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Building Up Your Technical Skills in a Fast-Paced Industry

With the constant influx of new technologies in software development, it can be difficult to decide which ones to learn and stay current with. This article outlines five tips for upskilling your technical knowledge, such as evaluating the 'why' before deciding what to learn, upskilling on the fundamentals first, accepting that you can't know everything, delegating tasks, and not neglecting your soft skills. It also emphasizes the importance of having a focus, working on communication skills, and reading outside of the IT area.

How to Navigate Your Manager Role at a New Company

As a new Engineering Manager at Marks & Spencer, the challenge of building trust is compounded by the need to set up a new structure and reshape the architecture to support growth. To build trust, it is important to understand the customer problems, technical strategy, and how the tech teams are aligned to the strategy. Communication and feedback from cross-functional teams is also important. Building trust with reports is necessary to do the job, and requires creating a psychologically safe environment, active listening, and providing sponsorship opportunities. Lastly, staying motivated is key to success in this role.

Team Development Framework for new managers

When transitioning from an Individual Contributor to a Manager, it can feel overwhelming. This post focuses on the mindset shift needed to better utilize the advice available for new Managers. The key difference between the two roles is the core action (Developing code vs. Developing team) and how it is done (high quality vs. high engagement). Managers must have a core set of skills such as building trust, active listening, decision-making, and emotional intelligence. Despite having the development framework and required skills, being a Manager is still hard due to the high cost of being wrong, solutions not always being logical, and non-determinism.

Bootstrapping a Startup While Working Full-Time

This is the story of how the author started their own company, Surfer, while still working full-time. They started small, building a rough prototype and not worrying about monetization. When they decided to find an investor, they ended up bootstrapping instead, cutting their salaries to zero and being mindful of their spending. The author's tips for starting a profitable company include starting slowly, charging customers as soon as possible, and incentivizing customers to pay for annual subscriptions.

Effective Hiring Practices: Asking the Right Questions

Finding the right talent for a job requires asking the right questions and conducting interviews in a way that makes candidates feel comfortable. It is important to look for a technical fit, but also a match in values and learning potential. To gain insight during interviews, it is recommended to take several unorthodox approaches, such as identifying and double-downing on risky matters, prompting candidates with open-ended topics, focusing on fewer topics in detail, asking how they would hire for the role, and encouraging them to come up with a question. Additionally, feedback should be asked for in order to improve the interview process.

How Product Management Chose Me

This article is about the author's journey into product management. After graduating college during the 2008 recession, the author took the first office job they could land and was initially doing technical help desk and quality assurance. After 6 months, they started to give feedback to the engineers and were eventually promoted to a product manager. They then moved to a larger growth-stage startup, but found that the company didn't understand the role of a product manager. The author eventually joined Capital One, where they were surrounded by other product managers and had access to internal learning resources. The author concludes that many people fall into product management in one way or another.

How to Help Employees Find Their Strengths and Passions

Many people don't know their passions and strengths, and often underestimate the value of their strengths. It is essential to identify and leverage unique strengths to be motivated and successful in a role. Through self-reflection and tools such as the 16 personality test and the CliftonStrengths assessment, individuals can discover their passions and strengths and make an impact. Leaders should create an environment where people can explore and build on their strengths, and be mindful that working on something you're passionate about always delivers better results. If you fail, it can mean several things: either you're in the wrong place, doing the wrong thing, or you have a gap in knowledge or skill that you need to address.

How Product Marketing Can (and Should) Help Product Development

Product teams often overlook user adoption when releasing new features, leading to missed opportunities. Product marketing is a critical strategy for ensuring user adoption, and should be included in the product development process from the beginning. Companies should focus on staying goal-oriented and maximizing user adoption when rolling out features.

Managing Through a Team Reorganization

This article is about the author's experience leading a team through a reorganization. It outlines the importance of being authentic and transparent with the team, building a trusted group of advisors, staying focused on priorities, and having a perspective that change is the only constant. It emphasizes the need for empathy and determination to successfully lead through a reorg.

Dealing with Uncertainties and Adapting as You Go

Organizations are facing a high level of uncertainty due to the changes in the work environment since 2020. Teams need to find the right balance between short- and long-term plans and incorporate flexibility. Managers should have discussions with their teams about the organization’s mission and stakeholders. Teams should have weekly achievements instead of monthly targets and frequent and purposeful communication. To build long-lasting teams, team-building activities should be encouraged and mission-driven, autonomous teams should be fostered.

Having Work-Life Balance: More Than Just A Suggestion

This article discusses the importance of maintaining a healthy work-life balance for ambitious workaholics. It emphasizes the need to take breaks and focus on personal life and hobbies, and suggests breaking career goals into segments to create a more balanced work week. It also highlights the importance of shutting off from work during weekends and the importance of cultivating social connections. In the end, it stresses that actively balancing out your life is valuable.

Deciding if Management Is Right for You

After taking a year to reflect on the decision to move into a management role, the author decided to start small and test their skills in guiding others. They mentored a few engineers and then took on an initiative to unify the architecture of their organization. This was a successful endeavor and gave the author the confidence to decide that they could be a good manager. The author emphasizes the importance of being a good leader in engineering, such as being humble, creating an environment where everyone can thrive, and making the team feel like they can rely on you.

Promoting Interdepartmental Teamwork for More Efficient Problem-Solving

Companies should strive to build autonomous teams that can solve their own problems, but communication between teams is important to ensure that external input is taken into account. A system of problem-solving that encourages interdepartmental collaboration can be implemented, which involves publishing a problem statement, collaborating via confluence papers, sifting through proposals, deciding on the best solution, and executing the solution. Sharing problems with the wider team can help to extract insight from a large number of people, and can be a great way to motivate people.

How to Motivate Your Engineers to Grow in Their Careers

This article discusses how to support career development for engineers in a company. It suggests creating a competency matrix for soft skills and providing a clear growth path with a leveling system to foster motivation. It also suggests appointing team leads and providing them with knowledge on how to guide their reports. This helps individuals progress in their career journey and reach their goals.

What Is Team Health and How to Achieve It

Evaluating team health is a continuous process that requires understanding the people aspect of the team, as well as the business impact. Leaders should assess their team's health by considering factors such as collaboration, motivation, individual needs, and the bigger picture. Additionally, feedback from the team should be gathered in order to create an environment that works for everyone and provides value to customers.

How to Successfully Rebuild Your Product

When the author joined their company, the product side of things was chaotic with many feature requests and value to bring to customers. To rebuild the product area, the author focused on understanding customer expectations, prioritizing the backlog, and measuring the changes. After rebuilding the product area, the company saw a higher adoption rate for features and a more customizable user experience. The key takeaways from this experience are to focus on the future, be client-focused, and follow up with clients.

How to Empower Teams to Build Out a Product Portfolio During Company Growth

As the company grew, it became clear that the current structure could not support the need for both product excellence and product innovation. To address this, two new teams were created, one for product excellence and one for product innovation. This division of teams allowed for better communication, ownership, and collaboration, as well as the creation of new leaders to help cultivate and translate the company's visions and goals.

Finding the Mission-Driven Product Management Role That You Want

When searching for a mission-driven job, it is important to evaluate the company's mission, the leaders, and the role itself. If you can't find the perfect job, look for the next best thing and pick your battles. Additionally, find leaders who will help you grow into your target role and focus on the long-term.

When Management Isn’t for You: How to Advance in Your Career as an IC

This article discusses the alternative career path of becoming a distinguished engineer for software engineers who don't want to pursue a managerial role. It outlines the four steps to becoming a distinguished engineer: reading the book Staff Engineer: Leadership Beyond the Management Track, identifying your current and goal archetypes, finding a mentor, and checking with your company to see if they provide this career track. It also emphasizes that not everyone is cut out to be a manager, and that it's important to find a path that will make you happy.

Checking For Values Alignment When Considering a New Role

In this article, the author discusses their experience with values misalignment with senior leadership in a previous role. They emphasize the importance of understanding and prioritizing your values when considering a new role, and suggest asking questions in the interview process to ensure that the company's values align with yours. They also discuss the difference between intentional and unintentional misalignment, and how to address each.

Building Up Your Technical Skills in a Fast-Paced Industry

With the constant influx of new technologies in software development, it can be difficult to decide which ones to learn and stay current with. This article outlines five tips for upskilling your technical knowledge, such as evaluating the 'why' before deciding what to learn, upskilling on the fundamentals first, accepting that you can't know everything, delegating tasks, and not neglecting your soft skills. It also emphasizes the importance of having a focus, working on communication skills, and reading outside of the IT area.

How to Navigate Your Manager Role at a New Company

As a new Engineering Manager at Marks & Spencer, the challenge of building trust is compounded by the need to set up a new structure and reshape the architecture to support growth. To build trust, it is important to understand the customer problems, technical strategy, and how the tech teams are aligned to the strategy. Communication and feedback from cross-functional teams is also important. Building trust with reports is necessary to do the job, and requires creating a psychologically safe environment, active listening, and providing sponsorship opportunities. Lastly, staying motivated is key to success in this role.

Team Development Framework for new managers

When transitioning from an Individual Contributor to a Manager, it can feel overwhelming. This post focuses on the mindset shift needed to better utilize the advice available for new Managers. The key difference between the two roles is the core action (Developing code vs. Developing team) and how it is done (high quality vs. high engagement). Managers must have a core set of skills such as building trust, active listening, decision-making, and emotional intelligence. Despite having the development framework and required skills, being a Manager is still hard due to the high cost of being wrong, solutions not always being logical, and non-determinism.

Bootstrapping a Startup While Working Full-Time

This is the story of how the author started their own company, Surfer, while still working full-time. They started small, building a rough prototype and not worrying about monetization. When they decided to find an investor, they ended up bootstrapping instead, cutting their salaries to zero and being mindful of their spending. The author's tips for starting a profitable company include starting slowly, charging customers as soon as possible, and incentivizing customers to pay for annual subscriptions.

Effective Hiring Practices: Asking the Right Questions

Finding the right talent for a job requires asking the right questions and conducting interviews in a way that makes candidates feel comfortable. It is important to look for a technical fit, but also a match in values and learning potential. To gain insight during interviews, it is recommended to take several unorthodox approaches, such as identifying and double-downing on risky matters, prompting candidates with open-ended topics, focusing on fewer topics in detail, asking how they would hire for the role, and encouraging them to come up with a question. Additionally, feedback should be asked for in order to improve the interview process.

How Product Management Chose Me

This article is about the author's journey into product management. After graduating college during the 2008 recession, the author took the first office job they could land and was initially doing technical help desk and quality assurance. After 6 months, they started to give feedback to the engineers and were eventually promoted to a product manager. They then moved to a larger growth-stage startup, but found that the company didn't understand the role of a product manager. The author eventually joined Capital One, where they were surrounded by other product managers and had access to internal learning resources. The author concludes that many people fall into product management in one way or another.

How to Help Employees Find Their Strengths and Passions

Many people don't know their passions and strengths, and often underestimate the value of their strengths. It is essential to identify and leverage unique strengths to be motivated and successful in a role. Through self-reflection and tools such as the 16 personality test and the CliftonStrengths assessment, individuals can discover their passions and strengths and make an impact. Leaders should create an environment where people can explore and build on their strengths, and be mindful that working on something you're passionate about always delivers better results. If you fail, it can mean several things: either you're in the wrong place, doing the wrong thing, or you have a gap in knowledge or skill that you need to address.

How Product Marketing Can (and Should) Help Product Development

Product teams often overlook user adoption when releasing new features, leading to missed opportunities. Product marketing is a critical strategy for ensuring user adoption, and should be included in the product development process from the beginning. Companies should focus on staying goal-oriented and maximizing user adoption when rolling out features.

Managing Through a Team Reorganization

This article is about the author's experience leading a team through a reorganization. It outlines the importance of being authentic and transparent with the team, building a trusted group of advisors, staying focused on priorities, and having a perspective that change is the only constant. It emphasizes the need for empathy and determination to successfully lead through a reorg.

Dealing with Uncertainties and Adapting as You Go

Organizations are facing a high level of uncertainty due to the changes in the work environment since 2020. Teams need to find the right balance between short- and long-term plans and incorporate flexibility. Managers should have discussions with their teams about the organization’s mission and stakeholders. Teams should have weekly achievements instead of monthly targets and frequent and purposeful communication. To build long-lasting teams, team-building activities should be encouraged and mission-driven, autonomous teams should be fostered.

Having Work-Life Balance: More Than Just A Suggestion

This article discusses the importance of maintaining a healthy work-life balance for ambitious workaholics. It emphasizes the need to take breaks and focus on personal life and hobbies, and suggests breaking career goals into segments to create a more balanced work week. It also highlights the importance of shutting off from work during weekends and the importance of cultivating social connections. In the end, it stresses that actively balancing out your life is valuable.

Deciding if Management Is Right for You

After taking a year to reflect on the decision to move into a management role, the author decided to start small and test their skills in guiding others. They mentored a few engineers and then took on an initiative to unify the architecture of their organization. This was a successful endeavor and gave the author the confidence to decide that they could be a good manager. The author emphasizes the importance of being a good leader in engineering, such as being humble, creating an environment where everyone can thrive, and making the team feel like they can rely on you.

Promoting Interdepartmental Teamwork for More Efficient Problem-Solving

Companies should strive to build autonomous teams that can solve their own problems, but communication between teams is important to ensure that external input is taken into account. A system of problem-solving that encourages interdepartmental collaboration can be implemented, which involves publishing a problem statement, collaborating via confluence papers, sifting through proposals, deciding on the best solution, and executing the solution. Sharing problems with the wider team can help to extract insight from a large number of people, and can be a great way to motivate people.

How to Motivate Your Engineers to Grow in Their Careers

This article discusses how to support career development for engineers in a company. It suggests creating a competency matrix for soft skills and providing a clear growth path with a leveling system to foster motivation. It also suggests appointing team leads and providing them with knowledge on how to guide their reports. This helps individuals progress in their career journey and reach their goals.

What Is Team Health and How to Achieve It

Evaluating team health is a continuous process that requires understanding the people aspect of the team, as well as the business impact. Leaders should assess their team's health by considering factors such as collaboration, motivation, individual needs, and the bigger picture. Additionally, feedback from the team should be gathered in order to create an environment that works for everyone and provides value to customers.

How to Successfully Rebuild Your Product

When the author joined their company, the product side of things was chaotic with many feature requests and value to bring to customers. To rebuild the product area, the author focused on understanding customer expectations, prioritizing the backlog, and measuring the changes. After rebuilding the product area, the company saw a higher adoption rate for features and a more customizable user experience. The key takeaways from this experience are to focus on the future, be client-focused, and follow up with clients.

How to Empower Teams to Build Out a Product Portfolio During Company Growth

As the company grew, it became clear that the current structure could not support the need for both product excellence and product innovation. To address this, two new teams were created, one for product excellence and one for product innovation. This division of teams allowed for better communication, ownership, and collaboration, as well as the creation of new leaders to help cultivate and translate the company's visions and goals.

Finding the Mission-Driven Product Management Role That You Want

When searching for a mission-driven job, it is important to evaluate the company's mission, the leaders, and the role itself. If you can't find the perfect job, look for the next best thing and pick your battles. Additionally, find leaders who will help you grow into your target role and focus on the long-term.

When Management Isn’t for You: How to Advance in Your Career as an IC

This article discusses the alternative career path of becoming a distinguished engineer for software engineers who don't want to pursue a managerial role. It outlines the four steps to becoming a distinguished engineer: reading the book Staff Engineer: Leadership Beyond the Management Track, identifying your current and goal archetypes, finding a mentor, and checking with your company to see if they provide this career track. It also emphasizes that not everyone is cut out to be a manager, and that it's important to find a path that will make you happy.

Checking For Values Alignment When Considering a New Role

In this article, the author discusses their experience with values misalignment with senior leadership in a previous role. They emphasize the importance of understanding and prioritizing your values when considering a new role, and suggest asking questions in the interview process to ensure that the company's values align with yours. They also discuss the difference between intentional and unintentional misalignment, and how to address each.

Building Up Your Technical Skills in a Fast-Paced Industry

With the constant influx of new technologies in software development, it can be difficult to decide which ones to learn and stay current with. This article outlines five tips for upskilling your technical knowledge, such as evaluating the 'why' before deciding what to learn, upskilling on the fundamentals first, accepting that you can't know everything, delegating tasks, and not neglecting your soft skills. It also emphasizes the importance of having a focus, working on communication skills, and reading outside of the IT area.

How to Navigate Your Manager Role at a New Company

As a new Engineering Manager at Marks & Spencer, the challenge of building trust is compounded by the need to set up a new structure and reshape the architecture to support growth. To build trust, it is important to understand the customer problems, technical strategy, and how the tech teams are aligned to the strategy. Communication and feedback from cross-functional teams is also important. Building trust with reports is necessary to do the job, and requires creating a psychologically safe environment, active listening, and providing sponsorship opportunities. Lastly, staying motivated is key to success in this role.

Team Development Framework for new managers

When transitioning from an Individual Contributor to a Manager, it can feel overwhelming. This post focuses on the mindset shift needed to better utilize the advice available for new Managers. The key difference between the two roles is the core action (Developing code vs. Developing team) and how it is done (high quality vs. high engagement). Managers must have a core set of skills such as building trust, active listening, decision-making, and emotional intelligence. Despite having the development framework and required skills, being a Manager is still hard due to the high cost of being wrong, solutions not always being logical, and non-determinism.

Bootstrapping a Startup While Working Full-Time

This is the story of how the author started their own company, Surfer, while still working full-time. They started small, building a rough prototype and not worrying about monetization. When they decided to find an investor, they ended up bootstrapping instead, cutting their salaries to zero and being mindful of their spending. The author's tips for starting a profitable company include starting slowly, charging customers as soon as possible, and incentivizing customers to pay for annual subscriptions.

Effective Hiring Practices: Asking the Right Questions

Finding the right talent for a job requires asking the right questions and conducting interviews in a way that makes candidates feel comfortable. It is important to look for a technical fit, but also a match in values and learning potential. To gain insight during interviews, it is recommended to take several unorthodox approaches, such as identifying and double-downing on risky matters, prompting candidates with open-ended topics, focusing on fewer topics in detail, asking how they would hire for the role, and encouraging them to come up with a question. Additionally, feedback should be asked for in order to improve the interview process.

How Product Management Chose Me

This article is about the author's journey into product management. After graduating college during the 2008 recession, the author took the first office job they could land and was initially doing technical help desk and quality assurance. After 6 months, they started to give feedback to the engineers and were eventually promoted to a product manager. They then moved to a larger growth-stage startup, but found that the company didn't understand the role of a product manager. The author eventually joined Capital One, where they were surrounded by other product managers and had access to internal learning resources. The author concludes that many people fall into product management in one way or another.

How to Help Employees Find Their Strengths and Passions

Many people don't know their passions and strengths, and often underestimate the value of their strengths. It is essential to identify and leverage unique strengths to be motivated and successful in a role. Through self-reflection and tools such as the 16 personality test and the CliftonStrengths assessment, individuals can discover their passions and strengths and make an impact. Leaders should create an environment where people can explore and build on their strengths, and be mindful that working on something you're passionate about always delivers better results. If you fail, it can mean several things: either you're in the wrong place, doing the wrong thing, or you have a gap in knowledge or skill that you need to address.

How Product Marketing Can (and Should) Help Product Development

Product teams often overlook user adoption when releasing new features, leading to missed opportunities. Product marketing is a critical strategy for ensuring user adoption, and should be included in the product development process from the beginning. Companies should focus on staying goal-oriented and maximizing user adoption when rolling out features.

Managing Through a Team Reorganization

This article is about the author's experience leading a team through a reorganization. It outlines the importance of being authentic and transparent with the team, building a trusted group of advisors, staying focused on priorities, and having a perspective that change is the only constant. It emphasizes the need for empathy and determination to successfully lead through a reorg.

Dealing with Uncertainties and Adapting as You Go

Organizations are facing a high level of uncertainty due to the changes in the work environment since 2020. Teams need to find the right balance between short- and long-term plans and incorporate flexibility. Managers should have discussions with their teams about the organization’s mission and stakeholders. Teams should have weekly achievements instead of monthly targets and frequent and purposeful communication. To build long-lasting teams, team-building activities should be encouraged and mission-driven, autonomous teams should be fostered.

Having Work-Life Balance: More Than Just A Suggestion

This article discusses the importance of maintaining a healthy work-life balance for ambitious workaholics. It emphasizes the need to take breaks and focus on personal life and hobbies, and suggests breaking career goals into segments to create a more balanced work week. It also highlights the importance of shutting off from work during weekends and the importance of cultivating social connections. In the end, it stresses that actively balancing out your life is valuable.

Deciding if Management Is Right for You

After taking a year to reflect on the decision to move into a management role, the author decided to start small and test their skills in guiding others. They mentored a few engineers and then took on an initiative to unify the architecture of their organization. This was a successful endeavor and gave the author the confidence to decide that they could be a good manager. The author emphasizes the importance of being a good leader in engineering, such as being humble, creating an environment where everyone can thrive, and making the team feel like they can rely on you.

Promoting Interdepartmental Teamwork for More Efficient Problem-Solving

Companies should strive to build autonomous teams that can solve their own problems, but communication between teams is important to ensure that external input is taken into account. A system of problem-solving that encourages interdepartmental collaboration can be implemented, which involves publishing a problem statement, collaborating via confluence papers, sifting through proposals, deciding on the best solution, and executing the solution. Sharing problems with the wider team can help to extract insight from a large number of people, and can be a great way to motivate people.

How to Motivate Your Engineers to Grow in Their Careers

This article discusses how to support career development for engineers in a company. It suggests creating a competency matrix for soft skills and providing a clear growth path with a leveling system to foster motivation. It also suggests appointing team leads and providing them with knowledge on how to guide their reports. This helps individuals progress in their career journey and reach their goals.

What Is Team Health and How to Achieve It

Evaluating team health is a continuous process that requires understanding the people aspect of the team, as well as the business impact. Leaders should assess their team's health by considering factors such as collaboration, motivation, individual needs, and the bigger picture. Additionally, feedback from the team should be gathered in order to create an environment that works for everyone and provides value to customers.

How to Successfully Rebuild Your Product

When the author joined their company, the product side of things was chaotic with many feature requests and value to bring to customers. To rebuild the product area, the author focused on understanding customer expectations, prioritizing the backlog, and measuring the changes. After rebuilding the product area, the company saw a higher adoption rate for features and a more customizable user experience. The key takeaways from this experience are to focus on the future, be client-focused, and follow up with clients.

How to Empower Teams to Build Out a Product Portfolio During Company Growth

As the company grew, it became clear that the current structure could not support the need for both product excellence and product innovation. To address this, two new teams were created, one for product excellence and one for product innovation. This division of teams allowed for better communication, ownership, and collaboration, as well as the creation of new leaders to help cultivate and translate the company's visions and goals.

Finding the Mission-Driven Product Management Role That You Want

When searching for a mission-driven job, it is important to evaluate the company's mission, the leaders, and the role itself. If you can't find the perfect job, look for the next best thing and pick your battles. Additionally, find leaders who will help you grow into your target role and focus on the long-term.

When Management Isn’t for You: How to Advance in Your Career as an IC

This article discusses the alternative career path of becoming a distinguished engineer for software engineers who don't want to pursue a managerial role. It outlines the four steps to becoming a distinguished engineer: reading the book Staff Engineer: Leadership Beyond the Management Track, identifying your current and goal archetypes, finding a mentor, and checking with your company to see if they provide this career track. It also emphasizes that not everyone is cut out to be a manager, and that it's important to find a path that will make you happy.

Checking For Values Alignment When Considering a New Role

In this article, the author discusses their experience with values misalignment with senior leadership in a previous role. They emphasize the importance of understanding and prioritizing your values when considering a new role, and suggest asking questions in the interview process to ensure that the company's values align with yours. They also discuss the difference between intentional and unintentional misalignment, and how to address each.

Building Up Your Technical Skills in a Fast-Paced Industry

With the constant influx of new technologies in software development, it can be difficult to decide which ones to learn and stay current with. This article outlines five tips for upskilling your technical knowledge, such as evaluating the 'why' before deciding what to learn, upskilling on the fundamentals first, accepting that you can't know everything, delegating tasks, and not neglecting your soft skills. It also emphasizes the importance of having a focus, working on communication skills, and reading outside of the IT area.

How to Navigate Your Manager Role at a New Company

As a new Engineering Manager at Marks & Spencer, the challenge of building trust is compounded by the need to set up a new structure and reshape the architecture to support growth. To build trust, it is important to understand the customer problems, technical strategy, and how the tech teams are aligned to the strategy. Communication and feedback from cross-functional teams is also important. Building trust with reports is necessary to do the job, and requires creating a psychologically safe environment, active listening, and providing sponsorship opportunities. Lastly, staying motivated is key to success in this role.

Team Development Framework for new managers

When transitioning from an Individual Contributor to a Manager, it can feel overwhelming. This post focuses on the mindset shift needed to better utilize the advice available for new Managers. The key difference between the two roles is the core action (Developing code vs. Developing team) and how it is done (high quality vs. high engagement). Managers must have a core set of skills such as building trust, active listening, decision-making, and emotional intelligence. Despite having the development framework and required skills, being a Manager is still hard due to the high cost of being wrong, solutions not always being logical, and non-determinism.

Bootstrapping a Startup While Working Full-Time

This is the story of how the author started their own company, Surfer, while still working full-time. They started small, building a rough prototype and not worrying about monetization. When they decided to find an investor, they ended up bootstrapping instead, cutting their salaries to zero and being mindful of their spending. The author's tips for starting a profitable company include starting slowly, charging customers as soon as possible, and incentivizing customers to pay for annual subscriptions.

Effective Hiring Practices: Asking the Right Questions

Finding the right talent for a job requires asking the right questions and conducting interviews in a way that makes candidates feel comfortable. It is important to look for a technical fit, but also a match in values and learning potential. To gain insight during interviews, it is recommended to take several unorthodox approaches, such as identifying and double-downing on risky matters, prompting candidates with open-ended topics, focusing on fewer topics in detail, asking how they would hire for the role, and encouraging them to come up with a question. Additionally, feedback should be asked for in order to improve the interview process.

How Product Management Chose Me

This article is about the author's journey into product management. After graduating college during the 2008 recession, the author took the first office job they could land and was initially doing technical help desk and quality assurance. After 6 months, they started to give feedback to the engineers and were eventually promoted to a product manager. They then moved to a larger growth-stage startup, but found that the company didn't understand the role of a product manager. The author eventually joined Capital One, where they were surrounded by other product managers and had access to internal learning resources. The author concludes that many people fall into product management in one way or another.

How to Help Employees Find Their Strengths and Passions

Many people don't know their passions and strengths, and often underestimate the value of their strengths. It is essential to identify and leverage unique strengths to be motivated and successful in a role. Through self-reflection and tools such as the 16 personality test and the CliftonStrengths assessment, individuals can discover their passions and strengths and make an impact. Leaders should create an environment where people can explore and build on their strengths, and be mindful that working on something you're passionate about always delivers better results. If you fail, it can mean several things: either you're in the wrong place, doing the wrong thing, or you have a gap in knowledge or skill that you need to address.

How Product Marketing Can (and Should) Help Product Development

Product teams often overlook user adoption when releasing new features, leading to missed opportunities. Product marketing is a critical strategy for ensuring user adoption, and should be included in the product development process from the beginning. Companies should focus on staying goal-oriented and maximizing user adoption when rolling out features.

Managing Through a Team Reorganization

This article is about the author's experience leading a team through a reorganization. It outlines the importance of being authentic and transparent with the team, building a trusted group of advisors, staying focused on priorities, and having a perspective that change is the only constant. It emphasizes the need for empathy and determination to successfully lead through a reorg.

Dealing with Uncertainties and Adapting as You Go

Organizations are facing a high level of uncertainty due to the changes in the work environment since 2020. Teams need to find the right balance between short- and long-term plans and incorporate flexibility. Managers should have discussions with their teams about the organization’s mission and stakeholders. Teams should have weekly achievements instead of monthly targets and frequent and purposeful communication. To build long-lasting teams, team-building activities should be encouraged and mission-driven, autonomous teams should be fostered.

Having Work-Life Balance: More Than Just A Suggestion

This article discusses the importance of maintaining a healthy work-life balance for ambitious workaholics. It emphasizes the need to take breaks and focus on personal life and hobbies, and suggests breaking career goals into segments to create a more balanced work week. It also highlights the importance of shutting off from work during weekends and the importance of cultivating social connections. In the end, it stresses that actively balancing out your life is valuable.

Deciding if Management Is Right for You

After taking a year to reflect on the decision to move into a management role, the author decided to start small and test their skills in guiding others. They mentored a few engineers and then took on an initiative to unify the architecture of their organization. This was a successful endeavor and gave the author the confidence to decide that they could be a good manager. The author emphasizes the importance of being a good leader in engineering, such as being humble, creating an environment where everyone can thrive, and making the team feel like they can rely on you.

Promoting Interdepartmental Teamwork for More Efficient Problem-Solving

Companies should strive to build autonomous teams that can solve their own problems, but communication between teams is important to ensure that external input is taken into account. A system of problem-solving that encourages interdepartmental collaboration can be implemented, which involves publishing a problem statement, collaborating via confluence papers, sifting through proposals, deciding on the best solution, and executing the solution. Sharing problems with the wider team can help to extract insight from a large number of people, and can be a great way to motivate people.

How to Motivate Your Engineers to Grow in Their Careers

This article discusses how to support career development for engineers in a company. It suggests creating a competency matrix for soft skills and providing a clear growth path with a leveling system to foster motivation. It also suggests appointing team leads and providing them with knowledge on how to guide their reports. This helps individuals progress in their career journey and reach their goals.

What Is Team Health and How to Achieve It

Evaluating team health is a continuous process that requires understanding the people aspect of the team, as well as the business impact. Leaders should assess their team's health by considering factors such as collaboration, motivation, individual needs, and the bigger picture. Additionally, feedback from the team should be gathered in order to create an environment that works for everyone and provides value to customers.

How to Successfully Rebuild Your Product

When the author joined their company, the product side of things was chaotic with many feature requests and value to bring to customers. To rebuild the product area, the author focused on understanding customer expectations, prioritizing the backlog, and measuring the changes. After rebuilding the product area, the company saw a higher adoption rate for features and a more customizable user experience. The key takeaways from this experience are to focus on the future, be client-focused, and follow up with clients.

How to Empower Teams to Build Out a Product Portfolio During Company Growth

As the company grew, it became clear that the current structure could not support the need for both product excellence and product innovation. To address this, two new teams were created, one for product excellence and one for product innovation. This division of teams allowed for better communication, ownership, and collaboration, as well as the creation of new leaders to help cultivate and translate the company's visions and goals.

Finding the Mission-Driven Product Management Role That You Want

When searching for a mission-driven job, it is important to evaluate the company's mission, the leaders, and the role itself. If you can't find the perfect job, look for the next best thing and pick your battles. Additionally, find leaders who will help you grow into your target role and focus on the long-term.

When Management Isn’t for You: How to Advance in Your Career as an IC

This article discusses the alternative career path of becoming a distinguished engineer for software engineers who don't want to pursue a managerial role. It outlines the four steps to becoming a distinguished engineer: reading the book Staff Engineer: Leadership Beyond the Management Track, identifying your current and goal archetypes, finding a mentor, and checking with your company to see if they provide this career track. It also emphasizes that not everyone is cut out to be a manager, and that it's important to find a path that will make you happy.

Checking For Values Alignment When Considering a New Role

In this article, the author discusses their experience with values misalignment with senior leadership in a previous role. They emphasize the importance of understanding and prioritizing your values when considering a new role, and suggest asking questions in the interview process to ensure that the company's values align with yours. They also discuss the difference between intentional and unintentional misalignment, and how to address each.

Building Up Your Technical Skills in a Fast-Paced Industry

With the constant influx of new technologies in software development, it can be difficult to decide which ones to learn and stay current with. This article outlines five tips for upskilling your technical knowledge, such as evaluating the 'why' before deciding what to learn, upskilling on the fundamentals first, accepting that you can't know everything, delegating tasks, and not neglecting your soft skills. It also emphasizes the importance of having a focus, working on communication skills, and reading outside of the IT area.

How to Navigate Your Manager Role at a New Company

As a new Engineering Manager at Marks & Spencer, the challenge of building trust is compounded by the need to set up a new structure and reshape the architecture to support growth. To build trust, it is important to understand the customer problems, technical strategy, and how the tech teams are aligned to the strategy. Communication and feedback from cross-functional teams is also important. Building trust with reports is necessary to do the job, and requires creating a psychologically safe environment, active listening, and providing sponsorship opportunities. Lastly, staying motivated is key to success in this role.

Team Development Framework for new managers

When transitioning from an Individual Contributor to a Manager, it can feel overwhelming. This post focuses on the mindset shift needed to better utilize the advice available for new Managers. The key difference between the two roles is the core action (Developing code vs. Developing team) and how it is done (high quality vs. high engagement). Managers must have a core set of skills such as building trust, active listening, decision-making, and emotional intelligence. Despite having the development framework and required skills, being a Manager is still hard due to the high cost of being wrong, solutions not always being logical, and non-determinism.

Bootstrapping a Startup While Working Full-Time

This is the story of how the author started their own company, Surfer, while still working full-time. They started small, building a rough prototype and not worrying about monetization. When they decided to find an investor, they ended up bootstrapping instead, cutting their salaries to zero and being mindful of their spending. The author's tips for starting a profitable company include starting slowly, charging customers as soon as possible, and incentivizing customers to pay for annual subscriptions.

Effective Hiring Practices: Asking the Right Questions

Finding the right talent for a job requires asking the right questions and conducting interviews in a way that makes candidates feel comfortable. It is important to look for a technical fit, but also a match in values and learning potential. To gain insight during interviews, it is recommended to take several unorthodox approaches, such as identifying and double-downing on risky matters, prompting candidates with open-ended topics, focusing on fewer topics in detail, asking how they would hire for the role, and encouraging them to come up with a question. Additionally, feedback should be asked for in order to improve the interview process.

How Product Management Chose Me

This article is about the author's journey into product management. After graduating college during the 2008 recession, the author took the first office job they could land and was initially doing technical help desk and quality assurance. After 6 months, they started to give feedback to the engineers and were eventually promoted to a product manager. They then moved to a larger growth-stage startup, but found that the company didn't understand the role of a product manager. The author eventually joined Capital One, where they were surrounded by other product managers and had access to internal learning resources. The author concludes that many people fall into product management in one way or another.

How to Help Employees Find Their Strengths and Passions

Many people don't know their passions and strengths, and often underestimate the value of their strengths. It is essential to identify and leverage unique strengths to be motivated and successful in a role. Through self-reflection and tools such as the 16 personality test and the CliftonStrengths assessment, individuals can discover their passions and strengths and make an impact. Leaders should create an environment where people can explore and build on their strengths, and be mindful that working on something you're passionate about always delivers better results. If you fail, it can mean several things: either you're in the wrong place, doing the wrong thing, or you have a gap in knowledge or skill that you need to address.

How Product Marketing Can (and Should) Help Product Development

Product teams often overlook user adoption when releasing new features, leading to missed opportunities. Product marketing is a critical strategy for ensuring user adoption, and should be included in the product development process from the beginning. Companies should focus on staying goal-oriented and maximizing user adoption when rolling out features.

Managing Through a Team Reorganization

This article is about the author's experience leading a team through a reorganization. It outlines the importance of being authentic and transparent with the team, building a trusted group of advisors, staying focused on priorities, and having a perspective that change is the only constant. It emphasizes the need for empathy and determination to successfully lead through a reorg.

Dealing with Uncertainties and Adapting as You Go

Organizations are facing a high level of uncertainty due to the changes in the work environment since 2020. Teams need to find the right balance between short- and long-term plans and incorporate flexibility. Managers should have discussions with their teams about the organization’s mission and stakeholders. Teams should have weekly achievements instead of monthly targets and frequent and purposeful communication. To build long-lasting teams, team-building activities should be encouraged and mission-driven, autonomous teams should be fostered.

Having Work-Life Balance: More Than Just A Suggestion

This article discusses the importance of maintaining a healthy work-life balance for ambitious workaholics. It emphasizes the need to take breaks and focus on personal life and hobbies, and suggests breaking career goals into segments to create a more balanced work week. It also highlights the importance of shutting off from work during weekends and the importance of cultivating social connections. In the end, it stresses that actively balancing out your life is valuable.

Deciding if Management Is Right for You

After taking a year to reflect on the decision to move into a management role, the author decided to start small and test their skills in guiding others. They mentored a few engineers and then took on an initiative to unify the architecture of their organization. This was a successful endeavor and gave the author the confidence to decide that they could be a good manager. The author emphasizes the importance of being a good leader in engineering, such as being humble, creating an environment where everyone can thrive, and making the team feel like they can rely on you.

Promoting Interdepartmental Teamwork for More Efficient Problem-Solving

Companies should strive to build autonomous teams that can solve their own problems, but communication between teams is important to ensure that external input is taken into account. A system of problem-solving that encourages interdepartmental collaboration can be implemented, which involves publishing a problem statement, collaborating via confluence papers, sifting through proposals, deciding on the best solution, and executing the solution. Sharing problems with the wider team can help to extract insight from a large number of people, and can be a great way to motivate people.

How to Motivate Your Engineers to Grow in Their Careers

This article discusses how to support career development for engineers in a company. It suggests creating a competency matrix for soft skills and providing a clear growth path with a leveling system to foster motivation. It also suggests appointing team leads and providing them with knowledge on how to guide their reports. This helps individuals progress in their career journey and reach their goals.

What Is Team Health and How to Achieve It

Evaluating team health is a continuous process that requires understanding the people aspect of the team, as well as the business impact. Leaders should assess their team's health by considering factors such as collaboration, motivation, individual needs, and the bigger picture. Additionally, feedback from the team should be gathered in order to create an environment that works for everyone and provides value to customers.

How to Successfully Rebuild Your Product

When the author joined their company, the product side of things was chaotic with many feature requests and value to bring to customers. To rebuild the product area, the author focused on understanding customer expectations, prioritizing the backlog, and measuring the changes. After rebuilding the product area, the company saw a higher adoption rate for features and a more customizable user experience. The key takeaways from this experience are to focus on the future, be client-focused, and follow up with clients.

How to Empower Teams to Build Out a Product Portfolio During Company Growth

As the company grew, it became clear that the current structure could not support the need for both product excellence and product innovation. To address this, two new teams were created, one for product excellence and one for product innovation. This division of teams allowed for better communication, ownership, and collaboration, as well as the creation of new leaders to help cultivate and translate the company's visions and goals.

Finding the Mission-Driven Product Management Role That You Want

When searching for a mission-driven job, it is important to evaluate the company's mission, the leaders, and the role itself. If you can't find the perfect job, look for the next best thing and pick your battles. Additionally, find leaders who will help you grow into your target role and focus on the long-term.

When Management Isn’t for You: How to Advance in Your Career as an IC

This article discusses the alternative career path of becoming a distinguished engineer for software engineers who don't want to pursue a managerial role. It outlines the four steps to becoming a distinguished engineer: reading the book Staff Engineer: Leadership Beyond the Management Track, identifying your current and goal archetypes, finding a mentor, and checking with your company to see if they provide this career track. It also emphasizes that not everyone is cut out to be a manager, and that it's important to find a path that will make you happy.

Checking For Values Alignment When Considering a New Role

In this article, the author discusses their experience with values misalignment with senior leadership in a previous role. They emphasize the importance of understanding and prioritizing your values when considering a new role, and suggest asking questions in the interview process to ensure that the company's values align with yours. They also discuss the difference between intentional and unintentional misalignment, and how to address each.

Building Up Your Technical Skills in a Fast-Paced Industry

With the constant influx of new technologies in software development, it can be difficult to decide which ones to learn and stay current with. This article outlines five tips for upskilling your technical knowledge, such as evaluating the 'why' before deciding what to learn, upskilling on the fundamentals first, accepting that you can't know everything, delegating tasks, and not neglecting your soft skills. It also emphasizes the importance of having a focus, working on communication skills, and reading outside of the IT area.

How to Navigate Your Manager Role at a New Company

As a new Engineering Manager at Marks & Spencer, the challenge of building trust is compounded by the need to set up a new structure and reshape the architecture to support growth. To build trust, it is important to understand the customer problems, technical strategy, and how the tech teams are aligned to the strategy. Communication and feedback from cross-functional teams is also important. Building trust with reports is necessary to do the job, and requires creating a psychologically safe environment, active listening, and providing sponsorship opportunities. Lastly, staying motivated is key to success in this role.

Team Development Framework for new managers

When transitioning from an Individual Contributor to a Manager, it can feel overwhelming. This post focuses on the mindset shift needed to better utilize the advice available for new Managers. The key difference between the two roles is the core action (Developing code vs. Developing team) and how it is done (high quality vs. high engagement). Managers must have a core set of skills such as building trust, active listening, decision-making, and emotional intelligence. Despite having the development framework and required skills, being a Manager is still hard due to the high cost of being wrong, solutions not always being logical, and non-determinism.

Bootstrapping a Startup While Working Full-Time

This is the story of how the author started their own company, Surfer, while still working full-time. They started small, building a rough prototype and not worrying about monetization. When they decided to find an investor, they ended up bootstrapping instead, cutting their salaries to zero and being mindful of their spending. The author's tips for starting a profitable company include starting slowly, charging customers as soon as possible, and incentivizing customers to pay for annual subscriptions.

Effective Hiring Practices: Asking the Right Questions

Finding the right talent for a job requires asking the right questions and conducting interviews in a way that makes candidates feel comfortable. It is important to look for a technical fit, but also a match in values and learning potential. To gain insight during interviews, it is recommended to take several unorthodox approaches, such as identifying and double-downing on risky matters, prompting candidates with open-ended topics, focusing on fewer topics in detail, asking how they would hire for the role, and encouraging them to come up with a question. Additionally, feedback should be asked for in order to improve the interview process.

How Product Management Chose Me

This article is about the author's journey into product management. After graduating college during the 2008 recession, the author took the first office job they could land and was initially doing technical help desk and quality assurance. After 6 months, they started to give feedback to the engineers and were eventually promoted to a product manager. They then moved to a larger growth-stage startup, but found that the company didn't understand the role of a product manager. The author eventually joined Capital One, where they were surrounded by other product managers and had access to internal learning resources. The author concludes that many people fall into product management in one way or another.

How to Help Employees Find Their Strengths and Passions

Many people don't know their passions and strengths, and often underestimate the value of their strengths. It is essential to identify and leverage unique strengths to be motivated and successful in a role. Through self-reflection and tools such as the 16 personality test and the CliftonStrengths assessment, individuals can discover their passions and strengths and make an impact. Leaders should create an environment where people can explore and build on their strengths, and be mindful that working on something you're passionate about always delivers better results. If you fail, it can mean several things: either you're in the wrong place, doing the wrong thing, or you have a gap in knowledge or skill that you need to address.

How Product Marketing Can (and Should) Help Product Development

Product teams often overlook user adoption when releasing new features, leading to missed opportunities. Product marketing is a critical strategy for ensuring user adoption, and should be included in the product development process from the beginning. Companies should focus on staying goal-oriented and maximizing user adoption when rolling out features.

Managing Through a Team Reorganization

This article is about the author's experience leading a team through a reorganization. It outlines the importance of being authentic and transparent with the team, building a trusted group of advisors, staying focused on priorities, and having a perspective that change is the only constant. It emphasizes the need for empathy and determination to successfully lead through a reorg.

Dealing with Uncertainties and Adapting as You Go

Organizations are facing a high level of uncertainty due to the changes in the work environment since 2020. Teams need to find the right balance between short- and long-term plans and incorporate flexibility. Managers should have discussions with their teams about the organization’s mission and stakeholders. Teams should have weekly achievements instead of monthly targets and frequent and purposeful communication. To build long-lasting teams, team-building activities should be encouraged and mission-driven, autonomous teams should be fostered.

Having Work-Life Balance: More Than Just A Suggestion

This article discusses the importance of maintaining a healthy work-life balance for ambitious workaholics. It emphasizes the need to take breaks and focus on personal life and hobbies, and suggests breaking career goals into segments to create a more balanced work week. It also highlights the importance of shutting off from work during weekends and the importance of cultivating social connections. In the end, it stresses that actively balancing out your life is valuable.

Deciding if Management Is Right for You

After taking a year to reflect on the decision to move into a management role, the author decided to start small and test their skills in guiding others. They mentored a few engineers and then took on an initiative to unify the architecture of their organization. This was a successful endeavor and gave the author the confidence to decide that they could be a good manager. The author emphasizes the importance of being a good leader in engineering, such as being humble, creating an environment where everyone can thrive, and making the team feel like they can rely on you.

Promoting Interdepartmental Teamwork for More Efficient Problem-Solving

Companies should strive to build autonomous teams that can solve their own problems, but communication between teams is important to ensure that external input is taken into account. A system of problem-solving that encourages interdepartmental collaboration can be implemented, which involves publishing a problem statement, collaborating via confluence papers, sifting through proposals, deciding on the best solution, and executing the solution. Sharing problems with the wider team can help to extract insight from a large number of people, and can be a great way to motivate people.

How to Motivate Your Engineers to Grow in Their Careers

This article discusses how to support career development for engineers in a company. It suggests creating a competency matrix for soft skills and providing a clear growth path with a leveling system to foster motivation. It also suggests appointing team leads and providing them with knowledge on how to guide their reports. This helps individuals progress in their career journey and reach their goals.

What Is Team Health and How to Achieve It

Evaluating team health is a continuous process that requires understanding the people aspect of the team, as well as the business impact. Leaders should assess their team's health by considering factors such as collaboration, motivation, individual needs, and the bigger picture. Additionally, feedback from the team should be gathered in order to create an environment that works for everyone and provides value to customers.

How to Successfully Rebuild Your Product

When the author joined their company, the product side of things was chaotic with many feature requests and value to bring to customers. To rebuild the product area, the author focused on understanding customer expectations, prioritizing the backlog, and measuring the changes. After rebuilding the product area, the company saw a higher adoption rate for features and a more customizable user experience. The key takeaways from this experience are to focus on the future, be client-focused, and follow up with clients.

How to Empower Teams to Build Out a Product Portfolio During Company Growth

As the company grew, it became clear that the current structure could not support the need for both product excellence and product innovation. To address this, two new teams were created, one for product excellence and one for product innovation. This division of teams allowed for better communication, ownership, and collaboration, as well as the creation of new leaders to help cultivate and translate the company's visions and goals.

Finding the Mission-Driven Product Management Role That You Want

When searching for a mission-driven job, it is important to evaluate the company's mission, the leaders, and the role itself. If you can't find the perfect job, look for the next best thing and pick your battles. Additionally, find leaders who will help you grow into your target role and focus on the long-term.

When Management Isn’t for You: How to Advance in Your Career as an IC

This article discusses the alternative career path of becoming a distinguished engineer for software engineers who don't want to pursue a managerial role. It outlines the four steps to becoming a distinguished engineer: reading the book Staff Engineer: Leadership Beyond the Management Track, identifying your current and goal archetypes, finding a mentor, and checking with your company to see if they provide this career track. It also emphasizes that not everyone is cut out to be a manager, and that it's important to find a path that will make you happy.

Checking For Values Alignment When Considering a New Role

In this article, the author discusses their experience with values misalignment with senior leadership in a previous role. They emphasize the importance of understanding and prioritizing your values when considering a new role, and suggest asking questions in the interview process to ensure that the company's values align with yours. They also discuss the difference between intentional and unintentional misalignment, and how to address each.