Knowledge shared by our community

How I Succeed at Convincing… Everyone

After returning from vacation, the speaker found that their PM and partner team had agreed to move forward with a feature that the speaker disagreed with. The speaker managed to change the course of the project by convincing the design, product, and engineering teams to re-think their solution. The speaker learned that it is important to not give up, to involve more people from their team to explain the context and implications of the solution, and that resolving conflict can strengthen cross team collaborations.

Using Snippets to Track Performance and Growth

This article discusses the importance of keeping track of one's own accomplishments and progress in order to be successful in their career. The author suggests using "snippets" - brief, bullet-pointed summaries of one's achievements - to keep track of their work and to share with their manager. Snippets can be used to initiate career conversations and to identify areas of growth. Ultimately, the author encourages people to take responsibility for their own career development.

How to Establish Yourself as a Leader

This article is about a woman's journey to becoming a tech lead and tech lead manager. She learned that self-leadership is more than just having a title, and that she could start leading without waiting for a title. She also learned that age doesn't matter when it comes to leadership, and that she should quiet her inner critic and fear in order to pursue her passion for leadership.

Debugging Your Own Growth

In 2018, the author was working towards a promotion to Principal Engineer at Booking.com but did not get it. This triggered a re-evaluation of how they had pursued their career until then, and they realized they had fallen into the senior developer’s dilemma. To address this, they moved to a different place in the business, developed a framework of how and where they spend their time, and worked at the edge to ensure they kept improving technically. Through this process, they learned the importance of taking responsibility for their own growth and viewing their career as a marathon.

Being Intentional About Diversity and Inclusion

This story is about a manager who realized that their team was not being intentional about diversity and inclusion. They took steps to make their team activities more inclusive, such as introducing other activities, encouraging discussions, and setting up mentoring rings. These efforts led to more representation from underrepresented groups, and the manager learned the importance of being deliberate about diversity and inclusion, as well as the importance of creating a safe and inclusive environment.

The Benefits of Returnship

This article discusses how to create a successful returnship program for people returning to the workforce after a career break. It outlines the steps to take, such as creating a time-bound internship program with experienced mentors, and targeting boot camps and non-traditional programs to receive applications from diverse candidates. The article also explains how returnship programs are beneficial for both individuals and companies, as they lead to less churn, strong commitment, and deep loyalty.

Pausing for Innovation

This article discusses how intentional pausing can help startups innovate and boost productivity. It suggests that teams should come together for a week-long brainstorming session, followed by a demo presentation and a retro of the process. The article also provides an example of how pausing helped one team identify an opportunity they had missed in their fast-paced environment. The article concludes that pausing helps people change their vantage point and see a bigger picture, and that the time limit adds to the positive pressure and excitement.

How to Retain Women Engineers

Companies have made efforts to increase the diversity of their tech workforce by improving recruitment of women, but not as much has been done to retain them. To address this, a company revised their career ladder to include recognition for mentoring, and initiated a Women's Club and other activities to support women engineers. Lessons learned include not making efforts a women-only initiative, recognizing women's hard work, being inclusive, and creating an environment that supports work-life balance.

Helping Your Reports Choose The Right Career Path

This article discusses the dilemma many senior engineers face when deciding between a management or technical career path. The author suggests creating a program where engineers can try out a manager role for a period of six months and then decide if they would like to continue that path or go back to their previous job. The program should also involve other departments to help the engineers gain knowledge outside of their domain.

Shipping Products Faster with Confidence

Many companies struggle to find a product-market fit, but often fail to realize that shipping features faster is key to receiving feedback and building something relevant. To move faster with confidence, engineers need to assess the full lifecycle of building features, identify potential bottlenecks, and invest in automated testing. Lessons learned include measuring, understanding customer usage, and making the testing experience great for developers.

Leading Post-Acquisition

This article outlines the steps to take to ensure a successful acquisition of engineering orgs. It emphasizes the importance of building a partnership with the acquired company, understanding the system, people, and processes, and achieving alignment on both strategic and tactical levels. It also highlights the importance of not creating siloes or isolating new teams and instead leveraging the strengths of the acquired company to create a successful partnership.

How to Balance the Continual Proliferation of Ideas With Limited Resources

This article discusses the problem of an individual who was continually proliferating new ideas, which caused disruption to the team's workflow and goals. The individual took action to abstain from sharing all ideas with the team, prioritize more, and accept that not all ideas can be pursued. This resulted in a new culture of prioritizing ruthlessly and conversations about what it means to be a data scientist or engineer. The lessons learned from this experience are to make peace with yourself, prioritize wisely, and understand that going slow can make you go faster.

Building a Brand New Data Product

This article discusses the process of developing a software product geared toward large corporations to help them identify and manage their non-financial risks. The authors developed a data engine and analytic platform to collect and analyze data, and then tested their approach on three to five different clients. They then built an MVP and continued to refine the product by deconstructing the consultancy model and focusing on all the possible stories that could be derived from the data. The authors learned that when providing advanced services to a company, it is important to discover their underlying needs by doing a project a few times as a consultant, and that as a CTO or product leader, it is possible to push back unreasonable requests from the business.

Streamlining a Data Science Team

Data science is a new career and can be unpredictable and unstructured. To make the data science team successful, it is important to help them understand the business problems they are trying to solve and how their work contributes to it. Applying Agile and quickly iterating based on user feedback is a great way to refine the model. Data scientists should be trained to think about how their models can be embedded into the software and should consider delivering a model and workflow that includes a human in the loop to monitor and correct decisions. Lessons learned include helping data scientists think more like software developers and users, starting small and getting quick feedback, and coaching people to get out of their comfort zone.

Building a DevOps Team and Re-Architecting the Product: A Matter of Priority

This engineering team wanted to reduce complexity and delivery time by transitioning from a monolithic architecture to microservices. To do this, they needed to redesign their build and deploy process. They had to convince product owners and senior leadership of the value of investing in DevOps and re-architecture, and they did this by presenting the need for change from a business perspective. They also created a multi-year execution plan with trackable and measurable milestones, and started small with minimal budget. Through this process, they learned the importance of being transparent, focusing on how changes will benefit stakeholders, having trackable and measurable milestones, admitting mistakes, and being agile.

Managing an East Coast Team From the West Coast

This article discusses the challenges of a remote engineering manager tasked with modernizing an organization's product and engineering. The manager overcame the time zone difference by working on Eastern time and traveling to the East Coast often. They also earned the trust of the team by making small improvements day-to-day and having casual one-on-one meetings with people across the organization. The article also highlights the importance of being empathetic, understanding the use cases, and using video conferencing to build relationships.

Leading a Team in Different Geographies

Product managers leading dispersed teams across different geographies face challenges such as different time zones and a lack of time zone overlap, cultural differences, and building relationships and overcoming a lack of interconnectedness. To address these challenges, product managers should increase and improve their written communication, use collaborative whiteboards, share audio messages, and travel to meet the team in their own environment. They should also be open to learning about different cultures, reflect on their own culture, and invest time in building relationships.

Embracing People From Non-Traditional Backgrounds

Product management requires a variety of skills and there is no pre-defined career path. Companies should embrace diversity and hire people from non-traditional backgrounds to bring unique value to their business. Job descriptions should be tailored to the skills needed and should be bias-free. Onboarding should include resources to familiarize with the domain, a senior PM to learn from, and a plan for career development. Diversity can bring fresh ideas and insights to product management.

The Benefits of Documentation

Writing and documenting things is a difficult task, but its benefits outweigh the effort. Documentation helps organize and streamline collective knowledge, and is especially important for online collaboration. Writing down thoughts helps to articulate them more clearly and can be used to create scripts for important meetings. Documentation also allows for asynchronous collaboration and communication automation. To make it easier to understand and browse documents, an Index Tree can be created. Writing takes discipline, but it is important for problem solving and building trust. Feedback should be tailored to the individual's writing style.

Tech Debt Is a People Problem

Tech debt is a growing problem that is hard to measure and solve due to lack of clarity on ownership and individual incentives. To fix tech debt, two actions have been taken: evangelizing to raise awareness and motivate people to volunteer resources, and clarifying ownership boundaries. Lessons learned include that most technical problems are people problems, communication is essential, and ownership boundaries are critical.

How I Succeed at Convincing… Everyone

After returning from vacation, the speaker found that their PM and partner team had agreed to move forward with a feature that the speaker disagreed with. The speaker managed to change the course of the project by convincing the design, product, and engineering teams to re-think their solution. The speaker learned that it is important to not give up, to involve more people from their team to explain the context and implications of the solution, and that resolving conflict can strengthen cross team collaborations.

Using Snippets to Track Performance and Growth

This article discusses the importance of keeping track of one's own accomplishments and progress in order to be successful in their career. The author suggests using "snippets" - brief, bullet-pointed summaries of one's achievements - to keep track of their work and to share with their manager. Snippets can be used to initiate career conversations and to identify areas of growth. Ultimately, the author encourages people to take responsibility for their own career development.

How to Establish Yourself as a Leader

This article is about a woman's journey to becoming a tech lead and tech lead manager. She learned that self-leadership is more than just having a title, and that she could start leading without waiting for a title. She also learned that age doesn't matter when it comes to leadership, and that she should quiet her inner critic and fear in order to pursue her passion for leadership.

Debugging Your Own Growth

In 2018, the author was working towards a promotion to Principal Engineer at Booking.com but did not get it. This triggered a re-evaluation of how they had pursued their career until then, and they realized they had fallen into the senior developer’s dilemma. To address this, they moved to a different place in the business, developed a framework of how and where they spend their time, and worked at the edge to ensure they kept improving technically. Through this process, they learned the importance of taking responsibility for their own growth and viewing their career as a marathon.

Being Intentional About Diversity and Inclusion

This story is about a manager who realized that their team was not being intentional about diversity and inclusion. They took steps to make their team activities more inclusive, such as introducing other activities, encouraging discussions, and setting up mentoring rings. These efforts led to more representation from underrepresented groups, and the manager learned the importance of being deliberate about diversity and inclusion, as well as the importance of creating a safe and inclusive environment.

The Benefits of Returnship

This article discusses how to create a successful returnship program for people returning to the workforce after a career break. It outlines the steps to take, such as creating a time-bound internship program with experienced mentors, and targeting boot camps and non-traditional programs to receive applications from diverse candidates. The article also explains how returnship programs are beneficial for both individuals and companies, as they lead to less churn, strong commitment, and deep loyalty.

Pausing for Innovation

This article discusses how intentional pausing can help startups innovate and boost productivity. It suggests that teams should come together for a week-long brainstorming session, followed by a demo presentation and a retro of the process. The article also provides an example of how pausing helped one team identify an opportunity they had missed in their fast-paced environment. The article concludes that pausing helps people change their vantage point and see a bigger picture, and that the time limit adds to the positive pressure and excitement.

How to Retain Women Engineers

Companies have made efforts to increase the diversity of their tech workforce by improving recruitment of women, but not as much has been done to retain them. To address this, a company revised their career ladder to include recognition for mentoring, and initiated a Women's Club and other activities to support women engineers. Lessons learned include not making efforts a women-only initiative, recognizing women's hard work, being inclusive, and creating an environment that supports work-life balance.

Helping Your Reports Choose The Right Career Path

This article discusses the dilemma many senior engineers face when deciding between a management or technical career path. The author suggests creating a program where engineers can try out a manager role for a period of six months and then decide if they would like to continue that path or go back to their previous job. The program should also involve other departments to help the engineers gain knowledge outside of their domain.

Shipping Products Faster with Confidence

Many companies struggle to find a product-market fit, but often fail to realize that shipping features faster is key to receiving feedback and building something relevant. To move faster with confidence, engineers need to assess the full lifecycle of building features, identify potential bottlenecks, and invest in automated testing. Lessons learned include measuring, understanding customer usage, and making the testing experience great for developers.

Leading Post-Acquisition

This article outlines the steps to take to ensure a successful acquisition of engineering orgs. It emphasizes the importance of building a partnership with the acquired company, understanding the system, people, and processes, and achieving alignment on both strategic and tactical levels. It also highlights the importance of not creating siloes or isolating new teams and instead leveraging the strengths of the acquired company to create a successful partnership.

How to Balance the Continual Proliferation of Ideas With Limited Resources

This article discusses the problem of an individual who was continually proliferating new ideas, which caused disruption to the team's workflow and goals. The individual took action to abstain from sharing all ideas with the team, prioritize more, and accept that not all ideas can be pursued. This resulted in a new culture of prioritizing ruthlessly and conversations about what it means to be a data scientist or engineer. The lessons learned from this experience are to make peace with yourself, prioritize wisely, and understand that going slow can make you go faster.

Building a Brand New Data Product

This article discusses the process of developing a software product geared toward large corporations to help them identify and manage their non-financial risks. The authors developed a data engine and analytic platform to collect and analyze data, and then tested their approach on three to five different clients. They then built an MVP and continued to refine the product by deconstructing the consultancy model and focusing on all the possible stories that could be derived from the data. The authors learned that when providing advanced services to a company, it is important to discover their underlying needs by doing a project a few times as a consultant, and that as a CTO or product leader, it is possible to push back unreasonable requests from the business.

Streamlining a Data Science Team

Data science is a new career and can be unpredictable and unstructured. To make the data science team successful, it is important to help them understand the business problems they are trying to solve and how their work contributes to it. Applying Agile and quickly iterating based on user feedback is a great way to refine the model. Data scientists should be trained to think about how their models can be embedded into the software and should consider delivering a model and workflow that includes a human in the loop to monitor and correct decisions. Lessons learned include helping data scientists think more like software developers and users, starting small and getting quick feedback, and coaching people to get out of their comfort zone.

Building a DevOps Team and Re-Architecting the Product: A Matter of Priority

This engineering team wanted to reduce complexity and delivery time by transitioning from a monolithic architecture to microservices. To do this, they needed to redesign their build and deploy process. They had to convince product owners and senior leadership of the value of investing in DevOps and re-architecture, and they did this by presenting the need for change from a business perspective. They also created a multi-year execution plan with trackable and measurable milestones, and started small with minimal budget. Through this process, they learned the importance of being transparent, focusing on how changes will benefit stakeholders, having trackable and measurable milestones, admitting mistakes, and being agile.

Managing an East Coast Team From the West Coast

This article discusses the challenges of a remote engineering manager tasked with modernizing an organization's product and engineering. The manager overcame the time zone difference by working on Eastern time and traveling to the East Coast often. They also earned the trust of the team by making small improvements day-to-day and having casual one-on-one meetings with people across the organization. The article also highlights the importance of being empathetic, understanding the use cases, and using video conferencing to build relationships.

Leading a Team in Different Geographies

Product managers leading dispersed teams across different geographies face challenges such as different time zones and a lack of time zone overlap, cultural differences, and building relationships and overcoming a lack of interconnectedness. To address these challenges, product managers should increase and improve their written communication, use collaborative whiteboards, share audio messages, and travel to meet the team in their own environment. They should also be open to learning about different cultures, reflect on their own culture, and invest time in building relationships.

Embracing People From Non-Traditional Backgrounds

Product management requires a variety of skills and there is no pre-defined career path. Companies should embrace diversity and hire people from non-traditional backgrounds to bring unique value to their business. Job descriptions should be tailored to the skills needed and should be bias-free. Onboarding should include resources to familiarize with the domain, a senior PM to learn from, and a plan for career development. Diversity can bring fresh ideas and insights to product management.

The Benefits of Documentation

Writing and documenting things is a difficult task, but its benefits outweigh the effort. Documentation helps organize and streamline collective knowledge, and is especially important for online collaboration. Writing down thoughts helps to articulate them more clearly and can be used to create scripts for important meetings. Documentation also allows for asynchronous collaboration and communication automation. To make it easier to understand and browse documents, an Index Tree can be created. Writing takes discipline, but it is important for problem solving and building trust. Feedback should be tailored to the individual's writing style.

Tech Debt Is a People Problem

Tech debt is a growing problem that is hard to measure and solve due to lack of clarity on ownership and individual incentives. To fix tech debt, two actions have been taken: evangelizing to raise awareness and motivate people to volunteer resources, and clarifying ownership boundaries. Lessons learned include that most technical problems are people problems, communication is essential, and ownership boundaries are critical.

How I Succeed at Convincing… Everyone

After returning from vacation, the speaker found that their PM and partner team had agreed to move forward with a feature that the speaker disagreed with. The speaker managed to change the course of the project by convincing the design, product, and engineering teams to re-think their solution. The speaker learned that it is important to not give up, to involve more people from their team to explain the context and implications of the solution, and that resolving conflict can strengthen cross team collaborations.

Using Snippets to Track Performance and Growth

This article discusses the importance of keeping track of one's own accomplishments and progress in order to be successful in their career. The author suggests using "snippets" - brief, bullet-pointed summaries of one's achievements - to keep track of their work and to share with their manager. Snippets can be used to initiate career conversations and to identify areas of growth. Ultimately, the author encourages people to take responsibility for their own career development.

How to Establish Yourself as a Leader

This article is about a woman's journey to becoming a tech lead and tech lead manager. She learned that self-leadership is more than just having a title, and that she could start leading without waiting for a title. She also learned that age doesn't matter when it comes to leadership, and that she should quiet her inner critic and fear in order to pursue her passion for leadership.

Debugging Your Own Growth

In 2018, the author was working towards a promotion to Principal Engineer at Booking.com but did not get it. This triggered a re-evaluation of how they had pursued their career until then, and they realized they had fallen into the senior developer’s dilemma. To address this, they moved to a different place in the business, developed a framework of how and where they spend their time, and worked at the edge to ensure they kept improving technically. Through this process, they learned the importance of taking responsibility for their own growth and viewing their career as a marathon.

Being Intentional About Diversity and Inclusion

This story is about a manager who realized that their team was not being intentional about diversity and inclusion. They took steps to make their team activities more inclusive, such as introducing other activities, encouraging discussions, and setting up mentoring rings. These efforts led to more representation from underrepresented groups, and the manager learned the importance of being deliberate about diversity and inclusion, as well as the importance of creating a safe and inclusive environment.

The Benefits of Returnship

This article discusses how to create a successful returnship program for people returning to the workforce after a career break. It outlines the steps to take, such as creating a time-bound internship program with experienced mentors, and targeting boot camps and non-traditional programs to receive applications from diverse candidates. The article also explains how returnship programs are beneficial for both individuals and companies, as they lead to less churn, strong commitment, and deep loyalty.

Pausing for Innovation

This article discusses how intentional pausing can help startups innovate and boost productivity. It suggests that teams should come together for a week-long brainstorming session, followed by a demo presentation and a retro of the process. The article also provides an example of how pausing helped one team identify an opportunity they had missed in their fast-paced environment. The article concludes that pausing helps people change their vantage point and see a bigger picture, and that the time limit adds to the positive pressure and excitement.

How to Retain Women Engineers

Companies have made efforts to increase the diversity of their tech workforce by improving recruitment of women, but not as much has been done to retain them. To address this, a company revised their career ladder to include recognition for mentoring, and initiated a Women's Club and other activities to support women engineers. Lessons learned include not making efforts a women-only initiative, recognizing women's hard work, being inclusive, and creating an environment that supports work-life balance.

Helping Your Reports Choose The Right Career Path

This article discusses the dilemma many senior engineers face when deciding between a management or technical career path. The author suggests creating a program where engineers can try out a manager role for a period of six months and then decide if they would like to continue that path or go back to their previous job. The program should also involve other departments to help the engineers gain knowledge outside of their domain.

Shipping Products Faster with Confidence

Many companies struggle to find a product-market fit, but often fail to realize that shipping features faster is key to receiving feedback and building something relevant. To move faster with confidence, engineers need to assess the full lifecycle of building features, identify potential bottlenecks, and invest in automated testing. Lessons learned include measuring, understanding customer usage, and making the testing experience great for developers.

Leading Post-Acquisition

This article outlines the steps to take to ensure a successful acquisition of engineering orgs. It emphasizes the importance of building a partnership with the acquired company, understanding the system, people, and processes, and achieving alignment on both strategic and tactical levels. It also highlights the importance of not creating siloes or isolating new teams and instead leveraging the strengths of the acquired company to create a successful partnership.

How to Balance the Continual Proliferation of Ideas With Limited Resources

This article discusses the problem of an individual who was continually proliferating new ideas, which caused disruption to the team's workflow and goals. The individual took action to abstain from sharing all ideas with the team, prioritize more, and accept that not all ideas can be pursued. This resulted in a new culture of prioritizing ruthlessly and conversations about what it means to be a data scientist or engineer. The lessons learned from this experience are to make peace with yourself, prioritize wisely, and understand that going slow can make you go faster.

Building a Brand New Data Product

This article discusses the process of developing a software product geared toward large corporations to help them identify and manage their non-financial risks. The authors developed a data engine and analytic platform to collect and analyze data, and then tested their approach on three to five different clients. They then built an MVP and continued to refine the product by deconstructing the consultancy model and focusing on all the possible stories that could be derived from the data. The authors learned that when providing advanced services to a company, it is important to discover their underlying needs by doing a project a few times as a consultant, and that as a CTO or product leader, it is possible to push back unreasonable requests from the business.

Streamlining a Data Science Team

Data science is a new career and can be unpredictable and unstructured. To make the data science team successful, it is important to help them understand the business problems they are trying to solve and how their work contributes to it. Applying Agile and quickly iterating based on user feedback is a great way to refine the model. Data scientists should be trained to think about how their models can be embedded into the software and should consider delivering a model and workflow that includes a human in the loop to monitor and correct decisions. Lessons learned include helping data scientists think more like software developers and users, starting small and getting quick feedback, and coaching people to get out of their comfort zone.

Building a DevOps Team and Re-Architecting the Product: A Matter of Priority

This engineering team wanted to reduce complexity and delivery time by transitioning from a monolithic architecture to microservices. To do this, they needed to redesign their build and deploy process. They had to convince product owners and senior leadership of the value of investing in DevOps and re-architecture, and they did this by presenting the need for change from a business perspective. They also created a multi-year execution plan with trackable and measurable milestones, and started small with minimal budget. Through this process, they learned the importance of being transparent, focusing on how changes will benefit stakeholders, having trackable and measurable milestones, admitting mistakes, and being agile.

Managing an East Coast Team From the West Coast

This article discusses the challenges of a remote engineering manager tasked with modernizing an organization's product and engineering. The manager overcame the time zone difference by working on Eastern time and traveling to the East Coast often. They also earned the trust of the team by making small improvements day-to-day and having casual one-on-one meetings with people across the organization. The article also highlights the importance of being empathetic, understanding the use cases, and using video conferencing to build relationships.

Leading a Team in Different Geographies

Product managers leading dispersed teams across different geographies face challenges such as different time zones and a lack of time zone overlap, cultural differences, and building relationships and overcoming a lack of interconnectedness. To address these challenges, product managers should increase and improve their written communication, use collaborative whiteboards, share audio messages, and travel to meet the team in their own environment. They should also be open to learning about different cultures, reflect on their own culture, and invest time in building relationships.

Embracing People From Non-Traditional Backgrounds

Product management requires a variety of skills and there is no pre-defined career path. Companies should embrace diversity and hire people from non-traditional backgrounds to bring unique value to their business. Job descriptions should be tailored to the skills needed and should be bias-free. Onboarding should include resources to familiarize with the domain, a senior PM to learn from, and a plan for career development. Diversity can bring fresh ideas and insights to product management.

The Benefits of Documentation

Writing and documenting things is a difficult task, but its benefits outweigh the effort. Documentation helps organize and streamline collective knowledge, and is especially important for online collaboration. Writing down thoughts helps to articulate them more clearly and can be used to create scripts for important meetings. Documentation also allows for asynchronous collaboration and communication automation. To make it easier to understand and browse documents, an Index Tree can be created. Writing takes discipline, but it is important for problem solving and building trust. Feedback should be tailored to the individual's writing style.

Tech Debt Is a People Problem

Tech debt is a growing problem that is hard to measure and solve due to lack of clarity on ownership and individual incentives. To fix tech debt, two actions have been taken: evangelizing to raise awareness and motivate people to volunteer resources, and clarifying ownership boundaries. Lessons learned include that most technical problems are people problems, communication is essential, and ownership boundaries are critical.

How I Succeed at Convincing… Everyone

After returning from vacation, the speaker found that their PM and partner team had agreed to move forward with a feature that the speaker disagreed with. The speaker managed to change the course of the project by convincing the design, product, and engineering teams to re-think their solution. The speaker learned that it is important to not give up, to involve more people from their team to explain the context and implications of the solution, and that resolving conflict can strengthen cross team collaborations.

Using Snippets to Track Performance and Growth

This article discusses the importance of keeping track of one's own accomplishments and progress in order to be successful in their career. The author suggests using "snippets" - brief, bullet-pointed summaries of one's achievements - to keep track of their work and to share with their manager. Snippets can be used to initiate career conversations and to identify areas of growth. Ultimately, the author encourages people to take responsibility for their own career development.

How to Establish Yourself as a Leader

This article is about a woman's journey to becoming a tech lead and tech lead manager. She learned that self-leadership is more than just having a title, and that she could start leading without waiting for a title. She also learned that age doesn't matter when it comes to leadership, and that she should quiet her inner critic and fear in order to pursue her passion for leadership.

Debugging Your Own Growth

In 2018, the author was working towards a promotion to Principal Engineer at Booking.com but did not get it. This triggered a re-evaluation of how they had pursued their career until then, and they realized they had fallen into the senior developer’s dilemma. To address this, they moved to a different place in the business, developed a framework of how and where they spend their time, and worked at the edge to ensure they kept improving technically. Through this process, they learned the importance of taking responsibility for their own growth and viewing their career as a marathon.

Being Intentional About Diversity and Inclusion

This story is about a manager who realized that their team was not being intentional about diversity and inclusion. They took steps to make their team activities more inclusive, such as introducing other activities, encouraging discussions, and setting up mentoring rings. These efforts led to more representation from underrepresented groups, and the manager learned the importance of being deliberate about diversity and inclusion, as well as the importance of creating a safe and inclusive environment.

The Benefits of Returnship

This article discusses how to create a successful returnship program for people returning to the workforce after a career break. It outlines the steps to take, such as creating a time-bound internship program with experienced mentors, and targeting boot camps and non-traditional programs to receive applications from diverse candidates. The article also explains how returnship programs are beneficial for both individuals and companies, as they lead to less churn, strong commitment, and deep loyalty.

Pausing for Innovation

This article discusses how intentional pausing can help startups innovate and boost productivity. It suggests that teams should come together for a week-long brainstorming session, followed by a demo presentation and a retro of the process. The article also provides an example of how pausing helped one team identify an opportunity they had missed in their fast-paced environment. The article concludes that pausing helps people change their vantage point and see a bigger picture, and that the time limit adds to the positive pressure and excitement.

How to Retain Women Engineers

Companies have made efforts to increase the diversity of their tech workforce by improving recruitment of women, but not as much has been done to retain them. To address this, a company revised their career ladder to include recognition for mentoring, and initiated a Women's Club and other activities to support women engineers. Lessons learned include not making efforts a women-only initiative, recognizing women's hard work, being inclusive, and creating an environment that supports work-life balance.

Helping Your Reports Choose The Right Career Path

This article discusses the dilemma many senior engineers face when deciding between a management or technical career path. The author suggests creating a program where engineers can try out a manager role for a period of six months and then decide if they would like to continue that path or go back to their previous job. The program should also involve other departments to help the engineers gain knowledge outside of their domain.

Shipping Products Faster with Confidence

Many companies struggle to find a product-market fit, but often fail to realize that shipping features faster is key to receiving feedback and building something relevant. To move faster with confidence, engineers need to assess the full lifecycle of building features, identify potential bottlenecks, and invest in automated testing. Lessons learned include measuring, understanding customer usage, and making the testing experience great for developers.

Leading Post-Acquisition

This article outlines the steps to take to ensure a successful acquisition of engineering orgs. It emphasizes the importance of building a partnership with the acquired company, understanding the system, people, and processes, and achieving alignment on both strategic and tactical levels. It also highlights the importance of not creating siloes or isolating new teams and instead leveraging the strengths of the acquired company to create a successful partnership.

How to Balance the Continual Proliferation of Ideas With Limited Resources

This article discusses the problem of an individual who was continually proliferating new ideas, which caused disruption to the team's workflow and goals. The individual took action to abstain from sharing all ideas with the team, prioritize more, and accept that not all ideas can be pursued. This resulted in a new culture of prioritizing ruthlessly and conversations about what it means to be a data scientist or engineer. The lessons learned from this experience are to make peace with yourself, prioritize wisely, and understand that going slow can make you go faster.

Building a Brand New Data Product

This article discusses the process of developing a software product geared toward large corporations to help them identify and manage their non-financial risks. The authors developed a data engine and analytic platform to collect and analyze data, and then tested their approach on three to five different clients. They then built an MVP and continued to refine the product by deconstructing the consultancy model and focusing on all the possible stories that could be derived from the data. The authors learned that when providing advanced services to a company, it is important to discover their underlying needs by doing a project a few times as a consultant, and that as a CTO or product leader, it is possible to push back unreasonable requests from the business.

Streamlining a Data Science Team

Data science is a new career and can be unpredictable and unstructured. To make the data science team successful, it is important to help them understand the business problems they are trying to solve and how their work contributes to it. Applying Agile and quickly iterating based on user feedback is a great way to refine the model. Data scientists should be trained to think about how their models can be embedded into the software and should consider delivering a model and workflow that includes a human in the loop to monitor and correct decisions. Lessons learned include helping data scientists think more like software developers and users, starting small and getting quick feedback, and coaching people to get out of their comfort zone.

Building a DevOps Team and Re-Architecting the Product: A Matter of Priority

This engineering team wanted to reduce complexity and delivery time by transitioning from a monolithic architecture to microservices. To do this, they needed to redesign their build and deploy process. They had to convince product owners and senior leadership of the value of investing in DevOps and re-architecture, and they did this by presenting the need for change from a business perspective. They also created a multi-year execution plan with trackable and measurable milestones, and started small with minimal budget. Through this process, they learned the importance of being transparent, focusing on how changes will benefit stakeholders, having trackable and measurable milestones, admitting mistakes, and being agile.

Managing an East Coast Team From the West Coast

This article discusses the challenges of a remote engineering manager tasked with modernizing an organization's product and engineering. The manager overcame the time zone difference by working on Eastern time and traveling to the East Coast often. They also earned the trust of the team by making small improvements day-to-day and having casual one-on-one meetings with people across the organization. The article also highlights the importance of being empathetic, understanding the use cases, and using video conferencing to build relationships.

Leading a Team in Different Geographies

Product managers leading dispersed teams across different geographies face challenges such as different time zones and a lack of time zone overlap, cultural differences, and building relationships and overcoming a lack of interconnectedness. To address these challenges, product managers should increase and improve their written communication, use collaborative whiteboards, share audio messages, and travel to meet the team in their own environment. They should also be open to learning about different cultures, reflect on their own culture, and invest time in building relationships.

Embracing People From Non-Traditional Backgrounds

Product management requires a variety of skills and there is no pre-defined career path. Companies should embrace diversity and hire people from non-traditional backgrounds to bring unique value to their business. Job descriptions should be tailored to the skills needed and should be bias-free. Onboarding should include resources to familiarize with the domain, a senior PM to learn from, and a plan for career development. Diversity can bring fresh ideas and insights to product management.

The Benefits of Documentation

Writing and documenting things is a difficult task, but its benefits outweigh the effort. Documentation helps organize and streamline collective knowledge, and is especially important for online collaboration. Writing down thoughts helps to articulate them more clearly and can be used to create scripts for important meetings. Documentation also allows for asynchronous collaboration and communication automation. To make it easier to understand and browse documents, an Index Tree can be created. Writing takes discipline, but it is important for problem solving and building trust. Feedback should be tailored to the individual's writing style.

Tech Debt Is a People Problem

Tech debt is a growing problem that is hard to measure and solve due to lack of clarity on ownership and individual incentives. To fix tech debt, two actions have been taken: evangelizing to raise awareness and motivate people to volunteer resources, and clarifying ownership boundaries. Lessons learned include that most technical problems are people problems, communication is essential, and ownership boundaries are critical.

How I Succeed at Convincing… Everyone

After returning from vacation, the speaker found that their PM and partner team had agreed to move forward with a feature that the speaker disagreed with. The speaker managed to change the course of the project by convincing the design, product, and engineering teams to re-think their solution. The speaker learned that it is important to not give up, to involve more people from their team to explain the context and implications of the solution, and that resolving conflict can strengthen cross team collaborations.

Using Snippets to Track Performance and Growth

This article discusses the importance of keeping track of one's own accomplishments and progress in order to be successful in their career. The author suggests using "snippets" - brief, bullet-pointed summaries of one's achievements - to keep track of their work and to share with their manager. Snippets can be used to initiate career conversations and to identify areas of growth. Ultimately, the author encourages people to take responsibility for their own career development.

How to Establish Yourself as a Leader

This article is about a woman's journey to becoming a tech lead and tech lead manager. She learned that self-leadership is more than just having a title, and that she could start leading without waiting for a title. She also learned that age doesn't matter when it comes to leadership, and that she should quiet her inner critic and fear in order to pursue her passion for leadership.

Debugging Your Own Growth

In 2018, the author was working towards a promotion to Principal Engineer at Booking.com but did not get it. This triggered a re-evaluation of how they had pursued their career until then, and they realized they had fallen into the senior developer’s dilemma. To address this, they moved to a different place in the business, developed a framework of how and where they spend their time, and worked at the edge to ensure they kept improving technically. Through this process, they learned the importance of taking responsibility for their own growth and viewing their career as a marathon.

Being Intentional About Diversity and Inclusion

This story is about a manager who realized that their team was not being intentional about diversity and inclusion. They took steps to make their team activities more inclusive, such as introducing other activities, encouraging discussions, and setting up mentoring rings. These efforts led to more representation from underrepresented groups, and the manager learned the importance of being deliberate about diversity and inclusion, as well as the importance of creating a safe and inclusive environment.

The Benefits of Returnship

This article discusses how to create a successful returnship program for people returning to the workforce after a career break. It outlines the steps to take, such as creating a time-bound internship program with experienced mentors, and targeting boot camps and non-traditional programs to receive applications from diverse candidates. The article also explains how returnship programs are beneficial for both individuals and companies, as they lead to less churn, strong commitment, and deep loyalty.

Pausing for Innovation

This article discusses how intentional pausing can help startups innovate and boost productivity. It suggests that teams should come together for a week-long brainstorming session, followed by a demo presentation and a retro of the process. The article also provides an example of how pausing helped one team identify an opportunity they had missed in their fast-paced environment. The article concludes that pausing helps people change their vantage point and see a bigger picture, and that the time limit adds to the positive pressure and excitement.

How to Retain Women Engineers

Companies have made efforts to increase the diversity of their tech workforce by improving recruitment of women, but not as much has been done to retain them. To address this, a company revised their career ladder to include recognition for mentoring, and initiated a Women's Club and other activities to support women engineers. Lessons learned include not making efforts a women-only initiative, recognizing women's hard work, being inclusive, and creating an environment that supports work-life balance.

Helping Your Reports Choose The Right Career Path

This article discusses the dilemma many senior engineers face when deciding between a management or technical career path. The author suggests creating a program where engineers can try out a manager role for a period of six months and then decide if they would like to continue that path or go back to their previous job. The program should also involve other departments to help the engineers gain knowledge outside of their domain.

Shipping Products Faster with Confidence

Many companies struggle to find a product-market fit, but often fail to realize that shipping features faster is key to receiving feedback and building something relevant. To move faster with confidence, engineers need to assess the full lifecycle of building features, identify potential bottlenecks, and invest in automated testing. Lessons learned include measuring, understanding customer usage, and making the testing experience great for developers.

Leading Post-Acquisition

This article outlines the steps to take to ensure a successful acquisition of engineering orgs. It emphasizes the importance of building a partnership with the acquired company, understanding the system, people, and processes, and achieving alignment on both strategic and tactical levels. It also highlights the importance of not creating siloes or isolating new teams and instead leveraging the strengths of the acquired company to create a successful partnership.

How to Balance the Continual Proliferation of Ideas With Limited Resources

This article discusses the problem of an individual who was continually proliferating new ideas, which caused disruption to the team's workflow and goals. The individual took action to abstain from sharing all ideas with the team, prioritize more, and accept that not all ideas can be pursued. This resulted in a new culture of prioritizing ruthlessly and conversations about what it means to be a data scientist or engineer. The lessons learned from this experience are to make peace with yourself, prioritize wisely, and understand that going slow can make you go faster.

Building a Brand New Data Product

This article discusses the process of developing a software product geared toward large corporations to help them identify and manage their non-financial risks. The authors developed a data engine and analytic platform to collect and analyze data, and then tested their approach on three to five different clients. They then built an MVP and continued to refine the product by deconstructing the consultancy model and focusing on all the possible stories that could be derived from the data. The authors learned that when providing advanced services to a company, it is important to discover their underlying needs by doing a project a few times as a consultant, and that as a CTO or product leader, it is possible to push back unreasonable requests from the business.

Streamlining a Data Science Team

Data science is a new career and can be unpredictable and unstructured. To make the data science team successful, it is important to help them understand the business problems they are trying to solve and how their work contributes to it. Applying Agile and quickly iterating based on user feedback is a great way to refine the model. Data scientists should be trained to think about how their models can be embedded into the software and should consider delivering a model and workflow that includes a human in the loop to monitor and correct decisions. Lessons learned include helping data scientists think more like software developers and users, starting small and getting quick feedback, and coaching people to get out of their comfort zone.

Building a DevOps Team and Re-Architecting the Product: A Matter of Priority

This engineering team wanted to reduce complexity and delivery time by transitioning from a monolithic architecture to microservices. To do this, they needed to redesign their build and deploy process. They had to convince product owners and senior leadership of the value of investing in DevOps and re-architecture, and they did this by presenting the need for change from a business perspective. They also created a multi-year execution plan with trackable and measurable milestones, and started small with minimal budget. Through this process, they learned the importance of being transparent, focusing on how changes will benefit stakeholders, having trackable and measurable milestones, admitting mistakes, and being agile.

Managing an East Coast Team From the West Coast

This article discusses the challenges of a remote engineering manager tasked with modernizing an organization's product and engineering. The manager overcame the time zone difference by working on Eastern time and traveling to the East Coast often. They also earned the trust of the team by making small improvements day-to-day and having casual one-on-one meetings with people across the organization. The article also highlights the importance of being empathetic, understanding the use cases, and using video conferencing to build relationships.

Leading a Team in Different Geographies

Product managers leading dispersed teams across different geographies face challenges such as different time zones and a lack of time zone overlap, cultural differences, and building relationships and overcoming a lack of interconnectedness. To address these challenges, product managers should increase and improve their written communication, use collaborative whiteboards, share audio messages, and travel to meet the team in their own environment. They should also be open to learning about different cultures, reflect on their own culture, and invest time in building relationships.

Embracing People From Non-Traditional Backgrounds

Product management requires a variety of skills and there is no pre-defined career path. Companies should embrace diversity and hire people from non-traditional backgrounds to bring unique value to their business. Job descriptions should be tailored to the skills needed and should be bias-free. Onboarding should include resources to familiarize with the domain, a senior PM to learn from, and a plan for career development. Diversity can bring fresh ideas and insights to product management.

The Benefits of Documentation

Writing and documenting things is a difficult task, but its benefits outweigh the effort. Documentation helps organize and streamline collective knowledge, and is especially important for online collaboration. Writing down thoughts helps to articulate them more clearly and can be used to create scripts for important meetings. Documentation also allows for asynchronous collaboration and communication automation. To make it easier to understand and browse documents, an Index Tree can be created. Writing takes discipline, but it is important for problem solving and building trust. Feedback should be tailored to the individual's writing style.

Tech Debt Is a People Problem

Tech debt is a growing problem that is hard to measure and solve due to lack of clarity on ownership and individual incentives. To fix tech debt, two actions have been taken: evangelizing to raise awareness and motivate people to volunteer resources, and clarifying ownership boundaries. Lessons learned include that most technical problems are people problems, communication is essential, and ownership boundaries are critical.

How I Succeed at Convincing… Everyone

After returning from vacation, the speaker found that their PM and partner team had agreed to move forward with a feature that the speaker disagreed with. The speaker managed to change the course of the project by convincing the design, product, and engineering teams to re-think their solution. The speaker learned that it is important to not give up, to involve more people from their team to explain the context and implications of the solution, and that resolving conflict can strengthen cross team collaborations.

Using Snippets to Track Performance and Growth

This article discusses the importance of keeping track of one's own accomplishments and progress in order to be successful in their career. The author suggests using "snippets" - brief, bullet-pointed summaries of one's achievements - to keep track of their work and to share with their manager. Snippets can be used to initiate career conversations and to identify areas of growth. Ultimately, the author encourages people to take responsibility for their own career development.

How to Establish Yourself as a Leader

This article is about a woman's journey to becoming a tech lead and tech lead manager. She learned that self-leadership is more than just having a title, and that she could start leading without waiting for a title. She also learned that age doesn't matter when it comes to leadership, and that she should quiet her inner critic and fear in order to pursue her passion for leadership.

Debugging Your Own Growth

In 2018, the author was working towards a promotion to Principal Engineer at Booking.com but did not get it. This triggered a re-evaluation of how they had pursued their career until then, and they realized they had fallen into the senior developer’s dilemma. To address this, they moved to a different place in the business, developed a framework of how and where they spend their time, and worked at the edge to ensure they kept improving technically. Through this process, they learned the importance of taking responsibility for their own growth and viewing their career as a marathon.

Being Intentional About Diversity and Inclusion

This story is about a manager who realized that their team was not being intentional about diversity and inclusion. They took steps to make their team activities more inclusive, such as introducing other activities, encouraging discussions, and setting up mentoring rings. These efforts led to more representation from underrepresented groups, and the manager learned the importance of being deliberate about diversity and inclusion, as well as the importance of creating a safe and inclusive environment.

The Benefits of Returnship

This article discusses how to create a successful returnship program for people returning to the workforce after a career break. It outlines the steps to take, such as creating a time-bound internship program with experienced mentors, and targeting boot camps and non-traditional programs to receive applications from diverse candidates. The article also explains how returnship programs are beneficial for both individuals and companies, as they lead to less churn, strong commitment, and deep loyalty.

Pausing for Innovation

This article discusses how intentional pausing can help startups innovate and boost productivity. It suggests that teams should come together for a week-long brainstorming session, followed by a demo presentation and a retro of the process. The article also provides an example of how pausing helped one team identify an opportunity they had missed in their fast-paced environment. The article concludes that pausing helps people change their vantage point and see a bigger picture, and that the time limit adds to the positive pressure and excitement.

How to Retain Women Engineers

Companies have made efforts to increase the diversity of their tech workforce by improving recruitment of women, but not as much has been done to retain them. To address this, a company revised their career ladder to include recognition for mentoring, and initiated a Women's Club and other activities to support women engineers. Lessons learned include not making efforts a women-only initiative, recognizing women's hard work, being inclusive, and creating an environment that supports work-life balance.

Helping Your Reports Choose The Right Career Path

This article discusses the dilemma many senior engineers face when deciding between a management or technical career path. The author suggests creating a program where engineers can try out a manager role for a period of six months and then decide if they would like to continue that path or go back to their previous job. The program should also involve other departments to help the engineers gain knowledge outside of their domain.

Shipping Products Faster with Confidence

Many companies struggle to find a product-market fit, but often fail to realize that shipping features faster is key to receiving feedback and building something relevant. To move faster with confidence, engineers need to assess the full lifecycle of building features, identify potential bottlenecks, and invest in automated testing. Lessons learned include measuring, understanding customer usage, and making the testing experience great for developers.

Leading Post-Acquisition

This article outlines the steps to take to ensure a successful acquisition of engineering orgs. It emphasizes the importance of building a partnership with the acquired company, understanding the system, people, and processes, and achieving alignment on both strategic and tactical levels. It also highlights the importance of not creating siloes or isolating new teams and instead leveraging the strengths of the acquired company to create a successful partnership.

How to Balance the Continual Proliferation of Ideas With Limited Resources

This article discusses the problem of an individual who was continually proliferating new ideas, which caused disruption to the team's workflow and goals. The individual took action to abstain from sharing all ideas with the team, prioritize more, and accept that not all ideas can be pursued. This resulted in a new culture of prioritizing ruthlessly and conversations about what it means to be a data scientist or engineer. The lessons learned from this experience are to make peace with yourself, prioritize wisely, and understand that going slow can make you go faster.

Building a Brand New Data Product

This article discusses the process of developing a software product geared toward large corporations to help them identify and manage their non-financial risks. The authors developed a data engine and analytic platform to collect and analyze data, and then tested their approach on three to five different clients. They then built an MVP and continued to refine the product by deconstructing the consultancy model and focusing on all the possible stories that could be derived from the data. The authors learned that when providing advanced services to a company, it is important to discover their underlying needs by doing a project a few times as a consultant, and that as a CTO or product leader, it is possible to push back unreasonable requests from the business.

Streamlining a Data Science Team

Data science is a new career and can be unpredictable and unstructured. To make the data science team successful, it is important to help them understand the business problems they are trying to solve and how their work contributes to it. Applying Agile and quickly iterating based on user feedback is a great way to refine the model. Data scientists should be trained to think about how their models can be embedded into the software and should consider delivering a model and workflow that includes a human in the loop to monitor and correct decisions. Lessons learned include helping data scientists think more like software developers and users, starting small and getting quick feedback, and coaching people to get out of their comfort zone.

Building a DevOps Team and Re-Architecting the Product: A Matter of Priority

This engineering team wanted to reduce complexity and delivery time by transitioning from a monolithic architecture to microservices. To do this, they needed to redesign their build and deploy process. They had to convince product owners and senior leadership of the value of investing in DevOps and re-architecture, and they did this by presenting the need for change from a business perspective. They also created a multi-year execution plan with trackable and measurable milestones, and started small with minimal budget. Through this process, they learned the importance of being transparent, focusing on how changes will benefit stakeholders, having trackable and measurable milestones, admitting mistakes, and being agile.

Managing an East Coast Team From the West Coast

This article discusses the challenges of a remote engineering manager tasked with modernizing an organization's product and engineering. The manager overcame the time zone difference by working on Eastern time and traveling to the East Coast often. They also earned the trust of the team by making small improvements day-to-day and having casual one-on-one meetings with people across the organization. The article also highlights the importance of being empathetic, understanding the use cases, and using video conferencing to build relationships.

Leading a Team in Different Geographies

Product managers leading dispersed teams across different geographies face challenges such as different time zones and a lack of time zone overlap, cultural differences, and building relationships and overcoming a lack of interconnectedness. To address these challenges, product managers should increase and improve their written communication, use collaborative whiteboards, share audio messages, and travel to meet the team in their own environment. They should also be open to learning about different cultures, reflect on their own culture, and invest time in building relationships.

Embracing People From Non-Traditional Backgrounds

Product management requires a variety of skills and there is no pre-defined career path. Companies should embrace diversity and hire people from non-traditional backgrounds to bring unique value to their business. Job descriptions should be tailored to the skills needed and should be bias-free. Onboarding should include resources to familiarize with the domain, a senior PM to learn from, and a plan for career development. Diversity can bring fresh ideas and insights to product management.

The Benefits of Documentation

Writing and documenting things is a difficult task, but its benefits outweigh the effort. Documentation helps organize and streamline collective knowledge, and is especially important for online collaboration. Writing down thoughts helps to articulate them more clearly and can be used to create scripts for important meetings. Documentation also allows for asynchronous collaboration and communication automation. To make it easier to understand and browse documents, an Index Tree can be created. Writing takes discipline, but it is important for problem solving and building trust. Feedback should be tailored to the individual's writing style.

Tech Debt Is a People Problem

Tech debt is a growing problem that is hard to measure and solve due to lack of clarity on ownership and individual incentives. To fix tech debt, two actions have been taken: evangelizing to raise awareness and motivate people to volunteer resources, and clarifying ownership boundaries. Lessons learned include that most technical problems are people problems, communication is essential, and ownership boundaries are critical.