Knowledge shared by our community

When an employee’s interests don’t fit with what the team can offer.

This case study describes a situation in which a back-end engineer was not motivated by the product-oriented work of the product engineering team. Through open discussion, the engineer was placed in an infrastructure team that better suited his motivations. The takeaway is that it is important to consider team fit during the hiring process and to be honest about motivations during onboarding. Additionally, it is important to have open discussions to keep employees motivated and to prevent their performance from dropping.

Dealing with underperformance caused by a complex personal situation

A manager noticed an employee was taking a lot of sick days and not responding to the team. After a one-on-one conversation, the employee revealed he had a special needs child that was taking up a lot of his time. The manager worked with the employee to create a flexible schedule that allowed him to take care of his child and still be a reliable member of the team. This situation taught the manager the importance of empathy and proactively helping employees.

Cultural challenges when opening a new office

Stripe opened an office in Seattle and faced the challenge of recruiting people from the local area. Traditional interviewing methods were not effective, so the leader had to be creative and think of alternative methods such as creating videos and organizing meetups. The lesson learned was to not assume that what works in one place will work in another, and to take cultural differences into account.

How to deal with an employee’s drop in performance?

A remote employee's performance dropped after a successful project, and the manager wanted to fire him. After talking to the employee, it was revealed that he was missing social interaction and feeling lonely. The manager found another Google team close to the employee's location and he was hired there, resulting in a remarkable improvement in his performance.

What to focus on when taking over a team that has had five managers in two years.

This article discusses the actions taken by a manager to ensure the growth and development of a small team of test engineers. The manager took the time to have one-on-one conversations with each team member to identify personal growth goals and offered guidance on the tools they were using. As a result, when the company underwent changes, the team was able to cope with the new job requirements. The article emphasizes the importance of taking an interest in the development of team members in order to retain them.

Making the jump from individual contributor to a manager of people.

This article discusses the challenges of transitioning from an individual contributor to a management role. It explains how the author had to change their value system and learn to be a team player, taking pride in what the team could accomplish together rather than seeking personal credit. The author also found that helping team members map out and achieve their own career goals was a great way to stimulate their dopamine centres and make themselves obsolete. The article concludes by emphasizing the importance of questioning one's motives when jumping back into an individual contributor role and considering how it might affect the team.

Leading a team in a domain you are not familiar with

When inheriting a Machine Learning team, a manager must establish their own credibility in order to lead the team well. This can be done through technical competence, but also by asking the team to be mentors, being honest about not knowing something, and instigating cross-team projects. These steps enabled the manager to focus on recruiting and identify high-potentials, and the team became one of the highest performing ML teams in the company. Ultimately, a manager's effectiveness depends on their balance between warmth and strength.

Having a thoughtful interview process will help your company in the long-term

At TuneIn, the hiring process was inefficient and decisions were being made arbitrarily. To improve the process, they implemented more discipline and structure, including a casual introductory discussion, technical evaluation, take-home exercise, and onsite review. The results have been great, with more qualified candidates being hired faster, and the process has taught two lessons: to build behavioral interviewing into every step, and to think of hiring as a long-term objective.

Investing in People - Working remotely creates a shift in management mindset

After getting married and having a child, the author and his wife decided to move back to South Dakota, despite the lack of tech jobs in the area. Concur allowed the author to work remotely on a six-month probation. This led to a shift in the author's management style, where he invested more in his employees and focused on understanding their strengths and weaknesses. This shift has been successful, and the author now reports directly to the president of the company.

Unhealthy competition between two engineers

When a manager took over a new team, two freelance engineers were working on the same part of a code and had conflicting approaches. After offering them both full-time jobs, the tension between them increased. The manager took action by meeting with them one-on-one and then together to discuss the problem. It was learned that the problem was partly caused by hiring them on the same day, not investing in onboarding them, and not setting clear expectations.

Managers do not need to know everything that their reports know

When a manager is put in charge of a team responsible for internal processes, they may not understand everything their team does. In this case, the manager had to solve a problem without understanding the actual process at stake. After talking to the engineer, they created a flowchart for sales ops and the Vice President and organized a meeting to clarify how to understand commissions. The lesson learned is that the manager's role is to make sure the right conversations happen between the right people, not to actually solve all problems themselves.

What not to do with your scrum master

In this experience, the author promoted someone to the role of scrum master and attended a retro meeting. This caused the team to become quiet and the scrum master to politely suggest the author should be quiet. The author learned that the scrum master's role is to help the team become self-organized, build relationships, educate the organization about scrum, and notify managers when they are creating an anti-pattern. The author believes that the scrum master should not report to a manager, but should be able to tell their manager what to do and what not to do.

Internal Projects vs. Open-Source

This article discusses the challenges of hiring a senior developer for Netflix who was passionate about open-source development. The engineer was initially enamored by presenting at external talks, but was not as enthusiastic about the internal work that went along with it. The manager had to point out that no open-source projects had ever been successful without an internal deployment that had been highly impactful and successful. Following this conversation, the engineer's attitude towards internal projects improved and the project was successfully deployed and open-sourced. The lesson learned is that it is important to bridge the philosophical divide between open-source ideals and internal requirements.

My interview coding test

This article discusses a problem the author encountered when interviewing candidates for a managerial role. The author found that the coding test they were using relied too heavily on knowledge of C/C++ and not enough on logical thinking. To address this, the author created a math-based coding test to evaluate the applicant's logical frame of mind and their reaction to mistakes. The author found that this test was a good indicator of whether or not the applicant would be a good developer.

A manager is the interface between the company vision and his team

An engineering manager was prioritizing projects that his direct reports were most excited to work on, even if they didn't contribute to the company vision. The manager was reminded that their primary job was to ensure their team was making the maximum contribution to the company vision. To ensure team success, rewards should be tied to company metrics, product team should provide more concrete goals, and cross-team building activities should be encouraged.

Keeping morale high during bankruptcy

After Kodak filed for bankruptcy in 2012, Kodak Gallery's management team was uncertain of the future of the company. To keep morale up, the team focused on a project to design a mobile-responsive website and instituted an agile process. Later, when the company was bought by Shutterfly, the team worked together to create a successful product, photo magnets, before the company shut down. This experience showed the importance of looking after team members and building camaraderie, even during difficult times.

Make sure you have efficient one-on-ones

After failing to promote an engineer, Nicole, due to not knowing her professional aspirations, the author changed the way they held one-on-ones. They now prepare for the one-on-ones, have a set of structured questions, provide performance feedback, talk less than 30% of the time, and never reschedule one-on-ones. This failure made the author realize that their one-on-ones were not efficient or productive and that they should have had career discussions and not reschedule one-on-ones.

Managing to delegate as the company grows

When the tech founders at Doctolib were taking on too much responsibility, the new arrival took steps to delegate tasks and empower the developers. This included participating in pushes with the founders, taking ownership of the push to prod, creating a checklist, and assigning a different person to push the application to production each day. This allowed the founders to take on more responsibilities and the developers to feel empowered.

Using peer feedback for a fair assessment of people and a better team culture

This article describes the process of implementing a peer feedback survey at a previous company in order to fairly assess team members. After a few rounds of feedback, the goal was to create an environment of trust and accountability, where people felt comfortable giving honest feedback to each other. The survey was successful in creating a team environment of trust and open communication, which is essential for successful teams.

How to set reasonable deadlines and get the team excited about them

In order to solve the problem of an engineering team that was loose in their process of setting sprint goals and project milestones, the leader of the team worked with the product team to create a prioritized backlog with rough estimates, mapped out week-by-week who was going to work on what, and switched to weekly sprints and a lightweight weekly sprint planning session. This enforced accountability, made engineers feel empowered, and earned trust with the rest of the organization.

When an employee’s interests don’t fit with what the team can offer.

This case study describes a situation in which a back-end engineer was not motivated by the product-oriented work of the product engineering team. Through open discussion, the engineer was placed in an infrastructure team that better suited his motivations. The takeaway is that it is important to consider team fit during the hiring process and to be honest about motivations during onboarding. Additionally, it is important to have open discussions to keep employees motivated and to prevent their performance from dropping.

Dealing with underperformance caused by a complex personal situation

A manager noticed an employee was taking a lot of sick days and not responding to the team. After a one-on-one conversation, the employee revealed he had a special needs child that was taking up a lot of his time. The manager worked with the employee to create a flexible schedule that allowed him to take care of his child and still be a reliable member of the team. This situation taught the manager the importance of empathy and proactively helping employees.

Cultural challenges when opening a new office

Stripe opened an office in Seattle and faced the challenge of recruiting people from the local area. Traditional interviewing methods were not effective, so the leader had to be creative and think of alternative methods such as creating videos and organizing meetups. The lesson learned was to not assume that what works in one place will work in another, and to take cultural differences into account.

How to deal with an employee’s drop in performance?

A remote employee's performance dropped after a successful project, and the manager wanted to fire him. After talking to the employee, it was revealed that he was missing social interaction and feeling lonely. The manager found another Google team close to the employee's location and he was hired there, resulting in a remarkable improvement in his performance.

What to focus on when taking over a team that has had five managers in two years.

This article discusses the actions taken by a manager to ensure the growth and development of a small team of test engineers. The manager took the time to have one-on-one conversations with each team member to identify personal growth goals and offered guidance on the tools they were using. As a result, when the company underwent changes, the team was able to cope with the new job requirements. The article emphasizes the importance of taking an interest in the development of team members in order to retain them.

Making the jump from individual contributor to a manager of people.

This article discusses the challenges of transitioning from an individual contributor to a management role. It explains how the author had to change their value system and learn to be a team player, taking pride in what the team could accomplish together rather than seeking personal credit. The author also found that helping team members map out and achieve their own career goals was a great way to stimulate their dopamine centres and make themselves obsolete. The article concludes by emphasizing the importance of questioning one's motives when jumping back into an individual contributor role and considering how it might affect the team.

Leading a team in a domain you are not familiar with

When inheriting a Machine Learning team, a manager must establish their own credibility in order to lead the team well. This can be done through technical competence, but also by asking the team to be mentors, being honest about not knowing something, and instigating cross-team projects. These steps enabled the manager to focus on recruiting and identify high-potentials, and the team became one of the highest performing ML teams in the company. Ultimately, a manager's effectiveness depends on their balance between warmth and strength.

Having a thoughtful interview process will help your company in the long-term

At TuneIn, the hiring process was inefficient and decisions were being made arbitrarily. To improve the process, they implemented more discipline and structure, including a casual introductory discussion, technical evaluation, take-home exercise, and onsite review. The results have been great, with more qualified candidates being hired faster, and the process has taught two lessons: to build behavioral interviewing into every step, and to think of hiring as a long-term objective.

Investing in People - Working remotely creates a shift in management mindset

After getting married and having a child, the author and his wife decided to move back to South Dakota, despite the lack of tech jobs in the area. Concur allowed the author to work remotely on a six-month probation. This led to a shift in the author's management style, where he invested more in his employees and focused on understanding their strengths and weaknesses. This shift has been successful, and the author now reports directly to the president of the company.

Unhealthy competition between two engineers

When a manager took over a new team, two freelance engineers were working on the same part of a code and had conflicting approaches. After offering them both full-time jobs, the tension between them increased. The manager took action by meeting with them one-on-one and then together to discuss the problem. It was learned that the problem was partly caused by hiring them on the same day, not investing in onboarding them, and not setting clear expectations.

Managers do not need to know everything that their reports know

When a manager is put in charge of a team responsible for internal processes, they may not understand everything their team does. In this case, the manager had to solve a problem without understanding the actual process at stake. After talking to the engineer, they created a flowchart for sales ops and the Vice President and organized a meeting to clarify how to understand commissions. The lesson learned is that the manager's role is to make sure the right conversations happen between the right people, not to actually solve all problems themselves.

What not to do with your scrum master

In this experience, the author promoted someone to the role of scrum master and attended a retro meeting. This caused the team to become quiet and the scrum master to politely suggest the author should be quiet. The author learned that the scrum master's role is to help the team become self-organized, build relationships, educate the organization about scrum, and notify managers when they are creating an anti-pattern. The author believes that the scrum master should not report to a manager, but should be able to tell their manager what to do and what not to do.

Internal Projects vs. Open-Source

This article discusses the challenges of hiring a senior developer for Netflix who was passionate about open-source development. The engineer was initially enamored by presenting at external talks, but was not as enthusiastic about the internal work that went along with it. The manager had to point out that no open-source projects had ever been successful without an internal deployment that had been highly impactful and successful. Following this conversation, the engineer's attitude towards internal projects improved and the project was successfully deployed and open-sourced. The lesson learned is that it is important to bridge the philosophical divide between open-source ideals and internal requirements.

My interview coding test

This article discusses a problem the author encountered when interviewing candidates for a managerial role. The author found that the coding test they were using relied too heavily on knowledge of C/C++ and not enough on logical thinking. To address this, the author created a math-based coding test to evaluate the applicant's logical frame of mind and their reaction to mistakes. The author found that this test was a good indicator of whether or not the applicant would be a good developer.

A manager is the interface between the company vision and his team

An engineering manager was prioritizing projects that his direct reports were most excited to work on, even if they didn't contribute to the company vision. The manager was reminded that their primary job was to ensure their team was making the maximum contribution to the company vision. To ensure team success, rewards should be tied to company metrics, product team should provide more concrete goals, and cross-team building activities should be encouraged.

Keeping morale high during bankruptcy

After Kodak filed for bankruptcy in 2012, Kodak Gallery's management team was uncertain of the future of the company. To keep morale up, the team focused on a project to design a mobile-responsive website and instituted an agile process. Later, when the company was bought by Shutterfly, the team worked together to create a successful product, photo magnets, before the company shut down. This experience showed the importance of looking after team members and building camaraderie, even during difficult times.

Make sure you have efficient one-on-ones

After failing to promote an engineer, Nicole, due to not knowing her professional aspirations, the author changed the way they held one-on-ones. They now prepare for the one-on-ones, have a set of structured questions, provide performance feedback, talk less than 30% of the time, and never reschedule one-on-ones. This failure made the author realize that their one-on-ones were not efficient or productive and that they should have had career discussions and not reschedule one-on-ones.

Managing to delegate as the company grows

When the tech founders at Doctolib were taking on too much responsibility, the new arrival took steps to delegate tasks and empower the developers. This included participating in pushes with the founders, taking ownership of the push to prod, creating a checklist, and assigning a different person to push the application to production each day. This allowed the founders to take on more responsibilities and the developers to feel empowered.

Using peer feedback for a fair assessment of people and a better team culture

This article describes the process of implementing a peer feedback survey at a previous company in order to fairly assess team members. After a few rounds of feedback, the goal was to create an environment of trust and accountability, where people felt comfortable giving honest feedback to each other. The survey was successful in creating a team environment of trust and open communication, which is essential for successful teams.

How to set reasonable deadlines and get the team excited about them

In order to solve the problem of an engineering team that was loose in their process of setting sprint goals and project milestones, the leader of the team worked with the product team to create a prioritized backlog with rough estimates, mapped out week-by-week who was going to work on what, and switched to weekly sprints and a lightweight weekly sprint planning session. This enforced accountability, made engineers feel empowered, and earned trust with the rest of the organization.

When an employee’s interests don’t fit with what the team can offer.

This case study describes a situation in which a back-end engineer was not motivated by the product-oriented work of the product engineering team. Through open discussion, the engineer was placed in an infrastructure team that better suited his motivations. The takeaway is that it is important to consider team fit during the hiring process and to be honest about motivations during onboarding. Additionally, it is important to have open discussions to keep employees motivated and to prevent their performance from dropping.

Dealing with underperformance caused by a complex personal situation

A manager noticed an employee was taking a lot of sick days and not responding to the team. After a one-on-one conversation, the employee revealed he had a special needs child that was taking up a lot of his time. The manager worked with the employee to create a flexible schedule that allowed him to take care of his child and still be a reliable member of the team. This situation taught the manager the importance of empathy and proactively helping employees.

Cultural challenges when opening a new office

Stripe opened an office in Seattle and faced the challenge of recruiting people from the local area. Traditional interviewing methods were not effective, so the leader had to be creative and think of alternative methods such as creating videos and organizing meetups. The lesson learned was to not assume that what works in one place will work in another, and to take cultural differences into account.

How to deal with an employee’s drop in performance?

A remote employee's performance dropped after a successful project, and the manager wanted to fire him. After talking to the employee, it was revealed that he was missing social interaction and feeling lonely. The manager found another Google team close to the employee's location and he was hired there, resulting in a remarkable improvement in his performance.

What to focus on when taking over a team that has had five managers in two years.

This article discusses the actions taken by a manager to ensure the growth and development of a small team of test engineers. The manager took the time to have one-on-one conversations with each team member to identify personal growth goals and offered guidance on the tools they were using. As a result, when the company underwent changes, the team was able to cope with the new job requirements. The article emphasizes the importance of taking an interest in the development of team members in order to retain them.

Making the jump from individual contributor to a manager of people.

This article discusses the challenges of transitioning from an individual contributor to a management role. It explains how the author had to change their value system and learn to be a team player, taking pride in what the team could accomplish together rather than seeking personal credit. The author also found that helping team members map out and achieve their own career goals was a great way to stimulate their dopamine centres and make themselves obsolete. The article concludes by emphasizing the importance of questioning one's motives when jumping back into an individual contributor role and considering how it might affect the team.

Leading a team in a domain you are not familiar with

When inheriting a Machine Learning team, a manager must establish their own credibility in order to lead the team well. This can be done through technical competence, but also by asking the team to be mentors, being honest about not knowing something, and instigating cross-team projects. These steps enabled the manager to focus on recruiting and identify high-potentials, and the team became one of the highest performing ML teams in the company. Ultimately, a manager's effectiveness depends on their balance between warmth and strength.

Having a thoughtful interview process will help your company in the long-term

At TuneIn, the hiring process was inefficient and decisions were being made arbitrarily. To improve the process, they implemented more discipline and structure, including a casual introductory discussion, technical evaluation, take-home exercise, and onsite review. The results have been great, with more qualified candidates being hired faster, and the process has taught two lessons: to build behavioral interviewing into every step, and to think of hiring as a long-term objective.

Investing in People - Working remotely creates a shift in management mindset

After getting married and having a child, the author and his wife decided to move back to South Dakota, despite the lack of tech jobs in the area. Concur allowed the author to work remotely on a six-month probation. This led to a shift in the author's management style, where he invested more in his employees and focused on understanding their strengths and weaknesses. This shift has been successful, and the author now reports directly to the president of the company.

Unhealthy competition between two engineers

When a manager took over a new team, two freelance engineers were working on the same part of a code and had conflicting approaches. After offering them both full-time jobs, the tension between them increased. The manager took action by meeting with them one-on-one and then together to discuss the problem. It was learned that the problem was partly caused by hiring them on the same day, not investing in onboarding them, and not setting clear expectations.

Managers do not need to know everything that their reports know

When a manager is put in charge of a team responsible for internal processes, they may not understand everything their team does. In this case, the manager had to solve a problem without understanding the actual process at stake. After talking to the engineer, they created a flowchart for sales ops and the Vice President and organized a meeting to clarify how to understand commissions. The lesson learned is that the manager's role is to make sure the right conversations happen between the right people, not to actually solve all problems themselves.

What not to do with your scrum master

In this experience, the author promoted someone to the role of scrum master and attended a retro meeting. This caused the team to become quiet and the scrum master to politely suggest the author should be quiet. The author learned that the scrum master's role is to help the team become self-organized, build relationships, educate the organization about scrum, and notify managers when they are creating an anti-pattern. The author believes that the scrum master should not report to a manager, but should be able to tell their manager what to do and what not to do.

Internal Projects vs. Open-Source

This article discusses the challenges of hiring a senior developer for Netflix who was passionate about open-source development. The engineer was initially enamored by presenting at external talks, but was not as enthusiastic about the internal work that went along with it. The manager had to point out that no open-source projects had ever been successful without an internal deployment that had been highly impactful and successful. Following this conversation, the engineer's attitude towards internal projects improved and the project was successfully deployed and open-sourced. The lesson learned is that it is important to bridge the philosophical divide between open-source ideals and internal requirements.

My interview coding test

This article discusses a problem the author encountered when interviewing candidates for a managerial role. The author found that the coding test they were using relied too heavily on knowledge of C/C++ and not enough on logical thinking. To address this, the author created a math-based coding test to evaluate the applicant's logical frame of mind and their reaction to mistakes. The author found that this test was a good indicator of whether or not the applicant would be a good developer.

A manager is the interface between the company vision and his team

An engineering manager was prioritizing projects that his direct reports were most excited to work on, even if they didn't contribute to the company vision. The manager was reminded that their primary job was to ensure their team was making the maximum contribution to the company vision. To ensure team success, rewards should be tied to company metrics, product team should provide more concrete goals, and cross-team building activities should be encouraged.

Keeping morale high during bankruptcy

After Kodak filed for bankruptcy in 2012, Kodak Gallery's management team was uncertain of the future of the company. To keep morale up, the team focused on a project to design a mobile-responsive website and instituted an agile process. Later, when the company was bought by Shutterfly, the team worked together to create a successful product, photo magnets, before the company shut down. This experience showed the importance of looking after team members and building camaraderie, even during difficult times.

Make sure you have efficient one-on-ones

After failing to promote an engineer, Nicole, due to not knowing her professional aspirations, the author changed the way they held one-on-ones. They now prepare for the one-on-ones, have a set of structured questions, provide performance feedback, talk less than 30% of the time, and never reschedule one-on-ones. This failure made the author realize that their one-on-ones were not efficient or productive and that they should have had career discussions and not reschedule one-on-ones.

Managing to delegate as the company grows

When the tech founders at Doctolib were taking on too much responsibility, the new arrival took steps to delegate tasks and empower the developers. This included participating in pushes with the founders, taking ownership of the push to prod, creating a checklist, and assigning a different person to push the application to production each day. This allowed the founders to take on more responsibilities and the developers to feel empowered.

Using peer feedback for a fair assessment of people and a better team culture

This article describes the process of implementing a peer feedback survey at a previous company in order to fairly assess team members. After a few rounds of feedback, the goal was to create an environment of trust and accountability, where people felt comfortable giving honest feedback to each other. The survey was successful in creating a team environment of trust and open communication, which is essential for successful teams.

How to set reasonable deadlines and get the team excited about them

In order to solve the problem of an engineering team that was loose in their process of setting sprint goals and project milestones, the leader of the team worked with the product team to create a prioritized backlog with rough estimates, mapped out week-by-week who was going to work on what, and switched to weekly sprints and a lightweight weekly sprint planning session. This enforced accountability, made engineers feel empowered, and earned trust with the rest of the organization.

When an employee’s interests don’t fit with what the team can offer.

This case study describes a situation in which a back-end engineer was not motivated by the product-oriented work of the product engineering team. Through open discussion, the engineer was placed in an infrastructure team that better suited his motivations. The takeaway is that it is important to consider team fit during the hiring process and to be honest about motivations during onboarding. Additionally, it is important to have open discussions to keep employees motivated and to prevent their performance from dropping.

Dealing with underperformance caused by a complex personal situation

A manager noticed an employee was taking a lot of sick days and not responding to the team. After a one-on-one conversation, the employee revealed he had a special needs child that was taking up a lot of his time. The manager worked with the employee to create a flexible schedule that allowed him to take care of his child and still be a reliable member of the team. This situation taught the manager the importance of empathy and proactively helping employees.

Cultural challenges when opening a new office

Stripe opened an office in Seattle and faced the challenge of recruiting people from the local area. Traditional interviewing methods were not effective, so the leader had to be creative and think of alternative methods such as creating videos and organizing meetups. The lesson learned was to not assume that what works in one place will work in another, and to take cultural differences into account.

How to deal with an employee’s drop in performance?

A remote employee's performance dropped after a successful project, and the manager wanted to fire him. After talking to the employee, it was revealed that he was missing social interaction and feeling lonely. The manager found another Google team close to the employee's location and he was hired there, resulting in a remarkable improvement in his performance.

What to focus on when taking over a team that has had five managers in two years.

This article discusses the actions taken by a manager to ensure the growth and development of a small team of test engineers. The manager took the time to have one-on-one conversations with each team member to identify personal growth goals and offered guidance on the tools they were using. As a result, when the company underwent changes, the team was able to cope with the new job requirements. The article emphasizes the importance of taking an interest in the development of team members in order to retain them.

Making the jump from individual contributor to a manager of people.

This article discusses the challenges of transitioning from an individual contributor to a management role. It explains how the author had to change their value system and learn to be a team player, taking pride in what the team could accomplish together rather than seeking personal credit. The author also found that helping team members map out and achieve their own career goals was a great way to stimulate their dopamine centres and make themselves obsolete. The article concludes by emphasizing the importance of questioning one's motives when jumping back into an individual contributor role and considering how it might affect the team.

Leading a team in a domain you are not familiar with

When inheriting a Machine Learning team, a manager must establish their own credibility in order to lead the team well. This can be done through technical competence, but also by asking the team to be mentors, being honest about not knowing something, and instigating cross-team projects. These steps enabled the manager to focus on recruiting and identify high-potentials, and the team became one of the highest performing ML teams in the company. Ultimately, a manager's effectiveness depends on their balance between warmth and strength.

Having a thoughtful interview process will help your company in the long-term

At TuneIn, the hiring process was inefficient and decisions were being made arbitrarily. To improve the process, they implemented more discipline and structure, including a casual introductory discussion, technical evaluation, take-home exercise, and onsite review. The results have been great, with more qualified candidates being hired faster, and the process has taught two lessons: to build behavioral interviewing into every step, and to think of hiring as a long-term objective.

Investing in People - Working remotely creates a shift in management mindset

After getting married and having a child, the author and his wife decided to move back to South Dakota, despite the lack of tech jobs in the area. Concur allowed the author to work remotely on a six-month probation. This led to a shift in the author's management style, where he invested more in his employees and focused on understanding their strengths and weaknesses. This shift has been successful, and the author now reports directly to the president of the company.

Unhealthy competition between two engineers

When a manager took over a new team, two freelance engineers were working on the same part of a code and had conflicting approaches. After offering them both full-time jobs, the tension between them increased. The manager took action by meeting with them one-on-one and then together to discuss the problem. It was learned that the problem was partly caused by hiring them on the same day, not investing in onboarding them, and not setting clear expectations.

Managers do not need to know everything that their reports know

When a manager is put in charge of a team responsible for internal processes, they may not understand everything their team does. In this case, the manager had to solve a problem without understanding the actual process at stake. After talking to the engineer, they created a flowchart for sales ops and the Vice President and organized a meeting to clarify how to understand commissions. The lesson learned is that the manager's role is to make sure the right conversations happen between the right people, not to actually solve all problems themselves.

What not to do with your scrum master

In this experience, the author promoted someone to the role of scrum master and attended a retro meeting. This caused the team to become quiet and the scrum master to politely suggest the author should be quiet. The author learned that the scrum master's role is to help the team become self-organized, build relationships, educate the organization about scrum, and notify managers when they are creating an anti-pattern. The author believes that the scrum master should not report to a manager, but should be able to tell their manager what to do and what not to do.

Internal Projects vs. Open-Source

This article discusses the challenges of hiring a senior developer for Netflix who was passionate about open-source development. The engineer was initially enamored by presenting at external talks, but was not as enthusiastic about the internal work that went along with it. The manager had to point out that no open-source projects had ever been successful without an internal deployment that had been highly impactful and successful. Following this conversation, the engineer's attitude towards internal projects improved and the project was successfully deployed and open-sourced. The lesson learned is that it is important to bridge the philosophical divide between open-source ideals and internal requirements.

My interview coding test

This article discusses a problem the author encountered when interviewing candidates for a managerial role. The author found that the coding test they were using relied too heavily on knowledge of C/C++ and not enough on logical thinking. To address this, the author created a math-based coding test to evaluate the applicant's logical frame of mind and their reaction to mistakes. The author found that this test was a good indicator of whether or not the applicant would be a good developer.

A manager is the interface between the company vision and his team

An engineering manager was prioritizing projects that his direct reports were most excited to work on, even if they didn't contribute to the company vision. The manager was reminded that their primary job was to ensure their team was making the maximum contribution to the company vision. To ensure team success, rewards should be tied to company metrics, product team should provide more concrete goals, and cross-team building activities should be encouraged.

Keeping morale high during bankruptcy

After Kodak filed for bankruptcy in 2012, Kodak Gallery's management team was uncertain of the future of the company. To keep morale up, the team focused on a project to design a mobile-responsive website and instituted an agile process. Later, when the company was bought by Shutterfly, the team worked together to create a successful product, photo magnets, before the company shut down. This experience showed the importance of looking after team members and building camaraderie, even during difficult times.

Make sure you have efficient one-on-ones

After failing to promote an engineer, Nicole, due to not knowing her professional aspirations, the author changed the way they held one-on-ones. They now prepare for the one-on-ones, have a set of structured questions, provide performance feedback, talk less than 30% of the time, and never reschedule one-on-ones. This failure made the author realize that their one-on-ones were not efficient or productive and that they should have had career discussions and not reschedule one-on-ones.

Managing to delegate as the company grows

When the tech founders at Doctolib were taking on too much responsibility, the new arrival took steps to delegate tasks and empower the developers. This included participating in pushes with the founders, taking ownership of the push to prod, creating a checklist, and assigning a different person to push the application to production each day. This allowed the founders to take on more responsibilities and the developers to feel empowered.

Using peer feedback for a fair assessment of people and a better team culture

This article describes the process of implementing a peer feedback survey at a previous company in order to fairly assess team members. After a few rounds of feedback, the goal was to create an environment of trust and accountability, where people felt comfortable giving honest feedback to each other. The survey was successful in creating a team environment of trust and open communication, which is essential for successful teams.

How to set reasonable deadlines and get the team excited about them

In order to solve the problem of an engineering team that was loose in their process of setting sprint goals and project milestones, the leader of the team worked with the product team to create a prioritized backlog with rough estimates, mapped out week-by-week who was going to work on what, and switched to weekly sprints and a lightweight weekly sprint planning session. This enforced accountability, made engineers feel empowered, and earned trust with the rest of the organization.

When an employee’s interests don’t fit with what the team can offer.

This case study describes a situation in which a back-end engineer was not motivated by the product-oriented work of the product engineering team. Through open discussion, the engineer was placed in an infrastructure team that better suited his motivations. The takeaway is that it is important to consider team fit during the hiring process and to be honest about motivations during onboarding. Additionally, it is important to have open discussions to keep employees motivated and to prevent their performance from dropping.

Dealing with underperformance caused by a complex personal situation

A manager noticed an employee was taking a lot of sick days and not responding to the team. After a one-on-one conversation, the employee revealed he had a special needs child that was taking up a lot of his time. The manager worked with the employee to create a flexible schedule that allowed him to take care of his child and still be a reliable member of the team. This situation taught the manager the importance of empathy and proactively helping employees.

Cultural challenges when opening a new office

Stripe opened an office in Seattle and faced the challenge of recruiting people from the local area. Traditional interviewing methods were not effective, so the leader had to be creative and think of alternative methods such as creating videos and organizing meetups. The lesson learned was to not assume that what works in one place will work in another, and to take cultural differences into account.

How to deal with an employee’s drop in performance?

A remote employee's performance dropped after a successful project, and the manager wanted to fire him. After talking to the employee, it was revealed that he was missing social interaction and feeling lonely. The manager found another Google team close to the employee's location and he was hired there, resulting in a remarkable improvement in his performance.

What to focus on when taking over a team that has had five managers in two years.

This article discusses the actions taken by a manager to ensure the growth and development of a small team of test engineers. The manager took the time to have one-on-one conversations with each team member to identify personal growth goals and offered guidance on the tools they were using. As a result, when the company underwent changes, the team was able to cope with the new job requirements. The article emphasizes the importance of taking an interest in the development of team members in order to retain them.

Making the jump from individual contributor to a manager of people.

This article discusses the challenges of transitioning from an individual contributor to a management role. It explains how the author had to change their value system and learn to be a team player, taking pride in what the team could accomplish together rather than seeking personal credit. The author also found that helping team members map out and achieve their own career goals was a great way to stimulate their dopamine centres and make themselves obsolete. The article concludes by emphasizing the importance of questioning one's motives when jumping back into an individual contributor role and considering how it might affect the team.

Leading a team in a domain you are not familiar with

When inheriting a Machine Learning team, a manager must establish their own credibility in order to lead the team well. This can be done through technical competence, but also by asking the team to be mentors, being honest about not knowing something, and instigating cross-team projects. These steps enabled the manager to focus on recruiting and identify high-potentials, and the team became one of the highest performing ML teams in the company. Ultimately, a manager's effectiveness depends on their balance between warmth and strength.

Having a thoughtful interview process will help your company in the long-term

At TuneIn, the hiring process was inefficient and decisions were being made arbitrarily. To improve the process, they implemented more discipline and structure, including a casual introductory discussion, technical evaluation, take-home exercise, and onsite review. The results have been great, with more qualified candidates being hired faster, and the process has taught two lessons: to build behavioral interviewing into every step, and to think of hiring as a long-term objective.

Investing in People - Working remotely creates a shift in management mindset

After getting married and having a child, the author and his wife decided to move back to South Dakota, despite the lack of tech jobs in the area. Concur allowed the author to work remotely on a six-month probation. This led to a shift in the author's management style, where he invested more in his employees and focused on understanding their strengths and weaknesses. This shift has been successful, and the author now reports directly to the president of the company.

Unhealthy competition between two engineers

When a manager took over a new team, two freelance engineers were working on the same part of a code and had conflicting approaches. After offering them both full-time jobs, the tension between them increased. The manager took action by meeting with them one-on-one and then together to discuss the problem. It was learned that the problem was partly caused by hiring them on the same day, not investing in onboarding them, and not setting clear expectations.

Managers do not need to know everything that their reports know

When a manager is put in charge of a team responsible for internal processes, they may not understand everything their team does. In this case, the manager had to solve a problem without understanding the actual process at stake. After talking to the engineer, they created a flowchart for sales ops and the Vice President and organized a meeting to clarify how to understand commissions. The lesson learned is that the manager's role is to make sure the right conversations happen between the right people, not to actually solve all problems themselves.

What not to do with your scrum master

In this experience, the author promoted someone to the role of scrum master and attended a retro meeting. This caused the team to become quiet and the scrum master to politely suggest the author should be quiet. The author learned that the scrum master's role is to help the team become self-organized, build relationships, educate the organization about scrum, and notify managers when they are creating an anti-pattern. The author believes that the scrum master should not report to a manager, but should be able to tell their manager what to do and what not to do.

Internal Projects vs. Open-Source

This article discusses the challenges of hiring a senior developer for Netflix who was passionate about open-source development. The engineer was initially enamored by presenting at external talks, but was not as enthusiastic about the internal work that went along with it. The manager had to point out that no open-source projects had ever been successful without an internal deployment that had been highly impactful and successful. Following this conversation, the engineer's attitude towards internal projects improved and the project was successfully deployed and open-sourced. The lesson learned is that it is important to bridge the philosophical divide between open-source ideals and internal requirements.

My interview coding test

This article discusses a problem the author encountered when interviewing candidates for a managerial role. The author found that the coding test they were using relied too heavily on knowledge of C/C++ and not enough on logical thinking. To address this, the author created a math-based coding test to evaluate the applicant's logical frame of mind and their reaction to mistakes. The author found that this test was a good indicator of whether or not the applicant would be a good developer.

A manager is the interface between the company vision and his team

An engineering manager was prioritizing projects that his direct reports were most excited to work on, even if they didn't contribute to the company vision. The manager was reminded that their primary job was to ensure their team was making the maximum contribution to the company vision. To ensure team success, rewards should be tied to company metrics, product team should provide more concrete goals, and cross-team building activities should be encouraged.

Keeping morale high during bankruptcy

After Kodak filed for bankruptcy in 2012, Kodak Gallery's management team was uncertain of the future of the company. To keep morale up, the team focused on a project to design a mobile-responsive website and instituted an agile process. Later, when the company was bought by Shutterfly, the team worked together to create a successful product, photo magnets, before the company shut down. This experience showed the importance of looking after team members and building camaraderie, even during difficult times.

Make sure you have efficient one-on-ones

After failing to promote an engineer, Nicole, due to not knowing her professional aspirations, the author changed the way they held one-on-ones. They now prepare for the one-on-ones, have a set of structured questions, provide performance feedback, talk less than 30% of the time, and never reschedule one-on-ones. This failure made the author realize that their one-on-ones were not efficient or productive and that they should have had career discussions and not reschedule one-on-ones.

Managing to delegate as the company grows

When the tech founders at Doctolib were taking on too much responsibility, the new arrival took steps to delegate tasks and empower the developers. This included participating in pushes with the founders, taking ownership of the push to prod, creating a checklist, and assigning a different person to push the application to production each day. This allowed the founders to take on more responsibilities and the developers to feel empowered.

Using peer feedback for a fair assessment of people and a better team culture

This article describes the process of implementing a peer feedback survey at a previous company in order to fairly assess team members. After a few rounds of feedback, the goal was to create an environment of trust and accountability, where people felt comfortable giving honest feedback to each other. The survey was successful in creating a team environment of trust and open communication, which is essential for successful teams.

How to set reasonable deadlines and get the team excited about them

In order to solve the problem of an engineering team that was loose in their process of setting sprint goals and project milestones, the leader of the team worked with the product team to create a prioritized backlog with rough estimates, mapped out week-by-week who was going to work on what, and switched to weekly sprints and a lightweight weekly sprint planning session. This enforced accountability, made engineers feel empowered, and earned trust with the rest of the organization.

When an employee’s interests don’t fit with what the team can offer.

This case study describes a situation in which a back-end engineer was not motivated by the product-oriented work of the product engineering team. Through open discussion, the engineer was placed in an infrastructure team that better suited his motivations. The takeaway is that it is important to consider team fit during the hiring process and to be honest about motivations during onboarding. Additionally, it is important to have open discussions to keep employees motivated and to prevent their performance from dropping.

Dealing with underperformance caused by a complex personal situation

A manager noticed an employee was taking a lot of sick days and not responding to the team. After a one-on-one conversation, the employee revealed he had a special needs child that was taking up a lot of his time. The manager worked with the employee to create a flexible schedule that allowed him to take care of his child and still be a reliable member of the team. This situation taught the manager the importance of empathy and proactively helping employees.

Cultural challenges when opening a new office

Stripe opened an office in Seattle and faced the challenge of recruiting people from the local area. Traditional interviewing methods were not effective, so the leader had to be creative and think of alternative methods such as creating videos and organizing meetups. The lesson learned was to not assume that what works in one place will work in another, and to take cultural differences into account.

How to deal with an employee’s drop in performance?

A remote employee's performance dropped after a successful project, and the manager wanted to fire him. After talking to the employee, it was revealed that he was missing social interaction and feeling lonely. The manager found another Google team close to the employee's location and he was hired there, resulting in a remarkable improvement in his performance.

What to focus on when taking over a team that has had five managers in two years.

This article discusses the actions taken by a manager to ensure the growth and development of a small team of test engineers. The manager took the time to have one-on-one conversations with each team member to identify personal growth goals and offered guidance on the tools they were using. As a result, when the company underwent changes, the team was able to cope with the new job requirements. The article emphasizes the importance of taking an interest in the development of team members in order to retain them.

Making the jump from individual contributor to a manager of people.

This article discusses the challenges of transitioning from an individual contributor to a management role. It explains how the author had to change their value system and learn to be a team player, taking pride in what the team could accomplish together rather than seeking personal credit. The author also found that helping team members map out and achieve their own career goals was a great way to stimulate their dopamine centres and make themselves obsolete. The article concludes by emphasizing the importance of questioning one's motives when jumping back into an individual contributor role and considering how it might affect the team.

Leading a team in a domain you are not familiar with

When inheriting a Machine Learning team, a manager must establish their own credibility in order to lead the team well. This can be done through technical competence, but also by asking the team to be mentors, being honest about not knowing something, and instigating cross-team projects. These steps enabled the manager to focus on recruiting and identify high-potentials, and the team became one of the highest performing ML teams in the company. Ultimately, a manager's effectiveness depends on their balance between warmth and strength.

Having a thoughtful interview process will help your company in the long-term

At TuneIn, the hiring process was inefficient and decisions were being made arbitrarily. To improve the process, they implemented more discipline and structure, including a casual introductory discussion, technical evaluation, take-home exercise, and onsite review. The results have been great, with more qualified candidates being hired faster, and the process has taught two lessons: to build behavioral interviewing into every step, and to think of hiring as a long-term objective.

Investing in People - Working remotely creates a shift in management mindset

After getting married and having a child, the author and his wife decided to move back to South Dakota, despite the lack of tech jobs in the area. Concur allowed the author to work remotely on a six-month probation. This led to a shift in the author's management style, where he invested more in his employees and focused on understanding their strengths and weaknesses. This shift has been successful, and the author now reports directly to the president of the company.

Unhealthy competition between two engineers

When a manager took over a new team, two freelance engineers were working on the same part of a code and had conflicting approaches. After offering them both full-time jobs, the tension between them increased. The manager took action by meeting with them one-on-one and then together to discuss the problem. It was learned that the problem was partly caused by hiring them on the same day, not investing in onboarding them, and not setting clear expectations.

Managers do not need to know everything that their reports know

When a manager is put in charge of a team responsible for internal processes, they may not understand everything their team does. In this case, the manager had to solve a problem without understanding the actual process at stake. After talking to the engineer, they created a flowchart for sales ops and the Vice President and organized a meeting to clarify how to understand commissions. The lesson learned is that the manager's role is to make sure the right conversations happen between the right people, not to actually solve all problems themselves.

What not to do with your scrum master

In this experience, the author promoted someone to the role of scrum master and attended a retro meeting. This caused the team to become quiet and the scrum master to politely suggest the author should be quiet. The author learned that the scrum master's role is to help the team become self-organized, build relationships, educate the organization about scrum, and notify managers when they are creating an anti-pattern. The author believes that the scrum master should not report to a manager, but should be able to tell their manager what to do and what not to do.

Internal Projects vs. Open-Source

This article discusses the challenges of hiring a senior developer for Netflix who was passionate about open-source development. The engineer was initially enamored by presenting at external talks, but was not as enthusiastic about the internal work that went along with it. The manager had to point out that no open-source projects had ever been successful without an internal deployment that had been highly impactful and successful. Following this conversation, the engineer's attitude towards internal projects improved and the project was successfully deployed and open-sourced. The lesson learned is that it is important to bridge the philosophical divide between open-source ideals and internal requirements.

My interview coding test

This article discusses a problem the author encountered when interviewing candidates for a managerial role. The author found that the coding test they were using relied too heavily on knowledge of C/C++ and not enough on logical thinking. To address this, the author created a math-based coding test to evaluate the applicant's logical frame of mind and their reaction to mistakes. The author found that this test was a good indicator of whether or not the applicant would be a good developer.

A manager is the interface between the company vision and his team

An engineering manager was prioritizing projects that his direct reports were most excited to work on, even if they didn't contribute to the company vision. The manager was reminded that their primary job was to ensure their team was making the maximum contribution to the company vision. To ensure team success, rewards should be tied to company metrics, product team should provide more concrete goals, and cross-team building activities should be encouraged.

Keeping morale high during bankruptcy

After Kodak filed for bankruptcy in 2012, Kodak Gallery's management team was uncertain of the future of the company. To keep morale up, the team focused on a project to design a mobile-responsive website and instituted an agile process. Later, when the company was bought by Shutterfly, the team worked together to create a successful product, photo magnets, before the company shut down. This experience showed the importance of looking after team members and building camaraderie, even during difficult times.

Make sure you have efficient one-on-ones

After failing to promote an engineer, Nicole, due to not knowing her professional aspirations, the author changed the way they held one-on-ones. They now prepare for the one-on-ones, have a set of structured questions, provide performance feedback, talk less than 30% of the time, and never reschedule one-on-ones. This failure made the author realize that their one-on-ones were not efficient or productive and that they should have had career discussions and not reschedule one-on-ones.

Managing to delegate as the company grows

When the tech founders at Doctolib were taking on too much responsibility, the new arrival took steps to delegate tasks and empower the developers. This included participating in pushes with the founders, taking ownership of the push to prod, creating a checklist, and assigning a different person to push the application to production each day. This allowed the founders to take on more responsibilities and the developers to feel empowered.

Using peer feedback for a fair assessment of people and a better team culture

This article describes the process of implementing a peer feedback survey at a previous company in order to fairly assess team members. After a few rounds of feedback, the goal was to create an environment of trust and accountability, where people felt comfortable giving honest feedback to each other. The survey was successful in creating a team environment of trust and open communication, which is essential for successful teams.

How to set reasonable deadlines and get the team excited about them

In order to solve the problem of an engineering team that was loose in their process of setting sprint goals and project milestones, the leader of the team worked with the product team to create a prioritized backlog with rough estimates, mapped out week-by-week who was going to work on what, and switched to weekly sprints and a lightweight weekly sprint planning session. This enforced accountability, made engineers feel empowered, and earned trust with the rest of the organization.