Knowledge shared by our community

Making the Leap from Being a Developer to a Product Manager

After working as a Developer for three and a half years, the author realized they wanted to become a Product Manager. With no resources to train themselves with, they gradually took on a PM role, learning the different tools and methodologies, the new stakeholders, and how to lead without influence. They also drew on their technical background to connect the dots for users and to understand the technology and architecture.

Becoming a Scrum Master

When starting at Intel, the protagonist faced a lack of experience driving their own decisions. To overcome this, they became certified as a Scrum master and introduced the agile mindset to the team. Through this, they learned that it pays to be curious, to give out credit, and to never shy away from questioning the status quo. They also learned that agility allows teams to fail fast and get back on their feet quickly.

Dealing with Personal Conflict

In a previous role, a manager was taking ownership of projects and trying to take control of the team, which caused a power struggle. The manager was also passing up promotions for people of color and giving them pay increases under the table. The speaker took action by talking to their team and CTO, and eventually confronting the manager privately. They learned to never be aggressive with their manager, to submit but not to the point of suffocation, and to be aware of discrimination.

Helping Employees Overcome Fear

This article discusses the importance of building up employees and giving them the confidence to take on more challenging roles. It explains how managers should keep track of their employees' strengths and weaknesses and provide mentorship to help them grow. It also suggests that cross-functional collaboration is possible when employees have different interests and skills.

Managing Squads Effectively

This team restructured to create separate squads with dedicated spaces and individual stand-ups, Slack channels, and Google groups. They also implemented KPIs for each group and encouraged individuals to develop their own. This allowed for deeper communication, more clarity for product managers, and a clearer vision for the team. Social events, hackathons, and a dedicated stand-up every Monday were also implemented to keep team members connected.

Relying on Sub-Managers to Improve and Optimize

This article discusses the challenges of managing a large team and how to foster a sense of empathy. It outlines the actions taken to plan an engineering team all-hands meeting, which included leaders contributing their visions for their squads and leveraging breakout rooms to gain feedback. It also discusses the lessons learned, such as pushing feedback and concerns up to the top, increasing visibility of core team metrics, and how this helped the organization become more informed on how to manage the growing company.

Creating a Safe Environment by Gathering Employee Feedback

This article discusses the importance of creating a culture of feedback in order to provide space for people to think and express their opinions. It suggests that without this space, feelings can get bottled up and people can become less engaged with their projects. The article provides advice on how to create this culture of feedback, such as setting aside time for team members to think, providing one-on-one coaching, and actively asking for feedback from team members. It also emphasizes the importance of closure and leveraging the HR team to make problems more visible and manageable.

Leading a Team Purposefully With Established Expectations

As a leader, it is important to set expectations early on and to communicate them clearly to the team. It is also important to conduct research and to consult data to inform decisions. Finally, it is important to ask for feedback and to figure things out as a team. Leaders should be focused on making decisions based on their experience and best judgement, and should be open to gathering information from others.

Is Management the Right Path for You

This article discusses the importance of understanding where one's energy comes from when considering a management career. The author recommends reflecting on past accomplishments and experiences to determine what brings energy and what takes it away. They also suggest trying both the technical and people routes to see which is the best fit and to be aware of the expectations of the role. Finally, they emphasize the importance of developing skills regardless of the career path chosen.

Graduating From Developer to Entrepreneur

The challenge of transitioning from a software engineer to a co-founder of a startup was difficult for the CTO and Co-Founder of Le Wagon. To address this, they hired mid-stage talents and trained them on company policies, hired alumni, and introduced middle management levels. The lessons learned were that each company has to discover its own ladder, there will be seniors and juniors in a company, and everyone needs to be challenged in a certain way.

Building Confidence as a New PM

When a new PM joined a company with an existing roadmap, they realized that it wasn't necessarily the right one. To figure out what to build, they spoke to stakeholders, customers, and identified small areas of the product that needed change. Through this process, they learned to leverage their individual strengths, try new things, and be transparent.

Resolving a Conflict

In this case study, the Product Manager was managing two competing products that were meant to solve for a compliance regulation. To resolve the conflict, the PM read the compliance guidelines, conducted research on competitors, and created a recommendation summary to present to stakeholders. Through this process, the PM learned that it is important to understand where colleagues are coming from, to appear as an authority on the subject, and to have private conversations before presenting publicly.

Hiring the Right Staff and Knowing Who the Right Staff is

In order to ensure the right staff is hired and to maintain a great team, it is important to address problems quickly. This includes talking to team members about any issues that arise, pointing out unacceptable behavior, and taking remedial action such as training and helping team members. If the behavior continues, it is best to remove the person quickly.

Choosing the Right Technology Stack for Your Project

CTOs face the challenge of choosing the right technology stack to ensure their company is future-proof. To do this, they must consider the cloud provider and the technology stack itself, while also taking into account the experience of their developers. To address this challenge, the CTO must take an inventory of the business functions, organize data and product information, and leverage the existing staff resources. Additionally, they must consider API first development, make predictions for the future, and allocate enough time for retooling the organization and training staff.

Overcoming IT Challenges for Onboarding New Hires

This article outlines the steps taken to successfully onboard new hires. The tech lead identified a ramp-up expectation and created a framework to track progress. Weekly and monthly checkpoints were also established to ensure the new hires were on track. The framework proved to be a win-win situation for both employers and employees.

Dire Consequences of a Lack of Product Vision

This article discusses the problem of a company that was unable to ship an MVP due to a lack of product vision and understanding of their customer base. After joining the company, the author identified three main mistakes that were preventing them from shipping their product: incorrect market sizing, not talking to customers, and not having any constraints in place. The article also highlights the importance of serving smaller customers, having constraints, and staying accountable to customers.

Structuring a Large Team: A Two-Phase Approach

When the VP of Engineering joined their previous company, they inherited a team of 18 engineers. The processes remained the same, making the team inefficient and difficult to work with. To address this, they implemented a two-phase approach consisting of deciding on the right structure and conducting a domain analysis to establish what each team owns. This allowed them to form five smaller, self-sustainable squads and create consistency across the teams. They also learned lessons about standups, success metrics, ownership, and visibility.

Developing Better Incident Response Policies

This company needed to support higher levels of uptime and performance guarantees for customers, so they implemented automation of testing and on-call scheduling. Automated testing included unit, UI, click-through, and load tests. On-call scheduling included creating a checklist for people going on call and a playbook for incident response. These changes resulted in faster resolution of issues. Lessons learned include ensuring end-to-end testing, having a unified view of alerts, and creating a checklist and playbook for on-call scheduling.

Providing a Great User Experience When Expanding Internationally

This article discusses the problem of increased latency when connecting to servers based in the US over the public internet. It outlines the various options considered, such as optimizing the code, running different versions of the infrastructure in different regions, and using a hybrid system. Ultimately, the company decided to use tools that allowed for local points of presence and networking, such as Cloudflare and AWS Global Accelerator, to improve the user experience. The article also highlights the importance of understanding the business impact of saying yes and thinking creatively to solve the problem.

Balancing Work and Life as a New Mother

After becoming a mother, a woman was able to successfully balance her work and home life by organizing her time, setting boundaries between work and home life, and relying on her team both in the workplace and at home. She learned that having a sound mind and a strong support system is essential for a successful leader, and that choosing a company with a supportive culture is important for working mothers.

Making the Leap from Being a Developer to a Product Manager

After working as a Developer for three and a half years, the author realized they wanted to become a Product Manager. With no resources to train themselves with, they gradually took on a PM role, learning the different tools and methodologies, the new stakeholders, and how to lead without influence. They also drew on their technical background to connect the dots for users and to understand the technology and architecture.

Becoming a Scrum Master

When starting at Intel, the protagonist faced a lack of experience driving their own decisions. To overcome this, they became certified as a Scrum master and introduced the agile mindset to the team. Through this, they learned that it pays to be curious, to give out credit, and to never shy away from questioning the status quo. They also learned that agility allows teams to fail fast and get back on their feet quickly.

Dealing with Personal Conflict

In a previous role, a manager was taking ownership of projects and trying to take control of the team, which caused a power struggle. The manager was also passing up promotions for people of color and giving them pay increases under the table. The speaker took action by talking to their team and CTO, and eventually confronting the manager privately. They learned to never be aggressive with their manager, to submit but not to the point of suffocation, and to be aware of discrimination.

Helping Employees Overcome Fear

This article discusses the importance of building up employees and giving them the confidence to take on more challenging roles. It explains how managers should keep track of their employees' strengths and weaknesses and provide mentorship to help them grow. It also suggests that cross-functional collaboration is possible when employees have different interests and skills.

Managing Squads Effectively

This team restructured to create separate squads with dedicated spaces and individual stand-ups, Slack channels, and Google groups. They also implemented KPIs for each group and encouraged individuals to develop their own. This allowed for deeper communication, more clarity for product managers, and a clearer vision for the team. Social events, hackathons, and a dedicated stand-up every Monday were also implemented to keep team members connected.

Relying on Sub-Managers to Improve and Optimize

This article discusses the challenges of managing a large team and how to foster a sense of empathy. It outlines the actions taken to plan an engineering team all-hands meeting, which included leaders contributing their visions for their squads and leveraging breakout rooms to gain feedback. It also discusses the lessons learned, such as pushing feedback and concerns up to the top, increasing visibility of core team metrics, and how this helped the organization become more informed on how to manage the growing company.

Creating a Safe Environment by Gathering Employee Feedback

This article discusses the importance of creating a culture of feedback in order to provide space for people to think and express their opinions. It suggests that without this space, feelings can get bottled up and people can become less engaged with their projects. The article provides advice on how to create this culture of feedback, such as setting aside time for team members to think, providing one-on-one coaching, and actively asking for feedback from team members. It also emphasizes the importance of closure and leveraging the HR team to make problems more visible and manageable.

Leading a Team Purposefully With Established Expectations

As a leader, it is important to set expectations early on and to communicate them clearly to the team. It is also important to conduct research and to consult data to inform decisions. Finally, it is important to ask for feedback and to figure things out as a team. Leaders should be focused on making decisions based on their experience and best judgement, and should be open to gathering information from others.

Is Management the Right Path for You

This article discusses the importance of understanding where one's energy comes from when considering a management career. The author recommends reflecting on past accomplishments and experiences to determine what brings energy and what takes it away. They also suggest trying both the technical and people routes to see which is the best fit and to be aware of the expectations of the role. Finally, they emphasize the importance of developing skills regardless of the career path chosen.

Graduating From Developer to Entrepreneur

The challenge of transitioning from a software engineer to a co-founder of a startup was difficult for the CTO and Co-Founder of Le Wagon. To address this, they hired mid-stage talents and trained them on company policies, hired alumni, and introduced middle management levels. The lessons learned were that each company has to discover its own ladder, there will be seniors and juniors in a company, and everyone needs to be challenged in a certain way.

Building Confidence as a New PM

When a new PM joined a company with an existing roadmap, they realized that it wasn't necessarily the right one. To figure out what to build, they spoke to stakeholders, customers, and identified small areas of the product that needed change. Through this process, they learned to leverage their individual strengths, try new things, and be transparent.

Resolving a Conflict

In this case study, the Product Manager was managing two competing products that were meant to solve for a compliance regulation. To resolve the conflict, the PM read the compliance guidelines, conducted research on competitors, and created a recommendation summary to present to stakeholders. Through this process, the PM learned that it is important to understand where colleagues are coming from, to appear as an authority on the subject, and to have private conversations before presenting publicly.

Hiring the Right Staff and Knowing Who the Right Staff is

In order to ensure the right staff is hired and to maintain a great team, it is important to address problems quickly. This includes talking to team members about any issues that arise, pointing out unacceptable behavior, and taking remedial action such as training and helping team members. If the behavior continues, it is best to remove the person quickly.

Choosing the Right Technology Stack for Your Project

CTOs face the challenge of choosing the right technology stack to ensure their company is future-proof. To do this, they must consider the cloud provider and the technology stack itself, while also taking into account the experience of their developers. To address this challenge, the CTO must take an inventory of the business functions, organize data and product information, and leverage the existing staff resources. Additionally, they must consider API first development, make predictions for the future, and allocate enough time for retooling the organization and training staff.

Overcoming IT Challenges for Onboarding New Hires

This article outlines the steps taken to successfully onboard new hires. The tech lead identified a ramp-up expectation and created a framework to track progress. Weekly and monthly checkpoints were also established to ensure the new hires were on track. The framework proved to be a win-win situation for both employers and employees.

Dire Consequences of a Lack of Product Vision

This article discusses the problem of a company that was unable to ship an MVP due to a lack of product vision and understanding of their customer base. After joining the company, the author identified three main mistakes that were preventing them from shipping their product: incorrect market sizing, not talking to customers, and not having any constraints in place. The article also highlights the importance of serving smaller customers, having constraints, and staying accountable to customers.

Structuring a Large Team: A Two-Phase Approach

When the VP of Engineering joined their previous company, they inherited a team of 18 engineers. The processes remained the same, making the team inefficient and difficult to work with. To address this, they implemented a two-phase approach consisting of deciding on the right structure and conducting a domain analysis to establish what each team owns. This allowed them to form five smaller, self-sustainable squads and create consistency across the teams. They also learned lessons about standups, success metrics, ownership, and visibility.

Developing Better Incident Response Policies

This company needed to support higher levels of uptime and performance guarantees for customers, so they implemented automation of testing and on-call scheduling. Automated testing included unit, UI, click-through, and load tests. On-call scheduling included creating a checklist for people going on call and a playbook for incident response. These changes resulted in faster resolution of issues. Lessons learned include ensuring end-to-end testing, having a unified view of alerts, and creating a checklist and playbook for on-call scheduling.

Providing a Great User Experience When Expanding Internationally

This article discusses the problem of increased latency when connecting to servers based in the US over the public internet. It outlines the various options considered, such as optimizing the code, running different versions of the infrastructure in different regions, and using a hybrid system. Ultimately, the company decided to use tools that allowed for local points of presence and networking, such as Cloudflare and AWS Global Accelerator, to improve the user experience. The article also highlights the importance of understanding the business impact of saying yes and thinking creatively to solve the problem.

Balancing Work and Life as a New Mother

After becoming a mother, a woman was able to successfully balance her work and home life by organizing her time, setting boundaries between work and home life, and relying on her team both in the workplace and at home. She learned that having a sound mind and a strong support system is essential for a successful leader, and that choosing a company with a supportive culture is important for working mothers.

Making the Leap from Being a Developer to a Product Manager

After working as a Developer for three and a half years, the author realized they wanted to become a Product Manager. With no resources to train themselves with, they gradually took on a PM role, learning the different tools and methodologies, the new stakeholders, and how to lead without influence. They also drew on their technical background to connect the dots for users and to understand the technology and architecture.

Becoming a Scrum Master

When starting at Intel, the protagonist faced a lack of experience driving their own decisions. To overcome this, they became certified as a Scrum master and introduced the agile mindset to the team. Through this, they learned that it pays to be curious, to give out credit, and to never shy away from questioning the status quo. They also learned that agility allows teams to fail fast and get back on their feet quickly.

Dealing with Personal Conflict

In a previous role, a manager was taking ownership of projects and trying to take control of the team, which caused a power struggle. The manager was also passing up promotions for people of color and giving them pay increases under the table. The speaker took action by talking to their team and CTO, and eventually confronting the manager privately. They learned to never be aggressive with their manager, to submit but not to the point of suffocation, and to be aware of discrimination.

Helping Employees Overcome Fear

This article discusses the importance of building up employees and giving them the confidence to take on more challenging roles. It explains how managers should keep track of their employees' strengths and weaknesses and provide mentorship to help them grow. It also suggests that cross-functional collaboration is possible when employees have different interests and skills.

Managing Squads Effectively

This team restructured to create separate squads with dedicated spaces and individual stand-ups, Slack channels, and Google groups. They also implemented KPIs for each group and encouraged individuals to develop their own. This allowed for deeper communication, more clarity for product managers, and a clearer vision for the team. Social events, hackathons, and a dedicated stand-up every Monday were also implemented to keep team members connected.

Relying on Sub-Managers to Improve and Optimize

This article discusses the challenges of managing a large team and how to foster a sense of empathy. It outlines the actions taken to plan an engineering team all-hands meeting, which included leaders contributing their visions for their squads and leveraging breakout rooms to gain feedback. It also discusses the lessons learned, such as pushing feedback and concerns up to the top, increasing visibility of core team metrics, and how this helped the organization become more informed on how to manage the growing company.

Creating a Safe Environment by Gathering Employee Feedback

This article discusses the importance of creating a culture of feedback in order to provide space for people to think and express their opinions. It suggests that without this space, feelings can get bottled up and people can become less engaged with their projects. The article provides advice on how to create this culture of feedback, such as setting aside time for team members to think, providing one-on-one coaching, and actively asking for feedback from team members. It also emphasizes the importance of closure and leveraging the HR team to make problems more visible and manageable.

Leading a Team Purposefully With Established Expectations

As a leader, it is important to set expectations early on and to communicate them clearly to the team. It is also important to conduct research and to consult data to inform decisions. Finally, it is important to ask for feedback and to figure things out as a team. Leaders should be focused on making decisions based on their experience and best judgement, and should be open to gathering information from others.

Is Management the Right Path for You

This article discusses the importance of understanding where one's energy comes from when considering a management career. The author recommends reflecting on past accomplishments and experiences to determine what brings energy and what takes it away. They also suggest trying both the technical and people routes to see which is the best fit and to be aware of the expectations of the role. Finally, they emphasize the importance of developing skills regardless of the career path chosen.

Graduating From Developer to Entrepreneur

The challenge of transitioning from a software engineer to a co-founder of a startup was difficult for the CTO and Co-Founder of Le Wagon. To address this, they hired mid-stage talents and trained them on company policies, hired alumni, and introduced middle management levels. The lessons learned were that each company has to discover its own ladder, there will be seniors and juniors in a company, and everyone needs to be challenged in a certain way.

Building Confidence as a New PM

When a new PM joined a company with an existing roadmap, they realized that it wasn't necessarily the right one. To figure out what to build, they spoke to stakeholders, customers, and identified small areas of the product that needed change. Through this process, they learned to leverage their individual strengths, try new things, and be transparent.

Resolving a Conflict

In this case study, the Product Manager was managing two competing products that were meant to solve for a compliance regulation. To resolve the conflict, the PM read the compliance guidelines, conducted research on competitors, and created a recommendation summary to present to stakeholders. Through this process, the PM learned that it is important to understand where colleagues are coming from, to appear as an authority on the subject, and to have private conversations before presenting publicly.

Hiring the Right Staff and Knowing Who the Right Staff is

In order to ensure the right staff is hired and to maintain a great team, it is important to address problems quickly. This includes talking to team members about any issues that arise, pointing out unacceptable behavior, and taking remedial action such as training and helping team members. If the behavior continues, it is best to remove the person quickly.

Choosing the Right Technology Stack for Your Project

CTOs face the challenge of choosing the right technology stack to ensure their company is future-proof. To do this, they must consider the cloud provider and the technology stack itself, while also taking into account the experience of their developers. To address this challenge, the CTO must take an inventory of the business functions, organize data and product information, and leverage the existing staff resources. Additionally, they must consider API first development, make predictions for the future, and allocate enough time for retooling the organization and training staff.

Overcoming IT Challenges for Onboarding New Hires

This article outlines the steps taken to successfully onboard new hires. The tech lead identified a ramp-up expectation and created a framework to track progress. Weekly and monthly checkpoints were also established to ensure the new hires were on track. The framework proved to be a win-win situation for both employers and employees.

Dire Consequences of a Lack of Product Vision

This article discusses the problem of a company that was unable to ship an MVP due to a lack of product vision and understanding of their customer base. After joining the company, the author identified three main mistakes that were preventing them from shipping their product: incorrect market sizing, not talking to customers, and not having any constraints in place. The article also highlights the importance of serving smaller customers, having constraints, and staying accountable to customers.

Structuring a Large Team: A Two-Phase Approach

When the VP of Engineering joined their previous company, they inherited a team of 18 engineers. The processes remained the same, making the team inefficient and difficult to work with. To address this, they implemented a two-phase approach consisting of deciding on the right structure and conducting a domain analysis to establish what each team owns. This allowed them to form five smaller, self-sustainable squads and create consistency across the teams. They also learned lessons about standups, success metrics, ownership, and visibility.

Developing Better Incident Response Policies

This company needed to support higher levels of uptime and performance guarantees for customers, so they implemented automation of testing and on-call scheduling. Automated testing included unit, UI, click-through, and load tests. On-call scheduling included creating a checklist for people going on call and a playbook for incident response. These changes resulted in faster resolution of issues. Lessons learned include ensuring end-to-end testing, having a unified view of alerts, and creating a checklist and playbook for on-call scheduling.

Providing a Great User Experience When Expanding Internationally

This article discusses the problem of increased latency when connecting to servers based in the US over the public internet. It outlines the various options considered, such as optimizing the code, running different versions of the infrastructure in different regions, and using a hybrid system. Ultimately, the company decided to use tools that allowed for local points of presence and networking, such as Cloudflare and AWS Global Accelerator, to improve the user experience. The article also highlights the importance of understanding the business impact of saying yes and thinking creatively to solve the problem.

Balancing Work and Life as a New Mother

After becoming a mother, a woman was able to successfully balance her work and home life by organizing her time, setting boundaries between work and home life, and relying on her team both in the workplace and at home. She learned that having a sound mind and a strong support system is essential for a successful leader, and that choosing a company with a supportive culture is important for working mothers.

Making the Leap from Being a Developer to a Product Manager

After working as a Developer for three and a half years, the author realized they wanted to become a Product Manager. With no resources to train themselves with, they gradually took on a PM role, learning the different tools and methodologies, the new stakeholders, and how to lead without influence. They also drew on their technical background to connect the dots for users and to understand the technology and architecture.

Becoming a Scrum Master

When starting at Intel, the protagonist faced a lack of experience driving their own decisions. To overcome this, they became certified as a Scrum master and introduced the agile mindset to the team. Through this, they learned that it pays to be curious, to give out credit, and to never shy away from questioning the status quo. They also learned that agility allows teams to fail fast and get back on their feet quickly.

Dealing with Personal Conflict

In a previous role, a manager was taking ownership of projects and trying to take control of the team, which caused a power struggle. The manager was also passing up promotions for people of color and giving them pay increases under the table. The speaker took action by talking to their team and CTO, and eventually confronting the manager privately. They learned to never be aggressive with their manager, to submit but not to the point of suffocation, and to be aware of discrimination.

Helping Employees Overcome Fear

This article discusses the importance of building up employees and giving them the confidence to take on more challenging roles. It explains how managers should keep track of their employees' strengths and weaknesses and provide mentorship to help them grow. It also suggests that cross-functional collaboration is possible when employees have different interests and skills.

Managing Squads Effectively

This team restructured to create separate squads with dedicated spaces and individual stand-ups, Slack channels, and Google groups. They also implemented KPIs for each group and encouraged individuals to develop their own. This allowed for deeper communication, more clarity for product managers, and a clearer vision for the team. Social events, hackathons, and a dedicated stand-up every Monday were also implemented to keep team members connected.

Relying on Sub-Managers to Improve and Optimize

This article discusses the challenges of managing a large team and how to foster a sense of empathy. It outlines the actions taken to plan an engineering team all-hands meeting, which included leaders contributing their visions for their squads and leveraging breakout rooms to gain feedback. It also discusses the lessons learned, such as pushing feedback and concerns up to the top, increasing visibility of core team metrics, and how this helped the organization become more informed on how to manage the growing company.

Creating a Safe Environment by Gathering Employee Feedback

This article discusses the importance of creating a culture of feedback in order to provide space for people to think and express their opinions. It suggests that without this space, feelings can get bottled up and people can become less engaged with their projects. The article provides advice on how to create this culture of feedback, such as setting aside time for team members to think, providing one-on-one coaching, and actively asking for feedback from team members. It also emphasizes the importance of closure and leveraging the HR team to make problems more visible and manageable.

Leading a Team Purposefully With Established Expectations

As a leader, it is important to set expectations early on and to communicate them clearly to the team. It is also important to conduct research and to consult data to inform decisions. Finally, it is important to ask for feedback and to figure things out as a team. Leaders should be focused on making decisions based on their experience and best judgement, and should be open to gathering information from others.

Is Management the Right Path for You

This article discusses the importance of understanding where one's energy comes from when considering a management career. The author recommends reflecting on past accomplishments and experiences to determine what brings energy and what takes it away. They also suggest trying both the technical and people routes to see which is the best fit and to be aware of the expectations of the role. Finally, they emphasize the importance of developing skills regardless of the career path chosen.

Graduating From Developer to Entrepreneur

The challenge of transitioning from a software engineer to a co-founder of a startup was difficult for the CTO and Co-Founder of Le Wagon. To address this, they hired mid-stage talents and trained them on company policies, hired alumni, and introduced middle management levels. The lessons learned were that each company has to discover its own ladder, there will be seniors and juniors in a company, and everyone needs to be challenged in a certain way.

Building Confidence as a New PM

When a new PM joined a company with an existing roadmap, they realized that it wasn't necessarily the right one. To figure out what to build, they spoke to stakeholders, customers, and identified small areas of the product that needed change. Through this process, they learned to leverage their individual strengths, try new things, and be transparent.

Resolving a Conflict

In this case study, the Product Manager was managing two competing products that were meant to solve for a compliance regulation. To resolve the conflict, the PM read the compliance guidelines, conducted research on competitors, and created a recommendation summary to present to stakeholders. Through this process, the PM learned that it is important to understand where colleagues are coming from, to appear as an authority on the subject, and to have private conversations before presenting publicly.

Hiring the Right Staff and Knowing Who the Right Staff is

In order to ensure the right staff is hired and to maintain a great team, it is important to address problems quickly. This includes talking to team members about any issues that arise, pointing out unacceptable behavior, and taking remedial action such as training and helping team members. If the behavior continues, it is best to remove the person quickly.

Choosing the Right Technology Stack for Your Project

CTOs face the challenge of choosing the right technology stack to ensure their company is future-proof. To do this, they must consider the cloud provider and the technology stack itself, while also taking into account the experience of their developers. To address this challenge, the CTO must take an inventory of the business functions, organize data and product information, and leverage the existing staff resources. Additionally, they must consider API first development, make predictions for the future, and allocate enough time for retooling the organization and training staff.

Overcoming IT Challenges for Onboarding New Hires

This article outlines the steps taken to successfully onboard new hires. The tech lead identified a ramp-up expectation and created a framework to track progress. Weekly and monthly checkpoints were also established to ensure the new hires were on track. The framework proved to be a win-win situation for both employers and employees.

Dire Consequences of a Lack of Product Vision

This article discusses the problem of a company that was unable to ship an MVP due to a lack of product vision and understanding of their customer base. After joining the company, the author identified three main mistakes that were preventing them from shipping their product: incorrect market sizing, not talking to customers, and not having any constraints in place. The article also highlights the importance of serving smaller customers, having constraints, and staying accountable to customers.

Structuring a Large Team: A Two-Phase Approach

When the VP of Engineering joined their previous company, they inherited a team of 18 engineers. The processes remained the same, making the team inefficient and difficult to work with. To address this, they implemented a two-phase approach consisting of deciding on the right structure and conducting a domain analysis to establish what each team owns. This allowed them to form five smaller, self-sustainable squads and create consistency across the teams. They also learned lessons about standups, success metrics, ownership, and visibility.

Developing Better Incident Response Policies

This company needed to support higher levels of uptime and performance guarantees for customers, so they implemented automation of testing and on-call scheduling. Automated testing included unit, UI, click-through, and load tests. On-call scheduling included creating a checklist for people going on call and a playbook for incident response. These changes resulted in faster resolution of issues. Lessons learned include ensuring end-to-end testing, having a unified view of alerts, and creating a checklist and playbook for on-call scheduling.

Providing a Great User Experience When Expanding Internationally

This article discusses the problem of increased latency when connecting to servers based in the US over the public internet. It outlines the various options considered, such as optimizing the code, running different versions of the infrastructure in different regions, and using a hybrid system. Ultimately, the company decided to use tools that allowed for local points of presence and networking, such as Cloudflare and AWS Global Accelerator, to improve the user experience. The article also highlights the importance of understanding the business impact of saying yes and thinking creatively to solve the problem.

Balancing Work and Life as a New Mother

After becoming a mother, a woman was able to successfully balance her work and home life by organizing her time, setting boundaries between work and home life, and relying on her team both in the workplace and at home. She learned that having a sound mind and a strong support system is essential for a successful leader, and that choosing a company with a supportive culture is important for working mothers.

Making the Leap from Being a Developer to a Product Manager

After working as a Developer for three and a half years, the author realized they wanted to become a Product Manager. With no resources to train themselves with, they gradually took on a PM role, learning the different tools and methodologies, the new stakeholders, and how to lead without influence. They also drew on their technical background to connect the dots for users and to understand the technology and architecture.

Becoming a Scrum Master

When starting at Intel, the protagonist faced a lack of experience driving their own decisions. To overcome this, they became certified as a Scrum master and introduced the agile mindset to the team. Through this, they learned that it pays to be curious, to give out credit, and to never shy away from questioning the status quo. They also learned that agility allows teams to fail fast and get back on their feet quickly.

Dealing with Personal Conflict

In a previous role, a manager was taking ownership of projects and trying to take control of the team, which caused a power struggle. The manager was also passing up promotions for people of color and giving them pay increases under the table. The speaker took action by talking to their team and CTO, and eventually confronting the manager privately. They learned to never be aggressive with their manager, to submit but not to the point of suffocation, and to be aware of discrimination.

Helping Employees Overcome Fear

This article discusses the importance of building up employees and giving them the confidence to take on more challenging roles. It explains how managers should keep track of their employees' strengths and weaknesses and provide mentorship to help them grow. It also suggests that cross-functional collaboration is possible when employees have different interests and skills.

Managing Squads Effectively

This team restructured to create separate squads with dedicated spaces and individual stand-ups, Slack channels, and Google groups. They also implemented KPIs for each group and encouraged individuals to develop their own. This allowed for deeper communication, more clarity for product managers, and a clearer vision for the team. Social events, hackathons, and a dedicated stand-up every Monday were also implemented to keep team members connected.

Relying on Sub-Managers to Improve and Optimize

This article discusses the challenges of managing a large team and how to foster a sense of empathy. It outlines the actions taken to plan an engineering team all-hands meeting, which included leaders contributing their visions for their squads and leveraging breakout rooms to gain feedback. It also discusses the lessons learned, such as pushing feedback and concerns up to the top, increasing visibility of core team metrics, and how this helped the organization become more informed on how to manage the growing company.

Creating a Safe Environment by Gathering Employee Feedback

This article discusses the importance of creating a culture of feedback in order to provide space for people to think and express their opinions. It suggests that without this space, feelings can get bottled up and people can become less engaged with their projects. The article provides advice on how to create this culture of feedback, such as setting aside time for team members to think, providing one-on-one coaching, and actively asking for feedback from team members. It also emphasizes the importance of closure and leveraging the HR team to make problems more visible and manageable.

Leading a Team Purposefully With Established Expectations

As a leader, it is important to set expectations early on and to communicate them clearly to the team. It is also important to conduct research and to consult data to inform decisions. Finally, it is important to ask for feedback and to figure things out as a team. Leaders should be focused on making decisions based on their experience and best judgement, and should be open to gathering information from others.

Is Management the Right Path for You

This article discusses the importance of understanding where one's energy comes from when considering a management career. The author recommends reflecting on past accomplishments and experiences to determine what brings energy and what takes it away. They also suggest trying both the technical and people routes to see which is the best fit and to be aware of the expectations of the role. Finally, they emphasize the importance of developing skills regardless of the career path chosen.

Graduating From Developer to Entrepreneur

The challenge of transitioning from a software engineer to a co-founder of a startup was difficult for the CTO and Co-Founder of Le Wagon. To address this, they hired mid-stage talents and trained them on company policies, hired alumni, and introduced middle management levels. The lessons learned were that each company has to discover its own ladder, there will be seniors and juniors in a company, and everyone needs to be challenged in a certain way.

Building Confidence as a New PM

When a new PM joined a company with an existing roadmap, they realized that it wasn't necessarily the right one. To figure out what to build, they spoke to stakeholders, customers, and identified small areas of the product that needed change. Through this process, they learned to leverage their individual strengths, try new things, and be transparent.

Resolving a Conflict

In this case study, the Product Manager was managing two competing products that were meant to solve for a compliance regulation. To resolve the conflict, the PM read the compliance guidelines, conducted research on competitors, and created a recommendation summary to present to stakeholders. Through this process, the PM learned that it is important to understand where colleagues are coming from, to appear as an authority on the subject, and to have private conversations before presenting publicly.

Hiring the Right Staff and Knowing Who the Right Staff is

In order to ensure the right staff is hired and to maintain a great team, it is important to address problems quickly. This includes talking to team members about any issues that arise, pointing out unacceptable behavior, and taking remedial action such as training and helping team members. If the behavior continues, it is best to remove the person quickly.

Choosing the Right Technology Stack for Your Project

CTOs face the challenge of choosing the right technology stack to ensure their company is future-proof. To do this, they must consider the cloud provider and the technology stack itself, while also taking into account the experience of their developers. To address this challenge, the CTO must take an inventory of the business functions, organize data and product information, and leverage the existing staff resources. Additionally, they must consider API first development, make predictions for the future, and allocate enough time for retooling the organization and training staff.

Overcoming IT Challenges for Onboarding New Hires

This article outlines the steps taken to successfully onboard new hires. The tech lead identified a ramp-up expectation and created a framework to track progress. Weekly and monthly checkpoints were also established to ensure the new hires were on track. The framework proved to be a win-win situation for both employers and employees.

Dire Consequences of a Lack of Product Vision

This article discusses the problem of a company that was unable to ship an MVP due to a lack of product vision and understanding of their customer base. After joining the company, the author identified three main mistakes that were preventing them from shipping their product: incorrect market sizing, not talking to customers, and not having any constraints in place. The article also highlights the importance of serving smaller customers, having constraints, and staying accountable to customers.

Structuring a Large Team: A Two-Phase Approach

When the VP of Engineering joined their previous company, they inherited a team of 18 engineers. The processes remained the same, making the team inefficient and difficult to work with. To address this, they implemented a two-phase approach consisting of deciding on the right structure and conducting a domain analysis to establish what each team owns. This allowed them to form five smaller, self-sustainable squads and create consistency across the teams. They also learned lessons about standups, success metrics, ownership, and visibility.

Developing Better Incident Response Policies

This company needed to support higher levels of uptime and performance guarantees for customers, so they implemented automation of testing and on-call scheduling. Automated testing included unit, UI, click-through, and load tests. On-call scheduling included creating a checklist for people going on call and a playbook for incident response. These changes resulted in faster resolution of issues. Lessons learned include ensuring end-to-end testing, having a unified view of alerts, and creating a checklist and playbook for on-call scheduling.

Providing a Great User Experience When Expanding Internationally

This article discusses the problem of increased latency when connecting to servers based in the US over the public internet. It outlines the various options considered, such as optimizing the code, running different versions of the infrastructure in different regions, and using a hybrid system. Ultimately, the company decided to use tools that allowed for local points of presence and networking, such as Cloudflare and AWS Global Accelerator, to improve the user experience. The article also highlights the importance of understanding the business impact of saying yes and thinking creatively to solve the problem.

Balancing Work and Life as a New Mother

After becoming a mother, a woman was able to successfully balance her work and home life by organizing her time, setting boundaries between work and home life, and relying on her team both in the workplace and at home. She learned that having a sound mind and a strong support system is essential for a successful leader, and that choosing a company with a supportive culture is important for working mothers.

Making the Leap from Being a Developer to a Product Manager

After working as a Developer for three and a half years, the author realized they wanted to become a Product Manager. With no resources to train themselves with, they gradually took on a PM role, learning the different tools and methodologies, the new stakeholders, and how to lead without influence. They also drew on their technical background to connect the dots for users and to understand the technology and architecture.

Becoming a Scrum Master

When starting at Intel, the protagonist faced a lack of experience driving their own decisions. To overcome this, they became certified as a Scrum master and introduced the agile mindset to the team. Through this, they learned that it pays to be curious, to give out credit, and to never shy away from questioning the status quo. They also learned that agility allows teams to fail fast and get back on their feet quickly.

Dealing with Personal Conflict

In a previous role, a manager was taking ownership of projects and trying to take control of the team, which caused a power struggle. The manager was also passing up promotions for people of color and giving them pay increases under the table. The speaker took action by talking to their team and CTO, and eventually confronting the manager privately. They learned to never be aggressive with their manager, to submit but not to the point of suffocation, and to be aware of discrimination.

Helping Employees Overcome Fear

This article discusses the importance of building up employees and giving them the confidence to take on more challenging roles. It explains how managers should keep track of their employees' strengths and weaknesses and provide mentorship to help them grow. It also suggests that cross-functional collaboration is possible when employees have different interests and skills.

Managing Squads Effectively

This team restructured to create separate squads with dedicated spaces and individual stand-ups, Slack channels, and Google groups. They also implemented KPIs for each group and encouraged individuals to develop their own. This allowed for deeper communication, more clarity for product managers, and a clearer vision for the team. Social events, hackathons, and a dedicated stand-up every Monday were also implemented to keep team members connected.

Relying on Sub-Managers to Improve and Optimize

This article discusses the challenges of managing a large team and how to foster a sense of empathy. It outlines the actions taken to plan an engineering team all-hands meeting, which included leaders contributing their visions for their squads and leveraging breakout rooms to gain feedback. It also discusses the lessons learned, such as pushing feedback and concerns up to the top, increasing visibility of core team metrics, and how this helped the organization become more informed on how to manage the growing company.

Creating a Safe Environment by Gathering Employee Feedback

This article discusses the importance of creating a culture of feedback in order to provide space for people to think and express their opinions. It suggests that without this space, feelings can get bottled up and people can become less engaged with their projects. The article provides advice on how to create this culture of feedback, such as setting aside time for team members to think, providing one-on-one coaching, and actively asking for feedback from team members. It also emphasizes the importance of closure and leveraging the HR team to make problems more visible and manageable.

Leading a Team Purposefully With Established Expectations

As a leader, it is important to set expectations early on and to communicate them clearly to the team. It is also important to conduct research and to consult data to inform decisions. Finally, it is important to ask for feedback and to figure things out as a team. Leaders should be focused on making decisions based on their experience and best judgement, and should be open to gathering information from others.

Is Management the Right Path for You

This article discusses the importance of understanding where one's energy comes from when considering a management career. The author recommends reflecting on past accomplishments and experiences to determine what brings energy and what takes it away. They also suggest trying both the technical and people routes to see which is the best fit and to be aware of the expectations of the role. Finally, they emphasize the importance of developing skills regardless of the career path chosen.

Graduating From Developer to Entrepreneur

The challenge of transitioning from a software engineer to a co-founder of a startup was difficult for the CTO and Co-Founder of Le Wagon. To address this, they hired mid-stage talents and trained them on company policies, hired alumni, and introduced middle management levels. The lessons learned were that each company has to discover its own ladder, there will be seniors and juniors in a company, and everyone needs to be challenged in a certain way.

Building Confidence as a New PM

When a new PM joined a company with an existing roadmap, they realized that it wasn't necessarily the right one. To figure out what to build, they spoke to stakeholders, customers, and identified small areas of the product that needed change. Through this process, they learned to leverage their individual strengths, try new things, and be transparent.

Resolving a Conflict

In this case study, the Product Manager was managing two competing products that were meant to solve for a compliance regulation. To resolve the conflict, the PM read the compliance guidelines, conducted research on competitors, and created a recommendation summary to present to stakeholders. Through this process, the PM learned that it is important to understand where colleagues are coming from, to appear as an authority on the subject, and to have private conversations before presenting publicly.

Hiring the Right Staff and Knowing Who the Right Staff is

In order to ensure the right staff is hired and to maintain a great team, it is important to address problems quickly. This includes talking to team members about any issues that arise, pointing out unacceptable behavior, and taking remedial action such as training and helping team members. If the behavior continues, it is best to remove the person quickly.

Choosing the Right Technology Stack for Your Project

CTOs face the challenge of choosing the right technology stack to ensure their company is future-proof. To do this, they must consider the cloud provider and the technology stack itself, while also taking into account the experience of their developers. To address this challenge, the CTO must take an inventory of the business functions, organize data and product information, and leverage the existing staff resources. Additionally, they must consider API first development, make predictions for the future, and allocate enough time for retooling the organization and training staff.

Overcoming IT Challenges for Onboarding New Hires

This article outlines the steps taken to successfully onboard new hires. The tech lead identified a ramp-up expectation and created a framework to track progress. Weekly and monthly checkpoints were also established to ensure the new hires were on track. The framework proved to be a win-win situation for both employers and employees.

Dire Consequences of a Lack of Product Vision

This article discusses the problem of a company that was unable to ship an MVP due to a lack of product vision and understanding of their customer base. After joining the company, the author identified three main mistakes that were preventing them from shipping their product: incorrect market sizing, not talking to customers, and not having any constraints in place. The article also highlights the importance of serving smaller customers, having constraints, and staying accountable to customers.

Structuring a Large Team: A Two-Phase Approach

When the VP of Engineering joined their previous company, they inherited a team of 18 engineers. The processes remained the same, making the team inefficient and difficult to work with. To address this, they implemented a two-phase approach consisting of deciding on the right structure and conducting a domain analysis to establish what each team owns. This allowed them to form five smaller, self-sustainable squads and create consistency across the teams. They also learned lessons about standups, success metrics, ownership, and visibility.

Developing Better Incident Response Policies

This company needed to support higher levels of uptime and performance guarantees for customers, so they implemented automation of testing and on-call scheduling. Automated testing included unit, UI, click-through, and load tests. On-call scheduling included creating a checklist for people going on call and a playbook for incident response. These changes resulted in faster resolution of issues. Lessons learned include ensuring end-to-end testing, having a unified view of alerts, and creating a checklist and playbook for on-call scheduling.

Providing a Great User Experience When Expanding Internationally

This article discusses the problem of increased latency when connecting to servers based in the US over the public internet. It outlines the various options considered, such as optimizing the code, running different versions of the infrastructure in different regions, and using a hybrid system. Ultimately, the company decided to use tools that allowed for local points of presence and networking, such as Cloudflare and AWS Global Accelerator, to improve the user experience. The article also highlights the importance of understanding the business impact of saying yes and thinking creatively to solve the problem.

Balancing Work and Life as a New Mother

After becoming a mother, a woman was able to successfully balance her work and home life by organizing her time, setting boundaries between work and home life, and relying on her team both in the workplace and at home. She learned that having a sound mind and a strong support system is essential for a successful leader, and that choosing a company with a supportive culture is important for working mothers.