team. To ensure successful implementation of status reports, the author looked for well-designed tools, communicated the need for the process, and made sure the team felt they were part of the decision-making process. This ultimately resulted in a successful implementation of the status reports.

I helped a direct report get out of “Hero” mode

A "Hero" employee was struggling to get out of their default mode of solving any problem that arose. The manager took action by offering the employee opportunities to grow and fill the space left by them moving to a new team with new hires and training. The lesson learned was that most "Heroes" end up in these situations due to bad onboarding and insufficient training, and it is the manager's role to guide them out of it.

Handling someone who ignores company policies

When employees ignore company policies, the most effective way to handle the situation is to point it out directly. Coaching employees is not helpful and could be counterproductive. Before deciding on how to handle a problem with an employee, determine if it is a mindset or skill set problem.

How to detect a potential problem within your team

During a one-on-one, a direct report expressed concern that some people were not aware of the time requirements associated with a process. After further investigation, it was found that the problem was due to one person not being prompt in responding to others. To solve the problem, clearer, quantitative language was used to match everyone's expectations. This experience taught the importance of being alert during one-on-ones, digging deeper if there is a sense of frustration, and watching out for patterns in stories across time.

How to encourage people to make the most of retrospectives

A senior engineer on a team was initially skeptical of the value of sprint retrospectives, but eventually came to understand their importance. It is important to listen to team members, create a safe space for them to share, and be flexible and adjust when necessary. There are lots of activities available to help identify areas of improvement in retrospectives.

The Push to Production Process Not Respected

When errors were occurring during the push to production process, a checklist was created to help the developers. However, people started to bypass the checklist, so an "production push algorithm" was created instead. This algorithm was more explicit and efficient, and now it is used for tasks beyond just development.

How to handle tension caused by cultural differences

A team split between Buenos Aires and Dallas had a negative impression of an engineer in Dallas due to his lack of knowledge of industry standards and his direct, even mean, attitude towards the Argentinian engineers. After discussing cultural differences, the engineer changed his behavior and the team was able to work together. It is important to set expectations for different cultures to interact and to discuss cultural differences in order to prevent misunderstandings.

What to do with an employee who wants to step-up

A good engineer was interested in becoming a senior engineer, so the manager discussed the criteria for promotion with him line-by-line. They had several follow-up conversations and the manager made it clear that the promotion was up to the employee's work. This showed the importance of setting clear expectations when promoting an employee.

How I improved at giving negative feedback

This article discusses the importance of giving negative feedback, even to people you care about. It suggests starting with your top performers and emphasizes that feedback is a gift. It also highlights the importance of giving feedback early on, rather than waiting until someone is on a performance plan and in line to be dismissed.