Knowledge shared by our community

Challenges Faced as the Vice President of Engineering

This article discusses the challenges faced when scaling an engineering team from one to multiple teams. It outlines the roles of the individual software engineer, the test team, the QA team, and the DevOps teams. It also explains the need to limit the size of changes and to release them incrementally with the help of automation and test coverage. Finally, it emphasizes the importance of influencing team members as a leader and building credibility with the leadership team.

Right Is Better Than Fast

A project was underway to redesign the login page at Box, making it more responsive and mobile-friendly. However, the Customer Success team raised a major concern that customers would be unhappy with the reduced space for custom welcome content. To address this, quantitative and qualitative data was gathered, and the design was revisited to add more space for the message. This process took longer than expected, but the reception by customers was better than it would have been without the extra steps. The takeaway is that partnering with customer-facing teams, building trusted relationships, and prioritizing the right solution over a fast one are all important for delivering a valuable product experience.

Making Moves: Transitioning from Engineering to Product Management

After graduating with a degree in computer science, the author joined a cloud content startup as a Quality Assurance (QA) Engineer. Intrigued by product management, the author took advantage of the mentorship offered by the product managers at the company and worked hard in their QA role to demonstrate their value to the company. After 1.5 years, the author was able to transition to product management. The author learned the importance of patience, persistence, excelling at everything they do, and finding mentors and sponsors.

Enabling Rural Coverage

This is a story of how the author, 11 years ago, was assigned a project to create a mobile application for a multinational company to push sales of consumer goods to rural retail. With no formal product training or experience, the author had to figure out the logistics and technical aspects of the project, as well as build mock designs and discuss ideas with other teams. Through trial and error, the author was able to successfully roll out the product and learned lessons about job description alignment, delegation, and communication etiquette.

The Simple Rule for Prioritization

This article discusses the challenges of product management in a fast-paced startup environment. It outlines the process of prioritizing tasks, balancing customer demands with the product team's goals, and taking risks to innovate and attract new customers. The author emphasizes the importance of prioritization for product managers and the need to take risks to ensure success.

Tips to Align Stakeholders

The author, a product manager, realized that the success of the product depended on the stakeholders and that they were not always familiar with the product. To address this, the author had meetings with the sales team and presented the product vision to the senior management. The author also implemented a framework called Weighted Shortest Job First (WSJF) to prioritize work and conducted an innovation sprint to keep up the morale of the team. The lessons learned from this experience were that results take time, the people aspect must be kept in mind, and systematic ways of doing things should be looked for.

Challenges of Working From Home

During the pandemic, work from home has been a challenge for many product managers who need to find a source of inspiration. Self-motivation is key, and employee attrition is a concern. To address this, the management implemented a hybrid work-from-home policy and the manager made sure that no one was overworked. Lessons learned include appreciating the little things, finding motivation, and building trust with team members.

Structuring a Scaling Team to Optimize for Growth

As the Engineering Manager at Amazon, the author had to come up with a strategy to scale and right-size the team in order to speed up customer delivery times and provide innovations. To do this, they split the team into smaller feature teams, each with their own specific goals, and implemented modern engineering practices such as continuous integration. They also split the feature teams by experience types that drivers experience throughout their travel. Through this process, the author learned the importance of obsessing over customers and collecting data earlier on for prospects.

Does Remote Work Really Work?

This article discusses the challenges faced by a company transitioning to a fully remote team. The head of engineering had to ensure a smooth transition and maintain the same level of collaboration and quality. To do this, they created artificial points of contact between teams, made it mandatory for people to join meetings from their own devices, and focused on building relationships. The article also highlights the lessons learned from this experience, such as the importance of creating space to build relationships, accepting delays in responses, and handling people sensitively.

On the Way From an IC to a Manager

When transitioning from an individual contributor to a manager, the author faced many challenges. To make the transition successful, the author sought out mentors, practiced delegation, and was transparent about their weaknesses and mistakes. Through this process, the author learned the importance of trusting their team, being open to new approaches, and reading books to gain knowledge.

Managing Employee Experience During Hyper-Growth

A hyper-growth company faced the challenge of evolving their product while managing multiple stakeholders. To solve this problem, they split their product team into two teams, one dealing with delivery and the other with after-sales services. They also formed a business-product partnership and held executive committee meetings to align their priorities and KPIs. Through this process, they learned the importance of communication, understanding the company's needs, and testing out different solutions.

How to Adapt the Roadmap Process to a Hyper-Growth Scaleup

A Product Manager faced the challenge of involving everyone in the process of building a roadmap when their team rapidly grew from 5PMs to 35 teams in two and a half years. To solve this problem, they implemented "problem pitches" and "solution workshops" to prioritize problems and explore solutions. Through this process, they were able to build the roadmap they had initially started working on and learned that prioritizing should be about what to do and what not to do, and that product teams need to find their way into the organization.

Handling Layoffs for the First Time

This article discusses the difficult experience of having to lay off members of one's own team. It outlines the steps taken to prepare for the layoff, the conversations that took place, and the lessons learned from the experience. It emphasizes the importance of having empathy and treating everyone with respect, taking it easy on deliverables for a few days, reaching out to everyone and checking in frequently, and coping with what remains after the layoffs.

Flexibility and Listening as a Manager

After eight years with Edmodo, a service that allows teachers to perform classroom functions online, the COVID-19 pandemic caused a sudden surge in traffic. The engineering team had to shift their focus to prioritize performance assignments. The protagonist, a director, proposed a short project to optimize the front-end of the site, which was approved. A new squad was formed and made more than fifty site improvements in four weeks. Edmodo was the only ed-tech site that did not go down during the pandemic. The protagonist learned the importance of being flexible, listening to their team, and communicating frequently.

How to Do Performance Reviews

This article discusses how the author changed the way they approached performance reviews in their current job. They prepared diligently for the reviews, gathering feedback from peers and encouraging people to ask for direct feedback from their peers. They also had conversations about aspirations and wrote down their feedback. During the session, they used Metro Retro, a tool for collaborative brainstorming and retrospectives. They also left the session with a concrete set of actions that would empower the report to make a difference. Finally, they received feedback on how they conducted the sessions.

Setting Up a Product Team for Success

When starting a new job, the product organization was found to be completely flat with no alignment among the squads and no clear mapping to the strategy. The manager was also overwhelmed with too many reports. After a month of analysis, a new structure, roles, and ways of working were introduced. This included organizing squads into tribes that correlated with three key business objectives, creating a product tribe lead role, and emphasizing communication and alignment early on in the product planning process. Lessons learned included communicating frequently, being open to feedback, and being prepared to adapt and change.

Developing a One-Year Execution Strategy

A new company mission and strategic direction had been announced, but the one-year execution strategy was unclear. To remedy this, the CEO and executive leadership greenlighted a plan to create a one-year execution strategy. Through conversations with the CEO, CFO, and cross-functional team, assumptions and open questions were identified and documented. These were then narrowed down to three objectives and communicated to the team. The strategy was socialized and used for quarterly planning. Lessons learned included the importance of including various people early, staying outside of the weeds, addressing focus issues head-on, overcommunicating, and understanding how different departments use the strategy.

Leading a Globally Distributed Team

This article discusses the challenges of managing a globally distributed team, particularly the time zone difference and cultural implications. Actions taken to address these challenges included co-locating work, reducing the number of meetings, and investing in processes. It also recommends making sure the team feels integrated, removing unnecessary meetings, and educating people on cultural awareness.

My Transition From a Large Corporation to an Early-Stage Startup

This article discusses the author's experience transitioning from a large enterprise to a startup. They had to learn new skills and build a team from scratch, while also developing the company culture. The author emphasizes the importance of researching the startup's mission and vision before joining, and being an active participant in defining the company culture. They also discuss the importance of learning on the fly and improvising with limited resources, as well as the rewarding experience of seeing how their work directly impacts the key objectives of the company.

Keeping Up With Rapid Growth for High-Performance Engineering Teams

This article discusses the challenges faced by a rapidly growing engineering organization, and the steps taken to address them. These steps included restructuring the team into three focus areas, defining roles and responsibilities, introducing processes and procedures to increase transparency, and establishing guilds and an architecture council to promote technical excellence. The article also highlights the importance of customizing existing solutions to the organization's unique needs, and the need for patience and perseverance when introducing new processes.

Challenges Faced as the Vice President of Engineering

This article discusses the challenges faced when scaling an engineering team from one to multiple teams. It outlines the roles of the individual software engineer, the test team, the QA team, and the DevOps teams. It also explains the need to limit the size of changes and to release them incrementally with the help of automation and test coverage. Finally, it emphasizes the importance of influencing team members as a leader and building credibility with the leadership team.

Right Is Better Than Fast

A project was underway to redesign the login page at Box, making it more responsive and mobile-friendly. However, the Customer Success team raised a major concern that customers would be unhappy with the reduced space for custom welcome content. To address this, quantitative and qualitative data was gathered, and the design was revisited to add more space for the message. This process took longer than expected, but the reception by customers was better than it would have been without the extra steps. The takeaway is that partnering with customer-facing teams, building trusted relationships, and prioritizing the right solution over a fast one are all important for delivering a valuable product experience.

Making Moves: Transitioning from Engineering to Product Management

After graduating with a degree in computer science, the author joined a cloud content startup as a Quality Assurance (QA) Engineer. Intrigued by product management, the author took advantage of the mentorship offered by the product managers at the company and worked hard in their QA role to demonstrate their value to the company. After 1.5 years, the author was able to transition to product management. The author learned the importance of patience, persistence, excelling at everything they do, and finding mentors and sponsors.

Enabling Rural Coverage

This is a story of how the author, 11 years ago, was assigned a project to create a mobile application for a multinational company to push sales of consumer goods to rural retail. With no formal product training or experience, the author had to figure out the logistics and technical aspects of the project, as well as build mock designs and discuss ideas with other teams. Through trial and error, the author was able to successfully roll out the product and learned lessons about job description alignment, delegation, and communication etiquette.

The Simple Rule for Prioritization

This article discusses the challenges of product management in a fast-paced startup environment. It outlines the process of prioritizing tasks, balancing customer demands with the product team's goals, and taking risks to innovate and attract new customers. The author emphasizes the importance of prioritization for product managers and the need to take risks to ensure success.

Tips to Align Stakeholders

The author, a product manager, realized that the success of the product depended on the stakeholders and that they were not always familiar with the product. To address this, the author had meetings with the sales team and presented the product vision to the senior management. The author also implemented a framework called Weighted Shortest Job First (WSJF) to prioritize work and conducted an innovation sprint to keep up the morale of the team. The lessons learned from this experience were that results take time, the people aspect must be kept in mind, and systematic ways of doing things should be looked for.

Challenges of Working From Home

During the pandemic, work from home has been a challenge for many product managers who need to find a source of inspiration. Self-motivation is key, and employee attrition is a concern. To address this, the management implemented a hybrid work-from-home policy and the manager made sure that no one was overworked. Lessons learned include appreciating the little things, finding motivation, and building trust with team members.

Structuring a Scaling Team to Optimize for Growth

As the Engineering Manager at Amazon, the author had to come up with a strategy to scale and right-size the team in order to speed up customer delivery times and provide innovations. To do this, they split the team into smaller feature teams, each with their own specific goals, and implemented modern engineering practices such as continuous integration. They also split the feature teams by experience types that drivers experience throughout their travel. Through this process, the author learned the importance of obsessing over customers and collecting data earlier on for prospects.

Does Remote Work Really Work?

This article discusses the challenges faced by a company transitioning to a fully remote team. The head of engineering had to ensure a smooth transition and maintain the same level of collaboration and quality. To do this, they created artificial points of contact between teams, made it mandatory for people to join meetings from their own devices, and focused on building relationships. The article also highlights the lessons learned from this experience, such as the importance of creating space to build relationships, accepting delays in responses, and handling people sensitively.

On the Way From an IC to a Manager

When transitioning from an individual contributor to a manager, the author faced many challenges. To make the transition successful, the author sought out mentors, practiced delegation, and was transparent about their weaknesses and mistakes. Through this process, the author learned the importance of trusting their team, being open to new approaches, and reading books to gain knowledge.

Managing Employee Experience During Hyper-Growth

A hyper-growth company faced the challenge of evolving their product while managing multiple stakeholders. To solve this problem, they split their product team into two teams, one dealing with delivery and the other with after-sales services. They also formed a business-product partnership and held executive committee meetings to align their priorities and KPIs. Through this process, they learned the importance of communication, understanding the company's needs, and testing out different solutions.

How to Adapt the Roadmap Process to a Hyper-Growth Scaleup

A Product Manager faced the challenge of involving everyone in the process of building a roadmap when their team rapidly grew from 5PMs to 35 teams in two and a half years. To solve this problem, they implemented "problem pitches" and "solution workshops" to prioritize problems and explore solutions. Through this process, they were able to build the roadmap they had initially started working on and learned that prioritizing should be about what to do and what not to do, and that product teams need to find their way into the organization.

Handling Layoffs for the First Time

This article discusses the difficult experience of having to lay off members of one's own team. It outlines the steps taken to prepare for the layoff, the conversations that took place, and the lessons learned from the experience. It emphasizes the importance of having empathy and treating everyone with respect, taking it easy on deliverables for a few days, reaching out to everyone and checking in frequently, and coping with what remains after the layoffs.

Flexibility and Listening as a Manager

After eight years with Edmodo, a service that allows teachers to perform classroom functions online, the COVID-19 pandemic caused a sudden surge in traffic. The engineering team had to shift their focus to prioritize performance assignments. The protagonist, a director, proposed a short project to optimize the front-end of the site, which was approved. A new squad was formed and made more than fifty site improvements in four weeks. Edmodo was the only ed-tech site that did not go down during the pandemic. The protagonist learned the importance of being flexible, listening to their team, and communicating frequently.

How to Do Performance Reviews

This article discusses how the author changed the way they approached performance reviews in their current job. They prepared diligently for the reviews, gathering feedback from peers and encouraging people to ask for direct feedback from their peers. They also had conversations about aspirations and wrote down their feedback. During the session, they used Metro Retro, a tool for collaborative brainstorming and retrospectives. They also left the session with a concrete set of actions that would empower the report to make a difference. Finally, they received feedback on how they conducted the sessions.

Setting Up a Product Team for Success

When starting a new job, the product organization was found to be completely flat with no alignment among the squads and no clear mapping to the strategy. The manager was also overwhelmed with too many reports. After a month of analysis, a new structure, roles, and ways of working were introduced. This included organizing squads into tribes that correlated with three key business objectives, creating a product tribe lead role, and emphasizing communication and alignment early on in the product planning process. Lessons learned included communicating frequently, being open to feedback, and being prepared to adapt and change.

Developing a One-Year Execution Strategy

A new company mission and strategic direction had been announced, but the one-year execution strategy was unclear. To remedy this, the CEO and executive leadership greenlighted a plan to create a one-year execution strategy. Through conversations with the CEO, CFO, and cross-functional team, assumptions and open questions were identified and documented. These were then narrowed down to three objectives and communicated to the team. The strategy was socialized and used for quarterly planning. Lessons learned included the importance of including various people early, staying outside of the weeds, addressing focus issues head-on, overcommunicating, and understanding how different departments use the strategy.

Leading a Globally Distributed Team

This article discusses the challenges of managing a globally distributed team, particularly the time zone difference and cultural implications. Actions taken to address these challenges included co-locating work, reducing the number of meetings, and investing in processes. It also recommends making sure the team feels integrated, removing unnecessary meetings, and educating people on cultural awareness.

My Transition From a Large Corporation to an Early-Stage Startup

This article discusses the author's experience transitioning from a large enterprise to a startup. They had to learn new skills and build a team from scratch, while also developing the company culture. The author emphasizes the importance of researching the startup's mission and vision before joining, and being an active participant in defining the company culture. They also discuss the importance of learning on the fly and improvising with limited resources, as well as the rewarding experience of seeing how their work directly impacts the key objectives of the company.

Keeping Up With Rapid Growth for High-Performance Engineering Teams

This article discusses the challenges faced by a rapidly growing engineering organization, and the steps taken to address them. These steps included restructuring the team into three focus areas, defining roles and responsibilities, introducing processes and procedures to increase transparency, and establishing guilds and an architecture council to promote technical excellence. The article also highlights the importance of customizing existing solutions to the organization's unique needs, and the need for patience and perseverance when introducing new processes.

Challenges Faced as the Vice President of Engineering

This article discusses the challenges faced when scaling an engineering team from one to multiple teams. It outlines the roles of the individual software engineer, the test team, the QA team, and the DevOps teams. It also explains the need to limit the size of changes and to release them incrementally with the help of automation and test coverage. Finally, it emphasizes the importance of influencing team members as a leader and building credibility with the leadership team.

Right Is Better Than Fast

A project was underway to redesign the login page at Box, making it more responsive and mobile-friendly. However, the Customer Success team raised a major concern that customers would be unhappy with the reduced space for custom welcome content. To address this, quantitative and qualitative data was gathered, and the design was revisited to add more space for the message. This process took longer than expected, but the reception by customers was better than it would have been without the extra steps. The takeaway is that partnering with customer-facing teams, building trusted relationships, and prioritizing the right solution over a fast one are all important for delivering a valuable product experience.

Making Moves: Transitioning from Engineering to Product Management

After graduating with a degree in computer science, the author joined a cloud content startup as a Quality Assurance (QA) Engineer. Intrigued by product management, the author took advantage of the mentorship offered by the product managers at the company and worked hard in their QA role to demonstrate their value to the company. After 1.5 years, the author was able to transition to product management. The author learned the importance of patience, persistence, excelling at everything they do, and finding mentors and sponsors.

Enabling Rural Coverage

This is a story of how the author, 11 years ago, was assigned a project to create a mobile application for a multinational company to push sales of consumer goods to rural retail. With no formal product training or experience, the author had to figure out the logistics and technical aspects of the project, as well as build mock designs and discuss ideas with other teams. Through trial and error, the author was able to successfully roll out the product and learned lessons about job description alignment, delegation, and communication etiquette.

The Simple Rule for Prioritization

This article discusses the challenges of product management in a fast-paced startup environment. It outlines the process of prioritizing tasks, balancing customer demands with the product team's goals, and taking risks to innovate and attract new customers. The author emphasizes the importance of prioritization for product managers and the need to take risks to ensure success.

Tips to Align Stakeholders

The author, a product manager, realized that the success of the product depended on the stakeholders and that they were not always familiar with the product. To address this, the author had meetings with the sales team and presented the product vision to the senior management. The author also implemented a framework called Weighted Shortest Job First (WSJF) to prioritize work and conducted an innovation sprint to keep up the morale of the team. The lessons learned from this experience were that results take time, the people aspect must be kept in mind, and systematic ways of doing things should be looked for.

Challenges of Working From Home

During the pandemic, work from home has been a challenge for many product managers who need to find a source of inspiration. Self-motivation is key, and employee attrition is a concern. To address this, the management implemented a hybrid work-from-home policy and the manager made sure that no one was overworked. Lessons learned include appreciating the little things, finding motivation, and building trust with team members.

Structuring a Scaling Team to Optimize for Growth

As the Engineering Manager at Amazon, the author had to come up with a strategy to scale and right-size the team in order to speed up customer delivery times and provide innovations. To do this, they split the team into smaller feature teams, each with their own specific goals, and implemented modern engineering practices such as continuous integration. They also split the feature teams by experience types that drivers experience throughout their travel. Through this process, the author learned the importance of obsessing over customers and collecting data earlier on for prospects.

Does Remote Work Really Work?

This article discusses the challenges faced by a company transitioning to a fully remote team. The head of engineering had to ensure a smooth transition and maintain the same level of collaboration and quality. To do this, they created artificial points of contact between teams, made it mandatory for people to join meetings from their own devices, and focused on building relationships. The article also highlights the lessons learned from this experience, such as the importance of creating space to build relationships, accepting delays in responses, and handling people sensitively.

On the Way From an IC to a Manager

When transitioning from an individual contributor to a manager, the author faced many challenges. To make the transition successful, the author sought out mentors, practiced delegation, and was transparent about their weaknesses and mistakes. Through this process, the author learned the importance of trusting their team, being open to new approaches, and reading books to gain knowledge.

Managing Employee Experience During Hyper-Growth

A hyper-growth company faced the challenge of evolving their product while managing multiple stakeholders. To solve this problem, they split their product team into two teams, one dealing with delivery and the other with after-sales services. They also formed a business-product partnership and held executive committee meetings to align their priorities and KPIs. Through this process, they learned the importance of communication, understanding the company's needs, and testing out different solutions.

How to Adapt the Roadmap Process to a Hyper-Growth Scaleup

A Product Manager faced the challenge of involving everyone in the process of building a roadmap when their team rapidly grew from 5PMs to 35 teams in two and a half years. To solve this problem, they implemented "problem pitches" and "solution workshops" to prioritize problems and explore solutions. Through this process, they were able to build the roadmap they had initially started working on and learned that prioritizing should be about what to do and what not to do, and that product teams need to find their way into the organization.

Handling Layoffs for the First Time

This article discusses the difficult experience of having to lay off members of one's own team. It outlines the steps taken to prepare for the layoff, the conversations that took place, and the lessons learned from the experience. It emphasizes the importance of having empathy and treating everyone with respect, taking it easy on deliverables for a few days, reaching out to everyone and checking in frequently, and coping with what remains after the layoffs.

Flexibility and Listening as a Manager

After eight years with Edmodo, a service that allows teachers to perform classroom functions online, the COVID-19 pandemic caused a sudden surge in traffic. The engineering team had to shift their focus to prioritize performance assignments. The protagonist, a director, proposed a short project to optimize the front-end of the site, which was approved. A new squad was formed and made more than fifty site improvements in four weeks. Edmodo was the only ed-tech site that did not go down during the pandemic. The protagonist learned the importance of being flexible, listening to their team, and communicating frequently.

How to Do Performance Reviews

This article discusses how the author changed the way they approached performance reviews in their current job. They prepared diligently for the reviews, gathering feedback from peers and encouraging people to ask for direct feedback from their peers. They also had conversations about aspirations and wrote down their feedback. During the session, they used Metro Retro, a tool for collaborative brainstorming and retrospectives. They also left the session with a concrete set of actions that would empower the report to make a difference. Finally, they received feedback on how they conducted the sessions.

Setting Up a Product Team for Success

When starting a new job, the product organization was found to be completely flat with no alignment among the squads and no clear mapping to the strategy. The manager was also overwhelmed with too many reports. After a month of analysis, a new structure, roles, and ways of working were introduced. This included organizing squads into tribes that correlated with three key business objectives, creating a product tribe lead role, and emphasizing communication and alignment early on in the product planning process. Lessons learned included communicating frequently, being open to feedback, and being prepared to adapt and change.

Developing a One-Year Execution Strategy

A new company mission and strategic direction had been announced, but the one-year execution strategy was unclear. To remedy this, the CEO and executive leadership greenlighted a plan to create a one-year execution strategy. Through conversations with the CEO, CFO, and cross-functional team, assumptions and open questions were identified and documented. These were then narrowed down to three objectives and communicated to the team. The strategy was socialized and used for quarterly planning. Lessons learned included the importance of including various people early, staying outside of the weeds, addressing focus issues head-on, overcommunicating, and understanding how different departments use the strategy.

Leading a Globally Distributed Team

This article discusses the challenges of managing a globally distributed team, particularly the time zone difference and cultural implications. Actions taken to address these challenges included co-locating work, reducing the number of meetings, and investing in processes. It also recommends making sure the team feels integrated, removing unnecessary meetings, and educating people on cultural awareness.

My Transition From a Large Corporation to an Early-Stage Startup

This article discusses the author's experience transitioning from a large enterprise to a startup. They had to learn new skills and build a team from scratch, while also developing the company culture. The author emphasizes the importance of researching the startup's mission and vision before joining, and being an active participant in defining the company culture. They also discuss the importance of learning on the fly and improvising with limited resources, as well as the rewarding experience of seeing how their work directly impacts the key objectives of the company.

Keeping Up With Rapid Growth for High-Performance Engineering Teams

This article discusses the challenges faced by a rapidly growing engineering organization, and the steps taken to address them. These steps included restructuring the team into three focus areas, defining roles and responsibilities, introducing processes and procedures to increase transparency, and establishing guilds and an architecture council to promote technical excellence. The article also highlights the importance of customizing existing solutions to the organization's unique needs, and the need for patience and perseverance when introducing new processes.

Challenges Faced as the Vice President of Engineering

This article discusses the challenges faced when scaling an engineering team from one to multiple teams. It outlines the roles of the individual software engineer, the test team, the QA team, and the DevOps teams. It also explains the need to limit the size of changes and to release them incrementally with the help of automation and test coverage. Finally, it emphasizes the importance of influencing team members as a leader and building credibility with the leadership team.

Right Is Better Than Fast

A project was underway to redesign the login page at Box, making it more responsive and mobile-friendly. However, the Customer Success team raised a major concern that customers would be unhappy with the reduced space for custom welcome content. To address this, quantitative and qualitative data was gathered, and the design was revisited to add more space for the message. This process took longer than expected, but the reception by customers was better than it would have been without the extra steps. The takeaway is that partnering with customer-facing teams, building trusted relationships, and prioritizing the right solution over a fast one are all important for delivering a valuable product experience.

Making Moves: Transitioning from Engineering to Product Management

After graduating with a degree in computer science, the author joined a cloud content startup as a Quality Assurance (QA) Engineer. Intrigued by product management, the author took advantage of the mentorship offered by the product managers at the company and worked hard in their QA role to demonstrate their value to the company. After 1.5 years, the author was able to transition to product management. The author learned the importance of patience, persistence, excelling at everything they do, and finding mentors and sponsors.

Enabling Rural Coverage

This is a story of how the author, 11 years ago, was assigned a project to create a mobile application for a multinational company to push sales of consumer goods to rural retail. With no formal product training or experience, the author had to figure out the logistics and technical aspects of the project, as well as build mock designs and discuss ideas with other teams. Through trial and error, the author was able to successfully roll out the product and learned lessons about job description alignment, delegation, and communication etiquette.

The Simple Rule for Prioritization

This article discusses the challenges of product management in a fast-paced startup environment. It outlines the process of prioritizing tasks, balancing customer demands with the product team's goals, and taking risks to innovate and attract new customers. The author emphasizes the importance of prioritization for product managers and the need to take risks to ensure success.

Tips to Align Stakeholders

The author, a product manager, realized that the success of the product depended on the stakeholders and that they were not always familiar with the product. To address this, the author had meetings with the sales team and presented the product vision to the senior management. The author also implemented a framework called Weighted Shortest Job First (WSJF) to prioritize work and conducted an innovation sprint to keep up the morale of the team. The lessons learned from this experience were that results take time, the people aspect must be kept in mind, and systematic ways of doing things should be looked for.

Challenges of Working From Home

During the pandemic, work from home has been a challenge for many product managers who need to find a source of inspiration. Self-motivation is key, and employee attrition is a concern. To address this, the management implemented a hybrid work-from-home policy and the manager made sure that no one was overworked. Lessons learned include appreciating the little things, finding motivation, and building trust with team members.

Structuring a Scaling Team to Optimize for Growth

As the Engineering Manager at Amazon, the author had to come up with a strategy to scale and right-size the team in order to speed up customer delivery times and provide innovations. To do this, they split the team into smaller feature teams, each with their own specific goals, and implemented modern engineering practices such as continuous integration. They also split the feature teams by experience types that drivers experience throughout their travel. Through this process, the author learned the importance of obsessing over customers and collecting data earlier on for prospects.

Does Remote Work Really Work?

This article discusses the challenges faced by a company transitioning to a fully remote team. The head of engineering had to ensure a smooth transition and maintain the same level of collaboration and quality. To do this, they created artificial points of contact between teams, made it mandatory for people to join meetings from their own devices, and focused on building relationships. The article also highlights the lessons learned from this experience, such as the importance of creating space to build relationships, accepting delays in responses, and handling people sensitively.

On the Way From an IC to a Manager

When transitioning from an individual contributor to a manager, the author faced many challenges. To make the transition successful, the author sought out mentors, practiced delegation, and was transparent about their weaknesses and mistakes. Through this process, the author learned the importance of trusting their team, being open to new approaches, and reading books to gain knowledge.

Managing Employee Experience During Hyper-Growth

A hyper-growth company faced the challenge of evolving their product while managing multiple stakeholders. To solve this problem, they split their product team into two teams, one dealing with delivery and the other with after-sales services. They also formed a business-product partnership and held executive committee meetings to align their priorities and KPIs. Through this process, they learned the importance of communication, understanding the company's needs, and testing out different solutions.

How to Adapt the Roadmap Process to a Hyper-Growth Scaleup

A Product Manager faced the challenge of involving everyone in the process of building a roadmap when their team rapidly grew from 5PMs to 35 teams in two and a half years. To solve this problem, they implemented "problem pitches" and "solution workshops" to prioritize problems and explore solutions. Through this process, they were able to build the roadmap they had initially started working on and learned that prioritizing should be about what to do and what not to do, and that product teams need to find their way into the organization.

Handling Layoffs for the First Time

This article discusses the difficult experience of having to lay off members of one's own team. It outlines the steps taken to prepare for the layoff, the conversations that took place, and the lessons learned from the experience. It emphasizes the importance of having empathy and treating everyone with respect, taking it easy on deliverables for a few days, reaching out to everyone and checking in frequently, and coping with what remains after the layoffs.

Flexibility and Listening as a Manager

After eight years with Edmodo, a service that allows teachers to perform classroom functions online, the COVID-19 pandemic caused a sudden surge in traffic. The engineering team had to shift their focus to prioritize performance assignments. The protagonist, a director, proposed a short project to optimize the front-end of the site, which was approved. A new squad was formed and made more than fifty site improvements in four weeks. Edmodo was the only ed-tech site that did not go down during the pandemic. The protagonist learned the importance of being flexible, listening to their team, and communicating frequently.

How to Do Performance Reviews

This article discusses how the author changed the way they approached performance reviews in their current job. They prepared diligently for the reviews, gathering feedback from peers and encouraging people to ask for direct feedback from their peers. They also had conversations about aspirations and wrote down their feedback. During the session, they used Metro Retro, a tool for collaborative brainstorming and retrospectives. They also left the session with a concrete set of actions that would empower the report to make a difference. Finally, they received feedback on how they conducted the sessions.

Setting Up a Product Team for Success

When starting a new job, the product organization was found to be completely flat with no alignment among the squads and no clear mapping to the strategy. The manager was also overwhelmed with too many reports. After a month of analysis, a new structure, roles, and ways of working were introduced. This included organizing squads into tribes that correlated with three key business objectives, creating a product tribe lead role, and emphasizing communication and alignment early on in the product planning process. Lessons learned included communicating frequently, being open to feedback, and being prepared to adapt and change.

Developing a One-Year Execution Strategy

A new company mission and strategic direction had been announced, but the one-year execution strategy was unclear. To remedy this, the CEO and executive leadership greenlighted a plan to create a one-year execution strategy. Through conversations with the CEO, CFO, and cross-functional team, assumptions and open questions were identified and documented. These were then narrowed down to three objectives and communicated to the team. The strategy was socialized and used for quarterly planning. Lessons learned included the importance of including various people early, staying outside of the weeds, addressing focus issues head-on, overcommunicating, and understanding how different departments use the strategy.

Leading a Globally Distributed Team

This article discusses the challenges of managing a globally distributed team, particularly the time zone difference and cultural implications. Actions taken to address these challenges included co-locating work, reducing the number of meetings, and investing in processes. It also recommends making sure the team feels integrated, removing unnecessary meetings, and educating people on cultural awareness.

My Transition From a Large Corporation to an Early-Stage Startup

This article discusses the author's experience transitioning from a large enterprise to a startup. They had to learn new skills and build a team from scratch, while also developing the company culture. The author emphasizes the importance of researching the startup's mission and vision before joining, and being an active participant in defining the company culture. They also discuss the importance of learning on the fly and improvising with limited resources, as well as the rewarding experience of seeing how their work directly impacts the key objectives of the company.

Keeping Up With Rapid Growth for High-Performance Engineering Teams

This article discusses the challenges faced by a rapidly growing engineering organization, and the steps taken to address them. These steps included restructuring the team into three focus areas, defining roles and responsibilities, introducing processes and procedures to increase transparency, and establishing guilds and an architecture council to promote technical excellence. The article also highlights the importance of customizing existing solutions to the organization's unique needs, and the need for patience and perseverance when introducing new processes.

Challenges Faced as the Vice President of Engineering

This article discusses the challenges faced when scaling an engineering team from one to multiple teams. It outlines the roles of the individual software engineer, the test team, the QA team, and the DevOps teams. It also explains the need to limit the size of changes and to release them incrementally with the help of automation and test coverage. Finally, it emphasizes the importance of influencing team members as a leader and building credibility with the leadership team.

Right Is Better Than Fast

A project was underway to redesign the login page at Box, making it more responsive and mobile-friendly. However, the Customer Success team raised a major concern that customers would be unhappy with the reduced space for custom welcome content. To address this, quantitative and qualitative data was gathered, and the design was revisited to add more space for the message. This process took longer than expected, but the reception by customers was better than it would have been without the extra steps. The takeaway is that partnering with customer-facing teams, building trusted relationships, and prioritizing the right solution over a fast one are all important for delivering a valuable product experience.

Making Moves: Transitioning from Engineering to Product Management

After graduating with a degree in computer science, the author joined a cloud content startup as a Quality Assurance (QA) Engineer. Intrigued by product management, the author took advantage of the mentorship offered by the product managers at the company and worked hard in their QA role to demonstrate their value to the company. After 1.5 years, the author was able to transition to product management. The author learned the importance of patience, persistence, excelling at everything they do, and finding mentors and sponsors.

Enabling Rural Coverage

This is a story of how the author, 11 years ago, was assigned a project to create a mobile application for a multinational company to push sales of consumer goods to rural retail. With no formal product training or experience, the author had to figure out the logistics and technical aspects of the project, as well as build mock designs and discuss ideas with other teams. Through trial and error, the author was able to successfully roll out the product and learned lessons about job description alignment, delegation, and communication etiquette.

The Simple Rule for Prioritization

This article discusses the challenges of product management in a fast-paced startup environment. It outlines the process of prioritizing tasks, balancing customer demands with the product team's goals, and taking risks to innovate and attract new customers. The author emphasizes the importance of prioritization for product managers and the need to take risks to ensure success.

Tips to Align Stakeholders

The author, a product manager, realized that the success of the product depended on the stakeholders and that they were not always familiar with the product. To address this, the author had meetings with the sales team and presented the product vision to the senior management. The author also implemented a framework called Weighted Shortest Job First (WSJF) to prioritize work and conducted an innovation sprint to keep up the morale of the team. The lessons learned from this experience were that results take time, the people aspect must be kept in mind, and systematic ways of doing things should be looked for.

Challenges of Working From Home

During the pandemic, work from home has been a challenge for many product managers who need to find a source of inspiration. Self-motivation is key, and employee attrition is a concern. To address this, the management implemented a hybrid work-from-home policy and the manager made sure that no one was overworked. Lessons learned include appreciating the little things, finding motivation, and building trust with team members.

Structuring a Scaling Team to Optimize for Growth

As the Engineering Manager at Amazon, the author had to come up with a strategy to scale and right-size the team in order to speed up customer delivery times and provide innovations. To do this, they split the team into smaller feature teams, each with their own specific goals, and implemented modern engineering practices such as continuous integration. They also split the feature teams by experience types that drivers experience throughout their travel. Through this process, the author learned the importance of obsessing over customers and collecting data earlier on for prospects.

Does Remote Work Really Work?

This article discusses the challenges faced by a company transitioning to a fully remote team. The head of engineering had to ensure a smooth transition and maintain the same level of collaboration and quality. To do this, they created artificial points of contact between teams, made it mandatory for people to join meetings from their own devices, and focused on building relationships. The article also highlights the lessons learned from this experience, such as the importance of creating space to build relationships, accepting delays in responses, and handling people sensitively.

On the Way From an IC to a Manager

When transitioning from an individual contributor to a manager, the author faced many challenges. To make the transition successful, the author sought out mentors, practiced delegation, and was transparent about their weaknesses and mistakes. Through this process, the author learned the importance of trusting their team, being open to new approaches, and reading books to gain knowledge.

Managing Employee Experience During Hyper-Growth

A hyper-growth company faced the challenge of evolving their product while managing multiple stakeholders. To solve this problem, they split their product team into two teams, one dealing with delivery and the other with after-sales services. They also formed a business-product partnership and held executive committee meetings to align their priorities and KPIs. Through this process, they learned the importance of communication, understanding the company's needs, and testing out different solutions.

How to Adapt the Roadmap Process to a Hyper-Growth Scaleup

A Product Manager faced the challenge of involving everyone in the process of building a roadmap when their team rapidly grew from 5PMs to 35 teams in two and a half years. To solve this problem, they implemented "problem pitches" and "solution workshops" to prioritize problems and explore solutions. Through this process, they were able to build the roadmap they had initially started working on and learned that prioritizing should be about what to do and what not to do, and that product teams need to find their way into the organization.

Handling Layoffs for the First Time

This article discusses the difficult experience of having to lay off members of one's own team. It outlines the steps taken to prepare for the layoff, the conversations that took place, and the lessons learned from the experience. It emphasizes the importance of having empathy and treating everyone with respect, taking it easy on deliverables for a few days, reaching out to everyone and checking in frequently, and coping with what remains after the layoffs.

Flexibility and Listening as a Manager

After eight years with Edmodo, a service that allows teachers to perform classroom functions online, the COVID-19 pandemic caused a sudden surge in traffic. The engineering team had to shift their focus to prioritize performance assignments. The protagonist, a director, proposed a short project to optimize the front-end of the site, which was approved. A new squad was formed and made more than fifty site improvements in four weeks. Edmodo was the only ed-tech site that did not go down during the pandemic. The protagonist learned the importance of being flexible, listening to their team, and communicating frequently.

How to Do Performance Reviews

This article discusses how the author changed the way they approached performance reviews in their current job. They prepared diligently for the reviews, gathering feedback from peers and encouraging people to ask for direct feedback from their peers. They also had conversations about aspirations and wrote down their feedback. During the session, they used Metro Retro, a tool for collaborative brainstorming and retrospectives. They also left the session with a concrete set of actions that would empower the report to make a difference. Finally, they received feedback on how they conducted the sessions.

Setting Up a Product Team for Success

When starting a new job, the product organization was found to be completely flat with no alignment among the squads and no clear mapping to the strategy. The manager was also overwhelmed with too many reports. After a month of analysis, a new structure, roles, and ways of working were introduced. This included organizing squads into tribes that correlated with three key business objectives, creating a product tribe lead role, and emphasizing communication and alignment early on in the product planning process. Lessons learned included communicating frequently, being open to feedback, and being prepared to adapt and change.

Developing a One-Year Execution Strategy

A new company mission and strategic direction had been announced, but the one-year execution strategy was unclear. To remedy this, the CEO and executive leadership greenlighted a plan to create a one-year execution strategy. Through conversations with the CEO, CFO, and cross-functional team, assumptions and open questions were identified and documented. These were then narrowed down to three objectives and communicated to the team. The strategy was socialized and used for quarterly planning. Lessons learned included the importance of including various people early, staying outside of the weeds, addressing focus issues head-on, overcommunicating, and understanding how different departments use the strategy.

Leading a Globally Distributed Team

This article discusses the challenges of managing a globally distributed team, particularly the time zone difference and cultural implications. Actions taken to address these challenges included co-locating work, reducing the number of meetings, and investing in processes. It also recommends making sure the team feels integrated, removing unnecessary meetings, and educating people on cultural awareness.

My Transition From a Large Corporation to an Early-Stage Startup

This article discusses the author's experience transitioning from a large enterprise to a startup. They had to learn new skills and build a team from scratch, while also developing the company culture. The author emphasizes the importance of researching the startup's mission and vision before joining, and being an active participant in defining the company culture. They also discuss the importance of learning on the fly and improvising with limited resources, as well as the rewarding experience of seeing how their work directly impacts the key objectives of the company.

Keeping Up With Rapid Growth for High-Performance Engineering Teams

This article discusses the challenges faced by a rapidly growing engineering organization, and the steps taken to address them. These steps included restructuring the team into three focus areas, defining roles and responsibilities, introducing processes and procedures to increase transparency, and establishing guilds and an architecture council to promote technical excellence. The article also highlights the importance of customizing existing solutions to the organization's unique needs, and the need for patience and perseverance when introducing new processes.

Challenges Faced as the Vice President of Engineering

This article discusses the challenges faced when scaling an engineering team from one to multiple teams. It outlines the roles of the individual software engineer, the test team, the QA team, and the DevOps teams. It also explains the need to limit the size of changes and to release them incrementally with the help of automation and test coverage. Finally, it emphasizes the importance of influencing team members as a leader and building credibility with the leadership team.

Right Is Better Than Fast

A project was underway to redesign the login page at Box, making it more responsive and mobile-friendly. However, the Customer Success team raised a major concern that customers would be unhappy with the reduced space for custom welcome content. To address this, quantitative and qualitative data was gathered, and the design was revisited to add more space for the message. This process took longer than expected, but the reception by customers was better than it would have been without the extra steps. The takeaway is that partnering with customer-facing teams, building trusted relationships, and prioritizing the right solution over a fast one are all important for delivering a valuable product experience.

Making Moves: Transitioning from Engineering to Product Management

After graduating with a degree in computer science, the author joined a cloud content startup as a Quality Assurance (QA) Engineer. Intrigued by product management, the author took advantage of the mentorship offered by the product managers at the company and worked hard in their QA role to demonstrate their value to the company. After 1.5 years, the author was able to transition to product management. The author learned the importance of patience, persistence, excelling at everything they do, and finding mentors and sponsors.

Enabling Rural Coverage

This is a story of how the author, 11 years ago, was assigned a project to create a mobile application for a multinational company to push sales of consumer goods to rural retail. With no formal product training or experience, the author had to figure out the logistics and technical aspects of the project, as well as build mock designs and discuss ideas with other teams. Through trial and error, the author was able to successfully roll out the product and learned lessons about job description alignment, delegation, and communication etiquette.

The Simple Rule for Prioritization

This article discusses the challenges of product management in a fast-paced startup environment. It outlines the process of prioritizing tasks, balancing customer demands with the product team's goals, and taking risks to innovate and attract new customers. The author emphasizes the importance of prioritization for product managers and the need to take risks to ensure success.

Tips to Align Stakeholders

The author, a product manager, realized that the success of the product depended on the stakeholders and that they were not always familiar with the product. To address this, the author had meetings with the sales team and presented the product vision to the senior management. The author also implemented a framework called Weighted Shortest Job First (WSJF) to prioritize work and conducted an innovation sprint to keep up the morale of the team. The lessons learned from this experience were that results take time, the people aspect must be kept in mind, and systematic ways of doing things should be looked for.

Challenges of Working From Home

During the pandemic, work from home has been a challenge for many product managers who need to find a source of inspiration. Self-motivation is key, and employee attrition is a concern. To address this, the management implemented a hybrid work-from-home policy and the manager made sure that no one was overworked. Lessons learned include appreciating the little things, finding motivation, and building trust with team members.

Structuring a Scaling Team to Optimize for Growth

As the Engineering Manager at Amazon, the author had to come up with a strategy to scale and right-size the team in order to speed up customer delivery times and provide innovations. To do this, they split the team into smaller feature teams, each with their own specific goals, and implemented modern engineering practices such as continuous integration. They also split the feature teams by experience types that drivers experience throughout their travel. Through this process, the author learned the importance of obsessing over customers and collecting data earlier on for prospects.

Does Remote Work Really Work?

This article discusses the challenges faced by a company transitioning to a fully remote team. The head of engineering had to ensure a smooth transition and maintain the same level of collaboration and quality. To do this, they created artificial points of contact between teams, made it mandatory for people to join meetings from their own devices, and focused on building relationships. The article also highlights the lessons learned from this experience, such as the importance of creating space to build relationships, accepting delays in responses, and handling people sensitively.

On the Way From an IC to a Manager

When transitioning from an individual contributor to a manager, the author faced many challenges. To make the transition successful, the author sought out mentors, practiced delegation, and was transparent about their weaknesses and mistakes. Through this process, the author learned the importance of trusting their team, being open to new approaches, and reading books to gain knowledge.

Managing Employee Experience During Hyper-Growth

A hyper-growth company faced the challenge of evolving their product while managing multiple stakeholders. To solve this problem, they split their product team into two teams, one dealing with delivery and the other with after-sales services. They also formed a business-product partnership and held executive committee meetings to align their priorities and KPIs. Through this process, they learned the importance of communication, understanding the company's needs, and testing out different solutions.

How to Adapt the Roadmap Process to a Hyper-Growth Scaleup

A Product Manager faced the challenge of involving everyone in the process of building a roadmap when their team rapidly grew from 5PMs to 35 teams in two and a half years. To solve this problem, they implemented "problem pitches" and "solution workshops" to prioritize problems and explore solutions. Through this process, they were able to build the roadmap they had initially started working on and learned that prioritizing should be about what to do and what not to do, and that product teams need to find their way into the organization.

Handling Layoffs for the First Time

This article discusses the difficult experience of having to lay off members of one's own team. It outlines the steps taken to prepare for the layoff, the conversations that took place, and the lessons learned from the experience. It emphasizes the importance of having empathy and treating everyone with respect, taking it easy on deliverables for a few days, reaching out to everyone and checking in frequently, and coping with what remains after the layoffs.

Flexibility and Listening as a Manager

After eight years with Edmodo, a service that allows teachers to perform classroom functions online, the COVID-19 pandemic caused a sudden surge in traffic. The engineering team had to shift their focus to prioritize performance assignments. The protagonist, a director, proposed a short project to optimize the front-end of the site, which was approved. A new squad was formed and made more than fifty site improvements in four weeks. Edmodo was the only ed-tech site that did not go down during the pandemic. The protagonist learned the importance of being flexible, listening to their team, and communicating frequently.

How to Do Performance Reviews

This article discusses how the author changed the way they approached performance reviews in their current job. They prepared diligently for the reviews, gathering feedback from peers and encouraging people to ask for direct feedback from their peers. They also had conversations about aspirations and wrote down their feedback. During the session, they used Metro Retro, a tool for collaborative brainstorming and retrospectives. They also left the session with a concrete set of actions that would empower the report to make a difference. Finally, they received feedback on how they conducted the sessions.

Setting Up a Product Team for Success

When starting a new job, the product organization was found to be completely flat with no alignment among the squads and no clear mapping to the strategy. The manager was also overwhelmed with too many reports. After a month of analysis, a new structure, roles, and ways of working were introduced. This included organizing squads into tribes that correlated with three key business objectives, creating a product tribe lead role, and emphasizing communication and alignment early on in the product planning process. Lessons learned included communicating frequently, being open to feedback, and being prepared to adapt and change.

Developing a One-Year Execution Strategy

A new company mission and strategic direction had been announced, but the one-year execution strategy was unclear. To remedy this, the CEO and executive leadership greenlighted a plan to create a one-year execution strategy. Through conversations with the CEO, CFO, and cross-functional team, assumptions and open questions were identified and documented. These were then narrowed down to three objectives and communicated to the team. The strategy was socialized and used for quarterly planning. Lessons learned included the importance of including various people early, staying outside of the weeds, addressing focus issues head-on, overcommunicating, and understanding how different departments use the strategy.

Leading a Globally Distributed Team

This article discusses the challenges of managing a globally distributed team, particularly the time zone difference and cultural implications. Actions taken to address these challenges included co-locating work, reducing the number of meetings, and investing in processes. It also recommends making sure the team feels integrated, removing unnecessary meetings, and educating people on cultural awareness.

My Transition From a Large Corporation to an Early-Stage Startup

This article discusses the author's experience transitioning from a large enterprise to a startup. They had to learn new skills and build a team from scratch, while also developing the company culture. The author emphasizes the importance of researching the startup's mission and vision before joining, and being an active participant in defining the company culture. They also discuss the importance of learning on the fly and improvising with limited resources, as well as the rewarding experience of seeing how their work directly impacts the key objectives of the company.

Keeping Up With Rapid Growth for High-Performance Engineering Teams

This article discusses the challenges faced by a rapidly growing engineering organization, and the steps taken to address them. These steps included restructuring the team into three focus areas, defining roles and responsibilities, introducing processes and procedures to increase transparency, and establishing guilds and an architecture council to promote technical excellence. The article also highlights the importance of customizing existing solutions to the organization's unique needs, and the need for patience and perseverance when introducing new processes.