Knowledge shared by our community

Developing a Rewards and Recognition Program

This article discusses a problem faced by many engineering organizations: lack of appreciation for engineers. To address this, a Rewards and Recognition Core Committee was formed to identify criteria for rewards and recognition and to introduce programs such as the Thank You Award and Spot Awards. It was found that connecting rewards and recognition to organizational values was key to success, and that adoption of the program was essential. The article also provides lessons learned from the experience.

From Zero From the First 20 Customers

A small cross-functional team was tasked with finding a solution to measure the usefulness and effectiveness of educational technology used in the classroom. To do this, the team used a streamlined process that included interviews with school districts, weekly brainstorming sessions, and daily discussions to estimate how confident they were in achieving their goals. Through this process, they were able to create a solution that allowed school districts to roll out a piece of technology to all of their devices. The team learned that trust in the team to own outcomes instead of tasks, getting close to customers, focusing on a few objectives, and planning for the transition from iterative to specialized projects are all important for success.

Managing Expectations on a Highly Visible Project

This project was aimed at improving the Netflix recommendation system by taking into account user browsing habits in real-time. To manage expectations and deliver features timely, the project manager talked to users and teams to understand the most common use cases and prioritize them. A proof of concept was built and demoed to users to get feedback. The project manager also built a tool to make the raw data more visually appealing. Lessons learned included using a less adopted technology with caution, building for scale from day one, and starting integrations early on.

Deciding to Build Vs. Leverage

As a technical lead, the author faced the dilemma of building a solution from scratch or leveraging existing technology or framework to solve the business problem. To make the decision, the author took various actions such as ensuring the available solutions met all the functional requirements of the business, fitting the solution well for the long-term strategy and scaling well for the business, doing a holistic analysis of the potential solutions in terms of the overall cost to the business, reviewing the security, privacy, and compliance requirements, and understanding the support offered by vendors or open-source solutions. The author learned that building an in-house solution with engineering teams is the most optimal way to solve the problem, to keep up to date with the latest trends, frameworks, and technologies, to have a deep understanding of the internal tools, platforms and infrastructure, and to prototype potential solutions against known use-cases and evaluate them on a standard set of metrics.

Short-Term Vs. Long-Term Hiring

When hiring for a fast-paced startup, it is important to think long-term and be transparent about expectations. Managers should consider how a role may evolve in the next 12-18 months and share this with potential candidates. It is also important to be honest about any uncertainty and to look for candidates who are comfortable with change and can adapt easily.

How Do Set Clear Hiring Expectations

Hiring in startups requires setting clear expectations from the start. To avoid misalignment, the manager should be explicit about the company mission and objectives before the new hire joins, and ask what success looks like in three months. Communication is key to managing expectations, and it should involve other people and have a paper trail. Repetition is important to ensure everyone is on the same page.

Managing Experienced People

Managing people of different seniority, experience, and competencies is a challenge for first-time managers. When managing junior people, it is important to provide direct guidance and protect them from ambiguity. When managing senior people, it is important to provide context and feedback, and to give them visibility and recognition for their individual efforts. It is also important to let people fail and learn from their failures, but with juniors, failures need to be highly controlled.

How Smart Managers Deal With Toxic Employees

This article discusses the problem of toxic employees and how to manage them. The author explains that coaching and understanding the person's motivations can help to identify if they are in the right role. If not, the author suggests finding a new role for them within the organization or creating redundancy. The author also shares lessons learned from their experience, such as the importance of coaching, managing out toxic people, and having a paper trail of communication.

Secrets to Finding Niche Talents

This article discusses the challenges of scaling a team from 4 to 20 people in a short period of time while responding to business needs. It outlines the actions taken to recruit highly skilled and senior talent in a niche field, such as the video game industry, and the lessons learned from the experience. These lessons include the importance of transparency when approaching highly skilled professionals, the value of referrals for high-quality talent, the need to look beyond compensation when making offers, and the importance of engaging and motivating employees.

How to Grow at Work

This article discusses the journey of a tech industry leader who rose from an individual contributor role to a leader role. It outlines the steps taken to achieve this, such as being proactive, helping teammates, and delegating tasks. It also emphasizes the importance of having a documented career plan and understanding the flow of money, profit and loss, and growth. Finally, it highlights the importance of creating a psychologically safe space for team members to share their concerns and aspirations, and building trust with the manager.

Finding a Balance Between Staying Hands-On and Letting Things Go

This article discusses the dilemma of balancing delegation and staying hands-on as a manager. The author suggests pair programming, assigning roles during incidents, and encouraging autonomy as ways to strike a balance. They also emphasize the importance of understanding the team's workflow and connecting with them. Lastly, they recommend the book Herding Tigers: Be the Leader That Creative People Need by Todd Henry.

Helping Ramp Up Teamwork

As an Engineering Manager, the author is dedicated to helping their team unlock their hidden potential and improve their internal communication and collaboration. To do this, they coach their reports on how to better articulate their thoughts in standups, listen to their peers, and offer help. They also encourage empathy and understanding of different backgrounds and mindsets, as well as the importance of context.

Finding the Right Office Space for a Startup

A startup moved to West Lafayette, Indiana, and rented a highrise office space with sleek interiors, but soon realized it was too expensive and not necessary for their needs. After consulting the team, they moved to a more affordable space that was better suited for their needs. The lesson learned was to focus on internal growth and invest in an office space that works for the team, not to impress anyone else.

Fundraising in the Midwest

A successful startup founder and CEO encountered difficulty fundraising in the Midwest, as the region values profitability and long-term runway over moonshot-based investing. With the help of investors, they adjusted their pitch and strategy to fit the Midwest approach, and ultimately decided to stay and build their business in the Midwest. They learned that fundraising varies from one region to another, and that it is important to explore different approaches. They also learned the value of having investors with shared values, and shifted their fundraising to Midwest investors.

Being a Manager from Scratch

This article discusses the challenges of becoming a manager from scratch, such as building relationships with new people, earning the team's trust, and learning the landscape of stakeholders. The author shares the actions they took to overcome these challenges, such as reshuffling the team, rolling up their sleeves and helping with regular IC work, and mapping out people from other departments. The article also highlights the lessons learned, such as being prepared for situations when you are on your own, having a plan, and earning the trust of your reports.

Enhancing Communication in Distributed Development

This article discusses the challenges of managing a development team with members located in different time zones and with varying levels of English proficiency. The author implemented a number of changes to simplify communication and improve collaboration, such as centralizing information, simplifying Jira processes, and encouraging documentation. These changes resulted in improved communication and reduced time spent on communication. The author also provides lessons learned, such as the importance of simplifying communication, centralizing communication, and keeping things simple.

Involving QA in the Development Process

This article discusses the relationship between QA and development and how it can take many shapes and forms. The author suggests that the most effective approach is to have QA join the development team from the start, as this will increase development velocity and product quality, as well as increase QA engagement. The article also suggests that QA should be included in all processes to make them feel like first-rate citizens.

Remote Onboarding: Setting New Hires Up for Success

In December 2019, my company started to consider remote work for the first time. When the pandemic hit, they quickly transitioned to remote and started to hire again. They created a welcoming package and sent out necessary equipment to new hires. A two-week training program was created with 10-15 hours of targeted training, and mentors were assigned to each new hire. Lessons learned included the need to create a structure to enforce communication and the realization that adjusting existing processes to a remote environment was easier than expected.

Turning Around a Dysfunctional Team

This article discusses the steps taken to improve a large engineering department that was not performing up to standard. The team was opaque about their work, other teams didn't like working with them, and they were unable to deliver on time. The author's tiger team of four senior engineers identified critical areas where they could bring in technology or build things themselves. After assessing the systems, development methodologies, organizational structure, and individuals on the team, they identified several serious problems. To address these issues, they implemented smaller incremental changes, realigned senior engineers to become technical leads, broke down the department into smaller teams, instituted an important rule that all requests had to go through a process, and moved to a simplified Scrum implementation. The author also shared lessons learned from this experience.

How to Attract Talent to a Startup

A small New York startup was struggling to compete with larger companies in terms of salaries and benefits when hiring engineers. To stand out, they created a story-based job ad that highlighted their mission and practices, and removed requirements. They also created an exceptional hiring experience by having a fast timeline, no technical questions, and a one-day trial period. This approach was successful and allowed them to hire and grow their team. The lessons learned were to frame the offer around things no one else is doing, be open and transparent about who they are, and empower the team to own the hiring process.

Developing a Rewards and Recognition Program

This article discusses a problem faced by many engineering organizations: lack of appreciation for engineers. To address this, a Rewards and Recognition Core Committee was formed to identify criteria for rewards and recognition and to introduce programs such as the Thank You Award and Spot Awards. It was found that connecting rewards and recognition to organizational values was key to success, and that adoption of the program was essential. The article also provides lessons learned from the experience.

From Zero From the First 20 Customers

A small cross-functional team was tasked with finding a solution to measure the usefulness and effectiveness of educational technology used in the classroom. To do this, the team used a streamlined process that included interviews with school districts, weekly brainstorming sessions, and daily discussions to estimate how confident they were in achieving their goals. Through this process, they were able to create a solution that allowed school districts to roll out a piece of technology to all of their devices. The team learned that trust in the team to own outcomes instead of tasks, getting close to customers, focusing on a few objectives, and planning for the transition from iterative to specialized projects are all important for success.

Managing Expectations on a Highly Visible Project

This project was aimed at improving the Netflix recommendation system by taking into account user browsing habits in real-time. To manage expectations and deliver features timely, the project manager talked to users and teams to understand the most common use cases and prioritize them. A proof of concept was built and demoed to users to get feedback. The project manager also built a tool to make the raw data more visually appealing. Lessons learned included using a less adopted technology with caution, building for scale from day one, and starting integrations early on.

Deciding to Build Vs. Leverage

As a technical lead, the author faced the dilemma of building a solution from scratch or leveraging existing technology or framework to solve the business problem. To make the decision, the author took various actions such as ensuring the available solutions met all the functional requirements of the business, fitting the solution well for the long-term strategy and scaling well for the business, doing a holistic analysis of the potential solutions in terms of the overall cost to the business, reviewing the security, privacy, and compliance requirements, and understanding the support offered by vendors or open-source solutions. The author learned that building an in-house solution with engineering teams is the most optimal way to solve the problem, to keep up to date with the latest trends, frameworks, and technologies, to have a deep understanding of the internal tools, platforms and infrastructure, and to prototype potential solutions against known use-cases and evaluate them on a standard set of metrics.

Short-Term Vs. Long-Term Hiring

When hiring for a fast-paced startup, it is important to think long-term and be transparent about expectations. Managers should consider how a role may evolve in the next 12-18 months and share this with potential candidates. It is also important to be honest about any uncertainty and to look for candidates who are comfortable with change and can adapt easily.

How Do Set Clear Hiring Expectations

Hiring in startups requires setting clear expectations from the start. To avoid misalignment, the manager should be explicit about the company mission and objectives before the new hire joins, and ask what success looks like in three months. Communication is key to managing expectations, and it should involve other people and have a paper trail. Repetition is important to ensure everyone is on the same page.

Managing Experienced People

Managing people of different seniority, experience, and competencies is a challenge for first-time managers. When managing junior people, it is important to provide direct guidance and protect them from ambiguity. When managing senior people, it is important to provide context and feedback, and to give them visibility and recognition for their individual efforts. It is also important to let people fail and learn from their failures, but with juniors, failures need to be highly controlled.

How Smart Managers Deal With Toxic Employees

This article discusses the problem of toxic employees and how to manage them. The author explains that coaching and understanding the person's motivations can help to identify if they are in the right role. If not, the author suggests finding a new role for them within the organization or creating redundancy. The author also shares lessons learned from their experience, such as the importance of coaching, managing out toxic people, and having a paper trail of communication.

Secrets to Finding Niche Talents

This article discusses the challenges of scaling a team from 4 to 20 people in a short period of time while responding to business needs. It outlines the actions taken to recruit highly skilled and senior talent in a niche field, such as the video game industry, and the lessons learned from the experience. These lessons include the importance of transparency when approaching highly skilled professionals, the value of referrals for high-quality talent, the need to look beyond compensation when making offers, and the importance of engaging and motivating employees.

How to Grow at Work

This article discusses the journey of a tech industry leader who rose from an individual contributor role to a leader role. It outlines the steps taken to achieve this, such as being proactive, helping teammates, and delegating tasks. It also emphasizes the importance of having a documented career plan and understanding the flow of money, profit and loss, and growth. Finally, it highlights the importance of creating a psychologically safe space for team members to share their concerns and aspirations, and building trust with the manager.

Finding a Balance Between Staying Hands-On and Letting Things Go

This article discusses the dilemma of balancing delegation and staying hands-on as a manager. The author suggests pair programming, assigning roles during incidents, and encouraging autonomy as ways to strike a balance. They also emphasize the importance of understanding the team's workflow and connecting with them. Lastly, they recommend the book Herding Tigers: Be the Leader That Creative People Need by Todd Henry.

Helping Ramp Up Teamwork

As an Engineering Manager, the author is dedicated to helping their team unlock their hidden potential and improve their internal communication and collaboration. To do this, they coach their reports on how to better articulate their thoughts in standups, listen to their peers, and offer help. They also encourage empathy and understanding of different backgrounds and mindsets, as well as the importance of context.

Finding the Right Office Space for a Startup

A startup moved to West Lafayette, Indiana, and rented a highrise office space with sleek interiors, but soon realized it was too expensive and not necessary for their needs. After consulting the team, they moved to a more affordable space that was better suited for their needs. The lesson learned was to focus on internal growth and invest in an office space that works for the team, not to impress anyone else.

Fundraising in the Midwest

A successful startup founder and CEO encountered difficulty fundraising in the Midwest, as the region values profitability and long-term runway over moonshot-based investing. With the help of investors, they adjusted their pitch and strategy to fit the Midwest approach, and ultimately decided to stay and build their business in the Midwest. They learned that fundraising varies from one region to another, and that it is important to explore different approaches. They also learned the value of having investors with shared values, and shifted their fundraising to Midwest investors.

Being a Manager from Scratch

This article discusses the challenges of becoming a manager from scratch, such as building relationships with new people, earning the team's trust, and learning the landscape of stakeholders. The author shares the actions they took to overcome these challenges, such as reshuffling the team, rolling up their sleeves and helping with regular IC work, and mapping out people from other departments. The article also highlights the lessons learned, such as being prepared for situations when you are on your own, having a plan, and earning the trust of your reports.

Enhancing Communication in Distributed Development

This article discusses the challenges of managing a development team with members located in different time zones and with varying levels of English proficiency. The author implemented a number of changes to simplify communication and improve collaboration, such as centralizing information, simplifying Jira processes, and encouraging documentation. These changes resulted in improved communication and reduced time spent on communication. The author also provides lessons learned, such as the importance of simplifying communication, centralizing communication, and keeping things simple.

Involving QA in the Development Process

This article discusses the relationship between QA and development and how it can take many shapes and forms. The author suggests that the most effective approach is to have QA join the development team from the start, as this will increase development velocity and product quality, as well as increase QA engagement. The article also suggests that QA should be included in all processes to make them feel like first-rate citizens.

Remote Onboarding: Setting New Hires Up for Success

In December 2019, my company started to consider remote work for the first time. When the pandemic hit, they quickly transitioned to remote and started to hire again. They created a welcoming package and sent out necessary equipment to new hires. A two-week training program was created with 10-15 hours of targeted training, and mentors were assigned to each new hire. Lessons learned included the need to create a structure to enforce communication and the realization that adjusting existing processes to a remote environment was easier than expected.

Turning Around a Dysfunctional Team

This article discusses the steps taken to improve a large engineering department that was not performing up to standard. The team was opaque about their work, other teams didn't like working with them, and they were unable to deliver on time. The author's tiger team of four senior engineers identified critical areas where they could bring in technology or build things themselves. After assessing the systems, development methodologies, organizational structure, and individuals on the team, they identified several serious problems. To address these issues, they implemented smaller incremental changes, realigned senior engineers to become technical leads, broke down the department into smaller teams, instituted an important rule that all requests had to go through a process, and moved to a simplified Scrum implementation. The author also shared lessons learned from this experience.

How to Attract Talent to a Startup

A small New York startup was struggling to compete with larger companies in terms of salaries and benefits when hiring engineers. To stand out, they created a story-based job ad that highlighted their mission and practices, and removed requirements. They also created an exceptional hiring experience by having a fast timeline, no technical questions, and a one-day trial period. This approach was successful and allowed them to hire and grow their team. The lessons learned were to frame the offer around things no one else is doing, be open and transparent about who they are, and empower the team to own the hiring process.

Developing a Rewards and Recognition Program

This article discusses a problem faced by many engineering organizations: lack of appreciation for engineers. To address this, a Rewards and Recognition Core Committee was formed to identify criteria for rewards and recognition and to introduce programs such as the Thank You Award and Spot Awards. It was found that connecting rewards and recognition to organizational values was key to success, and that adoption of the program was essential. The article also provides lessons learned from the experience.

From Zero From the First 20 Customers

A small cross-functional team was tasked with finding a solution to measure the usefulness and effectiveness of educational technology used in the classroom. To do this, the team used a streamlined process that included interviews with school districts, weekly brainstorming sessions, and daily discussions to estimate how confident they were in achieving their goals. Through this process, they were able to create a solution that allowed school districts to roll out a piece of technology to all of their devices. The team learned that trust in the team to own outcomes instead of tasks, getting close to customers, focusing on a few objectives, and planning for the transition from iterative to specialized projects are all important for success.

Managing Expectations on a Highly Visible Project

This project was aimed at improving the Netflix recommendation system by taking into account user browsing habits in real-time. To manage expectations and deliver features timely, the project manager talked to users and teams to understand the most common use cases and prioritize them. A proof of concept was built and demoed to users to get feedback. The project manager also built a tool to make the raw data more visually appealing. Lessons learned included using a less adopted technology with caution, building for scale from day one, and starting integrations early on.

Deciding to Build Vs. Leverage

As a technical lead, the author faced the dilemma of building a solution from scratch or leveraging existing technology or framework to solve the business problem. To make the decision, the author took various actions such as ensuring the available solutions met all the functional requirements of the business, fitting the solution well for the long-term strategy and scaling well for the business, doing a holistic analysis of the potential solutions in terms of the overall cost to the business, reviewing the security, privacy, and compliance requirements, and understanding the support offered by vendors or open-source solutions. The author learned that building an in-house solution with engineering teams is the most optimal way to solve the problem, to keep up to date with the latest trends, frameworks, and technologies, to have a deep understanding of the internal tools, platforms and infrastructure, and to prototype potential solutions against known use-cases and evaluate them on a standard set of metrics.

Short-Term Vs. Long-Term Hiring

When hiring for a fast-paced startup, it is important to think long-term and be transparent about expectations. Managers should consider how a role may evolve in the next 12-18 months and share this with potential candidates. It is also important to be honest about any uncertainty and to look for candidates who are comfortable with change and can adapt easily.

How Do Set Clear Hiring Expectations

Hiring in startups requires setting clear expectations from the start. To avoid misalignment, the manager should be explicit about the company mission and objectives before the new hire joins, and ask what success looks like in three months. Communication is key to managing expectations, and it should involve other people and have a paper trail. Repetition is important to ensure everyone is on the same page.

Managing Experienced People

Managing people of different seniority, experience, and competencies is a challenge for first-time managers. When managing junior people, it is important to provide direct guidance and protect them from ambiguity. When managing senior people, it is important to provide context and feedback, and to give them visibility and recognition for their individual efforts. It is also important to let people fail and learn from their failures, but with juniors, failures need to be highly controlled.

How Smart Managers Deal With Toxic Employees

This article discusses the problem of toxic employees and how to manage them. The author explains that coaching and understanding the person's motivations can help to identify if they are in the right role. If not, the author suggests finding a new role for them within the organization or creating redundancy. The author also shares lessons learned from their experience, such as the importance of coaching, managing out toxic people, and having a paper trail of communication.

Secrets to Finding Niche Talents

This article discusses the challenges of scaling a team from 4 to 20 people in a short period of time while responding to business needs. It outlines the actions taken to recruit highly skilled and senior talent in a niche field, such as the video game industry, and the lessons learned from the experience. These lessons include the importance of transparency when approaching highly skilled professionals, the value of referrals for high-quality talent, the need to look beyond compensation when making offers, and the importance of engaging and motivating employees.

How to Grow at Work

This article discusses the journey of a tech industry leader who rose from an individual contributor role to a leader role. It outlines the steps taken to achieve this, such as being proactive, helping teammates, and delegating tasks. It also emphasizes the importance of having a documented career plan and understanding the flow of money, profit and loss, and growth. Finally, it highlights the importance of creating a psychologically safe space for team members to share their concerns and aspirations, and building trust with the manager.

Finding a Balance Between Staying Hands-On and Letting Things Go

This article discusses the dilemma of balancing delegation and staying hands-on as a manager. The author suggests pair programming, assigning roles during incidents, and encouraging autonomy as ways to strike a balance. They also emphasize the importance of understanding the team's workflow and connecting with them. Lastly, they recommend the book Herding Tigers: Be the Leader That Creative People Need by Todd Henry.

Helping Ramp Up Teamwork

As an Engineering Manager, the author is dedicated to helping their team unlock their hidden potential and improve their internal communication and collaboration. To do this, they coach their reports on how to better articulate their thoughts in standups, listen to their peers, and offer help. They also encourage empathy and understanding of different backgrounds and mindsets, as well as the importance of context.

Finding the Right Office Space for a Startup

A startup moved to West Lafayette, Indiana, and rented a highrise office space with sleek interiors, but soon realized it was too expensive and not necessary for their needs. After consulting the team, they moved to a more affordable space that was better suited for their needs. The lesson learned was to focus on internal growth and invest in an office space that works for the team, not to impress anyone else.

Fundraising in the Midwest

A successful startup founder and CEO encountered difficulty fundraising in the Midwest, as the region values profitability and long-term runway over moonshot-based investing. With the help of investors, they adjusted their pitch and strategy to fit the Midwest approach, and ultimately decided to stay and build their business in the Midwest. They learned that fundraising varies from one region to another, and that it is important to explore different approaches. They also learned the value of having investors with shared values, and shifted their fundraising to Midwest investors.

Being a Manager from Scratch

This article discusses the challenges of becoming a manager from scratch, such as building relationships with new people, earning the team's trust, and learning the landscape of stakeholders. The author shares the actions they took to overcome these challenges, such as reshuffling the team, rolling up their sleeves and helping with regular IC work, and mapping out people from other departments. The article also highlights the lessons learned, such as being prepared for situations when you are on your own, having a plan, and earning the trust of your reports.

Enhancing Communication in Distributed Development

This article discusses the challenges of managing a development team with members located in different time zones and with varying levels of English proficiency. The author implemented a number of changes to simplify communication and improve collaboration, such as centralizing information, simplifying Jira processes, and encouraging documentation. These changes resulted in improved communication and reduced time spent on communication. The author also provides lessons learned, such as the importance of simplifying communication, centralizing communication, and keeping things simple.

Involving QA in the Development Process

This article discusses the relationship between QA and development and how it can take many shapes and forms. The author suggests that the most effective approach is to have QA join the development team from the start, as this will increase development velocity and product quality, as well as increase QA engagement. The article also suggests that QA should be included in all processes to make them feel like first-rate citizens.

Remote Onboarding: Setting New Hires Up for Success

In December 2019, my company started to consider remote work for the first time. When the pandemic hit, they quickly transitioned to remote and started to hire again. They created a welcoming package and sent out necessary equipment to new hires. A two-week training program was created with 10-15 hours of targeted training, and mentors were assigned to each new hire. Lessons learned included the need to create a structure to enforce communication and the realization that adjusting existing processes to a remote environment was easier than expected.

Turning Around a Dysfunctional Team

This article discusses the steps taken to improve a large engineering department that was not performing up to standard. The team was opaque about their work, other teams didn't like working with them, and they were unable to deliver on time. The author's tiger team of four senior engineers identified critical areas where they could bring in technology or build things themselves. After assessing the systems, development methodologies, organizational structure, and individuals on the team, they identified several serious problems. To address these issues, they implemented smaller incremental changes, realigned senior engineers to become technical leads, broke down the department into smaller teams, instituted an important rule that all requests had to go through a process, and moved to a simplified Scrum implementation. The author also shared lessons learned from this experience.

How to Attract Talent to a Startup

A small New York startup was struggling to compete with larger companies in terms of salaries and benefits when hiring engineers. To stand out, they created a story-based job ad that highlighted their mission and practices, and removed requirements. They also created an exceptional hiring experience by having a fast timeline, no technical questions, and a one-day trial period. This approach was successful and allowed them to hire and grow their team. The lessons learned were to frame the offer around things no one else is doing, be open and transparent about who they are, and empower the team to own the hiring process.

Developing a Rewards and Recognition Program

This article discusses a problem faced by many engineering organizations: lack of appreciation for engineers. To address this, a Rewards and Recognition Core Committee was formed to identify criteria for rewards and recognition and to introduce programs such as the Thank You Award and Spot Awards. It was found that connecting rewards and recognition to organizational values was key to success, and that adoption of the program was essential. The article also provides lessons learned from the experience.

From Zero From the First 20 Customers

A small cross-functional team was tasked with finding a solution to measure the usefulness and effectiveness of educational technology used in the classroom. To do this, the team used a streamlined process that included interviews with school districts, weekly brainstorming sessions, and daily discussions to estimate how confident they were in achieving their goals. Through this process, they were able to create a solution that allowed school districts to roll out a piece of technology to all of their devices. The team learned that trust in the team to own outcomes instead of tasks, getting close to customers, focusing on a few objectives, and planning for the transition from iterative to specialized projects are all important for success.

Managing Expectations on a Highly Visible Project

This project was aimed at improving the Netflix recommendation system by taking into account user browsing habits in real-time. To manage expectations and deliver features timely, the project manager talked to users and teams to understand the most common use cases and prioritize them. A proof of concept was built and demoed to users to get feedback. The project manager also built a tool to make the raw data more visually appealing. Lessons learned included using a less adopted technology with caution, building for scale from day one, and starting integrations early on.

Deciding to Build Vs. Leverage

As a technical lead, the author faced the dilemma of building a solution from scratch or leveraging existing technology or framework to solve the business problem. To make the decision, the author took various actions such as ensuring the available solutions met all the functional requirements of the business, fitting the solution well for the long-term strategy and scaling well for the business, doing a holistic analysis of the potential solutions in terms of the overall cost to the business, reviewing the security, privacy, and compliance requirements, and understanding the support offered by vendors or open-source solutions. The author learned that building an in-house solution with engineering teams is the most optimal way to solve the problem, to keep up to date with the latest trends, frameworks, and technologies, to have a deep understanding of the internal tools, platforms and infrastructure, and to prototype potential solutions against known use-cases and evaluate them on a standard set of metrics.

Short-Term Vs. Long-Term Hiring

When hiring for a fast-paced startup, it is important to think long-term and be transparent about expectations. Managers should consider how a role may evolve in the next 12-18 months and share this with potential candidates. It is also important to be honest about any uncertainty and to look for candidates who are comfortable with change and can adapt easily.

How Do Set Clear Hiring Expectations

Hiring in startups requires setting clear expectations from the start. To avoid misalignment, the manager should be explicit about the company mission and objectives before the new hire joins, and ask what success looks like in three months. Communication is key to managing expectations, and it should involve other people and have a paper trail. Repetition is important to ensure everyone is on the same page.

Managing Experienced People

Managing people of different seniority, experience, and competencies is a challenge for first-time managers. When managing junior people, it is important to provide direct guidance and protect them from ambiguity. When managing senior people, it is important to provide context and feedback, and to give them visibility and recognition for their individual efforts. It is also important to let people fail and learn from their failures, but with juniors, failures need to be highly controlled.

How Smart Managers Deal With Toxic Employees

This article discusses the problem of toxic employees and how to manage them. The author explains that coaching and understanding the person's motivations can help to identify if they are in the right role. If not, the author suggests finding a new role for them within the organization or creating redundancy. The author also shares lessons learned from their experience, such as the importance of coaching, managing out toxic people, and having a paper trail of communication.

Secrets to Finding Niche Talents

This article discusses the challenges of scaling a team from 4 to 20 people in a short period of time while responding to business needs. It outlines the actions taken to recruit highly skilled and senior talent in a niche field, such as the video game industry, and the lessons learned from the experience. These lessons include the importance of transparency when approaching highly skilled professionals, the value of referrals for high-quality talent, the need to look beyond compensation when making offers, and the importance of engaging and motivating employees.

How to Grow at Work

This article discusses the journey of a tech industry leader who rose from an individual contributor role to a leader role. It outlines the steps taken to achieve this, such as being proactive, helping teammates, and delegating tasks. It also emphasizes the importance of having a documented career plan and understanding the flow of money, profit and loss, and growth. Finally, it highlights the importance of creating a psychologically safe space for team members to share their concerns and aspirations, and building trust with the manager.

Finding a Balance Between Staying Hands-On and Letting Things Go

This article discusses the dilemma of balancing delegation and staying hands-on as a manager. The author suggests pair programming, assigning roles during incidents, and encouraging autonomy as ways to strike a balance. They also emphasize the importance of understanding the team's workflow and connecting with them. Lastly, they recommend the book Herding Tigers: Be the Leader That Creative People Need by Todd Henry.

Helping Ramp Up Teamwork

As an Engineering Manager, the author is dedicated to helping their team unlock their hidden potential and improve their internal communication and collaboration. To do this, they coach their reports on how to better articulate their thoughts in standups, listen to their peers, and offer help. They also encourage empathy and understanding of different backgrounds and mindsets, as well as the importance of context.

Finding the Right Office Space for a Startup

A startup moved to West Lafayette, Indiana, and rented a highrise office space with sleek interiors, but soon realized it was too expensive and not necessary for their needs. After consulting the team, they moved to a more affordable space that was better suited for their needs. The lesson learned was to focus on internal growth and invest in an office space that works for the team, not to impress anyone else.

Fundraising in the Midwest

A successful startup founder and CEO encountered difficulty fundraising in the Midwest, as the region values profitability and long-term runway over moonshot-based investing. With the help of investors, they adjusted their pitch and strategy to fit the Midwest approach, and ultimately decided to stay and build their business in the Midwest. They learned that fundraising varies from one region to another, and that it is important to explore different approaches. They also learned the value of having investors with shared values, and shifted their fundraising to Midwest investors.

Being a Manager from Scratch

This article discusses the challenges of becoming a manager from scratch, such as building relationships with new people, earning the team's trust, and learning the landscape of stakeholders. The author shares the actions they took to overcome these challenges, such as reshuffling the team, rolling up their sleeves and helping with regular IC work, and mapping out people from other departments. The article also highlights the lessons learned, such as being prepared for situations when you are on your own, having a plan, and earning the trust of your reports.

Enhancing Communication in Distributed Development

This article discusses the challenges of managing a development team with members located in different time zones and with varying levels of English proficiency. The author implemented a number of changes to simplify communication and improve collaboration, such as centralizing information, simplifying Jira processes, and encouraging documentation. These changes resulted in improved communication and reduced time spent on communication. The author also provides lessons learned, such as the importance of simplifying communication, centralizing communication, and keeping things simple.

Involving QA in the Development Process

This article discusses the relationship between QA and development and how it can take many shapes and forms. The author suggests that the most effective approach is to have QA join the development team from the start, as this will increase development velocity and product quality, as well as increase QA engagement. The article also suggests that QA should be included in all processes to make them feel like first-rate citizens.

Remote Onboarding: Setting New Hires Up for Success

In December 2019, my company started to consider remote work for the first time. When the pandemic hit, they quickly transitioned to remote and started to hire again. They created a welcoming package and sent out necessary equipment to new hires. A two-week training program was created with 10-15 hours of targeted training, and mentors were assigned to each new hire. Lessons learned included the need to create a structure to enforce communication and the realization that adjusting existing processes to a remote environment was easier than expected.

Turning Around a Dysfunctional Team

This article discusses the steps taken to improve a large engineering department that was not performing up to standard. The team was opaque about their work, other teams didn't like working with them, and they were unable to deliver on time. The author's tiger team of four senior engineers identified critical areas where they could bring in technology or build things themselves. After assessing the systems, development methodologies, organizational structure, and individuals on the team, they identified several serious problems. To address these issues, they implemented smaller incremental changes, realigned senior engineers to become technical leads, broke down the department into smaller teams, instituted an important rule that all requests had to go through a process, and moved to a simplified Scrum implementation. The author also shared lessons learned from this experience.

How to Attract Talent to a Startup

A small New York startup was struggling to compete with larger companies in terms of salaries and benefits when hiring engineers. To stand out, they created a story-based job ad that highlighted their mission and practices, and removed requirements. They also created an exceptional hiring experience by having a fast timeline, no technical questions, and a one-day trial period. This approach was successful and allowed them to hire and grow their team. The lessons learned were to frame the offer around things no one else is doing, be open and transparent about who they are, and empower the team to own the hiring process.

Developing a Rewards and Recognition Program

This article discusses a problem faced by many engineering organizations: lack of appreciation for engineers. To address this, a Rewards and Recognition Core Committee was formed to identify criteria for rewards and recognition and to introduce programs such as the Thank You Award and Spot Awards. It was found that connecting rewards and recognition to organizational values was key to success, and that adoption of the program was essential. The article also provides lessons learned from the experience.

From Zero From the First 20 Customers

A small cross-functional team was tasked with finding a solution to measure the usefulness and effectiveness of educational technology used in the classroom. To do this, the team used a streamlined process that included interviews with school districts, weekly brainstorming sessions, and daily discussions to estimate how confident they were in achieving their goals. Through this process, they were able to create a solution that allowed school districts to roll out a piece of technology to all of their devices. The team learned that trust in the team to own outcomes instead of tasks, getting close to customers, focusing on a few objectives, and planning for the transition from iterative to specialized projects are all important for success.

Managing Expectations on a Highly Visible Project

This project was aimed at improving the Netflix recommendation system by taking into account user browsing habits in real-time. To manage expectations and deliver features timely, the project manager talked to users and teams to understand the most common use cases and prioritize them. A proof of concept was built and demoed to users to get feedback. The project manager also built a tool to make the raw data more visually appealing. Lessons learned included using a less adopted technology with caution, building for scale from day one, and starting integrations early on.

Deciding to Build Vs. Leverage

As a technical lead, the author faced the dilemma of building a solution from scratch or leveraging existing technology or framework to solve the business problem. To make the decision, the author took various actions such as ensuring the available solutions met all the functional requirements of the business, fitting the solution well for the long-term strategy and scaling well for the business, doing a holistic analysis of the potential solutions in terms of the overall cost to the business, reviewing the security, privacy, and compliance requirements, and understanding the support offered by vendors or open-source solutions. The author learned that building an in-house solution with engineering teams is the most optimal way to solve the problem, to keep up to date with the latest trends, frameworks, and technologies, to have a deep understanding of the internal tools, platforms and infrastructure, and to prototype potential solutions against known use-cases and evaluate them on a standard set of metrics.

Short-Term Vs. Long-Term Hiring

When hiring for a fast-paced startup, it is important to think long-term and be transparent about expectations. Managers should consider how a role may evolve in the next 12-18 months and share this with potential candidates. It is also important to be honest about any uncertainty and to look for candidates who are comfortable with change and can adapt easily.

How Do Set Clear Hiring Expectations

Hiring in startups requires setting clear expectations from the start. To avoid misalignment, the manager should be explicit about the company mission and objectives before the new hire joins, and ask what success looks like in three months. Communication is key to managing expectations, and it should involve other people and have a paper trail. Repetition is important to ensure everyone is on the same page.

Managing Experienced People

Managing people of different seniority, experience, and competencies is a challenge for first-time managers. When managing junior people, it is important to provide direct guidance and protect them from ambiguity. When managing senior people, it is important to provide context and feedback, and to give them visibility and recognition for their individual efforts. It is also important to let people fail and learn from their failures, but with juniors, failures need to be highly controlled.

How Smart Managers Deal With Toxic Employees

This article discusses the problem of toxic employees and how to manage them. The author explains that coaching and understanding the person's motivations can help to identify if they are in the right role. If not, the author suggests finding a new role for them within the organization or creating redundancy. The author also shares lessons learned from their experience, such as the importance of coaching, managing out toxic people, and having a paper trail of communication.

Secrets to Finding Niche Talents

This article discusses the challenges of scaling a team from 4 to 20 people in a short period of time while responding to business needs. It outlines the actions taken to recruit highly skilled and senior talent in a niche field, such as the video game industry, and the lessons learned from the experience. These lessons include the importance of transparency when approaching highly skilled professionals, the value of referrals for high-quality talent, the need to look beyond compensation when making offers, and the importance of engaging and motivating employees.

How to Grow at Work

This article discusses the journey of a tech industry leader who rose from an individual contributor role to a leader role. It outlines the steps taken to achieve this, such as being proactive, helping teammates, and delegating tasks. It also emphasizes the importance of having a documented career plan and understanding the flow of money, profit and loss, and growth. Finally, it highlights the importance of creating a psychologically safe space for team members to share their concerns and aspirations, and building trust with the manager.

Finding a Balance Between Staying Hands-On and Letting Things Go

This article discusses the dilemma of balancing delegation and staying hands-on as a manager. The author suggests pair programming, assigning roles during incidents, and encouraging autonomy as ways to strike a balance. They also emphasize the importance of understanding the team's workflow and connecting with them. Lastly, they recommend the book Herding Tigers: Be the Leader That Creative People Need by Todd Henry.

Helping Ramp Up Teamwork

As an Engineering Manager, the author is dedicated to helping their team unlock their hidden potential and improve their internal communication and collaboration. To do this, they coach their reports on how to better articulate their thoughts in standups, listen to their peers, and offer help. They also encourage empathy and understanding of different backgrounds and mindsets, as well as the importance of context.

Finding the Right Office Space for a Startup

A startup moved to West Lafayette, Indiana, and rented a highrise office space with sleek interiors, but soon realized it was too expensive and not necessary for their needs. After consulting the team, they moved to a more affordable space that was better suited for their needs. The lesson learned was to focus on internal growth and invest in an office space that works for the team, not to impress anyone else.

Fundraising in the Midwest

A successful startup founder and CEO encountered difficulty fundraising in the Midwest, as the region values profitability and long-term runway over moonshot-based investing. With the help of investors, they adjusted their pitch and strategy to fit the Midwest approach, and ultimately decided to stay and build their business in the Midwest. They learned that fundraising varies from one region to another, and that it is important to explore different approaches. They also learned the value of having investors with shared values, and shifted their fundraising to Midwest investors.

Being a Manager from Scratch

This article discusses the challenges of becoming a manager from scratch, such as building relationships with new people, earning the team's trust, and learning the landscape of stakeholders. The author shares the actions they took to overcome these challenges, such as reshuffling the team, rolling up their sleeves and helping with regular IC work, and mapping out people from other departments. The article also highlights the lessons learned, such as being prepared for situations when you are on your own, having a plan, and earning the trust of your reports.

Enhancing Communication in Distributed Development

This article discusses the challenges of managing a development team with members located in different time zones and with varying levels of English proficiency. The author implemented a number of changes to simplify communication and improve collaboration, such as centralizing information, simplifying Jira processes, and encouraging documentation. These changes resulted in improved communication and reduced time spent on communication. The author also provides lessons learned, such as the importance of simplifying communication, centralizing communication, and keeping things simple.

Involving QA in the Development Process

This article discusses the relationship between QA and development and how it can take many shapes and forms. The author suggests that the most effective approach is to have QA join the development team from the start, as this will increase development velocity and product quality, as well as increase QA engagement. The article also suggests that QA should be included in all processes to make them feel like first-rate citizens.

Remote Onboarding: Setting New Hires Up for Success

In December 2019, my company started to consider remote work for the first time. When the pandemic hit, they quickly transitioned to remote and started to hire again. They created a welcoming package and sent out necessary equipment to new hires. A two-week training program was created with 10-15 hours of targeted training, and mentors were assigned to each new hire. Lessons learned included the need to create a structure to enforce communication and the realization that adjusting existing processes to a remote environment was easier than expected.

Turning Around a Dysfunctional Team

This article discusses the steps taken to improve a large engineering department that was not performing up to standard. The team was opaque about their work, other teams didn't like working with them, and they were unable to deliver on time. The author's tiger team of four senior engineers identified critical areas where they could bring in technology or build things themselves. After assessing the systems, development methodologies, organizational structure, and individuals on the team, they identified several serious problems. To address these issues, they implemented smaller incremental changes, realigned senior engineers to become technical leads, broke down the department into smaller teams, instituted an important rule that all requests had to go through a process, and moved to a simplified Scrum implementation. The author also shared lessons learned from this experience.

How to Attract Talent to a Startup

A small New York startup was struggling to compete with larger companies in terms of salaries and benefits when hiring engineers. To stand out, they created a story-based job ad that highlighted their mission and practices, and removed requirements. They also created an exceptional hiring experience by having a fast timeline, no technical questions, and a one-day trial period. This approach was successful and allowed them to hire and grow their team. The lessons learned were to frame the offer around things no one else is doing, be open and transparent about who they are, and empower the team to own the hiring process.

Developing a Rewards and Recognition Program

This article discusses a problem faced by many engineering organizations: lack of appreciation for engineers. To address this, a Rewards and Recognition Core Committee was formed to identify criteria for rewards and recognition and to introduce programs such as the Thank You Award and Spot Awards. It was found that connecting rewards and recognition to organizational values was key to success, and that adoption of the program was essential. The article also provides lessons learned from the experience.

From Zero From the First 20 Customers

A small cross-functional team was tasked with finding a solution to measure the usefulness and effectiveness of educational technology used in the classroom. To do this, the team used a streamlined process that included interviews with school districts, weekly brainstorming sessions, and daily discussions to estimate how confident they were in achieving their goals. Through this process, they were able to create a solution that allowed school districts to roll out a piece of technology to all of their devices. The team learned that trust in the team to own outcomes instead of tasks, getting close to customers, focusing on a few objectives, and planning for the transition from iterative to specialized projects are all important for success.

Managing Expectations on a Highly Visible Project

This project was aimed at improving the Netflix recommendation system by taking into account user browsing habits in real-time. To manage expectations and deliver features timely, the project manager talked to users and teams to understand the most common use cases and prioritize them. A proof of concept was built and demoed to users to get feedback. The project manager also built a tool to make the raw data more visually appealing. Lessons learned included using a less adopted technology with caution, building for scale from day one, and starting integrations early on.

Deciding to Build Vs. Leverage

As a technical lead, the author faced the dilemma of building a solution from scratch or leveraging existing technology or framework to solve the business problem. To make the decision, the author took various actions such as ensuring the available solutions met all the functional requirements of the business, fitting the solution well for the long-term strategy and scaling well for the business, doing a holistic analysis of the potential solutions in terms of the overall cost to the business, reviewing the security, privacy, and compliance requirements, and understanding the support offered by vendors or open-source solutions. The author learned that building an in-house solution with engineering teams is the most optimal way to solve the problem, to keep up to date with the latest trends, frameworks, and technologies, to have a deep understanding of the internal tools, platforms and infrastructure, and to prototype potential solutions against known use-cases and evaluate them on a standard set of metrics.

Short-Term Vs. Long-Term Hiring

When hiring for a fast-paced startup, it is important to think long-term and be transparent about expectations. Managers should consider how a role may evolve in the next 12-18 months and share this with potential candidates. It is also important to be honest about any uncertainty and to look for candidates who are comfortable with change and can adapt easily.

How Do Set Clear Hiring Expectations

Hiring in startups requires setting clear expectations from the start. To avoid misalignment, the manager should be explicit about the company mission and objectives before the new hire joins, and ask what success looks like in three months. Communication is key to managing expectations, and it should involve other people and have a paper trail. Repetition is important to ensure everyone is on the same page.

Managing Experienced People

Managing people of different seniority, experience, and competencies is a challenge for first-time managers. When managing junior people, it is important to provide direct guidance and protect them from ambiguity. When managing senior people, it is important to provide context and feedback, and to give them visibility and recognition for their individual efforts. It is also important to let people fail and learn from their failures, but with juniors, failures need to be highly controlled.

How Smart Managers Deal With Toxic Employees

This article discusses the problem of toxic employees and how to manage them. The author explains that coaching and understanding the person's motivations can help to identify if they are in the right role. If not, the author suggests finding a new role for them within the organization or creating redundancy. The author also shares lessons learned from their experience, such as the importance of coaching, managing out toxic people, and having a paper trail of communication.

Secrets to Finding Niche Talents

This article discusses the challenges of scaling a team from 4 to 20 people in a short period of time while responding to business needs. It outlines the actions taken to recruit highly skilled and senior talent in a niche field, such as the video game industry, and the lessons learned from the experience. These lessons include the importance of transparency when approaching highly skilled professionals, the value of referrals for high-quality talent, the need to look beyond compensation when making offers, and the importance of engaging and motivating employees.

How to Grow at Work

This article discusses the journey of a tech industry leader who rose from an individual contributor role to a leader role. It outlines the steps taken to achieve this, such as being proactive, helping teammates, and delegating tasks. It also emphasizes the importance of having a documented career plan and understanding the flow of money, profit and loss, and growth. Finally, it highlights the importance of creating a psychologically safe space for team members to share their concerns and aspirations, and building trust with the manager.

Finding a Balance Between Staying Hands-On and Letting Things Go

This article discusses the dilemma of balancing delegation and staying hands-on as a manager. The author suggests pair programming, assigning roles during incidents, and encouraging autonomy as ways to strike a balance. They also emphasize the importance of understanding the team's workflow and connecting with them. Lastly, they recommend the book Herding Tigers: Be the Leader That Creative People Need by Todd Henry.

Helping Ramp Up Teamwork

As an Engineering Manager, the author is dedicated to helping their team unlock their hidden potential and improve their internal communication and collaboration. To do this, they coach their reports on how to better articulate their thoughts in standups, listen to their peers, and offer help. They also encourage empathy and understanding of different backgrounds and mindsets, as well as the importance of context.

Finding the Right Office Space for a Startup

A startup moved to West Lafayette, Indiana, and rented a highrise office space with sleek interiors, but soon realized it was too expensive and not necessary for their needs. After consulting the team, they moved to a more affordable space that was better suited for their needs. The lesson learned was to focus on internal growth and invest in an office space that works for the team, not to impress anyone else.

Fundraising in the Midwest

A successful startup founder and CEO encountered difficulty fundraising in the Midwest, as the region values profitability and long-term runway over moonshot-based investing. With the help of investors, they adjusted their pitch and strategy to fit the Midwest approach, and ultimately decided to stay and build their business in the Midwest. They learned that fundraising varies from one region to another, and that it is important to explore different approaches. They also learned the value of having investors with shared values, and shifted their fundraising to Midwest investors.

Being a Manager from Scratch

This article discusses the challenges of becoming a manager from scratch, such as building relationships with new people, earning the team's trust, and learning the landscape of stakeholders. The author shares the actions they took to overcome these challenges, such as reshuffling the team, rolling up their sleeves and helping with regular IC work, and mapping out people from other departments. The article also highlights the lessons learned, such as being prepared for situations when you are on your own, having a plan, and earning the trust of your reports.

Enhancing Communication in Distributed Development

This article discusses the challenges of managing a development team with members located in different time zones and with varying levels of English proficiency. The author implemented a number of changes to simplify communication and improve collaboration, such as centralizing information, simplifying Jira processes, and encouraging documentation. These changes resulted in improved communication and reduced time spent on communication. The author also provides lessons learned, such as the importance of simplifying communication, centralizing communication, and keeping things simple.

Involving QA in the Development Process

This article discusses the relationship between QA and development and how it can take many shapes and forms. The author suggests that the most effective approach is to have QA join the development team from the start, as this will increase development velocity and product quality, as well as increase QA engagement. The article also suggests that QA should be included in all processes to make them feel like first-rate citizens.

Remote Onboarding: Setting New Hires Up for Success

In December 2019, my company started to consider remote work for the first time. When the pandemic hit, they quickly transitioned to remote and started to hire again. They created a welcoming package and sent out necessary equipment to new hires. A two-week training program was created with 10-15 hours of targeted training, and mentors were assigned to each new hire. Lessons learned included the need to create a structure to enforce communication and the realization that adjusting existing processes to a remote environment was easier than expected.

Turning Around a Dysfunctional Team

This article discusses the steps taken to improve a large engineering department that was not performing up to standard. The team was opaque about their work, other teams didn't like working with them, and they were unable to deliver on time. The author's tiger team of four senior engineers identified critical areas where they could bring in technology or build things themselves. After assessing the systems, development methodologies, organizational structure, and individuals on the team, they identified several serious problems. To address these issues, they implemented smaller incremental changes, realigned senior engineers to become technical leads, broke down the department into smaller teams, instituted an important rule that all requests had to go through a process, and moved to a simplified Scrum implementation. The author also shared lessons learned from this experience.

How to Attract Talent to a Startup

A small New York startup was struggling to compete with larger companies in terms of salaries and benefits when hiring engineers. To stand out, they created a story-based job ad that highlighted their mission and practices, and removed requirements. They also created an exceptional hiring experience by having a fast timeline, no technical questions, and a one-day trial period. This approach was successful and allowed them to hire and grow their team. The lessons learned were to frame the offer around things no one else is doing, be open and transparent about who they are, and empower the team to own the hiring process.