Knowledge shared by our community

Build Better Relationships through Open Communication with Clients

The speaker led product and operations at a SaaS company providing an incident management and communications platform. One of their clients, an energy company, was tough on them and didn't like changes to the platform. The speaker built a relationship with the executive responsible for risk management and business continuity at the customer by being open and honest about their own company challenges and listening to the customer's concerns. This process led to better communication and understanding between the company and their clients, resulting in better relationships, greater understanding, and greater retention.

Maintain Dispassionate Objectivity when Conflict-Solving

A strategy consultant was hired to help stand up a software joint venture between two US government-sponsored financial entities. The consultant was able to build relationships with stakeholders across multiple companies, hold weekly status meetings, and expose different teams' positions on various topics to de-politicize the situation. As a result, the consultant was successful in helping the JV execs and parent companies reach an agreement, winning them tens of millions of dollars in business. The consultant was also asked to join future projects dealing with similar issues.

Sometimes the Messenger is as Important as the Message

The technology consultancy I worked for was acquired by a large advertising conglomerate, and I joined the leadership team to lead the transformation PMO. I encountered many problems, but the biggest one was team members of various agencies not wanting to participate in data sharing. I spoke with the CEOs of each agency and they agreed to endorse the sharing, which allowed them to participate in more projects and the rest of the group benefited from their knowledge. This showed the importance of hearing about the benefits from their own leaders, who had already earned the respect of their teams.

Separating Commercial Software Development to its Own Department

This project was about developing a strategy for better managing software IP at a digital consulting firm. An operating model was developed and endorsed by CTOs and other product leaders, and was adopted by the consulting firm and its parent organization. The benefits of separating commercial software development to its own department include creating a consistent sales message and process, higher margins, better quality and consistent value for clients, and more productive teams.

Being Comfortable in Unfamiliar Territory

In order to take advantage of growth opportunities, one must become comfortable with being uncomfortable. This means cultivating a fearless quality and accepting that you are in control of your career. To do this, practice studying, communicating, prototyping, testing hypotheses, and making data-driven decisions. This will help you to feel empowered and work confidently in many situations.

Establishing Career Growth and OKR’s for New Team Members

This article discusses the importance of setting career-driven goals for incoming engineers. The author suggests establishing open communication and helping engineers write OKR's (Objectives and Key Results) to ensure they are properly aligned with their career development. The author also emphasizes the importance of making OKR's public and measurable, and using them as an opportunity to grow out of one's comfort zone.

Managing Misaligned OKRs to Prevent Churn and Increase Productivity

When the manager of a new site reliability engineering team was given a set of OKRs to fulfill, they realized that the amount of technical debt and firefighting was too high to meet the expectations. To address this, they adopted their own vision of a successful team, abdicated their order-making power, and distributed the responsibilities of the team across the company. As a result, they were able to retain team members, avoid burn out, and increase productivity. This experience taught the manager to understand the problem their boss was trying to solve, have a solid case for why they solved it differently, and to follow the spirit of their boss's orders rather than the letter.

Investigating the Need For Rewriting a Code Base and Then Successfully Doing So

The codebase inherited by the author was overly complex and difficult to navigate, resulting in a lot of wasted time. After investigation, the author and their senior engineer concluded that a rewrite was necessary, but the manager was resistant due to past experiences with rewrites taking 3-4x the time allotted. The author was able to convince the manager to move forward with the rewrite, which took 6 months instead of the estimated 4 months. The rewrite was successful, resulting in faster product wishlists, happier employees, and a feature that took a month to build in the old codebase taking only seven hours in the new codebase. Hiring new people and breaking up responsibility was especially helpful in the process.

Sourcing, Interviewing, and Hiring When Time is Sensitive

The manager was faced with a difficult situation when three engineers quit just before their arrival and four more within the first week. To combat this, they worked tirelessly to recruit new engineers, becoming friends with recruiting agencies, using Vettery as their preferred method of recruiting, and revamping the interview process. Through their hard work, they were able to hire nine engineers in 100 days and three more shortly thereafter. They also learned the importance of extending interview requests, understanding a candidate's coding ability, and creating harder questions to ensure a successful hire.

Gaining Team Respect as a New Manager

A new engineering manager was not receiving the same respect as the other manager who had started two weeks prior. The new manager took a 'listen first' attitude, which was seen as inferior by some of the engineers. To gain the trust of the team, the manager stayed loyal to them and put their foot down on executive orders. The manager also learned that it would have been smarter to come in with a plan and communicate more frequently with the team.

Hiring Pipeline for Passion and Talent

The CTO of a new company in Brazil was tasked with hiring a team that was representative of the entrepreneur's vision. He created a pipeline of tests to filter out potential candidates, including IQ tests, smoke tests, and paid challenges. He learned that it is more important to hire talented and motivated individuals than those with specific skill sets, and was able to assemble a successful team with high retention rates.

Sourcing Interested Candidates in QA

This article discusses how to identify candidates who are truly interested in a QA career. The author suggests posing an interview question that requires the candidate to think about how an architecture will break, and looking for a system level thinker who can think at the component level and introduce chaos into the system. Additionally, the author suggests leveling all QA engineers at the same level and salary range as software engineers, and creating a company culture that supports QA career growth.

Building a Dev Team From the Bottom Up

This article outlines the steps taken to build a successful development team, from defining the development process and culture to hiring interns and repurposing a project manager. It also highlights the importance of having a well-defined process and culture in order to attract and retain developers, as well as the benefits of having a junior take over support escalations to prevent senior resources from being interrupted. Finally, it suggests hiring interns as a way to build a pipeline of juniors as the team grows.

Becoming a great Product Manager

This article discusses the qualities of a great Product Manager, which include empathy, understanding the grey area, being a helper, and being a leader without authority. It suggests that becoming great is a 10,000 hour problem and that it takes 2 years of being lost and 3-5 years of making mistakes before one can really understand the difficulty of being great. It also suggests studying empathy, considering how to bring it to the whole team, wrestling with when to move to the next phase of development, and considering one's role as a culture creator.

Intuition Demystified: Why being data-driven and using your intuition aren’t as different as you think

This article discusses how teams can decide what to do next by using a combination of data-driven and data-informed approaches, such as KPIs, success metrics, A/B testing, prototypes, insights, intuition, market research, surveys, usability testing, and user empathy. It emphasizes the importance of understanding the user and gathering the necessary data to build empathy for them in order to create innovative solutions that will truly serve them.

Kicking off an AI project

This article outlines the steps taken by a company to empower their platform with AI capabilities. The steps included hiring AI specialists, researching the domain, and creating a chatbot prototype. After 4 months, the team had a showcase ready and reached out to customers for feedback. After 3 more months, the product was in Beta and ready for launch. The takeaway from this process is that a balance of hiring and knowledge gathering can be effective in boosting the ramp up time of new technologies, but it is important to get customer feedback early on.

How to Manage Product Managers

When managing Product Managers with different strengths, it is important to review their performance individually. This can be done by looking at two categories of performance indicators: skill and engagement. Depending on the employee's skill and engagement level, the manager must adjust their management style accordingly. For employees with high skill and low engagement, it is important to look at a 360 degree view of what could be affecting their performance, such as personal issues or misaligned expectations. It is also important to make expectations objective, so that the goal posts do not keep changing.

Building a Product Management Team from 1 to 2 Employees

When a start-up company grows, it can be difficult for the CEO or co-founder to keep up with all the decisions. To help, it is important to hire a counterpart who can fill in the gaps in skills and knowledge. However, it is also important to find someone you trust and to delegate tasks slowly and carefully. It is important to be clear about what decisions need manager input and what decisions can be made by the employee.

Building the Right Team Early On

A team of thirty remote employees was brought on to build a clickable prototype, but it became clear that they would not be able to deliver the expected results in the given time and budget. To solve this, the team was let go and specialized contractors were hired instead. The key lesson learned was that it is not the size of the team that matters, but the value and output they can produce. To ensure the original vision is kept, a core group of management should direct the decisions and create a culture that empowers the team to make decisions that are good for the company and user base.

Surviving the Transition From IC to Management

This article discusses the transition from individual contributor to management and the challenges that come with it. It outlines the importance of learning to delegate, taking inspiration from those who have done it before, and improving upon soft skills such as listening. It also emphasizes the importance of focusing on people instead of projects and maintaining technical knowledge.

Build Better Relationships through Open Communication with Clients

The speaker led product and operations at a SaaS company providing an incident management and communications platform. One of their clients, an energy company, was tough on them and didn't like changes to the platform. The speaker built a relationship with the executive responsible for risk management and business continuity at the customer by being open and honest about their own company challenges and listening to the customer's concerns. This process led to better communication and understanding between the company and their clients, resulting in better relationships, greater understanding, and greater retention.

Maintain Dispassionate Objectivity when Conflict-Solving

A strategy consultant was hired to help stand up a software joint venture between two US government-sponsored financial entities. The consultant was able to build relationships with stakeholders across multiple companies, hold weekly status meetings, and expose different teams' positions on various topics to de-politicize the situation. As a result, the consultant was successful in helping the JV execs and parent companies reach an agreement, winning them tens of millions of dollars in business. The consultant was also asked to join future projects dealing with similar issues.

Sometimes the Messenger is as Important as the Message

The technology consultancy I worked for was acquired by a large advertising conglomerate, and I joined the leadership team to lead the transformation PMO. I encountered many problems, but the biggest one was team members of various agencies not wanting to participate in data sharing. I spoke with the CEOs of each agency and they agreed to endorse the sharing, which allowed them to participate in more projects and the rest of the group benefited from their knowledge. This showed the importance of hearing about the benefits from their own leaders, who had already earned the respect of their teams.

Separating Commercial Software Development to its Own Department

This project was about developing a strategy for better managing software IP at a digital consulting firm. An operating model was developed and endorsed by CTOs and other product leaders, and was adopted by the consulting firm and its parent organization. The benefits of separating commercial software development to its own department include creating a consistent sales message and process, higher margins, better quality and consistent value for clients, and more productive teams.

Being Comfortable in Unfamiliar Territory

In order to take advantage of growth opportunities, one must become comfortable with being uncomfortable. This means cultivating a fearless quality and accepting that you are in control of your career. To do this, practice studying, communicating, prototyping, testing hypotheses, and making data-driven decisions. This will help you to feel empowered and work confidently in many situations.

Establishing Career Growth and OKR’s for New Team Members

This article discusses the importance of setting career-driven goals for incoming engineers. The author suggests establishing open communication and helping engineers write OKR's (Objectives and Key Results) to ensure they are properly aligned with their career development. The author also emphasizes the importance of making OKR's public and measurable, and using them as an opportunity to grow out of one's comfort zone.

Managing Misaligned OKRs to Prevent Churn and Increase Productivity

When the manager of a new site reliability engineering team was given a set of OKRs to fulfill, they realized that the amount of technical debt and firefighting was too high to meet the expectations. To address this, they adopted their own vision of a successful team, abdicated their order-making power, and distributed the responsibilities of the team across the company. As a result, they were able to retain team members, avoid burn out, and increase productivity. This experience taught the manager to understand the problem their boss was trying to solve, have a solid case for why they solved it differently, and to follow the spirit of their boss's orders rather than the letter.

Investigating the Need For Rewriting a Code Base and Then Successfully Doing So

The codebase inherited by the author was overly complex and difficult to navigate, resulting in a lot of wasted time. After investigation, the author and their senior engineer concluded that a rewrite was necessary, but the manager was resistant due to past experiences with rewrites taking 3-4x the time allotted. The author was able to convince the manager to move forward with the rewrite, which took 6 months instead of the estimated 4 months. The rewrite was successful, resulting in faster product wishlists, happier employees, and a feature that took a month to build in the old codebase taking only seven hours in the new codebase. Hiring new people and breaking up responsibility was especially helpful in the process.

Sourcing, Interviewing, and Hiring When Time is Sensitive

The manager was faced with a difficult situation when three engineers quit just before their arrival and four more within the first week. To combat this, they worked tirelessly to recruit new engineers, becoming friends with recruiting agencies, using Vettery as their preferred method of recruiting, and revamping the interview process. Through their hard work, they were able to hire nine engineers in 100 days and three more shortly thereafter. They also learned the importance of extending interview requests, understanding a candidate's coding ability, and creating harder questions to ensure a successful hire.

Gaining Team Respect as a New Manager

A new engineering manager was not receiving the same respect as the other manager who had started two weeks prior. The new manager took a 'listen first' attitude, which was seen as inferior by some of the engineers. To gain the trust of the team, the manager stayed loyal to them and put their foot down on executive orders. The manager also learned that it would have been smarter to come in with a plan and communicate more frequently with the team.

Hiring Pipeline for Passion and Talent

The CTO of a new company in Brazil was tasked with hiring a team that was representative of the entrepreneur's vision. He created a pipeline of tests to filter out potential candidates, including IQ tests, smoke tests, and paid challenges. He learned that it is more important to hire talented and motivated individuals than those with specific skill sets, and was able to assemble a successful team with high retention rates.

Sourcing Interested Candidates in QA

This article discusses how to identify candidates who are truly interested in a QA career. The author suggests posing an interview question that requires the candidate to think about how an architecture will break, and looking for a system level thinker who can think at the component level and introduce chaos into the system. Additionally, the author suggests leveling all QA engineers at the same level and salary range as software engineers, and creating a company culture that supports QA career growth.

Building a Dev Team From the Bottom Up

This article outlines the steps taken to build a successful development team, from defining the development process and culture to hiring interns and repurposing a project manager. It also highlights the importance of having a well-defined process and culture in order to attract and retain developers, as well as the benefits of having a junior take over support escalations to prevent senior resources from being interrupted. Finally, it suggests hiring interns as a way to build a pipeline of juniors as the team grows.

Becoming a great Product Manager

This article discusses the qualities of a great Product Manager, which include empathy, understanding the grey area, being a helper, and being a leader without authority. It suggests that becoming great is a 10,000 hour problem and that it takes 2 years of being lost and 3-5 years of making mistakes before one can really understand the difficulty of being great. It also suggests studying empathy, considering how to bring it to the whole team, wrestling with when to move to the next phase of development, and considering one's role as a culture creator.

Intuition Demystified: Why being data-driven and using your intuition aren’t as different as you think

This article discusses how teams can decide what to do next by using a combination of data-driven and data-informed approaches, such as KPIs, success metrics, A/B testing, prototypes, insights, intuition, market research, surveys, usability testing, and user empathy. It emphasizes the importance of understanding the user and gathering the necessary data to build empathy for them in order to create innovative solutions that will truly serve them.

Kicking off an AI project

This article outlines the steps taken by a company to empower their platform with AI capabilities. The steps included hiring AI specialists, researching the domain, and creating a chatbot prototype. After 4 months, the team had a showcase ready and reached out to customers for feedback. After 3 more months, the product was in Beta and ready for launch. The takeaway from this process is that a balance of hiring and knowledge gathering can be effective in boosting the ramp up time of new technologies, but it is important to get customer feedback early on.

How to Manage Product Managers

When managing Product Managers with different strengths, it is important to review their performance individually. This can be done by looking at two categories of performance indicators: skill and engagement. Depending on the employee's skill and engagement level, the manager must adjust their management style accordingly. For employees with high skill and low engagement, it is important to look at a 360 degree view of what could be affecting their performance, such as personal issues or misaligned expectations. It is also important to make expectations objective, so that the goal posts do not keep changing.

Building a Product Management Team from 1 to 2 Employees

When a start-up company grows, it can be difficult for the CEO or co-founder to keep up with all the decisions. To help, it is important to hire a counterpart who can fill in the gaps in skills and knowledge. However, it is also important to find someone you trust and to delegate tasks slowly and carefully. It is important to be clear about what decisions need manager input and what decisions can be made by the employee.

Building the Right Team Early On

A team of thirty remote employees was brought on to build a clickable prototype, but it became clear that they would not be able to deliver the expected results in the given time and budget. To solve this, the team was let go and specialized contractors were hired instead. The key lesson learned was that it is not the size of the team that matters, but the value and output they can produce. To ensure the original vision is kept, a core group of management should direct the decisions and create a culture that empowers the team to make decisions that are good for the company and user base.

Surviving the Transition From IC to Management

This article discusses the transition from individual contributor to management and the challenges that come with it. It outlines the importance of learning to delegate, taking inspiration from those who have done it before, and improving upon soft skills such as listening. It also emphasizes the importance of focusing on people instead of projects and maintaining technical knowledge.

Build Better Relationships through Open Communication with Clients

The speaker led product and operations at a SaaS company providing an incident management and communications platform. One of their clients, an energy company, was tough on them and didn't like changes to the platform. The speaker built a relationship with the executive responsible for risk management and business continuity at the customer by being open and honest about their own company challenges and listening to the customer's concerns. This process led to better communication and understanding between the company and their clients, resulting in better relationships, greater understanding, and greater retention.

Maintain Dispassionate Objectivity when Conflict-Solving

A strategy consultant was hired to help stand up a software joint venture between two US government-sponsored financial entities. The consultant was able to build relationships with stakeholders across multiple companies, hold weekly status meetings, and expose different teams' positions on various topics to de-politicize the situation. As a result, the consultant was successful in helping the JV execs and parent companies reach an agreement, winning them tens of millions of dollars in business. The consultant was also asked to join future projects dealing with similar issues.

Sometimes the Messenger is as Important as the Message

The technology consultancy I worked for was acquired by a large advertising conglomerate, and I joined the leadership team to lead the transformation PMO. I encountered many problems, but the biggest one was team members of various agencies not wanting to participate in data sharing. I spoke with the CEOs of each agency and they agreed to endorse the sharing, which allowed them to participate in more projects and the rest of the group benefited from their knowledge. This showed the importance of hearing about the benefits from their own leaders, who had already earned the respect of their teams.

Separating Commercial Software Development to its Own Department

This project was about developing a strategy for better managing software IP at a digital consulting firm. An operating model was developed and endorsed by CTOs and other product leaders, and was adopted by the consulting firm and its parent organization. The benefits of separating commercial software development to its own department include creating a consistent sales message and process, higher margins, better quality and consistent value for clients, and more productive teams.

Being Comfortable in Unfamiliar Territory

In order to take advantage of growth opportunities, one must become comfortable with being uncomfortable. This means cultivating a fearless quality and accepting that you are in control of your career. To do this, practice studying, communicating, prototyping, testing hypotheses, and making data-driven decisions. This will help you to feel empowered and work confidently in many situations.

Establishing Career Growth and OKR’s for New Team Members

This article discusses the importance of setting career-driven goals for incoming engineers. The author suggests establishing open communication and helping engineers write OKR's (Objectives and Key Results) to ensure they are properly aligned with their career development. The author also emphasizes the importance of making OKR's public and measurable, and using them as an opportunity to grow out of one's comfort zone.

Managing Misaligned OKRs to Prevent Churn and Increase Productivity

When the manager of a new site reliability engineering team was given a set of OKRs to fulfill, they realized that the amount of technical debt and firefighting was too high to meet the expectations. To address this, they adopted their own vision of a successful team, abdicated their order-making power, and distributed the responsibilities of the team across the company. As a result, they were able to retain team members, avoid burn out, and increase productivity. This experience taught the manager to understand the problem their boss was trying to solve, have a solid case for why they solved it differently, and to follow the spirit of their boss's orders rather than the letter.

Investigating the Need For Rewriting a Code Base and Then Successfully Doing So

The codebase inherited by the author was overly complex and difficult to navigate, resulting in a lot of wasted time. After investigation, the author and their senior engineer concluded that a rewrite was necessary, but the manager was resistant due to past experiences with rewrites taking 3-4x the time allotted. The author was able to convince the manager to move forward with the rewrite, which took 6 months instead of the estimated 4 months. The rewrite was successful, resulting in faster product wishlists, happier employees, and a feature that took a month to build in the old codebase taking only seven hours in the new codebase. Hiring new people and breaking up responsibility was especially helpful in the process.

Sourcing, Interviewing, and Hiring When Time is Sensitive

The manager was faced with a difficult situation when three engineers quit just before their arrival and four more within the first week. To combat this, they worked tirelessly to recruit new engineers, becoming friends with recruiting agencies, using Vettery as their preferred method of recruiting, and revamping the interview process. Through their hard work, they were able to hire nine engineers in 100 days and three more shortly thereafter. They also learned the importance of extending interview requests, understanding a candidate's coding ability, and creating harder questions to ensure a successful hire.

Gaining Team Respect as a New Manager

A new engineering manager was not receiving the same respect as the other manager who had started two weeks prior. The new manager took a 'listen first' attitude, which was seen as inferior by some of the engineers. To gain the trust of the team, the manager stayed loyal to them and put their foot down on executive orders. The manager also learned that it would have been smarter to come in with a plan and communicate more frequently with the team.

Hiring Pipeline for Passion and Talent

The CTO of a new company in Brazil was tasked with hiring a team that was representative of the entrepreneur's vision. He created a pipeline of tests to filter out potential candidates, including IQ tests, smoke tests, and paid challenges. He learned that it is more important to hire talented and motivated individuals than those with specific skill sets, and was able to assemble a successful team with high retention rates.

Sourcing Interested Candidates in QA

This article discusses how to identify candidates who are truly interested in a QA career. The author suggests posing an interview question that requires the candidate to think about how an architecture will break, and looking for a system level thinker who can think at the component level and introduce chaos into the system. Additionally, the author suggests leveling all QA engineers at the same level and salary range as software engineers, and creating a company culture that supports QA career growth.

Building a Dev Team From the Bottom Up

This article outlines the steps taken to build a successful development team, from defining the development process and culture to hiring interns and repurposing a project manager. It also highlights the importance of having a well-defined process and culture in order to attract and retain developers, as well as the benefits of having a junior take over support escalations to prevent senior resources from being interrupted. Finally, it suggests hiring interns as a way to build a pipeline of juniors as the team grows.

Becoming a great Product Manager

This article discusses the qualities of a great Product Manager, which include empathy, understanding the grey area, being a helper, and being a leader without authority. It suggests that becoming great is a 10,000 hour problem and that it takes 2 years of being lost and 3-5 years of making mistakes before one can really understand the difficulty of being great. It also suggests studying empathy, considering how to bring it to the whole team, wrestling with when to move to the next phase of development, and considering one's role as a culture creator.

Intuition Demystified: Why being data-driven and using your intuition aren’t as different as you think

This article discusses how teams can decide what to do next by using a combination of data-driven and data-informed approaches, such as KPIs, success metrics, A/B testing, prototypes, insights, intuition, market research, surveys, usability testing, and user empathy. It emphasizes the importance of understanding the user and gathering the necessary data to build empathy for them in order to create innovative solutions that will truly serve them.

Kicking off an AI project

This article outlines the steps taken by a company to empower their platform with AI capabilities. The steps included hiring AI specialists, researching the domain, and creating a chatbot prototype. After 4 months, the team had a showcase ready and reached out to customers for feedback. After 3 more months, the product was in Beta and ready for launch. The takeaway from this process is that a balance of hiring and knowledge gathering can be effective in boosting the ramp up time of new technologies, but it is important to get customer feedback early on.

How to Manage Product Managers

When managing Product Managers with different strengths, it is important to review their performance individually. This can be done by looking at two categories of performance indicators: skill and engagement. Depending on the employee's skill and engagement level, the manager must adjust their management style accordingly. For employees with high skill and low engagement, it is important to look at a 360 degree view of what could be affecting their performance, such as personal issues or misaligned expectations. It is also important to make expectations objective, so that the goal posts do not keep changing.

Building a Product Management Team from 1 to 2 Employees

When a start-up company grows, it can be difficult for the CEO or co-founder to keep up with all the decisions. To help, it is important to hire a counterpart who can fill in the gaps in skills and knowledge. However, it is also important to find someone you trust and to delegate tasks slowly and carefully. It is important to be clear about what decisions need manager input and what decisions can be made by the employee.

Building the Right Team Early On

A team of thirty remote employees was brought on to build a clickable prototype, but it became clear that they would not be able to deliver the expected results in the given time and budget. To solve this, the team was let go and specialized contractors were hired instead. The key lesson learned was that it is not the size of the team that matters, but the value and output they can produce. To ensure the original vision is kept, a core group of management should direct the decisions and create a culture that empowers the team to make decisions that are good for the company and user base.

Surviving the Transition From IC to Management

This article discusses the transition from individual contributor to management and the challenges that come with it. It outlines the importance of learning to delegate, taking inspiration from those who have done it before, and improving upon soft skills such as listening. It also emphasizes the importance of focusing on people instead of projects and maintaining technical knowledge.

Build Better Relationships through Open Communication with Clients

The speaker led product and operations at a SaaS company providing an incident management and communications platform. One of their clients, an energy company, was tough on them and didn't like changes to the platform. The speaker built a relationship with the executive responsible for risk management and business continuity at the customer by being open and honest about their own company challenges and listening to the customer's concerns. This process led to better communication and understanding between the company and their clients, resulting in better relationships, greater understanding, and greater retention.

Maintain Dispassionate Objectivity when Conflict-Solving

A strategy consultant was hired to help stand up a software joint venture between two US government-sponsored financial entities. The consultant was able to build relationships with stakeholders across multiple companies, hold weekly status meetings, and expose different teams' positions on various topics to de-politicize the situation. As a result, the consultant was successful in helping the JV execs and parent companies reach an agreement, winning them tens of millions of dollars in business. The consultant was also asked to join future projects dealing with similar issues.

Sometimes the Messenger is as Important as the Message

The technology consultancy I worked for was acquired by a large advertising conglomerate, and I joined the leadership team to lead the transformation PMO. I encountered many problems, but the biggest one was team members of various agencies not wanting to participate in data sharing. I spoke with the CEOs of each agency and they agreed to endorse the sharing, which allowed them to participate in more projects and the rest of the group benefited from their knowledge. This showed the importance of hearing about the benefits from their own leaders, who had already earned the respect of their teams.

Separating Commercial Software Development to its Own Department

This project was about developing a strategy for better managing software IP at a digital consulting firm. An operating model was developed and endorsed by CTOs and other product leaders, and was adopted by the consulting firm and its parent organization. The benefits of separating commercial software development to its own department include creating a consistent sales message and process, higher margins, better quality and consistent value for clients, and more productive teams.

Being Comfortable in Unfamiliar Territory

In order to take advantage of growth opportunities, one must become comfortable with being uncomfortable. This means cultivating a fearless quality and accepting that you are in control of your career. To do this, practice studying, communicating, prototyping, testing hypotheses, and making data-driven decisions. This will help you to feel empowered and work confidently in many situations.

Establishing Career Growth and OKR’s for New Team Members

This article discusses the importance of setting career-driven goals for incoming engineers. The author suggests establishing open communication and helping engineers write OKR's (Objectives and Key Results) to ensure they are properly aligned with their career development. The author also emphasizes the importance of making OKR's public and measurable, and using them as an opportunity to grow out of one's comfort zone.

Managing Misaligned OKRs to Prevent Churn and Increase Productivity

When the manager of a new site reliability engineering team was given a set of OKRs to fulfill, they realized that the amount of technical debt and firefighting was too high to meet the expectations. To address this, they adopted their own vision of a successful team, abdicated their order-making power, and distributed the responsibilities of the team across the company. As a result, they were able to retain team members, avoid burn out, and increase productivity. This experience taught the manager to understand the problem their boss was trying to solve, have a solid case for why they solved it differently, and to follow the spirit of their boss's orders rather than the letter.

Investigating the Need For Rewriting a Code Base and Then Successfully Doing So

The codebase inherited by the author was overly complex and difficult to navigate, resulting in a lot of wasted time. After investigation, the author and their senior engineer concluded that a rewrite was necessary, but the manager was resistant due to past experiences with rewrites taking 3-4x the time allotted. The author was able to convince the manager to move forward with the rewrite, which took 6 months instead of the estimated 4 months. The rewrite was successful, resulting in faster product wishlists, happier employees, and a feature that took a month to build in the old codebase taking only seven hours in the new codebase. Hiring new people and breaking up responsibility was especially helpful in the process.

Sourcing, Interviewing, and Hiring When Time is Sensitive

The manager was faced with a difficult situation when three engineers quit just before their arrival and four more within the first week. To combat this, they worked tirelessly to recruit new engineers, becoming friends with recruiting agencies, using Vettery as their preferred method of recruiting, and revamping the interview process. Through their hard work, they were able to hire nine engineers in 100 days and three more shortly thereafter. They also learned the importance of extending interview requests, understanding a candidate's coding ability, and creating harder questions to ensure a successful hire.

Gaining Team Respect as a New Manager

A new engineering manager was not receiving the same respect as the other manager who had started two weeks prior. The new manager took a 'listen first' attitude, which was seen as inferior by some of the engineers. To gain the trust of the team, the manager stayed loyal to them and put their foot down on executive orders. The manager also learned that it would have been smarter to come in with a plan and communicate more frequently with the team.

Hiring Pipeline for Passion and Talent

The CTO of a new company in Brazil was tasked with hiring a team that was representative of the entrepreneur's vision. He created a pipeline of tests to filter out potential candidates, including IQ tests, smoke tests, and paid challenges. He learned that it is more important to hire talented and motivated individuals than those with specific skill sets, and was able to assemble a successful team with high retention rates.

Sourcing Interested Candidates in QA

This article discusses how to identify candidates who are truly interested in a QA career. The author suggests posing an interview question that requires the candidate to think about how an architecture will break, and looking for a system level thinker who can think at the component level and introduce chaos into the system. Additionally, the author suggests leveling all QA engineers at the same level and salary range as software engineers, and creating a company culture that supports QA career growth.

Building a Dev Team From the Bottom Up

This article outlines the steps taken to build a successful development team, from defining the development process and culture to hiring interns and repurposing a project manager. It also highlights the importance of having a well-defined process and culture in order to attract and retain developers, as well as the benefits of having a junior take over support escalations to prevent senior resources from being interrupted. Finally, it suggests hiring interns as a way to build a pipeline of juniors as the team grows.

Becoming a great Product Manager

This article discusses the qualities of a great Product Manager, which include empathy, understanding the grey area, being a helper, and being a leader without authority. It suggests that becoming great is a 10,000 hour problem and that it takes 2 years of being lost and 3-5 years of making mistakes before one can really understand the difficulty of being great. It also suggests studying empathy, considering how to bring it to the whole team, wrestling with when to move to the next phase of development, and considering one's role as a culture creator.

Intuition Demystified: Why being data-driven and using your intuition aren’t as different as you think

This article discusses how teams can decide what to do next by using a combination of data-driven and data-informed approaches, such as KPIs, success metrics, A/B testing, prototypes, insights, intuition, market research, surveys, usability testing, and user empathy. It emphasizes the importance of understanding the user and gathering the necessary data to build empathy for them in order to create innovative solutions that will truly serve them.

Kicking off an AI project

This article outlines the steps taken by a company to empower their platform with AI capabilities. The steps included hiring AI specialists, researching the domain, and creating a chatbot prototype. After 4 months, the team had a showcase ready and reached out to customers for feedback. After 3 more months, the product was in Beta and ready for launch. The takeaway from this process is that a balance of hiring and knowledge gathering can be effective in boosting the ramp up time of new technologies, but it is important to get customer feedback early on.

How to Manage Product Managers

When managing Product Managers with different strengths, it is important to review their performance individually. This can be done by looking at two categories of performance indicators: skill and engagement. Depending on the employee's skill and engagement level, the manager must adjust their management style accordingly. For employees with high skill and low engagement, it is important to look at a 360 degree view of what could be affecting their performance, such as personal issues or misaligned expectations. It is also important to make expectations objective, so that the goal posts do not keep changing.

Building a Product Management Team from 1 to 2 Employees

When a start-up company grows, it can be difficult for the CEO or co-founder to keep up with all the decisions. To help, it is important to hire a counterpart who can fill in the gaps in skills and knowledge. However, it is also important to find someone you trust and to delegate tasks slowly and carefully. It is important to be clear about what decisions need manager input and what decisions can be made by the employee.

Building the Right Team Early On

A team of thirty remote employees was brought on to build a clickable prototype, but it became clear that they would not be able to deliver the expected results in the given time and budget. To solve this, the team was let go and specialized contractors were hired instead. The key lesson learned was that it is not the size of the team that matters, but the value and output they can produce. To ensure the original vision is kept, a core group of management should direct the decisions and create a culture that empowers the team to make decisions that are good for the company and user base.

Surviving the Transition From IC to Management

This article discusses the transition from individual contributor to management and the challenges that come with it. It outlines the importance of learning to delegate, taking inspiration from those who have done it before, and improving upon soft skills such as listening. It also emphasizes the importance of focusing on people instead of projects and maintaining technical knowledge.

Build Better Relationships through Open Communication with Clients

The speaker led product and operations at a SaaS company providing an incident management and communications platform. One of their clients, an energy company, was tough on them and didn't like changes to the platform. The speaker built a relationship with the executive responsible for risk management and business continuity at the customer by being open and honest about their own company challenges and listening to the customer's concerns. This process led to better communication and understanding between the company and their clients, resulting in better relationships, greater understanding, and greater retention.

Maintain Dispassionate Objectivity when Conflict-Solving

A strategy consultant was hired to help stand up a software joint venture between two US government-sponsored financial entities. The consultant was able to build relationships with stakeholders across multiple companies, hold weekly status meetings, and expose different teams' positions on various topics to de-politicize the situation. As a result, the consultant was successful in helping the JV execs and parent companies reach an agreement, winning them tens of millions of dollars in business. The consultant was also asked to join future projects dealing with similar issues.

Sometimes the Messenger is as Important as the Message

The technology consultancy I worked for was acquired by a large advertising conglomerate, and I joined the leadership team to lead the transformation PMO. I encountered many problems, but the biggest one was team members of various agencies not wanting to participate in data sharing. I spoke with the CEOs of each agency and they agreed to endorse the sharing, which allowed them to participate in more projects and the rest of the group benefited from their knowledge. This showed the importance of hearing about the benefits from their own leaders, who had already earned the respect of their teams.

Separating Commercial Software Development to its Own Department

This project was about developing a strategy for better managing software IP at a digital consulting firm. An operating model was developed and endorsed by CTOs and other product leaders, and was adopted by the consulting firm and its parent organization. The benefits of separating commercial software development to its own department include creating a consistent sales message and process, higher margins, better quality and consistent value for clients, and more productive teams.

Being Comfortable in Unfamiliar Territory

In order to take advantage of growth opportunities, one must become comfortable with being uncomfortable. This means cultivating a fearless quality and accepting that you are in control of your career. To do this, practice studying, communicating, prototyping, testing hypotheses, and making data-driven decisions. This will help you to feel empowered and work confidently in many situations.

Establishing Career Growth and OKR’s for New Team Members

This article discusses the importance of setting career-driven goals for incoming engineers. The author suggests establishing open communication and helping engineers write OKR's (Objectives and Key Results) to ensure they are properly aligned with their career development. The author also emphasizes the importance of making OKR's public and measurable, and using them as an opportunity to grow out of one's comfort zone.

Managing Misaligned OKRs to Prevent Churn and Increase Productivity

When the manager of a new site reliability engineering team was given a set of OKRs to fulfill, they realized that the amount of technical debt and firefighting was too high to meet the expectations. To address this, they adopted their own vision of a successful team, abdicated their order-making power, and distributed the responsibilities of the team across the company. As a result, they were able to retain team members, avoid burn out, and increase productivity. This experience taught the manager to understand the problem their boss was trying to solve, have a solid case for why they solved it differently, and to follow the spirit of their boss's orders rather than the letter.

Investigating the Need For Rewriting a Code Base and Then Successfully Doing So

The codebase inherited by the author was overly complex and difficult to navigate, resulting in a lot of wasted time. After investigation, the author and their senior engineer concluded that a rewrite was necessary, but the manager was resistant due to past experiences with rewrites taking 3-4x the time allotted. The author was able to convince the manager to move forward with the rewrite, which took 6 months instead of the estimated 4 months. The rewrite was successful, resulting in faster product wishlists, happier employees, and a feature that took a month to build in the old codebase taking only seven hours in the new codebase. Hiring new people and breaking up responsibility was especially helpful in the process.

Sourcing, Interviewing, and Hiring When Time is Sensitive

The manager was faced with a difficult situation when three engineers quit just before their arrival and four more within the first week. To combat this, they worked tirelessly to recruit new engineers, becoming friends with recruiting agencies, using Vettery as their preferred method of recruiting, and revamping the interview process. Through their hard work, they were able to hire nine engineers in 100 days and three more shortly thereafter. They also learned the importance of extending interview requests, understanding a candidate's coding ability, and creating harder questions to ensure a successful hire.

Gaining Team Respect as a New Manager

A new engineering manager was not receiving the same respect as the other manager who had started two weeks prior. The new manager took a 'listen first' attitude, which was seen as inferior by some of the engineers. To gain the trust of the team, the manager stayed loyal to them and put their foot down on executive orders. The manager also learned that it would have been smarter to come in with a plan and communicate more frequently with the team.

Hiring Pipeline for Passion and Talent

The CTO of a new company in Brazil was tasked with hiring a team that was representative of the entrepreneur's vision. He created a pipeline of tests to filter out potential candidates, including IQ tests, smoke tests, and paid challenges. He learned that it is more important to hire talented and motivated individuals than those with specific skill sets, and was able to assemble a successful team with high retention rates.

Sourcing Interested Candidates in QA

This article discusses how to identify candidates who are truly interested in a QA career. The author suggests posing an interview question that requires the candidate to think about how an architecture will break, and looking for a system level thinker who can think at the component level and introduce chaos into the system. Additionally, the author suggests leveling all QA engineers at the same level and salary range as software engineers, and creating a company culture that supports QA career growth.

Building a Dev Team From the Bottom Up

This article outlines the steps taken to build a successful development team, from defining the development process and culture to hiring interns and repurposing a project manager. It also highlights the importance of having a well-defined process and culture in order to attract and retain developers, as well as the benefits of having a junior take over support escalations to prevent senior resources from being interrupted. Finally, it suggests hiring interns as a way to build a pipeline of juniors as the team grows.

Becoming a great Product Manager

This article discusses the qualities of a great Product Manager, which include empathy, understanding the grey area, being a helper, and being a leader without authority. It suggests that becoming great is a 10,000 hour problem and that it takes 2 years of being lost and 3-5 years of making mistakes before one can really understand the difficulty of being great. It also suggests studying empathy, considering how to bring it to the whole team, wrestling with when to move to the next phase of development, and considering one's role as a culture creator.

Intuition Demystified: Why being data-driven and using your intuition aren’t as different as you think

This article discusses how teams can decide what to do next by using a combination of data-driven and data-informed approaches, such as KPIs, success metrics, A/B testing, prototypes, insights, intuition, market research, surveys, usability testing, and user empathy. It emphasizes the importance of understanding the user and gathering the necessary data to build empathy for them in order to create innovative solutions that will truly serve them.

Kicking off an AI project

This article outlines the steps taken by a company to empower their platform with AI capabilities. The steps included hiring AI specialists, researching the domain, and creating a chatbot prototype. After 4 months, the team had a showcase ready and reached out to customers for feedback. After 3 more months, the product was in Beta and ready for launch. The takeaway from this process is that a balance of hiring and knowledge gathering can be effective in boosting the ramp up time of new technologies, but it is important to get customer feedback early on.

How to Manage Product Managers

When managing Product Managers with different strengths, it is important to review their performance individually. This can be done by looking at two categories of performance indicators: skill and engagement. Depending on the employee's skill and engagement level, the manager must adjust their management style accordingly. For employees with high skill and low engagement, it is important to look at a 360 degree view of what could be affecting their performance, such as personal issues or misaligned expectations. It is also important to make expectations objective, so that the goal posts do not keep changing.

Building a Product Management Team from 1 to 2 Employees

When a start-up company grows, it can be difficult for the CEO or co-founder to keep up with all the decisions. To help, it is important to hire a counterpart who can fill in the gaps in skills and knowledge. However, it is also important to find someone you trust and to delegate tasks slowly and carefully. It is important to be clear about what decisions need manager input and what decisions can be made by the employee.

Building the Right Team Early On

A team of thirty remote employees was brought on to build a clickable prototype, but it became clear that they would not be able to deliver the expected results in the given time and budget. To solve this, the team was let go and specialized contractors were hired instead. The key lesson learned was that it is not the size of the team that matters, but the value and output they can produce. To ensure the original vision is kept, a core group of management should direct the decisions and create a culture that empowers the team to make decisions that are good for the company and user base.

Surviving the Transition From IC to Management

This article discusses the transition from individual contributor to management and the challenges that come with it. It outlines the importance of learning to delegate, taking inspiration from those who have done it before, and improving upon soft skills such as listening. It also emphasizes the importance of focusing on people instead of projects and maintaining technical knowledge.

Build Better Relationships through Open Communication with Clients

The speaker led product and operations at a SaaS company providing an incident management and communications platform. One of their clients, an energy company, was tough on them and didn't like changes to the platform. The speaker built a relationship with the executive responsible for risk management and business continuity at the customer by being open and honest about their own company challenges and listening to the customer's concerns. This process led to better communication and understanding between the company and their clients, resulting in better relationships, greater understanding, and greater retention.

Maintain Dispassionate Objectivity when Conflict-Solving

A strategy consultant was hired to help stand up a software joint venture between two US government-sponsored financial entities. The consultant was able to build relationships with stakeholders across multiple companies, hold weekly status meetings, and expose different teams' positions on various topics to de-politicize the situation. As a result, the consultant was successful in helping the JV execs and parent companies reach an agreement, winning them tens of millions of dollars in business. The consultant was also asked to join future projects dealing with similar issues.

Sometimes the Messenger is as Important as the Message

The technology consultancy I worked for was acquired by a large advertising conglomerate, and I joined the leadership team to lead the transformation PMO. I encountered many problems, but the biggest one was team members of various agencies not wanting to participate in data sharing. I spoke with the CEOs of each agency and they agreed to endorse the sharing, which allowed them to participate in more projects and the rest of the group benefited from their knowledge. This showed the importance of hearing about the benefits from their own leaders, who had already earned the respect of their teams.

Separating Commercial Software Development to its Own Department

This project was about developing a strategy for better managing software IP at a digital consulting firm. An operating model was developed and endorsed by CTOs and other product leaders, and was adopted by the consulting firm and its parent organization. The benefits of separating commercial software development to its own department include creating a consistent sales message and process, higher margins, better quality and consistent value for clients, and more productive teams.

Being Comfortable in Unfamiliar Territory

In order to take advantage of growth opportunities, one must become comfortable with being uncomfortable. This means cultivating a fearless quality and accepting that you are in control of your career. To do this, practice studying, communicating, prototyping, testing hypotheses, and making data-driven decisions. This will help you to feel empowered and work confidently in many situations.

Establishing Career Growth and OKR’s for New Team Members

This article discusses the importance of setting career-driven goals for incoming engineers. The author suggests establishing open communication and helping engineers write OKR's (Objectives and Key Results) to ensure they are properly aligned with their career development. The author also emphasizes the importance of making OKR's public and measurable, and using them as an opportunity to grow out of one's comfort zone.

Managing Misaligned OKRs to Prevent Churn and Increase Productivity

When the manager of a new site reliability engineering team was given a set of OKRs to fulfill, they realized that the amount of technical debt and firefighting was too high to meet the expectations. To address this, they adopted their own vision of a successful team, abdicated their order-making power, and distributed the responsibilities of the team across the company. As a result, they were able to retain team members, avoid burn out, and increase productivity. This experience taught the manager to understand the problem their boss was trying to solve, have a solid case for why they solved it differently, and to follow the spirit of their boss's orders rather than the letter.

Investigating the Need For Rewriting a Code Base and Then Successfully Doing So

The codebase inherited by the author was overly complex and difficult to navigate, resulting in a lot of wasted time. After investigation, the author and their senior engineer concluded that a rewrite was necessary, but the manager was resistant due to past experiences with rewrites taking 3-4x the time allotted. The author was able to convince the manager to move forward with the rewrite, which took 6 months instead of the estimated 4 months. The rewrite was successful, resulting in faster product wishlists, happier employees, and a feature that took a month to build in the old codebase taking only seven hours in the new codebase. Hiring new people and breaking up responsibility was especially helpful in the process.

Sourcing, Interviewing, and Hiring When Time is Sensitive

The manager was faced with a difficult situation when three engineers quit just before their arrival and four more within the first week. To combat this, they worked tirelessly to recruit new engineers, becoming friends with recruiting agencies, using Vettery as their preferred method of recruiting, and revamping the interview process. Through their hard work, they were able to hire nine engineers in 100 days and three more shortly thereafter. They also learned the importance of extending interview requests, understanding a candidate's coding ability, and creating harder questions to ensure a successful hire.

Gaining Team Respect as a New Manager

A new engineering manager was not receiving the same respect as the other manager who had started two weeks prior. The new manager took a 'listen first' attitude, which was seen as inferior by some of the engineers. To gain the trust of the team, the manager stayed loyal to them and put their foot down on executive orders. The manager also learned that it would have been smarter to come in with a plan and communicate more frequently with the team.

Hiring Pipeline for Passion and Talent

The CTO of a new company in Brazil was tasked with hiring a team that was representative of the entrepreneur's vision. He created a pipeline of tests to filter out potential candidates, including IQ tests, smoke tests, and paid challenges. He learned that it is more important to hire talented and motivated individuals than those with specific skill sets, and was able to assemble a successful team with high retention rates.

Sourcing Interested Candidates in QA

This article discusses how to identify candidates who are truly interested in a QA career. The author suggests posing an interview question that requires the candidate to think about how an architecture will break, and looking for a system level thinker who can think at the component level and introduce chaos into the system. Additionally, the author suggests leveling all QA engineers at the same level and salary range as software engineers, and creating a company culture that supports QA career growth.

Building a Dev Team From the Bottom Up

This article outlines the steps taken to build a successful development team, from defining the development process and culture to hiring interns and repurposing a project manager. It also highlights the importance of having a well-defined process and culture in order to attract and retain developers, as well as the benefits of having a junior take over support escalations to prevent senior resources from being interrupted. Finally, it suggests hiring interns as a way to build a pipeline of juniors as the team grows.

Becoming a great Product Manager

This article discusses the qualities of a great Product Manager, which include empathy, understanding the grey area, being a helper, and being a leader without authority. It suggests that becoming great is a 10,000 hour problem and that it takes 2 years of being lost and 3-5 years of making mistakes before one can really understand the difficulty of being great. It also suggests studying empathy, considering how to bring it to the whole team, wrestling with when to move to the next phase of development, and considering one's role as a culture creator.

Intuition Demystified: Why being data-driven and using your intuition aren’t as different as you think

This article discusses how teams can decide what to do next by using a combination of data-driven and data-informed approaches, such as KPIs, success metrics, A/B testing, prototypes, insights, intuition, market research, surveys, usability testing, and user empathy. It emphasizes the importance of understanding the user and gathering the necessary data to build empathy for them in order to create innovative solutions that will truly serve them.

Kicking off an AI project

This article outlines the steps taken by a company to empower their platform with AI capabilities. The steps included hiring AI specialists, researching the domain, and creating a chatbot prototype. After 4 months, the team had a showcase ready and reached out to customers for feedback. After 3 more months, the product was in Beta and ready for launch. The takeaway from this process is that a balance of hiring and knowledge gathering can be effective in boosting the ramp up time of new technologies, but it is important to get customer feedback early on.

How to Manage Product Managers

When managing Product Managers with different strengths, it is important to review their performance individually. This can be done by looking at two categories of performance indicators: skill and engagement. Depending on the employee's skill and engagement level, the manager must adjust their management style accordingly. For employees with high skill and low engagement, it is important to look at a 360 degree view of what could be affecting their performance, such as personal issues or misaligned expectations. It is also important to make expectations objective, so that the goal posts do not keep changing.

Building a Product Management Team from 1 to 2 Employees

When a start-up company grows, it can be difficult for the CEO or co-founder to keep up with all the decisions. To help, it is important to hire a counterpart who can fill in the gaps in skills and knowledge. However, it is also important to find someone you trust and to delegate tasks slowly and carefully. It is important to be clear about what decisions need manager input and what decisions can be made by the employee.

Building the Right Team Early On

A team of thirty remote employees was brought on to build a clickable prototype, but it became clear that they would not be able to deliver the expected results in the given time and budget. To solve this, the team was let go and specialized contractors were hired instead. The key lesson learned was that it is not the size of the team that matters, but the value and output they can produce. To ensure the original vision is kept, a core group of management should direct the decisions and create a culture that empowers the team to make decisions that are good for the company and user base.

Surviving the Transition From IC to Management

This article discusses the transition from individual contributor to management and the challenges that come with it. It outlines the importance of learning to delegate, taking inspiration from those who have done it before, and improving upon soft skills such as listening. It also emphasizes the importance of focusing on people instead of projects and maintaining technical knowledge.