Knowledge shared by our community

Become a Manager on My Own: A Classic Tale of Being Thrown into a Management Role

This article is about the transition of an iOS engineer to a manager, and the lessons learned along the way. The author discusses the importance of understanding the company's higher-level vision, building trust with the team, delegating work, and finding mentors to help broaden their horizon. They also recommend three books to read to help with the transition. The author emphasizes the importance of patience and trust when shifting from maker to manager.

Building a Product and Solution that Requires Multiple Large Companies to Come Together

In 2016, GE Aviation began a project to improve the tracking of airline baggage and provide more detailed information to passengers. To do this, they partnered with Oracle, Infosys, and other smaller players in Silicon Valley, and established relationships with the International Air Travel Association (IATA). The project was a challenge due to the lack of existing solutions in the industry, and required the author to take a leadership role in motivating the players and setting a clear vision. The author also wrote a book in 2017, Architecting the Industrial Internet, which expanded on the topic of airline baggage.

Preparing an Existing Internal Product for an External, Commercial Launch in the Future

As a product manager, the challenge was to balance the direction of the product between the specific use internally and making it sufficiently broad so that it could solve similar problems for external customers in the future. To overcome this, the product manager looked at similar products in the industry, spoke with customers, and built a tactical roadmap for each quarterly release while establishing a three year vision for the product. This allowed the development teams and architects to see what they were working on in terms of immediate use, as well as where the product would be ending in the long term. This external product was later put into use with General Electric and other outside companies.

Advice For Improving Your Hiring and Interview Process

Lever is a recruitment tool used to track applicants, observations, conclusions, and ratings. Writing down observations rather than conclusions is important to reduce bias. Resumes should be looked at after the interview to ensure the same score and conclusion is reached by different interviewers. Lever is a valuable resource that allows all interviewers to have access to the same information about an applicant.

Personally Adapting to be More Comfortable in the Role of New Manager

A senior client developer at HBO had to decide between the architecture route or the manager route. After deciding to become a manager, the individual had to quickly learn how to become comfortable with being wrong, speaking up in meetings, giving feedback, and managing their time. Through these changes, the individual learned how to give helpful feedback and saw their reports improve.

Stepping up and Dealing with an Employee Demonstrating Low Performance

When the author became manager of a team of nine, they were warned about a person who had been moved around teams for years due to performance issues. The author took action by increasing one-on-one conversations, documenting conversations, and putting together a performance improvement plan. Eventually, the person chose to leave halfway through the plan. The author learned that it can be difficult to be direct and honest with people, but it is valuable.

How to Develop a Formalized Career Path For Your Employees

This article discusses the process of formalizing a career path for an engineering organization of 45 people. Actions taken included creating better job descriptions, a self-evaluation kit, and providing training in management, communication, and technical skills. As a result, employees were able to have more control over their career progression and become more aware of how to improve their skills. The article also highlights the importance of aligning employee progression with company goals and having a tool to objectively assess employee skills.

How to Gain Support for Your Project After An Acquisition

After an organization was acquired by a large corporation, a small R&D team had an idea to tell stories in a more interactive way. They encountered many failures and lack of success during the first two years, but eventually managed to integrate their project with the corporation's main platform. They learned that the value of a project is not intrinsically in itself but in the relationships it develops and how it fits within the company. They also learned that in large corporations, personal incentives and agendas affect a lot of what happens, and they had to find people who would champion their project because they would personally benefit from it.

Feelings, Non-Violent Communication, and Feedback - The Rebirth of a Fallen Team

At New Relic, I joined a team that had fallen apart due to a lack of trust and communication. To solve these issues, I implemented trust building exercises, nonviolent communication training, identified individual and team needs, and added appreciation into standups. This experience taught me how to deal with feelings that are undermining the team and their performance, and how to establish relationships and give proper feedback to one another. The team was able to become a much stronger, cohesive, and less resentful unit.

Developing a Peer Relationship with Your Boss

This article discusses a problem the author faced with a manager in their first year of work. The manager had high expectations but was hands-off, causing the author anxiety. To resolve this, the author took the initiative to invest in the relationship, viewing it as a peer relationship rather than a hierarchical one. They increased interactions, sent summaries of events before 1:1s, and asked for advice. The article concludes with lessons learned, such as the importance of trust in a relationship with a boss, managing upwards in an additive manner, and doing what is right for the team and business.

Giving Your Team Space and Support

In a difficult period of negative press and internal turmoil, an engineering manager was able to keep the team focused on their jobs and shipping projects by showing empathy and providing a safe space for team members to express their thoughts and vulnerabilities. Through authenticity, asking questions, and understanding, the manager was able to help the team make their own decisions and only one of the 12 engineers left the team. This experience taught the manager the importance of authenticity, asking questions, and being empathetic.

Teach Them to Yearn For It

A team was tasked with launching an electric scooter product in one of the key markets in less than six weeks. They decided to order the hardware product from China and attach an IOT communication module to it. Despite the tight deadline, the team managed to assemble the product and launch it in four weeks. The team learned that when there is a mission of what needs to be done, people come together and can make the impossible happen. The leader of the team also learned the importance of having a clear vision and empowering people on the team to take ownership.

The Rewards of a Speedy Development By a Small Team

In a situation where there was no headcount to launch a pilot project in partnership with another company in 4 months, the lead engineer was able to be resourceful and assemble a team of three people to design and build the product. The product was launched and led to the acquisition of the company they were partnering with. The engineer was then responsible for growing the team from three to over 50 people in one year, proving that it is possible to build innovative products in a large company if you are resourceful and have a can-do attitude.

When Feedback Comes as a Surprise

Leaders often face uncomfortable situations when giving feedback to their team members, such as when the feedback comes as a surprise to the recipient. To avoid this, it is important to have transparent conversations and follow-ups to ensure that the feedback is understood and internalized. Leaders should give honest and transparent feedback to their team members, and remember that their role is to ensure the complete success of the team, not just act as a coach.

Journeying Between Companies of Different Size

This article discusses the challenges of navigating different size companies and the importance of taking the time to understand the culture of the new company. It emphasizes the need to observe and listen before jumping in and trying to prove value, and highlights the benefits of working at both small and large companies.

Creating Space in Your Fully Booked Calendar

This article provides advice on how to manage time as a manager, including making two separate lists of tasks that can be delegated and those that only you can do, saying no to certain tasks, and creating opportunities for others by giving them new challenges. It also suggests blocking out dedicated focus time in your calendar to be strategically effective.

Mistakes Are OK as Long as We Learn from Them

This article discusses the lessons learned from the author's experience of managing teams. The author emphasizes the importance of encouraging team members to make decisions independently and to think through the consequences of their actions. Postmortems are also suggested as a way to improve decision-making and to focus on what can be done better rather than pointing out mistakes. The author's guiding principle is to support team members as long as they have thought through the implications of their decisions and spent enough time considering the best choice.

How to Improve Collaboration Between Product Management and Engineering

This article discusses the journey of merging different organizations into a cross-functional team structure, and the two-in-a-box approach that was implemented to foster strong relationships between product owners and technical leads. It also outlines the importance of reducing focus, evaluating the impact of changes, and nurturing communication between product and engineering teams. Finally, it suggests replacing project teams with product teams to ensure that features are maintained and updated.

Hiring the Right Fit

This article discusses the importance of hiring the right person for a successful business. It outlines the actions taken by the author to ensure that they are making the best hiring decisions, such as relying on external recruiters and trusting their instinct. It also explains how to read resumes to get a better understanding of a candidate's personality and skills. The article also highlights the importance of being aware of cultural differences when assessing a candidate.

Health and Emotions Should Not Come with Targets and Goals

In order to understand the emotions of employees in the age of data and OKRs, a cultural identity exercise was conducted with three basic questions. It was found that self-awareness and deprecation are key to understanding people's thoughts and how to make situations better. Additionally, it was found that quantified and direct interviewing misses out on the impact of people who bring excitement to the conversation.

Become a Manager on My Own: A Classic Tale of Being Thrown into a Management Role

This article is about the transition of an iOS engineer to a manager, and the lessons learned along the way. The author discusses the importance of understanding the company's higher-level vision, building trust with the team, delegating work, and finding mentors to help broaden their horizon. They also recommend three books to read to help with the transition. The author emphasizes the importance of patience and trust when shifting from maker to manager.

Building a Product and Solution that Requires Multiple Large Companies to Come Together

In 2016, GE Aviation began a project to improve the tracking of airline baggage and provide more detailed information to passengers. To do this, they partnered with Oracle, Infosys, and other smaller players in Silicon Valley, and established relationships with the International Air Travel Association (IATA). The project was a challenge due to the lack of existing solutions in the industry, and required the author to take a leadership role in motivating the players and setting a clear vision. The author also wrote a book in 2017, Architecting the Industrial Internet, which expanded on the topic of airline baggage.

Preparing an Existing Internal Product for an External, Commercial Launch in the Future

As a product manager, the challenge was to balance the direction of the product between the specific use internally and making it sufficiently broad so that it could solve similar problems for external customers in the future. To overcome this, the product manager looked at similar products in the industry, spoke with customers, and built a tactical roadmap for each quarterly release while establishing a three year vision for the product. This allowed the development teams and architects to see what they were working on in terms of immediate use, as well as where the product would be ending in the long term. This external product was later put into use with General Electric and other outside companies.

Advice For Improving Your Hiring and Interview Process

Lever is a recruitment tool used to track applicants, observations, conclusions, and ratings. Writing down observations rather than conclusions is important to reduce bias. Resumes should be looked at after the interview to ensure the same score and conclusion is reached by different interviewers. Lever is a valuable resource that allows all interviewers to have access to the same information about an applicant.

Personally Adapting to be More Comfortable in the Role of New Manager

A senior client developer at HBO had to decide between the architecture route or the manager route. After deciding to become a manager, the individual had to quickly learn how to become comfortable with being wrong, speaking up in meetings, giving feedback, and managing their time. Through these changes, the individual learned how to give helpful feedback and saw their reports improve.

Stepping up and Dealing with an Employee Demonstrating Low Performance

When the author became manager of a team of nine, they were warned about a person who had been moved around teams for years due to performance issues. The author took action by increasing one-on-one conversations, documenting conversations, and putting together a performance improvement plan. Eventually, the person chose to leave halfway through the plan. The author learned that it can be difficult to be direct and honest with people, but it is valuable.

How to Develop a Formalized Career Path For Your Employees

This article discusses the process of formalizing a career path for an engineering organization of 45 people. Actions taken included creating better job descriptions, a self-evaluation kit, and providing training in management, communication, and technical skills. As a result, employees were able to have more control over their career progression and become more aware of how to improve their skills. The article also highlights the importance of aligning employee progression with company goals and having a tool to objectively assess employee skills.

How to Gain Support for Your Project After An Acquisition

After an organization was acquired by a large corporation, a small R&D team had an idea to tell stories in a more interactive way. They encountered many failures and lack of success during the first two years, but eventually managed to integrate their project with the corporation's main platform. They learned that the value of a project is not intrinsically in itself but in the relationships it develops and how it fits within the company. They also learned that in large corporations, personal incentives and agendas affect a lot of what happens, and they had to find people who would champion their project because they would personally benefit from it.

Feelings, Non-Violent Communication, and Feedback - The Rebirth of a Fallen Team

At New Relic, I joined a team that had fallen apart due to a lack of trust and communication. To solve these issues, I implemented trust building exercises, nonviolent communication training, identified individual and team needs, and added appreciation into standups. This experience taught me how to deal with feelings that are undermining the team and their performance, and how to establish relationships and give proper feedback to one another. The team was able to become a much stronger, cohesive, and less resentful unit.

Developing a Peer Relationship with Your Boss

This article discusses a problem the author faced with a manager in their first year of work. The manager had high expectations but was hands-off, causing the author anxiety. To resolve this, the author took the initiative to invest in the relationship, viewing it as a peer relationship rather than a hierarchical one. They increased interactions, sent summaries of events before 1:1s, and asked for advice. The article concludes with lessons learned, such as the importance of trust in a relationship with a boss, managing upwards in an additive manner, and doing what is right for the team and business.

Giving Your Team Space and Support

In a difficult period of negative press and internal turmoil, an engineering manager was able to keep the team focused on their jobs and shipping projects by showing empathy and providing a safe space for team members to express their thoughts and vulnerabilities. Through authenticity, asking questions, and understanding, the manager was able to help the team make their own decisions and only one of the 12 engineers left the team. This experience taught the manager the importance of authenticity, asking questions, and being empathetic.

Teach Them to Yearn For It

A team was tasked with launching an electric scooter product in one of the key markets in less than six weeks. They decided to order the hardware product from China and attach an IOT communication module to it. Despite the tight deadline, the team managed to assemble the product and launch it in four weeks. The team learned that when there is a mission of what needs to be done, people come together and can make the impossible happen. The leader of the team also learned the importance of having a clear vision and empowering people on the team to take ownership.

The Rewards of a Speedy Development By a Small Team

In a situation where there was no headcount to launch a pilot project in partnership with another company in 4 months, the lead engineer was able to be resourceful and assemble a team of three people to design and build the product. The product was launched and led to the acquisition of the company they were partnering with. The engineer was then responsible for growing the team from three to over 50 people in one year, proving that it is possible to build innovative products in a large company if you are resourceful and have a can-do attitude.

When Feedback Comes as a Surprise

Leaders often face uncomfortable situations when giving feedback to their team members, such as when the feedback comes as a surprise to the recipient. To avoid this, it is important to have transparent conversations and follow-ups to ensure that the feedback is understood and internalized. Leaders should give honest and transparent feedback to their team members, and remember that their role is to ensure the complete success of the team, not just act as a coach.

Journeying Between Companies of Different Size

This article discusses the challenges of navigating different size companies and the importance of taking the time to understand the culture of the new company. It emphasizes the need to observe and listen before jumping in and trying to prove value, and highlights the benefits of working at both small and large companies.

Creating Space in Your Fully Booked Calendar

This article provides advice on how to manage time as a manager, including making two separate lists of tasks that can be delegated and those that only you can do, saying no to certain tasks, and creating opportunities for others by giving them new challenges. It also suggests blocking out dedicated focus time in your calendar to be strategically effective.

Mistakes Are OK as Long as We Learn from Them

This article discusses the lessons learned from the author's experience of managing teams. The author emphasizes the importance of encouraging team members to make decisions independently and to think through the consequences of their actions. Postmortems are also suggested as a way to improve decision-making and to focus on what can be done better rather than pointing out mistakes. The author's guiding principle is to support team members as long as they have thought through the implications of their decisions and spent enough time considering the best choice.

How to Improve Collaboration Between Product Management and Engineering

This article discusses the journey of merging different organizations into a cross-functional team structure, and the two-in-a-box approach that was implemented to foster strong relationships between product owners and technical leads. It also outlines the importance of reducing focus, evaluating the impact of changes, and nurturing communication between product and engineering teams. Finally, it suggests replacing project teams with product teams to ensure that features are maintained and updated.

Hiring the Right Fit

This article discusses the importance of hiring the right person for a successful business. It outlines the actions taken by the author to ensure that they are making the best hiring decisions, such as relying on external recruiters and trusting their instinct. It also explains how to read resumes to get a better understanding of a candidate's personality and skills. The article also highlights the importance of being aware of cultural differences when assessing a candidate.

Health and Emotions Should Not Come with Targets and Goals

In order to understand the emotions of employees in the age of data and OKRs, a cultural identity exercise was conducted with three basic questions. It was found that self-awareness and deprecation are key to understanding people's thoughts and how to make situations better. Additionally, it was found that quantified and direct interviewing misses out on the impact of people who bring excitement to the conversation.

Become a Manager on My Own: A Classic Tale of Being Thrown into a Management Role

This article is about the transition of an iOS engineer to a manager, and the lessons learned along the way. The author discusses the importance of understanding the company's higher-level vision, building trust with the team, delegating work, and finding mentors to help broaden their horizon. They also recommend three books to read to help with the transition. The author emphasizes the importance of patience and trust when shifting from maker to manager.

Building a Product and Solution that Requires Multiple Large Companies to Come Together

In 2016, GE Aviation began a project to improve the tracking of airline baggage and provide more detailed information to passengers. To do this, they partnered with Oracle, Infosys, and other smaller players in Silicon Valley, and established relationships with the International Air Travel Association (IATA). The project was a challenge due to the lack of existing solutions in the industry, and required the author to take a leadership role in motivating the players and setting a clear vision. The author also wrote a book in 2017, Architecting the Industrial Internet, which expanded on the topic of airline baggage.

Preparing an Existing Internal Product for an External, Commercial Launch in the Future

As a product manager, the challenge was to balance the direction of the product between the specific use internally and making it sufficiently broad so that it could solve similar problems for external customers in the future. To overcome this, the product manager looked at similar products in the industry, spoke with customers, and built a tactical roadmap for each quarterly release while establishing a three year vision for the product. This allowed the development teams and architects to see what they were working on in terms of immediate use, as well as where the product would be ending in the long term. This external product was later put into use with General Electric and other outside companies.

Advice For Improving Your Hiring and Interview Process

Lever is a recruitment tool used to track applicants, observations, conclusions, and ratings. Writing down observations rather than conclusions is important to reduce bias. Resumes should be looked at after the interview to ensure the same score and conclusion is reached by different interviewers. Lever is a valuable resource that allows all interviewers to have access to the same information about an applicant.

Personally Adapting to be More Comfortable in the Role of New Manager

A senior client developer at HBO had to decide between the architecture route or the manager route. After deciding to become a manager, the individual had to quickly learn how to become comfortable with being wrong, speaking up in meetings, giving feedback, and managing their time. Through these changes, the individual learned how to give helpful feedback and saw their reports improve.

Stepping up and Dealing with an Employee Demonstrating Low Performance

When the author became manager of a team of nine, they were warned about a person who had been moved around teams for years due to performance issues. The author took action by increasing one-on-one conversations, documenting conversations, and putting together a performance improvement plan. Eventually, the person chose to leave halfway through the plan. The author learned that it can be difficult to be direct and honest with people, but it is valuable.

How to Develop a Formalized Career Path For Your Employees

This article discusses the process of formalizing a career path for an engineering organization of 45 people. Actions taken included creating better job descriptions, a self-evaluation kit, and providing training in management, communication, and technical skills. As a result, employees were able to have more control over their career progression and become more aware of how to improve their skills. The article also highlights the importance of aligning employee progression with company goals and having a tool to objectively assess employee skills.

How to Gain Support for Your Project After An Acquisition

After an organization was acquired by a large corporation, a small R&D team had an idea to tell stories in a more interactive way. They encountered many failures and lack of success during the first two years, but eventually managed to integrate their project with the corporation's main platform. They learned that the value of a project is not intrinsically in itself but in the relationships it develops and how it fits within the company. They also learned that in large corporations, personal incentives and agendas affect a lot of what happens, and they had to find people who would champion their project because they would personally benefit from it.

Feelings, Non-Violent Communication, and Feedback - The Rebirth of a Fallen Team

At New Relic, I joined a team that had fallen apart due to a lack of trust and communication. To solve these issues, I implemented trust building exercises, nonviolent communication training, identified individual and team needs, and added appreciation into standups. This experience taught me how to deal with feelings that are undermining the team and their performance, and how to establish relationships and give proper feedback to one another. The team was able to become a much stronger, cohesive, and less resentful unit.

Developing a Peer Relationship with Your Boss

This article discusses a problem the author faced with a manager in their first year of work. The manager had high expectations but was hands-off, causing the author anxiety. To resolve this, the author took the initiative to invest in the relationship, viewing it as a peer relationship rather than a hierarchical one. They increased interactions, sent summaries of events before 1:1s, and asked for advice. The article concludes with lessons learned, such as the importance of trust in a relationship with a boss, managing upwards in an additive manner, and doing what is right for the team and business.

Giving Your Team Space and Support

In a difficult period of negative press and internal turmoil, an engineering manager was able to keep the team focused on their jobs and shipping projects by showing empathy and providing a safe space for team members to express their thoughts and vulnerabilities. Through authenticity, asking questions, and understanding, the manager was able to help the team make their own decisions and only one of the 12 engineers left the team. This experience taught the manager the importance of authenticity, asking questions, and being empathetic.

Teach Them to Yearn For It

A team was tasked with launching an electric scooter product in one of the key markets in less than six weeks. They decided to order the hardware product from China and attach an IOT communication module to it. Despite the tight deadline, the team managed to assemble the product and launch it in four weeks. The team learned that when there is a mission of what needs to be done, people come together and can make the impossible happen. The leader of the team also learned the importance of having a clear vision and empowering people on the team to take ownership.

The Rewards of a Speedy Development By a Small Team

In a situation where there was no headcount to launch a pilot project in partnership with another company in 4 months, the lead engineer was able to be resourceful and assemble a team of three people to design and build the product. The product was launched and led to the acquisition of the company they were partnering with. The engineer was then responsible for growing the team from three to over 50 people in one year, proving that it is possible to build innovative products in a large company if you are resourceful and have a can-do attitude.

When Feedback Comes as a Surprise

Leaders often face uncomfortable situations when giving feedback to their team members, such as when the feedback comes as a surprise to the recipient. To avoid this, it is important to have transparent conversations and follow-ups to ensure that the feedback is understood and internalized. Leaders should give honest and transparent feedback to their team members, and remember that their role is to ensure the complete success of the team, not just act as a coach.

Journeying Between Companies of Different Size

This article discusses the challenges of navigating different size companies and the importance of taking the time to understand the culture of the new company. It emphasizes the need to observe and listen before jumping in and trying to prove value, and highlights the benefits of working at both small and large companies.

Creating Space in Your Fully Booked Calendar

This article provides advice on how to manage time as a manager, including making two separate lists of tasks that can be delegated and those that only you can do, saying no to certain tasks, and creating opportunities for others by giving them new challenges. It also suggests blocking out dedicated focus time in your calendar to be strategically effective.

Mistakes Are OK as Long as We Learn from Them

This article discusses the lessons learned from the author's experience of managing teams. The author emphasizes the importance of encouraging team members to make decisions independently and to think through the consequences of their actions. Postmortems are also suggested as a way to improve decision-making and to focus on what can be done better rather than pointing out mistakes. The author's guiding principle is to support team members as long as they have thought through the implications of their decisions and spent enough time considering the best choice.

How to Improve Collaboration Between Product Management and Engineering

This article discusses the journey of merging different organizations into a cross-functional team structure, and the two-in-a-box approach that was implemented to foster strong relationships between product owners and technical leads. It also outlines the importance of reducing focus, evaluating the impact of changes, and nurturing communication between product and engineering teams. Finally, it suggests replacing project teams with product teams to ensure that features are maintained and updated.

Hiring the Right Fit

This article discusses the importance of hiring the right person for a successful business. It outlines the actions taken by the author to ensure that they are making the best hiring decisions, such as relying on external recruiters and trusting their instinct. It also explains how to read resumes to get a better understanding of a candidate's personality and skills. The article also highlights the importance of being aware of cultural differences when assessing a candidate.

Health and Emotions Should Not Come with Targets and Goals

In order to understand the emotions of employees in the age of data and OKRs, a cultural identity exercise was conducted with three basic questions. It was found that self-awareness and deprecation are key to understanding people's thoughts and how to make situations better. Additionally, it was found that quantified and direct interviewing misses out on the impact of people who bring excitement to the conversation.

Become a Manager on My Own: A Classic Tale of Being Thrown into a Management Role

This article is about the transition of an iOS engineer to a manager, and the lessons learned along the way. The author discusses the importance of understanding the company's higher-level vision, building trust with the team, delegating work, and finding mentors to help broaden their horizon. They also recommend three books to read to help with the transition. The author emphasizes the importance of patience and trust when shifting from maker to manager.

Building a Product and Solution that Requires Multiple Large Companies to Come Together

In 2016, GE Aviation began a project to improve the tracking of airline baggage and provide more detailed information to passengers. To do this, they partnered with Oracle, Infosys, and other smaller players in Silicon Valley, and established relationships with the International Air Travel Association (IATA). The project was a challenge due to the lack of existing solutions in the industry, and required the author to take a leadership role in motivating the players and setting a clear vision. The author also wrote a book in 2017, Architecting the Industrial Internet, which expanded on the topic of airline baggage.

Preparing an Existing Internal Product for an External, Commercial Launch in the Future

As a product manager, the challenge was to balance the direction of the product between the specific use internally and making it sufficiently broad so that it could solve similar problems for external customers in the future. To overcome this, the product manager looked at similar products in the industry, spoke with customers, and built a tactical roadmap for each quarterly release while establishing a three year vision for the product. This allowed the development teams and architects to see what they were working on in terms of immediate use, as well as where the product would be ending in the long term. This external product was later put into use with General Electric and other outside companies.

Advice For Improving Your Hiring and Interview Process

Lever is a recruitment tool used to track applicants, observations, conclusions, and ratings. Writing down observations rather than conclusions is important to reduce bias. Resumes should be looked at after the interview to ensure the same score and conclusion is reached by different interviewers. Lever is a valuable resource that allows all interviewers to have access to the same information about an applicant.

Personally Adapting to be More Comfortable in the Role of New Manager

A senior client developer at HBO had to decide between the architecture route or the manager route. After deciding to become a manager, the individual had to quickly learn how to become comfortable with being wrong, speaking up in meetings, giving feedback, and managing their time. Through these changes, the individual learned how to give helpful feedback and saw their reports improve.

Stepping up and Dealing with an Employee Demonstrating Low Performance

When the author became manager of a team of nine, they were warned about a person who had been moved around teams for years due to performance issues. The author took action by increasing one-on-one conversations, documenting conversations, and putting together a performance improvement plan. Eventually, the person chose to leave halfway through the plan. The author learned that it can be difficult to be direct and honest with people, but it is valuable.

How to Develop a Formalized Career Path For Your Employees

This article discusses the process of formalizing a career path for an engineering organization of 45 people. Actions taken included creating better job descriptions, a self-evaluation kit, and providing training in management, communication, and technical skills. As a result, employees were able to have more control over their career progression and become more aware of how to improve their skills. The article also highlights the importance of aligning employee progression with company goals and having a tool to objectively assess employee skills.

How to Gain Support for Your Project After An Acquisition

After an organization was acquired by a large corporation, a small R&D team had an idea to tell stories in a more interactive way. They encountered many failures and lack of success during the first two years, but eventually managed to integrate their project with the corporation's main platform. They learned that the value of a project is not intrinsically in itself but in the relationships it develops and how it fits within the company. They also learned that in large corporations, personal incentives and agendas affect a lot of what happens, and they had to find people who would champion their project because they would personally benefit from it.

Feelings, Non-Violent Communication, and Feedback - The Rebirth of a Fallen Team

At New Relic, I joined a team that had fallen apart due to a lack of trust and communication. To solve these issues, I implemented trust building exercises, nonviolent communication training, identified individual and team needs, and added appreciation into standups. This experience taught me how to deal with feelings that are undermining the team and their performance, and how to establish relationships and give proper feedback to one another. The team was able to become a much stronger, cohesive, and less resentful unit.

Developing a Peer Relationship with Your Boss

This article discusses a problem the author faced with a manager in their first year of work. The manager had high expectations but was hands-off, causing the author anxiety. To resolve this, the author took the initiative to invest in the relationship, viewing it as a peer relationship rather than a hierarchical one. They increased interactions, sent summaries of events before 1:1s, and asked for advice. The article concludes with lessons learned, such as the importance of trust in a relationship with a boss, managing upwards in an additive manner, and doing what is right for the team and business.

Giving Your Team Space and Support

In a difficult period of negative press and internal turmoil, an engineering manager was able to keep the team focused on their jobs and shipping projects by showing empathy and providing a safe space for team members to express their thoughts and vulnerabilities. Through authenticity, asking questions, and understanding, the manager was able to help the team make their own decisions and only one of the 12 engineers left the team. This experience taught the manager the importance of authenticity, asking questions, and being empathetic.

Teach Them to Yearn For It

A team was tasked with launching an electric scooter product in one of the key markets in less than six weeks. They decided to order the hardware product from China and attach an IOT communication module to it. Despite the tight deadline, the team managed to assemble the product and launch it in four weeks. The team learned that when there is a mission of what needs to be done, people come together and can make the impossible happen. The leader of the team also learned the importance of having a clear vision and empowering people on the team to take ownership.

The Rewards of a Speedy Development By a Small Team

In a situation where there was no headcount to launch a pilot project in partnership with another company in 4 months, the lead engineer was able to be resourceful and assemble a team of three people to design and build the product. The product was launched and led to the acquisition of the company they were partnering with. The engineer was then responsible for growing the team from three to over 50 people in one year, proving that it is possible to build innovative products in a large company if you are resourceful and have a can-do attitude.

When Feedback Comes as a Surprise

Leaders often face uncomfortable situations when giving feedback to their team members, such as when the feedback comes as a surprise to the recipient. To avoid this, it is important to have transparent conversations and follow-ups to ensure that the feedback is understood and internalized. Leaders should give honest and transparent feedback to their team members, and remember that their role is to ensure the complete success of the team, not just act as a coach.

Journeying Between Companies of Different Size

This article discusses the challenges of navigating different size companies and the importance of taking the time to understand the culture of the new company. It emphasizes the need to observe and listen before jumping in and trying to prove value, and highlights the benefits of working at both small and large companies.

Creating Space in Your Fully Booked Calendar

This article provides advice on how to manage time as a manager, including making two separate lists of tasks that can be delegated and those that only you can do, saying no to certain tasks, and creating opportunities for others by giving them new challenges. It also suggests blocking out dedicated focus time in your calendar to be strategically effective.

Mistakes Are OK as Long as We Learn from Them

This article discusses the lessons learned from the author's experience of managing teams. The author emphasizes the importance of encouraging team members to make decisions independently and to think through the consequences of their actions. Postmortems are also suggested as a way to improve decision-making and to focus on what can be done better rather than pointing out mistakes. The author's guiding principle is to support team members as long as they have thought through the implications of their decisions and spent enough time considering the best choice.

How to Improve Collaboration Between Product Management and Engineering

This article discusses the journey of merging different organizations into a cross-functional team structure, and the two-in-a-box approach that was implemented to foster strong relationships between product owners and technical leads. It also outlines the importance of reducing focus, evaluating the impact of changes, and nurturing communication between product and engineering teams. Finally, it suggests replacing project teams with product teams to ensure that features are maintained and updated.

Hiring the Right Fit

This article discusses the importance of hiring the right person for a successful business. It outlines the actions taken by the author to ensure that they are making the best hiring decisions, such as relying on external recruiters and trusting their instinct. It also explains how to read resumes to get a better understanding of a candidate's personality and skills. The article also highlights the importance of being aware of cultural differences when assessing a candidate.

Health and Emotions Should Not Come with Targets and Goals

In order to understand the emotions of employees in the age of data and OKRs, a cultural identity exercise was conducted with three basic questions. It was found that self-awareness and deprecation are key to understanding people's thoughts and how to make situations better. Additionally, it was found that quantified and direct interviewing misses out on the impact of people who bring excitement to the conversation.

Become a Manager on My Own: A Classic Tale of Being Thrown into a Management Role

This article is about the transition of an iOS engineer to a manager, and the lessons learned along the way. The author discusses the importance of understanding the company's higher-level vision, building trust with the team, delegating work, and finding mentors to help broaden their horizon. They also recommend three books to read to help with the transition. The author emphasizes the importance of patience and trust when shifting from maker to manager.

Building a Product and Solution that Requires Multiple Large Companies to Come Together

In 2016, GE Aviation began a project to improve the tracking of airline baggage and provide more detailed information to passengers. To do this, they partnered with Oracle, Infosys, and other smaller players in Silicon Valley, and established relationships with the International Air Travel Association (IATA). The project was a challenge due to the lack of existing solutions in the industry, and required the author to take a leadership role in motivating the players and setting a clear vision. The author also wrote a book in 2017, Architecting the Industrial Internet, which expanded on the topic of airline baggage.

Preparing an Existing Internal Product for an External, Commercial Launch in the Future

As a product manager, the challenge was to balance the direction of the product between the specific use internally and making it sufficiently broad so that it could solve similar problems for external customers in the future. To overcome this, the product manager looked at similar products in the industry, spoke with customers, and built a tactical roadmap for each quarterly release while establishing a three year vision for the product. This allowed the development teams and architects to see what they were working on in terms of immediate use, as well as where the product would be ending in the long term. This external product was later put into use with General Electric and other outside companies.

Advice For Improving Your Hiring and Interview Process

Lever is a recruitment tool used to track applicants, observations, conclusions, and ratings. Writing down observations rather than conclusions is important to reduce bias. Resumes should be looked at after the interview to ensure the same score and conclusion is reached by different interviewers. Lever is a valuable resource that allows all interviewers to have access to the same information about an applicant.

Personally Adapting to be More Comfortable in the Role of New Manager

A senior client developer at HBO had to decide between the architecture route or the manager route. After deciding to become a manager, the individual had to quickly learn how to become comfortable with being wrong, speaking up in meetings, giving feedback, and managing their time. Through these changes, the individual learned how to give helpful feedback and saw their reports improve.

Stepping up and Dealing with an Employee Demonstrating Low Performance

When the author became manager of a team of nine, they were warned about a person who had been moved around teams for years due to performance issues. The author took action by increasing one-on-one conversations, documenting conversations, and putting together a performance improvement plan. Eventually, the person chose to leave halfway through the plan. The author learned that it can be difficult to be direct and honest with people, but it is valuable.

How to Develop a Formalized Career Path For Your Employees

This article discusses the process of formalizing a career path for an engineering organization of 45 people. Actions taken included creating better job descriptions, a self-evaluation kit, and providing training in management, communication, and technical skills. As a result, employees were able to have more control over their career progression and become more aware of how to improve their skills. The article also highlights the importance of aligning employee progression with company goals and having a tool to objectively assess employee skills.

How to Gain Support for Your Project After An Acquisition

After an organization was acquired by a large corporation, a small R&D team had an idea to tell stories in a more interactive way. They encountered many failures and lack of success during the first two years, but eventually managed to integrate their project with the corporation's main platform. They learned that the value of a project is not intrinsically in itself but in the relationships it develops and how it fits within the company. They also learned that in large corporations, personal incentives and agendas affect a lot of what happens, and they had to find people who would champion their project because they would personally benefit from it.

Feelings, Non-Violent Communication, and Feedback - The Rebirth of a Fallen Team

At New Relic, I joined a team that had fallen apart due to a lack of trust and communication. To solve these issues, I implemented trust building exercises, nonviolent communication training, identified individual and team needs, and added appreciation into standups. This experience taught me how to deal with feelings that are undermining the team and their performance, and how to establish relationships and give proper feedback to one another. The team was able to become a much stronger, cohesive, and less resentful unit.

Developing a Peer Relationship with Your Boss

This article discusses a problem the author faced with a manager in their first year of work. The manager had high expectations but was hands-off, causing the author anxiety. To resolve this, the author took the initiative to invest in the relationship, viewing it as a peer relationship rather than a hierarchical one. They increased interactions, sent summaries of events before 1:1s, and asked for advice. The article concludes with lessons learned, such as the importance of trust in a relationship with a boss, managing upwards in an additive manner, and doing what is right for the team and business.

Giving Your Team Space and Support

In a difficult period of negative press and internal turmoil, an engineering manager was able to keep the team focused on their jobs and shipping projects by showing empathy and providing a safe space for team members to express their thoughts and vulnerabilities. Through authenticity, asking questions, and understanding, the manager was able to help the team make their own decisions and only one of the 12 engineers left the team. This experience taught the manager the importance of authenticity, asking questions, and being empathetic.

Teach Them to Yearn For It

A team was tasked with launching an electric scooter product in one of the key markets in less than six weeks. They decided to order the hardware product from China and attach an IOT communication module to it. Despite the tight deadline, the team managed to assemble the product and launch it in four weeks. The team learned that when there is a mission of what needs to be done, people come together and can make the impossible happen. The leader of the team also learned the importance of having a clear vision and empowering people on the team to take ownership.

The Rewards of a Speedy Development By a Small Team

In a situation where there was no headcount to launch a pilot project in partnership with another company in 4 months, the lead engineer was able to be resourceful and assemble a team of three people to design and build the product. The product was launched and led to the acquisition of the company they were partnering with. The engineer was then responsible for growing the team from three to over 50 people in one year, proving that it is possible to build innovative products in a large company if you are resourceful and have a can-do attitude.

When Feedback Comes as a Surprise

Leaders often face uncomfortable situations when giving feedback to their team members, such as when the feedback comes as a surprise to the recipient. To avoid this, it is important to have transparent conversations and follow-ups to ensure that the feedback is understood and internalized. Leaders should give honest and transparent feedback to their team members, and remember that their role is to ensure the complete success of the team, not just act as a coach.

Journeying Between Companies of Different Size

This article discusses the challenges of navigating different size companies and the importance of taking the time to understand the culture of the new company. It emphasizes the need to observe and listen before jumping in and trying to prove value, and highlights the benefits of working at both small and large companies.

Creating Space in Your Fully Booked Calendar

This article provides advice on how to manage time as a manager, including making two separate lists of tasks that can be delegated and those that only you can do, saying no to certain tasks, and creating opportunities for others by giving them new challenges. It also suggests blocking out dedicated focus time in your calendar to be strategically effective.

Mistakes Are OK as Long as We Learn from Them

This article discusses the lessons learned from the author's experience of managing teams. The author emphasizes the importance of encouraging team members to make decisions independently and to think through the consequences of their actions. Postmortems are also suggested as a way to improve decision-making and to focus on what can be done better rather than pointing out mistakes. The author's guiding principle is to support team members as long as they have thought through the implications of their decisions and spent enough time considering the best choice.

How to Improve Collaboration Between Product Management and Engineering

This article discusses the journey of merging different organizations into a cross-functional team structure, and the two-in-a-box approach that was implemented to foster strong relationships between product owners and technical leads. It also outlines the importance of reducing focus, evaluating the impact of changes, and nurturing communication between product and engineering teams. Finally, it suggests replacing project teams with product teams to ensure that features are maintained and updated.

Hiring the Right Fit

This article discusses the importance of hiring the right person for a successful business. It outlines the actions taken by the author to ensure that they are making the best hiring decisions, such as relying on external recruiters and trusting their instinct. It also explains how to read resumes to get a better understanding of a candidate's personality and skills. The article also highlights the importance of being aware of cultural differences when assessing a candidate.

Health and Emotions Should Not Come with Targets and Goals

In order to understand the emotions of employees in the age of data and OKRs, a cultural identity exercise was conducted with three basic questions. It was found that self-awareness and deprecation are key to understanding people's thoughts and how to make situations better. Additionally, it was found that quantified and direct interviewing misses out on the impact of people who bring excitement to the conversation.

Become a Manager on My Own: A Classic Tale of Being Thrown into a Management Role

This article is about the transition of an iOS engineer to a manager, and the lessons learned along the way. The author discusses the importance of understanding the company's higher-level vision, building trust with the team, delegating work, and finding mentors to help broaden their horizon. They also recommend three books to read to help with the transition. The author emphasizes the importance of patience and trust when shifting from maker to manager.

Building a Product and Solution that Requires Multiple Large Companies to Come Together

In 2016, GE Aviation began a project to improve the tracking of airline baggage and provide more detailed information to passengers. To do this, they partnered with Oracle, Infosys, and other smaller players in Silicon Valley, and established relationships with the International Air Travel Association (IATA). The project was a challenge due to the lack of existing solutions in the industry, and required the author to take a leadership role in motivating the players and setting a clear vision. The author also wrote a book in 2017, Architecting the Industrial Internet, which expanded on the topic of airline baggage.

Preparing an Existing Internal Product for an External, Commercial Launch in the Future

As a product manager, the challenge was to balance the direction of the product between the specific use internally and making it sufficiently broad so that it could solve similar problems for external customers in the future. To overcome this, the product manager looked at similar products in the industry, spoke with customers, and built a tactical roadmap for each quarterly release while establishing a three year vision for the product. This allowed the development teams and architects to see what they were working on in terms of immediate use, as well as where the product would be ending in the long term. This external product was later put into use with General Electric and other outside companies.

Advice For Improving Your Hiring and Interview Process

Lever is a recruitment tool used to track applicants, observations, conclusions, and ratings. Writing down observations rather than conclusions is important to reduce bias. Resumes should be looked at after the interview to ensure the same score and conclusion is reached by different interviewers. Lever is a valuable resource that allows all interviewers to have access to the same information about an applicant.

Personally Adapting to be More Comfortable in the Role of New Manager

A senior client developer at HBO had to decide between the architecture route or the manager route. After deciding to become a manager, the individual had to quickly learn how to become comfortable with being wrong, speaking up in meetings, giving feedback, and managing their time. Through these changes, the individual learned how to give helpful feedback and saw their reports improve.

Stepping up and Dealing with an Employee Demonstrating Low Performance

When the author became manager of a team of nine, they were warned about a person who had been moved around teams for years due to performance issues. The author took action by increasing one-on-one conversations, documenting conversations, and putting together a performance improvement plan. Eventually, the person chose to leave halfway through the plan. The author learned that it can be difficult to be direct and honest with people, but it is valuable.

How to Develop a Formalized Career Path For Your Employees

This article discusses the process of formalizing a career path for an engineering organization of 45 people. Actions taken included creating better job descriptions, a self-evaluation kit, and providing training in management, communication, and technical skills. As a result, employees were able to have more control over their career progression and become more aware of how to improve their skills. The article also highlights the importance of aligning employee progression with company goals and having a tool to objectively assess employee skills.

How to Gain Support for Your Project After An Acquisition

After an organization was acquired by a large corporation, a small R&D team had an idea to tell stories in a more interactive way. They encountered many failures and lack of success during the first two years, but eventually managed to integrate their project with the corporation's main platform. They learned that the value of a project is not intrinsically in itself but in the relationships it develops and how it fits within the company. They also learned that in large corporations, personal incentives and agendas affect a lot of what happens, and they had to find people who would champion their project because they would personally benefit from it.

Feelings, Non-Violent Communication, and Feedback - The Rebirth of a Fallen Team

At New Relic, I joined a team that had fallen apart due to a lack of trust and communication. To solve these issues, I implemented trust building exercises, nonviolent communication training, identified individual and team needs, and added appreciation into standups. This experience taught me how to deal with feelings that are undermining the team and their performance, and how to establish relationships and give proper feedback to one another. The team was able to become a much stronger, cohesive, and less resentful unit.

Developing a Peer Relationship with Your Boss

This article discusses a problem the author faced with a manager in their first year of work. The manager had high expectations but was hands-off, causing the author anxiety. To resolve this, the author took the initiative to invest in the relationship, viewing it as a peer relationship rather than a hierarchical one. They increased interactions, sent summaries of events before 1:1s, and asked for advice. The article concludes with lessons learned, such as the importance of trust in a relationship with a boss, managing upwards in an additive manner, and doing what is right for the team and business.

Giving Your Team Space and Support

In a difficult period of negative press and internal turmoil, an engineering manager was able to keep the team focused on their jobs and shipping projects by showing empathy and providing a safe space for team members to express their thoughts and vulnerabilities. Through authenticity, asking questions, and understanding, the manager was able to help the team make their own decisions and only one of the 12 engineers left the team. This experience taught the manager the importance of authenticity, asking questions, and being empathetic.

Teach Them to Yearn For It

A team was tasked with launching an electric scooter product in one of the key markets in less than six weeks. They decided to order the hardware product from China and attach an IOT communication module to it. Despite the tight deadline, the team managed to assemble the product and launch it in four weeks. The team learned that when there is a mission of what needs to be done, people come together and can make the impossible happen. The leader of the team also learned the importance of having a clear vision and empowering people on the team to take ownership.

The Rewards of a Speedy Development By a Small Team

In a situation where there was no headcount to launch a pilot project in partnership with another company in 4 months, the lead engineer was able to be resourceful and assemble a team of three people to design and build the product. The product was launched and led to the acquisition of the company they were partnering with. The engineer was then responsible for growing the team from three to over 50 people in one year, proving that it is possible to build innovative products in a large company if you are resourceful and have a can-do attitude.

When Feedback Comes as a Surprise

Leaders often face uncomfortable situations when giving feedback to their team members, such as when the feedback comes as a surprise to the recipient. To avoid this, it is important to have transparent conversations and follow-ups to ensure that the feedback is understood and internalized. Leaders should give honest and transparent feedback to their team members, and remember that their role is to ensure the complete success of the team, not just act as a coach.

Journeying Between Companies of Different Size

This article discusses the challenges of navigating different size companies and the importance of taking the time to understand the culture of the new company. It emphasizes the need to observe and listen before jumping in and trying to prove value, and highlights the benefits of working at both small and large companies.

Creating Space in Your Fully Booked Calendar

This article provides advice on how to manage time as a manager, including making two separate lists of tasks that can be delegated and those that only you can do, saying no to certain tasks, and creating opportunities for others by giving them new challenges. It also suggests blocking out dedicated focus time in your calendar to be strategically effective.

Mistakes Are OK as Long as We Learn from Them

This article discusses the lessons learned from the author's experience of managing teams. The author emphasizes the importance of encouraging team members to make decisions independently and to think through the consequences of their actions. Postmortems are also suggested as a way to improve decision-making and to focus on what can be done better rather than pointing out mistakes. The author's guiding principle is to support team members as long as they have thought through the implications of their decisions and spent enough time considering the best choice.

How to Improve Collaboration Between Product Management and Engineering

This article discusses the journey of merging different organizations into a cross-functional team structure, and the two-in-a-box approach that was implemented to foster strong relationships between product owners and technical leads. It also outlines the importance of reducing focus, evaluating the impact of changes, and nurturing communication between product and engineering teams. Finally, it suggests replacing project teams with product teams to ensure that features are maintained and updated.

Hiring the Right Fit

This article discusses the importance of hiring the right person for a successful business. It outlines the actions taken by the author to ensure that they are making the best hiring decisions, such as relying on external recruiters and trusting their instinct. It also explains how to read resumes to get a better understanding of a candidate's personality and skills. The article also highlights the importance of being aware of cultural differences when assessing a candidate.

Health and Emotions Should Not Come with Targets and Goals

In order to understand the emotions of employees in the age of data and OKRs, a cultural identity exercise was conducted with three basic questions. It was found that self-awareness and deprecation are key to understanding people's thoughts and how to make situations better. Additionally, it was found that quantified and direct interviewing misses out on the impact of people who bring excitement to the conversation.