Knowledge shared by our community

Redesigning our dev process from scratch

Following a reorganization, a manager was tasked with defining work processes. After a few months, it was clear that the process was inefficient and needed to be changed. The manager and PM designed a new process with fewer stages, an estimation stage, and enforced it with Jira. This has improved efficiency, visibility, and deliverability. The manager learned that simpler processes, investing in tools, and taking estimations into account are key principles for successful process design.

Reduce Cluttered Processes and Empower Team To Increase Effectiveness

When the engineering team at Managed by Q was not delivering, the Executive team identified that the team lacked goal clarity and was scared of making decisions. The Executive team identified the two most important projects and the team focused on those. One of the projects was a dispatching system, but the team was putting too much process and measurement in place. The team was asked to ship a version of the dispatching system as soon as possible to see if it would work. This was successful and built confidence for the team, as well as credibility between the team and the Executive team. The experience taught the Executive team to know how to get out of the way and give the team space to win.

Overcoming an engineer’s temper

A junior engineer at Google was having difficulty advancing in his career, and it was discovered that his temper was the main issue. Through regular one-on-one meetings, the engineer was able to gain control of his emotions and improve his performance, eventually leading to a promotion. This experience showed that if an issue is identified and analyzed, it can be solved and people can improve quickly.

What to Do When You Need to Fire Someone Who is Popular

A manager had to make a difficult decision to let go of an employee, Sam, who was liked by many in the company, but was not performing well and was creating a bad environment. The manager had to think rationally and remove emotions from the decision, and ultimately decided to let Sam go. This decision improved the team atmosphere, but resulted in the departure of Sam's close friend, Bill. The manager learned that performance must be considered over personal relationships when making decisions.

Promoting the wrong person to a management position

An engineer was promoted to team lead, but was unable to handle the people side of the role. The manager took action by coaching the engineer to take a pure engineering path and taking on some of the team lead responsibilities. The manager learned to be more careful when promoting people to leadership positions, to trust their gut feeling, and to use internal resources to help managers validate their choice. If the person is not right for the job, it is better to let them go.

Looking for leadership skills when promoting an IC to manager.

As a manager, it can be difficult to know who to promote to managerial roles. To identify potential leaders, I look for signs during regular one-on-ones and encourage initiative. I also set up a 3-month try-out period to assess their management skills. This helps me identify people with both great leadership and management skills, while also minimizing the risk of losing a great engineer if they fail to be permanently promoted.

Engaged in a face to face discussion to rebuild a key business partner relationship

A company was facing a difficult decision regarding a business partner that was critical to their revenue. Rather than replace them, the new manager decided to reach out and talk directly to the partner. Through open dialogue and understanding the real issues, the manager was able to salvage the partnership and learn valuable lessons about communication and problem solving.

Reducing layers of management

When the senior director of engineering joined Zoosk, they found a lot of layers for a relatively small team of 35 people. After meeting with each person, they found that people were promoted into management roles without formal training. The director worked with HR and the SVP to create a new role, allowing people to become a tech lead and progress to a technical director role without having to manage people. This allowed the engineer to get the title they wanted and the time they needed for coding. This experience highlighted the importance of having a dual career path and understanding the motivations of each team member.

Solving a problem where team members keep being late for stand-up meetings

A team of eight engineers was struggling to meet deadlines, and their manager noticed a correlation between their late arrivals to the daily stand-up meeting and their missed deadlines. To encourage the team to be on time, they set collective goals and counted the number of times they were all there on time instead of counting the number of times they were late. This resulted in the team being more disciplined and arriving on time, leading to successful deadlines.

How to integrate employees with a different company culture?

When integrating new people into a company, Datto found that a good cultural fit was as important as a good technical fit. To ensure this, they were transparent about their company's culture and project direction, and allowed employees to decide for themselves if they wanted to stay or go. As a result, two of the three software engineers who were not a good fit resigned and the remaining employees bought-in to the company's values and were energized.

As a new manager, a technical rock-star defied my authority.

When a new manager inherited a team with a subject matter expert who challenged their authority, they had to earn his trust. This was done by being professional, positive, and constructive, earning credibility, empowering them, defending their team, giving them the benefit of the doubt, having honest conversations, and forming strong teams. After three to five months, the manager and the expert became friends.

I got myself immersed in a completely different culture

This experience taught the author the importance of understanding the culture of the company they are working for, especially when transitioning from a tech company to a non-tech company. The author had to fight for what they wanted and adapt to the company's processes, but also learned to appreciate the cultural principles of the company. This experience has been beneficial in their current career, as they now have an understanding of the customers they work with.

How to solve a conflict between two team members

Two engineers in the same team were arguing about a technical decision, and their manager intervened by organizing a meeting and helping them to identify the problem and come up with a new solution. The manager learned two lessons from this experience: to have a good overview of the team and to help the engineers arrive at the solution, rather than providing a solution.

Lessons from hiring an engineer who doesn’t fit the company’s culture

In this case study, a technical engineer was hired despite warnings from experienced engineers that he may not be a good fit. He ended up being toxic to the team and had to be let go. The lesson learned was to listen to experienced engineers, do a test with the person, and set clear expectations that take a person's background into account.

Challenging structure when faced with an underperforming employee.

A direct report was underperforming and working on a side project without anyone knowing. Instead of terminating his contract, the manager implemented a performance improvement plan. They brought back transparency, accountability, and structure to the team with the help of a senior engineer. After two weeks, the situation had improved and the individual was performing again. This experience taught the manager that different people have different needs in terms of work environments and that it is important to provide the correct structure for engineers to perform.

Ensuring remote workers feel like part of the team.

Rainforest QA changed the way they worked to better integrate remote workers into the team. They implemented two remote weeks every six months, moved to better technologies, and increased transparency by having a weekly meeting with the exec team and an AMA section in the bi-weekly all-hands meeting. These changes helped to motivate employees and make them feel like part of the team.

I had to demote one of my engineers

A manager had to communicate changes to their team, including a demotion for one engineer. They spoke openly and transparently with the engineer, explaining the criteria for the decision and discussing their feelings. The engineer decided to stay and was motivated to work harder, becoming one of the best engineers. The lesson learned is to be prepared and thoughtful when communicating difficult news, being transparent and clear about why the decision was made.

Trusting your gut feelings when promoting engineers as managers.

A tech lead with attitude issues asked to be promoted to Engineering Manager. A committee of senior engineers and Directors evaluated his capacity and were positive about him, so the promotion went ahead. However, after three months, he started blaming people and sending emails blaming others for an outage. After multiple emails and conversations, he switched to another team. This episode showed the importance of trusting one's gut feeling.

Learn what are your employees strengths and weaknesses and play with it

A manager had to have a one-on-one with an engineer who was taking too long to complete a task. After talking to him, the manager realized that the engineer was more motivated by conceptual understanding than execution. The manager then adapted to the engineer's strengths and was able to refocus him on the task. The main takeaway is that managers should take the time to understand their employees' strengths and weaknesses and play to those strengths.

How to deal with cultural difference at work?

Working with a remote team in China resulted in a loss of time and productivity due to a mismatch between expectations and delivery. To prevent this from happening again, clear success criteria and expectations were set and a cultural training was implemented to help the US and Polish engineers communicate better.

Redesigning our dev process from scratch

Following a reorganization, a manager was tasked with defining work processes. After a few months, it was clear that the process was inefficient and needed to be changed. The manager and PM designed a new process with fewer stages, an estimation stage, and enforced it with Jira. This has improved efficiency, visibility, and deliverability. The manager learned that simpler processes, investing in tools, and taking estimations into account are key principles for successful process design.

Reduce Cluttered Processes and Empower Team To Increase Effectiveness

When the engineering team at Managed by Q was not delivering, the Executive team identified that the team lacked goal clarity and was scared of making decisions. The Executive team identified the two most important projects and the team focused on those. One of the projects was a dispatching system, but the team was putting too much process and measurement in place. The team was asked to ship a version of the dispatching system as soon as possible to see if it would work. This was successful and built confidence for the team, as well as credibility between the team and the Executive team. The experience taught the Executive team to know how to get out of the way and give the team space to win.

Overcoming an engineer’s temper

A junior engineer at Google was having difficulty advancing in his career, and it was discovered that his temper was the main issue. Through regular one-on-one meetings, the engineer was able to gain control of his emotions and improve his performance, eventually leading to a promotion. This experience showed that if an issue is identified and analyzed, it can be solved and people can improve quickly.

What to Do When You Need to Fire Someone Who is Popular

A manager had to make a difficult decision to let go of an employee, Sam, who was liked by many in the company, but was not performing well and was creating a bad environment. The manager had to think rationally and remove emotions from the decision, and ultimately decided to let Sam go. This decision improved the team atmosphere, but resulted in the departure of Sam's close friend, Bill. The manager learned that performance must be considered over personal relationships when making decisions.

Promoting the wrong person to a management position

An engineer was promoted to team lead, but was unable to handle the people side of the role. The manager took action by coaching the engineer to take a pure engineering path and taking on some of the team lead responsibilities. The manager learned to be more careful when promoting people to leadership positions, to trust their gut feeling, and to use internal resources to help managers validate their choice. If the person is not right for the job, it is better to let them go.

Looking for leadership skills when promoting an IC to manager.

As a manager, it can be difficult to know who to promote to managerial roles. To identify potential leaders, I look for signs during regular one-on-ones and encourage initiative. I also set up a 3-month try-out period to assess their management skills. This helps me identify people with both great leadership and management skills, while also minimizing the risk of losing a great engineer if they fail to be permanently promoted.

Engaged in a face to face discussion to rebuild a key business partner relationship

A company was facing a difficult decision regarding a business partner that was critical to their revenue. Rather than replace them, the new manager decided to reach out and talk directly to the partner. Through open dialogue and understanding the real issues, the manager was able to salvage the partnership and learn valuable lessons about communication and problem solving.

Reducing layers of management

When the senior director of engineering joined Zoosk, they found a lot of layers for a relatively small team of 35 people. After meeting with each person, they found that people were promoted into management roles without formal training. The director worked with HR and the SVP to create a new role, allowing people to become a tech lead and progress to a technical director role without having to manage people. This allowed the engineer to get the title they wanted and the time they needed for coding. This experience highlighted the importance of having a dual career path and understanding the motivations of each team member.

Solving a problem where team members keep being late for stand-up meetings

A team of eight engineers was struggling to meet deadlines, and their manager noticed a correlation between their late arrivals to the daily stand-up meeting and their missed deadlines. To encourage the team to be on time, they set collective goals and counted the number of times they were all there on time instead of counting the number of times they were late. This resulted in the team being more disciplined and arriving on time, leading to successful deadlines.

How to integrate employees with a different company culture?

When integrating new people into a company, Datto found that a good cultural fit was as important as a good technical fit. To ensure this, they were transparent about their company's culture and project direction, and allowed employees to decide for themselves if they wanted to stay or go. As a result, two of the three software engineers who were not a good fit resigned and the remaining employees bought-in to the company's values and were energized.

As a new manager, a technical rock-star defied my authority.

When a new manager inherited a team with a subject matter expert who challenged their authority, they had to earn his trust. This was done by being professional, positive, and constructive, earning credibility, empowering them, defending their team, giving them the benefit of the doubt, having honest conversations, and forming strong teams. After three to five months, the manager and the expert became friends.

I got myself immersed in a completely different culture

This experience taught the author the importance of understanding the culture of the company they are working for, especially when transitioning from a tech company to a non-tech company. The author had to fight for what they wanted and adapt to the company's processes, but also learned to appreciate the cultural principles of the company. This experience has been beneficial in their current career, as they now have an understanding of the customers they work with.

How to solve a conflict between two team members

Two engineers in the same team were arguing about a technical decision, and their manager intervened by organizing a meeting and helping them to identify the problem and come up with a new solution. The manager learned two lessons from this experience: to have a good overview of the team and to help the engineers arrive at the solution, rather than providing a solution.

Lessons from hiring an engineer who doesn’t fit the company’s culture

In this case study, a technical engineer was hired despite warnings from experienced engineers that he may not be a good fit. He ended up being toxic to the team and had to be let go. The lesson learned was to listen to experienced engineers, do a test with the person, and set clear expectations that take a person's background into account.

Challenging structure when faced with an underperforming employee.

A direct report was underperforming and working on a side project without anyone knowing. Instead of terminating his contract, the manager implemented a performance improvement plan. They brought back transparency, accountability, and structure to the team with the help of a senior engineer. After two weeks, the situation had improved and the individual was performing again. This experience taught the manager that different people have different needs in terms of work environments and that it is important to provide the correct structure for engineers to perform.

Ensuring remote workers feel like part of the team.

Rainforest QA changed the way they worked to better integrate remote workers into the team. They implemented two remote weeks every six months, moved to better technologies, and increased transparency by having a weekly meeting with the exec team and an AMA section in the bi-weekly all-hands meeting. These changes helped to motivate employees and make them feel like part of the team.

I had to demote one of my engineers

A manager had to communicate changes to their team, including a demotion for one engineer. They spoke openly and transparently with the engineer, explaining the criteria for the decision and discussing their feelings. The engineer decided to stay and was motivated to work harder, becoming one of the best engineers. The lesson learned is to be prepared and thoughtful when communicating difficult news, being transparent and clear about why the decision was made.

Trusting your gut feelings when promoting engineers as managers.

A tech lead with attitude issues asked to be promoted to Engineering Manager. A committee of senior engineers and Directors evaluated his capacity and were positive about him, so the promotion went ahead. However, after three months, he started blaming people and sending emails blaming others for an outage. After multiple emails and conversations, he switched to another team. This episode showed the importance of trusting one's gut feeling.

Learn what are your employees strengths and weaknesses and play with it

A manager had to have a one-on-one with an engineer who was taking too long to complete a task. After talking to him, the manager realized that the engineer was more motivated by conceptual understanding than execution. The manager then adapted to the engineer's strengths and was able to refocus him on the task. The main takeaway is that managers should take the time to understand their employees' strengths and weaknesses and play to those strengths.

How to deal with cultural difference at work?

Working with a remote team in China resulted in a loss of time and productivity due to a mismatch between expectations and delivery. To prevent this from happening again, clear success criteria and expectations were set and a cultural training was implemented to help the US and Polish engineers communicate better.

Redesigning our dev process from scratch

Following a reorganization, a manager was tasked with defining work processes. After a few months, it was clear that the process was inefficient and needed to be changed. The manager and PM designed a new process with fewer stages, an estimation stage, and enforced it with Jira. This has improved efficiency, visibility, and deliverability. The manager learned that simpler processes, investing in tools, and taking estimations into account are key principles for successful process design.

Reduce Cluttered Processes and Empower Team To Increase Effectiveness

When the engineering team at Managed by Q was not delivering, the Executive team identified that the team lacked goal clarity and was scared of making decisions. The Executive team identified the two most important projects and the team focused on those. One of the projects was a dispatching system, but the team was putting too much process and measurement in place. The team was asked to ship a version of the dispatching system as soon as possible to see if it would work. This was successful and built confidence for the team, as well as credibility between the team and the Executive team. The experience taught the Executive team to know how to get out of the way and give the team space to win.

Overcoming an engineer’s temper

A junior engineer at Google was having difficulty advancing in his career, and it was discovered that his temper was the main issue. Through regular one-on-one meetings, the engineer was able to gain control of his emotions and improve his performance, eventually leading to a promotion. This experience showed that if an issue is identified and analyzed, it can be solved and people can improve quickly.

What to Do When You Need to Fire Someone Who is Popular

A manager had to make a difficult decision to let go of an employee, Sam, who was liked by many in the company, but was not performing well and was creating a bad environment. The manager had to think rationally and remove emotions from the decision, and ultimately decided to let Sam go. This decision improved the team atmosphere, but resulted in the departure of Sam's close friend, Bill. The manager learned that performance must be considered over personal relationships when making decisions.

Promoting the wrong person to a management position

An engineer was promoted to team lead, but was unable to handle the people side of the role. The manager took action by coaching the engineer to take a pure engineering path and taking on some of the team lead responsibilities. The manager learned to be more careful when promoting people to leadership positions, to trust their gut feeling, and to use internal resources to help managers validate their choice. If the person is not right for the job, it is better to let them go.

Looking for leadership skills when promoting an IC to manager.

As a manager, it can be difficult to know who to promote to managerial roles. To identify potential leaders, I look for signs during regular one-on-ones and encourage initiative. I also set up a 3-month try-out period to assess their management skills. This helps me identify people with both great leadership and management skills, while also minimizing the risk of losing a great engineer if they fail to be permanently promoted.

Engaged in a face to face discussion to rebuild a key business partner relationship

A company was facing a difficult decision regarding a business partner that was critical to their revenue. Rather than replace them, the new manager decided to reach out and talk directly to the partner. Through open dialogue and understanding the real issues, the manager was able to salvage the partnership and learn valuable lessons about communication and problem solving.

Reducing layers of management

When the senior director of engineering joined Zoosk, they found a lot of layers for a relatively small team of 35 people. After meeting with each person, they found that people were promoted into management roles without formal training. The director worked with HR and the SVP to create a new role, allowing people to become a tech lead and progress to a technical director role without having to manage people. This allowed the engineer to get the title they wanted and the time they needed for coding. This experience highlighted the importance of having a dual career path and understanding the motivations of each team member.

Solving a problem where team members keep being late for stand-up meetings

A team of eight engineers was struggling to meet deadlines, and their manager noticed a correlation between their late arrivals to the daily stand-up meeting and their missed deadlines. To encourage the team to be on time, they set collective goals and counted the number of times they were all there on time instead of counting the number of times they were late. This resulted in the team being more disciplined and arriving on time, leading to successful deadlines.

How to integrate employees with a different company culture?

When integrating new people into a company, Datto found that a good cultural fit was as important as a good technical fit. To ensure this, they were transparent about their company's culture and project direction, and allowed employees to decide for themselves if they wanted to stay or go. As a result, two of the three software engineers who were not a good fit resigned and the remaining employees bought-in to the company's values and were energized.

As a new manager, a technical rock-star defied my authority.

When a new manager inherited a team with a subject matter expert who challenged their authority, they had to earn his trust. This was done by being professional, positive, and constructive, earning credibility, empowering them, defending their team, giving them the benefit of the doubt, having honest conversations, and forming strong teams. After three to five months, the manager and the expert became friends.

I got myself immersed in a completely different culture

This experience taught the author the importance of understanding the culture of the company they are working for, especially when transitioning from a tech company to a non-tech company. The author had to fight for what they wanted and adapt to the company's processes, but also learned to appreciate the cultural principles of the company. This experience has been beneficial in their current career, as they now have an understanding of the customers they work with.

How to solve a conflict between two team members

Two engineers in the same team were arguing about a technical decision, and their manager intervened by organizing a meeting and helping them to identify the problem and come up with a new solution. The manager learned two lessons from this experience: to have a good overview of the team and to help the engineers arrive at the solution, rather than providing a solution.

Lessons from hiring an engineer who doesn’t fit the company’s culture

In this case study, a technical engineer was hired despite warnings from experienced engineers that he may not be a good fit. He ended up being toxic to the team and had to be let go. The lesson learned was to listen to experienced engineers, do a test with the person, and set clear expectations that take a person's background into account.

Challenging structure when faced with an underperforming employee.

A direct report was underperforming and working on a side project without anyone knowing. Instead of terminating his contract, the manager implemented a performance improvement plan. They brought back transparency, accountability, and structure to the team with the help of a senior engineer. After two weeks, the situation had improved and the individual was performing again. This experience taught the manager that different people have different needs in terms of work environments and that it is important to provide the correct structure for engineers to perform.

Ensuring remote workers feel like part of the team.

Rainforest QA changed the way they worked to better integrate remote workers into the team. They implemented two remote weeks every six months, moved to better technologies, and increased transparency by having a weekly meeting with the exec team and an AMA section in the bi-weekly all-hands meeting. These changes helped to motivate employees and make them feel like part of the team.

I had to demote one of my engineers

A manager had to communicate changes to their team, including a demotion for one engineer. They spoke openly and transparently with the engineer, explaining the criteria for the decision and discussing their feelings. The engineer decided to stay and was motivated to work harder, becoming one of the best engineers. The lesson learned is to be prepared and thoughtful when communicating difficult news, being transparent and clear about why the decision was made.

Trusting your gut feelings when promoting engineers as managers.

A tech lead with attitude issues asked to be promoted to Engineering Manager. A committee of senior engineers and Directors evaluated his capacity and were positive about him, so the promotion went ahead. However, after three months, he started blaming people and sending emails blaming others for an outage. After multiple emails and conversations, he switched to another team. This episode showed the importance of trusting one's gut feeling.

Learn what are your employees strengths and weaknesses and play with it

A manager had to have a one-on-one with an engineer who was taking too long to complete a task. After talking to him, the manager realized that the engineer was more motivated by conceptual understanding than execution. The manager then adapted to the engineer's strengths and was able to refocus him on the task. The main takeaway is that managers should take the time to understand their employees' strengths and weaknesses and play to those strengths.

How to deal with cultural difference at work?

Working with a remote team in China resulted in a loss of time and productivity due to a mismatch between expectations and delivery. To prevent this from happening again, clear success criteria and expectations were set and a cultural training was implemented to help the US and Polish engineers communicate better.

Redesigning our dev process from scratch

Following a reorganization, a manager was tasked with defining work processes. After a few months, it was clear that the process was inefficient and needed to be changed. The manager and PM designed a new process with fewer stages, an estimation stage, and enforced it with Jira. This has improved efficiency, visibility, and deliverability. The manager learned that simpler processes, investing in tools, and taking estimations into account are key principles for successful process design.

Reduce Cluttered Processes and Empower Team To Increase Effectiveness

When the engineering team at Managed by Q was not delivering, the Executive team identified that the team lacked goal clarity and was scared of making decisions. The Executive team identified the two most important projects and the team focused on those. One of the projects was a dispatching system, but the team was putting too much process and measurement in place. The team was asked to ship a version of the dispatching system as soon as possible to see if it would work. This was successful and built confidence for the team, as well as credibility between the team and the Executive team. The experience taught the Executive team to know how to get out of the way and give the team space to win.

Overcoming an engineer’s temper

A junior engineer at Google was having difficulty advancing in his career, and it was discovered that his temper was the main issue. Through regular one-on-one meetings, the engineer was able to gain control of his emotions and improve his performance, eventually leading to a promotion. This experience showed that if an issue is identified and analyzed, it can be solved and people can improve quickly.

What to Do When You Need to Fire Someone Who is Popular

A manager had to make a difficult decision to let go of an employee, Sam, who was liked by many in the company, but was not performing well and was creating a bad environment. The manager had to think rationally and remove emotions from the decision, and ultimately decided to let Sam go. This decision improved the team atmosphere, but resulted in the departure of Sam's close friend, Bill. The manager learned that performance must be considered over personal relationships when making decisions.

Promoting the wrong person to a management position

An engineer was promoted to team lead, but was unable to handle the people side of the role. The manager took action by coaching the engineer to take a pure engineering path and taking on some of the team lead responsibilities. The manager learned to be more careful when promoting people to leadership positions, to trust their gut feeling, and to use internal resources to help managers validate their choice. If the person is not right for the job, it is better to let them go.

Looking for leadership skills when promoting an IC to manager.

As a manager, it can be difficult to know who to promote to managerial roles. To identify potential leaders, I look for signs during regular one-on-ones and encourage initiative. I also set up a 3-month try-out period to assess their management skills. This helps me identify people with both great leadership and management skills, while also minimizing the risk of losing a great engineer if they fail to be permanently promoted.

Engaged in a face to face discussion to rebuild a key business partner relationship

A company was facing a difficult decision regarding a business partner that was critical to their revenue. Rather than replace them, the new manager decided to reach out and talk directly to the partner. Through open dialogue and understanding the real issues, the manager was able to salvage the partnership and learn valuable lessons about communication and problem solving.

Reducing layers of management

When the senior director of engineering joined Zoosk, they found a lot of layers for a relatively small team of 35 people. After meeting with each person, they found that people were promoted into management roles without formal training. The director worked with HR and the SVP to create a new role, allowing people to become a tech lead and progress to a technical director role without having to manage people. This allowed the engineer to get the title they wanted and the time they needed for coding. This experience highlighted the importance of having a dual career path and understanding the motivations of each team member.

Solving a problem where team members keep being late for stand-up meetings

A team of eight engineers was struggling to meet deadlines, and their manager noticed a correlation between their late arrivals to the daily stand-up meeting and their missed deadlines. To encourage the team to be on time, they set collective goals and counted the number of times they were all there on time instead of counting the number of times they were late. This resulted in the team being more disciplined and arriving on time, leading to successful deadlines.

How to integrate employees with a different company culture?

When integrating new people into a company, Datto found that a good cultural fit was as important as a good technical fit. To ensure this, they were transparent about their company's culture and project direction, and allowed employees to decide for themselves if they wanted to stay or go. As a result, two of the three software engineers who were not a good fit resigned and the remaining employees bought-in to the company's values and were energized.

As a new manager, a technical rock-star defied my authority.

When a new manager inherited a team with a subject matter expert who challenged their authority, they had to earn his trust. This was done by being professional, positive, and constructive, earning credibility, empowering them, defending their team, giving them the benefit of the doubt, having honest conversations, and forming strong teams. After three to five months, the manager and the expert became friends.

I got myself immersed in a completely different culture

This experience taught the author the importance of understanding the culture of the company they are working for, especially when transitioning from a tech company to a non-tech company. The author had to fight for what they wanted and adapt to the company's processes, but also learned to appreciate the cultural principles of the company. This experience has been beneficial in their current career, as they now have an understanding of the customers they work with.

How to solve a conflict between two team members

Two engineers in the same team were arguing about a technical decision, and their manager intervened by organizing a meeting and helping them to identify the problem and come up with a new solution. The manager learned two lessons from this experience: to have a good overview of the team and to help the engineers arrive at the solution, rather than providing a solution.

Lessons from hiring an engineer who doesn’t fit the company’s culture

In this case study, a technical engineer was hired despite warnings from experienced engineers that he may not be a good fit. He ended up being toxic to the team and had to be let go. The lesson learned was to listen to experienced engineers, do a test with the person, and set clear expectations that take a person's background into account.

Challenging structure when faced with an underperforming employee.

A direct report was underperforming and working on a side project without anyone knowing. Instead of terminating his contract, the manager implemented a performance improvement plan. They brought back transparency, accountability, and structure to the team with the help of a senior engineer. After two weeks, the situation had improved and the individual was performing again. This experience taught the manager that different people have different needs in terms of work environments and that it is important to provide the correct structure for engineers to perform.

Ensuring remote workers feel like part of the team.

Rainforest QA changed the way they worked to better integrate remote workers into the team. They implemented two remote weeks every six months, moved to better technologies, and increased transparency by having a weekly meeting with the exec team and an AMA section in the bi-weekly all-hands meeting. These changes helped to motivate employees and make them feel like part of the team.

I had to demote one of my engineers

A manager had to communicate changes to their team, including a demotion for one engineer. They spoke openly and transparently with the engineer, explaining the criteria for the decision and discussing their feelings. The engineer decided to stay and was motivated to work harder, becoming one of the best engineers. The lesson learned is to be prepared and thoughtful when communicating difficult news, being transparent and clear about why the decision was made.

Trusting your gut feelings when promoting engineers as managers.

A tech lead with attitude issues asked to be promoted to Engineering Manager. A committee of senior engineers and Directors evaluated his capacity and were positive about him, so the promotion went ahead. However, after three months, he started blaming people and sending emails blaming others for an outage. After multiple emails and conversations, he switched to another team. This episode showed the importance of trusting one's gut feeling.

Learn what are your employees strengths and weaknesses and play with it

A manager had to have a one-on-one with an engineer who was taking too long to complete a task. After talking to him, the manager realized that the engineer was more motivated by conceptual understanding than execution. The manager then adapted to the engineer's strengths and was able to refocus him on the task. The main takeaway is that managers should take the time to understand their employees' strengths and weaknesses and play to those strengths.

How to deal with cultural difference at work?

Working with a remote team in China resulted in a loss of time and productivity due to a mismatch between expectations and delivery. To prevent this from happening again, clear success criteria and expectations were set and a cultural training was implemented to help the US and Polish engineers communicate better.

Redesigning our dev process from scratch

Following a reorganization, a manager was tasked with defining work processes. After a few months, it was clear that the process was inefficient and needed to be changed. The manager and PM designed a new process with fewer stages, an estimation stage, and enforced it with Jira. This has improved efficiency, visibility, and deliverability. The manager learned that simpler processes, investing in tools, and taking estimations into account are key principles for successful process design.

Reduce Cluttered Processes and Empower Team To Increase Effectiveness

When the engineering team at Managed by Q was not delivering, the Executive team identified that the team lacked goal clarity and was scared of making decisions. The Executive team identified the two most important projects and the team focused on those. One of the projects was a dispatching system, but the team was putting too much process and measurement in place. The team was asked to ship a version of the dispatching system as soon as possible to see if it would work. This was successful and built confidence for the team, as well as credibility between the team and the Executive team. The experience taught the Executive team to know how to get out of the way and give the team space to win.

Overcoming an engineer’s temper

A junior engineer at Google was having difficulty advancing in his career, and it was discovered that his temper was the main issue. Through regular one-on-one meetings, the engineer was able to gain control of his emotions and improve his performance, eventually leading to a promotion. This experience showed that if an issue is identified and analyzed, it can be solved and people can improve quickly.

What to Do When You Need to Fire Someone Who is Popular

A manager had to make a difficult decision to let go of an employee, Sam, who was liked by many in the company, but was not performing well and was creating a bad environment. The manager had to think rationally and remove emotions from the decision, and ultimately decided to let Sam go. This decision improved the team atmosphere, but resulted in the departure of Sam's close friend, Bill. The manager learned that performance must be considered over personal relationships when making decisions.

Promoting the wrong person to a management position

An engineer was promoted to team lead, but was unable to handle the people side of the role. The manager took action by coaching the engineer to take a pure engineering path and taking on some of the team lead responsibilities. The manager learned to be more careful when promoting people to leadership positions, to trust their gut feeling, and to use internal resources to help managers validate their choice. If the person is not right for the job, it is better to let them go.

Looking for leadership skills when promoting an IC to manager.

As a manager, it can be difficult to know who to promote to managerial roles. To identify potential leaders, I look for signs during regular one-on-ones and encourage initiative. I also set up a 3-month try-out period to assess their management skills. This helps me identify people with both great leadership and management skills, while also minimizing the risk of losing a great engineer if they fail to be permanently promoted.

Engaged in a face to face discussion to rebuild a key business partner relationship

A company was facing a difficult decision regarding a business partner that was critical to their revenue. Rather than replace them, the new manager decided to reach out and talk directly to the partner. Through open dialogue and understanding the real issues, the manager was able to salvage the partnership and learn valuable lessons about communication and problem solving.

Reducing layers of management

When the senior director of engineering joined Zoosk, they found a lot of layers for a relatively small team of 35 people. After meeting with each person, they found that people were promoted into management roles without formal training. The director worked with HR and the SVP to create a new role, allowing people to become a tech lead and progress to a technical director role without having to manage people. This allowed the engineer to get the title they wanted and the time they needed for coding. This experience highlighted the importance of having a dual career path and understanding the motivations of each team member.

Solving a problem where team members keep being late for stand-up meetings

A team of eight engineers was struggling to meet deadlines, and their manager noticed a correlation between their late arrivals to the daily stand-up meeting and their missed deadlines. To encourage the team to be on time, they set collective goals and counted the number of times they were all there on time instead of counting the number of times they were late. This resulted in the team being more disciplined and arriving on time, leading to successful deadlines.

How to integrate employees with a different company culture?

When integrating new people into a company, Datto found that a good cultural fit was as important as a good technical fit. To ensure this, they were transparent about their company's culture and project direction, and allowed employees to decide for themselves if they wanted to stay or go. As a result, two of the three software engineers who were not a good fit resigned and the remaining employees bought-in to the company's values and were energized.

As a new manager, a technical rock-star defied my authority.

When a new manager inherited a team with a subject matter expert who challenged their authority, they had to earn his trust. This was done by being professional, positive, and constructive, earning credibility, empowering them, defending their team, giving them the benefit of the doubt, having honest conversations, and forming strong teams. After three to five months, the manager and the expert became friends.

I got myself immersed in a completely different culture

This experience taught the author the importance of understanding the culture of the company they are working for, especially when transitioning from a tech company to a non-tech company. The author had to fight for what they wanted and adapt to the company's processes, but also learned to appreciate the cultural principles of the company. This experience has been beneficial in their current career, as they now have an understanding of the customers they work with.

How to solve a conflict between two team members

Two engineers in the same team were arguing about a technical decision, and their manager intervened by organizing a meeting and helping them to identify the problem and come up with a new solution. The manager learned two lessons from this experience: to have a good overview of the team and to help the engineers arrive at the solution, rather than providing a solution.

Lessons from hiring an engineer who doesn’t fit the company’s culture

In this case study, a technical engineer was hired despite warnings from experienced engineers that he may not be a good fit. He ended up being toxic to the team and had to be let go. The lesson learned was to listen to experienced engineers, do a test with the person, and set clear expectations that take a person's background into account.

Challenging structure when faced with an underperforming employee.

A direct report was underperforming and working on a side project without anyone knowing. Instead of terminating his contract, the manager implemented a performance improvement plan. They brought back transparency, accountability, and structure to the team with the help of a senior engineer. After two weeks, the situation had improved and the individual was performing again. This experience taught the manager that different people have different needs in terms of work environments and that it is important to provide the correct structure for engineers to perform.

Ensuring remote workers feel like part of the team.

Rainforest QA changed the way they worked to better integrate remote workers into the team. They implemented two remote weeks every six months, moved to better technologies, and increased transparency by having a weekly meeting with the exec team and an AMA section in the bi-weekly all-hands meeting. These changes helped to motivate employees and make them feel like part of the team.

I had to demote one of my engineers

A manager had to communicate changes to their team, including a demotion for one engineer. They spoke openly and transparently with the engineer, explaining the criteria for the decision and discussing their feelings. The engineer decided to stay and was motivated to work harder, becoming one of the best engineers. The lesson learned is to be prepared and thoughtful when communicating difficult news, being transparent and clear about why the decision was made.

Trusting your gut feelings when promoting engineers as managers.

A tech lead with attitude issues asked to be promoted to Engineering Manager. A committee of senior engineers and Directors evaluated his capacity and were positive about him, so the promotion went ahead. However, after three months, he started blaming people and sending emails blaming others for an outage. After multiple emails and conversations, he switched to another team. This episode showed the importance of trusting one's gut feeling.

Learn what are your employees strengths and weaknesses and play with it

A manager had to have a one-on-one with an engineer who was taking too long to complete a task. After talking to him, the manager realized that the engineer was more motivated by conceptual understanding than execution. The manager then adapted to the engineer's strengths and was able to refocus him on the task. The main takeaway is that managers should take the time to understand their employees' strengths and weaknesses and play to those strengths.

How to deal with cultural difference at work?

Working with a remote team in China resulted in a loss of time and productivity due to a mismatch between expectations and delivery. To prevent this from happening again, clear success criteria and expectations were set and a cultural training was implemented to help the US and Polish engineers communicate better.

Redesigning our dev process from scratch

Following a reorganization, a manager was tasked with defining work processes. After a few months, it was clear that the process was inefficient and needed to be changed. The manager and PM designed a new process with fewer stages, an estimation stage, and enforced it with Jira. This has improved efficiency, visibility, and deliverability. The manager learned that simpler processes, investing in tools, and taking estimations into account are key principles for successful process design.

Reduce Cluttered Processes and Empower Team To Increase Effectiveness

When the engineering team at Managed by Q was not delivering, the Executive team identified that the team lacked goal clarity and was scared of making decisions. The Executive team identified the two most important projects and the team focused on those. One of the projects was a dispatching system, but the team was putting too much process and measurement in place. The team was asked to ship a version of the dispatching system as soon as possible to see if it would work. This was successful and built confidence for the team, as well as credibility between the team and the Executive team. The experience taught the Executive team to know how to get out of the way and give the team space to win.

Overcoming an engineer’s temper

A junior engineer at Google was having difficulty advancing in his career, and it was discovered that his temper was the main issue. Through regular one-on-one meetings, the engineer was able to gain control of his emotions and improve his performance, eventually leading to a promotion. This experience showed that if an issue is identified and analyzed, it can be solved and people can improve quickly.

What to Do When You Need to Fire Someone Who is Popular

A manager had to make a difficult decision to let go of an employee, Sam, who was liked by many in the company, but was not performing well and was creating a bad environment. The manager had to think rationally and remove emotions from the decision, and ultimately decided to let Sam go. This decision improved the team atmosphere, but resulted in the departure of Sam's close friend, Bill. The manager learned that performance must be considered over personal relationships when making decisions.

Promoting the wrong person to a management position

An engineer was promoted to team lead, but was unable to handle the people side of the role. The manager took action by coaching the engineer to take a pure engineering path and taking on some of the team lead responsibilities. The manager learned to be more careful when promoting people to leadership positions, to trust their gut feeling, and to use internal resources to help managers validate their choice. If the person is not right for the job, it is better to let them go.

Looking for leadership skills when promoting an IC to manager.

As a manager, it can be difficult to know who to promote to managerial roles. To identify potential leaders, I look for signs during regular one-on-ones and encourage initiative. I also set up a 3-month try-out period to assess their management skills. This helps me identify people with both great leadership and management skills, while also minimizing the risk of losing a great engineer if they fail to be permanently promoted.

Engaged in a face to face discussion to rebuild a key business partner relationship

A company was facing a difficult decision regarding a business partner that was critical to their revenue. Rather than replace them, the new manager decided to reach out and talk directly to the partner. Through open dialogue and understanding the real issues, the manager was able to salvage the partnership and learn valuable lessons about communication and problem solving.

Reducing layers of management

When the senior director of engineering joined Zoosk, they found a lot of layers for a relatively small team of 35 people. After meeting with each person, they found that people were promoted into management roles without formal training. The director worked with HR and the SVP to create a new role, allowing people to become a tech lead and progress to a technical director role without having to manage people. This allowed the engineer to get the title they wanted and the time they needed for coding. This experience highlighted the importance of having a dual career path and understanding the motivations of each team member.

Solving a problem where team members keep being late for stand-up meetings

A team of eight engineers was struggling to meet deadlines, and their manager noticed a correlation between their late arrivals to the daily stand-up meeting and their missed deadlines. To encourage the team to be on time, they set collective goals and counted the number of times they were all there on time instead of counting the number of times they were late. This resulted in the team being more disciplined and arriving on time, leading to successful deadlines.

How to integrate employees with a different company culture?

When integrating new people into a company, Datto found that a good cultural fit was as important as a good technical fit. To ensure this, they were transparent about their company's culture and project direction, and allowed employees to decide for themselves if they wanted to stay or go. As a result, two of the three software engineers who were not a good fit resigned and the remaining employees bought-in to the company's values and were energized.

As a new manager, a technical rock-star defied my authority.

When a new manager inherited a team with a subject matter expert who challenged their authority, they had to earn his trust. This was done by being professional, positive, and constructive, earning credibility, empowering them, defending their team, giving them the benefit of the doubt, having honest conversations, and forming strong teams. After three to five months, the manager and the expert became friends.

I got myself immersed in a completely different culture

This experience taught the author the importance of understanding the culture of the company they are working for, especially when transitioning from a tech company to a non-tech company. The author had to fight for what they wanted and adapt to the company's processes, but also learned to appreciate the cultural principles of the company. This experience has been beneficial in their current career, as they now have an understanding of the customers they work with.

How to solve a conflict between two team members

Two engineers in the same team were arguing about a technical decision, and their manager intervened by organizing a meeting and helping them to identify the problem and come up with a new solution. The manager learned two lessons from this experience: to have a good overview of the team and to help the engineers arrive at the solution, rather than providing a solution.

Lessons from hiring an engineer who doesn’t fit the company’s culture

In this case study, a technical engineer was hired despite warnings from experienced engineers that he may not be a good fit. He ended up being toxic to the team and had to be let go. The lesson learned was to listen to experienced engineers, do a test with the person, and set clear expectations that take a person's background into account.

Challenging structure when faced with an underperforming employee.

A direct report was underperforming and working on a side project without anyone knowing. Instead of terminating his contract, the manager implemented a performance improvement plan. They brought back transparency, accountability, and structure to the team with the help of a senior engineer. After two weeks, the situation had improved and the individual was performing again. This experience taught the manager that different people have different needs in terms of work environments and that it is important to provide the correct structure for engineers to perform.

Ensuring remote workers feel like part of the team.

Rainforest QA changed the way they worked to better integrate remote workers into the team. They implemented two remote weeks every six months, moved to better technologies, and increased transparency by having a weekly meeting with the exec team and an AMA section in the bi-weekly all-hands meeting. These changes helped to motivate employees and make them feel like part of the team.

I had to demote one of my engineers

A manager had to communicate changes to their team, including a demotion for one engineer. They spoke openly and transparently with the engineer, explaining the criteria for the decision and discussing their feelings. The engineer decided to stay and was motivated to work harder, becoming one of the best engineers. The lesson learned is to be prepared and thoughtful when communicating difficult news, being transparent and clear about why the decision was made.

Trusting your gut feelings when promoting engineers as managers.

A tech lead with attitude issues asked to be promoted to Engineering Manager. A committee of senior engineers and Directors evaluated his capacity and were positive about him, so the promotion went ahead. However, after three months, he started blaming people and sending emails blaming others for an outage. After multiple emails and conversations, he switched to another team. This episode showed the importance of trusting one's gut feeling.

Learn what are your employees strengths and weaknesses and play with it

A manager had to have a one-on-one with an engineer who was taking too long to complete a task. After talking to him, the manager realized that the engineer was more motivated by conceptual understanding than execution. The manager then adapted to the engineer's strengths and was able to refocus him on the task. The main takeaway is that managers should take the time to understand their employees' strengths and weaknesses and play to those strengths.

How to deal with cultural difference at work?

Working with a remote team in China resulted in a loss of time and productivity due to a mismatch between expectations and delivery. To prevent this from happening again, clear success criteria and expectations were set and a cultural training was implemented to help the US and Polish engineers communicate better.