Knowledge shared by our community

The departure of someone seen as essential for your team

In this case study, the Research and Development director had to face the challenge of one of his team members leaving the company for a year. He chose to be transparent with the team and worked on ways to share the team member's activities among the rest of the team. The director also had to adapt his management style to become closer to the team members and ensure what he said was more precise and detailed. The key lesson learned was to be transparent with the team and to turn a problem into an opportunity.

Training a developer to fill a management role

When a company grows quickly, it can be difficult to find someone with the right leadership skills to fill a new managerial role. In this case, the team leader hired a senior developer and spent eight months training them for the role before officially promoting them. This allowed the team to get used to the new manager and accept them as a legitimate leader. The lesson learned is that it is important to take the time to delegate properly and understand the impact that a new layer of management can have.

Work on strengths, not weaknesses

The manager identified the strengths and weaknesses of each engineer and discussed it with them during 1:1s. Instead of trying to force engineers to do things they don't enjoy and aren't good at, the manager focused on leveraging and developing their individual strengths. This was found to be more impactful and a better use of time for both the employee and manager.

Effective 1:1s

To keep track of his growing engineering team, the author implemented weekly 1:1s with each engineer to ask questions about their accomplishments, blocks, and what should and shouldn't be done. He also keeps a shared Google Doc to make the twice-yearly review process easier. The goal is to ensure no one gets blocked for long, get a pulse on what people are working on, and make sure people feel heard.

Manage Expectation of your stakeholders (Internal and External)

A manager was assigned a new responsibility without being informed and was sent emails with information that caused alarm. After researching the scope of the work, it became clear that the project was too big and vague. The manager had to explain to their boss that they couldn't take on the work and reached out to the other department to let them know. This experience taught the manager to pay attention to emails from senior positions and to understand the context of the work before taking it on.

The Importance of Empowering Data Engineers to See a Company’s Bigger Priorities

Data scientists and students often get excited to apply advanced tools to AI projects, without considering the company's problem that the product is meant to solve. This leads to inefficiencies and a lack of progress. To address this, an exercise is used to teach students, product managers, and ML engineers to think of a basic solution and measure its quality before applying complex tools. This helps them focus on the bigger picture and create a usable solution quickly.

Double Your Productivity by Having Remote Engineers Meet the Team in Person

In order to help remote engineers transition to the team, a team-building experience was created where the whole team meets up in the same space for a week every three months. This has had a huge impact on the team, as the engineers enjoy getting to know each other in person and collaborate better once they physically meet.

The Importance of Focusing On Customer Success

The company had no way to measure the success of their product line roll out and adoption, so they investigated and took action to identify levers to increase adoption and renewal rates. They used data from their system and customer interviews to analyze usage patterns and build a team of customer success managers to train customers and encourage long-term usage. This experience taught them to make this a broader problem and focus on the customer and people, instead of just technology.

Managing Typical Workload and Pressure when a Start-Up is Acquired

In this case study, a start-up team was acquired by an organization in a fast-evolving industry. The team was expected to continue to operate as a SAAS business and deliver on the AI front, creating a dual role and overwhelming expectations for the team leader. To address this, the team leader created a weekly calendar to schedule tasks and sleep, and drew up a plan to get some of the tasks off his plate. He also sought advice on hiring people and bringing more voices to the process. The key lesson learned is to understand the new set up and adjust appropriately, stepping back to make a good analysis of the scenario and create a sound action plan.

Leaving your team in the hands of a new manager

An engineering manager transitioning to a full-time IC role needs to find the right balance between uncovering the performance of their direct reports and allowing the new manager to discover it on their own. The best way to achieve a successful transition is to be open-minded and organised, providing the new manager with an overview of the work performance of each team member, making themselves available for meetings or one-on-ones, and being transparent and upfront with the team about the change.

Being a new manager

This article provides advice on how to transition from a tech lead to an engineering manager, including performance reviews, compensation levels, and prioritization. It emphasizes the importance of soft skills, deep knowledge of the company, and focusing on bigger problems. It also suggests involving a group of managers in semestrial reviews to help objectively measure performance.

Team player vs. high performer

This story is about a tech contributor who was excellent at his job, but had a negative impact on the team due to his dismissive attitude. After a year of trying to figure out the source of the problem, the manager had conversations with the engineer and gave him direct feedback. Despite some improvement, the engineer had burnt too many bridges and eventually transferred out. The manager learned that it is better to have someone who is a better team player, even if they are not as strong technically.

Experimenting with management

An engineering manager needed to promote someone to add structure to his team, but none of his engineers were interested. He found a woman with a combination of technical and soft skills who was already acting as a mentor, and convinced her to take on the role on an experimental basis. She was well-received by the team and stayed in the role full-time at the end of the experiment. The lesson learned is that it is essential to find a way to get somebody to step up without hurting the team, and framing the role as an experiment is a great way to go.

The Importance of Aligning on Priorities with Your Manager

The author joined a team with a new roadmap that had technical constraints not accounted for. After brainstorming with engineers, they presented multiple sequencing options to the manager, recommending one that would deliver business impact the earliest. The manager agreed and the author learned the importance of getting alignment with the manager on priorities and presenting multiple solutions.

Gaining Respect from Engineers as a Product Manager

When joining a team without a product manager, the new PM took time to understand the team's needs and challenges. Through observation and conversations, the PM identified areas of improvement and presented solutions to the team. The PM learned that some engineers take more time to warm up to the new PM, and that the same process works for both low and high expectations.

Taking the Initiative to Transition from Engineering to Product

A technical program manager wanted to transition into a product management role, but faced bias from their company. To prove themselves, they built a strong relationship with a VP of product, took on a small project, and studied for interviews. In the end, they received the offer to become a product manager. The lesson learned is that it is best to transfer internally and find a sponsor on the product team who will support you through the transition.

Building a Remote B-to-C Support Team

When building a remote support team, the author initially hired experienced managers, but they lacked the specific domain knowledge required to do the job. The author then hired two entry-level technical resources and trained them, becoming a "working manager" in the process. To build team cohesion, the author organized quarterly meetings in different cities, combined with a company briefing and team-building activities. This approach exposed low performers and allowed the team to grow beyond 7 people. The author learned that it is important to be careful when hiring, that remote teams can work if done correctly, and to learn the product until you can do the job yourself.

Recruiting a Great Engineer

After posting a job and receiving a stream of resumes, the author questioned their own ability to lead the engineering team and reset their assumptions. They asked pointed questions to the interviewees about technology, teamwork, process, conflict, and trust, and chose someone they felt they could trust for the lead. The author learned that trust must be earned and maintained to have productive working relationships when hiring.

Small team + looming deadline = priorities

Working on a tight deadline to build a mobile chat app from scratch, the engineer had to judge which parts of the app were most likely to stay and which were important for dogfooding. This was a challenging task, but frequent communication with the team helped. The experience taught the engineer the importance of working smarter and faster, and that sometimes it is necessary to build things that will be replaced in the near future.

Better tooling, better UX

In 2015, Lead UI Engineer at Zazzle, faced with the challenge of explaining why certain things couldn't be done, decided to upgrade the tech stack. After researching various frameworks, React (and TypeScript) rose to the top. After making a compelling presentation to key stakeholders, the next flagship experience was built on React and now 95% of development is on the new React stack. The successful transition was due to the engineer's ability to frame the argument in a way that resonated with both Engineering and Product.

The departure of someone seen as essential for your team

In this case study, the Research and Development director had to face the challenge of one of his team members leaving the company for a year. He chose to be transparent with the team and worked on ways to share the team member's activities among the rest of the team. The director also had to adapt his management style to become closer to the team members and ensure what he said was more precise and detailed. The key lesson learned was to be transparent with the team and to turn a problem into an opportunity.

Training a developer to fill a management role

When a company grows quickly, it can be difficult to find someone with the right leadership skills to fill a new managerial role. In this case, the team leader hired a senior developer and spent eight months training them for the role before officially promoting them. This allowed the team to get used to the new manager and accept them as a legitimate leader. The lesson learned is that it is important to take the time to delegate properly and understand the impact that a new layer of management can have.

Work on strengths, not weaknesses

The manager identified the strengths and weaknesses of each engineer and discussed it with them during 1:1s. Instead of trying to force engineers to do things they don't enjoy and aren't good at, the manager focused on leveraging and developing their individual strengths. This was found to be more impactful and a better use of time for both the employee and manager.

Effective 1:1s

To keep track of his growing engineering team, the author implemented weekly 1:1s with each engineer to ask questions about their accomplishments, blocks, and what should and shouldn't be done. He also keeps a shared Google Doc to make the twice-yearly review process easier. The goal is to ensure no one gets blocked for long, get a pulse on what people are working on, and make sure people feel heard.

Manage Expectation of your stakeholders (Internal and External)

A manager was assigned a new responsibility without being informed and was sent emails with information that caused alarm. After researching the scope of the work, it became clear that the project was too big and vague. The manager had to explain to their boss that they couldn't take on the work and reached out to the other department to let them know. This experience taught the manager to pay attention to emails from senior positions and to understand the context of the work before taking it on.

The Importance of Empowering Data Engineers to See a Company’s Bigger Priorities

Data scientists and students often get excited to apply advanced tools to AI projects, without considering the company's problem that the product is meant to solve. This leads to inefficiencies and a lack of progress. To address this, an exercise is used to teach students, product managers, and ML engineers to think of a basic solution and measure its quality before applying complex tools. This helps them focus on the bigger picture and create a usable solution quickly.

Double Your Productivity by Having Remote Engineers Meet the Team in Person

In order to help remote engineers transition to the team, a team-building experience was created where the whole team meets up in the same space for a week every three months. This has had a huge impact on the team, as the engineers enjoy getting to know each other in person and collaborate better once they physically meet.

The Importance of Focusing On Customer Success

The company had no way to measure the success of their product line roll out and adoption, so they investigated and took action to identify levers to increase adoption and renewal rates. They used data from their system and customer interviews to analyze usage patterns and build a team of customer success managers to train customers and encourage long-term usage. This experience taught them to make this a broader problem and focus on the customer and people, instead of just technology.

Managing Typical Workload and Pressure when a Start-Up is Acquired

In this case study, a start-up team was acquired by an organization in a fast-evolving industry. The team was expected to continue to operate as a SAAS business and deliver on the AI front, creating a dual role and overwhelming expectations for the team leader. To address this, the team leader created a weekly calendar to schedule tasks and sleep, and drew up a plan to get some of the tasks off his plate. He also sought advice on hiring people and bringing more voices to the process. The key lesson learned is to understand the new set up and adjust appropriately, stepping back to make a good analysis of the scenario and create a sound action plan.

Leaving your team in the hands of a new manager

An engineering manager transitioning to a full-time IC role needs to find the right balance between uncovering the performance of their direct reports and allowing the new manager to discover it on their own. The best way to achieve a successful transition is to be open-minded and organised, providing the new manager with an overview of the work performance of each team member, making themselves available for meetings or one-on-ones, and being transparent and upfront with the team about the change.

Being a new manager

This article provides advice on how to transition from a tech lead to an engineering manager, including performance reviews, compensation levels, and prioritization. It emphasizes the importance of soft skills, deep knowledge of the company, and focusing on bigger problems. It also suggests involving a group of managers in semestrial reviews to help objectively measure performance.

Team player vs. high performer

This story is about a tech contributor who was excellent at his job, but had a negative impact on the team due to his dismissive attitude. After a year of trying to figure out the source of the problem, the manager had conversations with the engineer and gave him direct feedback. Despite some improvement, the engineer had burnt too many bridges and eventually transferred out. The manager learned that it is better to have someone who is a better team player, even if they are not as strong technically.

Experimenting with management

An engineering manager needed to promote someone to add structure to his team, but none of his engineers were interested. He found a woman with a combination of technical and soft skills who was already acting as a mentor, and convinced her to take on the role on an experimental basis. She was well-received by the team and stayed in the role full-time at the end of the experiment. The lesson learned is that it is essential to find a way to get somebody to step up without hurting the team, and framing the role as an experiment is a great way to go.

The Importance of Aligning on Priorities with Your Manager

The author joined a team with a new roadmap that had technical constraints not accounted for. After brainstorming with engineers, they presented multiple sequencing options to the manager, recommending one that would deliver business impact the earliest. The manager agreed and the author learned the importance of getting alignment with the manager on priorities and presenting multiple solutions.

Gaining Respect from Engineers as a Product Manager

When joining a team without a product manager, the new PM took time to understand the team's needs and challenges. Through observation and conversations, the PM identified areas of improvement and presented solutions to the team. The PM learned that some engineers take more time to warm up to the new PM, and that the same process works for both low and high expectations.

Taking the Initiative to Transition from Engineering to Product

A technical program manager wanted to transition into a product management role, but faced bias from their company. To prove themselves, they built a strong relationship with a VP of product, took on a small project, and studied for interviews. In the end, they received the offer to become a product manager. The lesson learned is that it is best to transfer internally and find a sponsor on the product team who will support you through the transition.

Building a Remote B-to-C Support Team

When building a remote support team, the author initially hired experienced managers, but they lacked the specific domain knowledge required to do the job. The author then hired two entry-level technical resources and trained them, becoming a "working manager" in the process. To build team cohesion, the author organized quarterly meetings in different cities, combined with a company briefing and team-building activities. This approach exposed low performers and allowed the team to grow beyond 7 people. The author learned that it is important to be careful when hiring, that remote teams can work if done correctly, and to learn the product until you can do the job yourself.

Recruiting a Great Engineer

After posting a job and receiving a stream of resumes, the author questioned their own ability to lead the engineering team and reset their assumptions. They asked pointed questions to the interviewees about technology, teamwork, process, conflict, and trust, and chose someone they felt they could trust for the lead. The author learned that trust must be earned and maintained to have productive working relationships when hiring.

Small team + looming deadline = priorities

Working on a tight deadline to build a mobile chat app from scratch, the engineer had to judge which parts of the app were most likely to stay and which were important for dogfooding. This was a challenging task, but frequent communication with the team helped. The experience taught the engineer the importance of working smarter and faster, and that sometimes it is necessary to build things that will be replaced in the near future.

Better tooling, better UX

In 2015, Lead UI Engineer at Zazzle, faced with the challenge of explaining why certain things couldn't be done, decided to upgrade the tech stack. After researching various frameworks, React (and TypeScript) rose to the top. After making a compelling presentation to key stakeholders, the next flagship experience was built on React and now 95% of development is on the new React stack. The successful transition was due to the engineer's ability to frame the argument in a way that resonated with both Engineering and Product.

The departure of someone seen as essential for your team

In this case study, the Research and Development director had to face the challenge of one of his team members leaving the company for a year. He chose to be transparent with the team and worked on ways to share the team member's activities among the rest of the team. The director also had to adapt his management style to become closer to the team members and ensure what he said was more precise and detailed. The key lesson learned was to be transparent with the team and to turn a problem into an opportunity.

Training a developer to fill a management role

When a company grows quickly, it can be difficult to find someone with the right leadership skills to fill a new managerial role. In this case, the team leader hired a senior developer and spent eight months training them for the role before officially promoting them. This allowed the team to get used to the new manager and accept them as a legitimate leader. The lesson learned is that it is important to take the time to delegate properly and understand the impact that a new layer of management can have.

Work on strengths, not weaknesses

The manager identified the strengths and weaknesses of each engineer and discussed it with them during 1:1s. Instead of trying to force engineers to do things they don't enjoy and aren't good at, the manager focused on leveraging and developing their individual strengths. This was found to be more impactful and a better use of time for both the employee and manager.

Effective 1:1s

To keep track of his growing engineering team, the author implemented weekly 1:1s with each engineer to ask questions about their accomplishments, blocks, and what should and shouldn't be done. He also keeps a shared Google Doc to make the twice-yearly review process easier. The goal is to ensure no one gets blocked for long, get a pulse on what people are working on, and make sure people feel heard.

Manage Expectation of your stakeholders (Internal and External)

A manager was assigned a new responsibility without being informed and was sent emails with information that caused alarm. After researching the scope of the work, it became clear that the project was too big and vague. The manager had to explain to their boss that they couldn't take on the work and reached out to the other department to let them know. This experience taught the manager to pay attention to emails from senior positions and to understand the context of the work before taking it on.

The Importance of Empowering Data Engineers to See a Company’s Bigger Priorities

Data scientists and students often get excited to apply advanced tools to AI projects, without considering the company's problem that the product is meant to solve. This leads to inefficiencies and a lack of progress. To address this, an exercise is used to teach students, product managers, and ML engineers to think of a basic solution and measure its quality before applying complex tools. This helps them focus on the bigger picture and create a usable solution quickly.

Double Your Productivity by Having Remote Engineers Meet the Team in Person

In order to help remote engineers transition to the team, a team-building experience was created where the whole team meets up in the same space for a week every three months. This has had a huge impact on the team, as the engineers enjoy getting to know each other in person and collaborate better once they physically meet.

The Importance of Focusing On Customer Success

The company had no way to measure the success of their product line roll out and adoption, so they investigated and took action to identify levers to increase adoption and renewal rates. They used data from their system and customer interviews to analyze usage patterns and build a team of customer success managers to train customers and encourage long-term usage. This experience taught them to make this a broader problem and focus on the customer and people, instead of just technology.

Managing Typical Workload and Pressure when a Start-Up is Acquired

In this case study, a start-up team was acquired by an organization in a fast-evolving industry. The team was expected to continue to operate as a SAAS business and deliver on the AI front, creating a dual role and overwhelming expectations for the team leader. To address this, the team leader created a weekly calendar to schedule tasks and sleep, and drew up a plan to get some of the tasks off his plate. He also sought advice on hiring people and bringing more voices to the process. The key lesson learned is to understand the new set up and adjust appropriately, stepping back to make a good analysis of the scenario and create a sound action plan.

Leaving your team in the hands of a new manager

An engineering manager transitioning to a full-time IC role needs to find the right balance between uncovering the performance of their direct reports and allowing the new manager to discover it on their own. The best way to achieve a successful transition is to be open-minded and organised, providing the new manager with an overview of the work performance of each team member, making themselves available for meetings or one-on-ones, and being transparent and upfront with the team about the change.

Being a new manager

This article provides advice on how to transition from a tech lead to an engineering manager, including performance reviews, compensation levels, and prioritization. It emphasizes the importance of soft skills, deep knowledge of the company, and focusing on bigger problems. It also suggests involving a group of managers in semestrial reviews to help objectively measure performance.

Team player vs. high performer

This story is about a tech contributor who was excellent at his job, but had a negative impact on the team due to his dismissive attitude. After a year of trying to figure out the source of the problem, the manager had conversations with the engineer and gave him direct feedback. Despite some improvement, the engineer had burnt too many bridges and eventually transferred out. The manager learned that it is better to have someone who is a better team player, even if they are not as strong technically.

Experimenting with management

An engineering manager needed to promote someone to add structure to his team, but none of his engineers were interested. He found a woman with a combination of technical and soft skills who was already acting as a mentor, and convinced her to take on the role on an experimental basis. She was well-received by the team and stayed in the role full-time at the end of the experiment. The lesson learned is that it is essential to find a way to get somebody to step up without hurting the team, and framing the role as an experiment is a great way to go.

The Importance of Aligning on Priorities with Your Manager

The author joined a team with a new roadmap that had technical constraints not accounted for. After brainstorming with engineers, they presented multiple sequencing options to the manager, recommending one that would deliver business impact the earliest. The manager agreed and the author learned the importance of getting alignment with the manager on priorities and presenting multiple solutions.

Gaining Respect from Engineers as a Product Manager

When joining a team without a product manager, the new PM took time to understand the team's needs and challenges. Through observation and conversations, the PM identified areas of improvement and presented solutions to the team. The PM learned that some engineers take more time to warm up to the new PM, and that the same process works for both low and high expectations.

Taking the Initiative to Transition from Engineering to Product

A technical program manager wanted to transition into a product management role, but faced bias from their company. To prove themselves, they built a strong relationship with a VP of product, took on a small project, and studied for interviews. In the end, they received the offer to become a product manager. The lesson learned is that it is best to transfer internally and find a sponsor on the product team who will support you through the transition.

Building a Remote B-to-C Support Team

When building a remote support team, the author initially hired experienced managers, but they lacked the specific domain knowledge required to do the job. The author then hired two entry-level technical resources and trained them, becoming a "working manager" in the process. To build team cohesion, the author organized quarterly meetings in different cities, combined with a company briefing and team-building activities. This approach exposed low performers and allowed the team to grow beyond 7 people. The author learned that it is important to be careful when hiring, that remote teams can work if done correctly, and to learn the product until you can do the job yourself.

Recruiting a Great Engineer

After posting a job and receiving a stream of resumes, the author questioned their own ability to lead the engineering team and reset their assumptions. They asked pointed questions to the interviewees about technology, teamwork, process, conflict, and trust, and chose someone they felt they could trust for the lead. The author learned that trust must be earned and maintained to have productive working relationships when hiring.

Small team + looming deadline = priorities

Working on a tight deadline to build a mobile chat app from scratch, the engineer had to judge which parts of the app were most likely to stay and which were important for dogfooding. This was a challenging task, but frequent communication with the team helped. The experience taught the engineer the importance of working smarter and faster, and that sometimes it is necessary to build things that will be replaced in the near future.

Better tooling, better UX

In 2015, Lead UI Engineer at Zazzle, faced with the challenge of explaining why certain things couldn't be done, decided to upgrade the tech stack. After researching various frameworks, React (and TypeScript) rose to the top. After making a compelling presentation to key stakeholders, the next flagship experience was built on React and now 95% of development is on the new React stack. The successful transition was due to the engineer's ability to frame the argument in a way that resonated with both Engineering and Product.

The departure of someone seen as essential for your team

In this case study, the Research and Development director had to face the challenge of one of his team members leaving the company for a year. He chose to be transparent with the team and worked on ways to share the team member's activities among the rest of the team. The director also had to adapt his management style to become closer to the team members and ensure what he said was more precise and detailed. The key lesson learned was to be transparent with the team and to turn a problem into an opportunity.

Training a developer to fill a management role

When a company grows quickly, it can be difficult to find someone with the right leadership skills to fill a new managerial role. In this case, the team leader hired a senior developer and spent eight months training them for the role before officially promoting them. This allowed the team to get used to the new manager and accept them as a legitimate leader. The lesson learned is that it is important to take the time to delegate properly and understand the impact that a new layer of management can have.

Work on strengths, not weaknesses

The manager identified the strengths and weaknesses of each engineer and discussed it with them during 1:1s. Instead of trying to force engineers to do things they don't enjoy and aren't good at, the manager focused on leveraging and developing their individual strengths. This was found to be more impactful and a better use of time for both the employee and manager.

Effective 1:1s

To keep track of his growing engineering team, the author implemented weekly 1:1s with each engineer to ask questions about their accomplishments, blocks, and what should and shouldn't be done. He also keeps a shared Google Doc to make the twice-yearly review process easier. The goal is to ensure no one gets blocked for long, get a pulse on what people are working on, and make sure people feel heard.

Manage Expectation of your stakeholders (Internal and External)

A manager was assigned a new responsibility without being informed and was sent emails with information that caused alarm. After researching the scope of the work, it became clear that the project was too big and vague. The manager had to explain to their boss that they couldn't take on the work and reached out to the other department to let them know. This experience taught the manager to pay attention to emails from senior positions and to understand the context of the work before taking it on.

The Importance of Empowering Data Engineers to See a Company’s Bigger Priorities

Data scientists and students often get excited to apply advanced tools to AI projects, without considering the company's problem that the product is meant to solve. This leads to inefficiencies and a lack of progress. To address this, an exercise is used to teach students, product managers, and ML engineers to think of a basic solution and measure its quality before applying complex tools. This helps them focus on the bigger picture and create a usable solution quickly.

Double Your Productivity by Having Remote Engineers Meet the Team in Person

In order to help remote engineers transition to the team, a team-building experience was created where the whole team meets up in the same space for a week every three months. This has had a huge impact on the team, as the engineers enjoy getting to know each other in person and collaborate better once they physically meet.

The Importance of Focusing On Customer Success

The company had no way to measure the success of their product line roll out and adoption, so they investigated and took action to identify levers to increase adoption and renewal rates. They used data from their system and customer interviews to analyze usage patterns and build a team of customer success managers to train customers and encourage long-term usage. This experience taught them to make this a broader problem and focus on the customer and people, instead of just technology.

Managing Typical Workload and Pressure when a Start-Up is Acquired

In this case study, a start-up team was acquired by an organization in a fast-evolving industry. The team was expected to continue to operate as a SAAS business and deliver on the AI front, creating a dual role and overwhelming expectations for the team leader. To address this, the team leader created a weekly calendar to schedule tasks and sleep, and drew up a plan to get some of the tasks off his plate. He also sought advice on hiring people and bringing more voices to the process. The key lesson learned is to understand the new set up and adjust appropriately, stepping back to make a good analysis of the scenario and create a sound action plan.

Leaving your team in the hands of a new manager

An engineering manager transitioning to a full-time IC role needs to find the right balance between uncovering the performance of their direct reports and allowing the new manager to discover it on their own. The best way to achieve a successful transition is to be open-minded and organised, providing the new manager with an overview of the work performance of each team member, making themselves available for meetings or one-on-ones, and being transparent and upfront with the team about the change.

Being a new manager

This article provides advice on how to transition from a tech lead to an engineering manager, including performance reviews, compensation levels, and prioritization. It emphasizes the importance of soft skills, deep knowledge of the company, and focusing on bigger problems. It also suggests involving a group of managers in semestrial reviews to help objectively measure performance.

Team player vs. high performer

This story is about a tech contributor who was excellent at his job, but had a negative impact on the team due to his dismissive attitude. After a year of trying to figure out the source of the problem, the manager had conversations with the engineer and gave him direct feedback. Despite some improvement, the engineer had burnt too many bridges and eventually transferred out. The manager learned that it is better to have someone who is a better team player, even if they are not as strong technically.

Experimenting with management

An engineering manager needed to promote someone to add structure to his team, but none of his engineers were interested. He found a woman with a combination of technical and soft skills who was already acting as a mentor, and convinced her to take on the role on an experimental basis. She was well-received by the team and stayed in the role full-time at the end of the experiment. The lesson learned is that it is essential to find a way to get somebody to step up without hurting the team, and framing the role as an experiment is a great way to go.

The Importance of Aligning on Priorities with Your Manager

The author joined a team with a new roadmap that had technical constraints not accounted for. After brainstorming with engineers, they presented multiple sequencing options to the manager, recommending one that would deliver business impact the earliest. The manager agreed and the author learned the importance of getting alignment with the manager on priorities and presenting multiple solutions.

Gaining Respect from Engineers as a Product Manager

When joining a team without a product manager, the new PM took time to understand the team's needs and challenges. Through observation and conversations, the PM identified areas of improvement and presented solutions to the team. The PM learned that some engineers take more time to warm up to the new PM, and that the same process works for both low and high expectations.

Taking the Initiative to Transition from Engineering to Product

A technical program manager wanted to transition into a product management role, but faced bias from their company. To prove themselves, they built a strong relationship with a VP of product, took on a small project, and studied for interviews. In the end, they received the offer to become a product manager. The lesson learned is that it is best to transfer internally and find a sponsor on the product team who will support you through the transition.

Building a Remote B-to-C Support Team

When building a remote support team, the author initially hired experienced managers, but they lacked the specific domain knowledge required to do the job. The author then hired two entry-level technical resources and trained them, becoming a "working manager" in the process. To build team cohesion, the author organized quarterly meetings in different cities, combined with a company briefing and team-building activities. This approach exposed low performers and allowed the team to grow beyond 7 people. The author learned that it is important to be careful when hiring, that remote teams can work if done correctly, and to learn the product until you can do the job yourself.

Recruiting a Great Engineer

After posting a job and receiving a stream of resumes, the author questioned their own ability to lead the engineering team and reset their assumptions. They asked pointed questions to the interviewees about technology, teamwork, process, conflict, and trust, and chose someone they felt they could trust for the lead. The author learned that trust must be earned and maintained to have productive working relationships when hiring.

Small team + looming deadline = priorities

Working on a tight deadline to build a mobile chat app from scratch, the engineer had to judge which parts of the app were most likely to stay and which were important for dogfooding. This was a challenging task, but frequent communication with the team helped. The experience taught the engineer the importance of working smarter and faster, and that sometimes it is necessary to build things that will be replaced in the near future.

Better tooling, better UX

In 2015, Lead UI Engineer at Zazzle, faced with the challenge of explaining why certain things couldn't be done, decided to upgrade the tech stack. After researching various frameworks, React (and TypeScript) rose to the top. After making a compelling presentation to key stakeholders, the next flagship experience was built on React and now 95% of development is on the new React stack. The successful transition was due to the engineer's ability to frame the argument in a way that resonated with both Engineering and Product.

The departure of someone seen as essential for your team

In this case study, the Research and Development director had to face the challenge of one of his team members leaving the company for a year. He chose to be transparent with the team and worked on ways to share the team member's activities among the rest of the team. The director also had to adapt his management style to become closer to the team members and ensure what he said was more precise and detailed. The key lesson learned was to be transparent with the team and to turn a problem into an opportunity.

Training a developer to fill a management role

When a company grows quickly, it can be difficult to find someone with the right leadership skills to fill a new managerial role. In this case, the team leader hired a senior developer and spent eight months training them for the role before officially promoting them. This allowed the team to get used to the new manager and accept them as a legitimate leader. The lesson learned is that it is important to take the time to delegate properly and understand the impact that a new layer of management can have.

Work on strengths, not weaknesses

The manager identified the strengths and weaknesses of each engineer and discussed it with them during 1:1s. Instead of trying to force engineers to do things they don't enjoy and aren't good at, the manager focused on leveraging and developing their individual strengths. This was found to be more impactful and a better use of time for both the employee and manager.

Effective 1:1s

To keep track of his growing engineering team, the author implemented weekly 1:1s with each engineer to ask questions about their accomplishments, blocks, and what should and shouldn't be done. He also keeps a shared Google Doc to make the twice-yearly review process easier. The goal is to ensure no one gets blocked for long, get a pulse on what people are working on, and make sure people feel heard.

Manage Expectation of your stakeholders (Internal and External)

A manager was assigned a new responsibility without being informed and was sent emails with information that caused alarm. After researching the scope of the work, it became clear that the project was too big and vague. The manager had to explain to their boss that they couldn't take on the work and reached out to the other department to let them know. This experience taught the manager to pay attention to emails from senior positions and to understand the context of the work before taking it on.

The Importance of Empowering Data Engineers to See a Company’s Bigger Priorities

Data scientists and students often get excited to apply advanced tools to AI projects, without considering the company's problem that the product is meant to solve. This leads to inefficiencies and a lack of progress. To address this, an exercise is used to teach students, product managers, and ML engineers to think of a basic solution and measure its quality before applying complex tools. This helps them focus on the bigger picture and create a usable solution quickly.

Double Your Productivity by Having Remote Engineers Meet the Team in Person

In order to help remote engineers transition to the team, a team-building experience was created where the whole team meets up in the same space for a week every three months. This has had a huge impact on the team, as the engineers enjoy getting to know each other in person and collaborate better once they physically meet.

The Importance of Focusing On Customer Success

The company had no way to measure the success of their product line roll out and adoption, so they investigated and took action to identify levers to increase adoption and renewal rates. They used data from their system and customer interviews to analyze usage patterns and build a team of customer success managers to train customers and encourage long-term usage. This experience taught them to make this a broader problem and focus on the customer and people, instead of just technology.

Managing Typical Workload and Pressure when a Start-Up is Acquired

In this case study, a start-up team was acquired by an organization in a fast-evolving industry. The team was expected to continue to operate as a SAAS business and deliver on the AI front, creating a dual role and overwhelming expectations for the team leader. To address this, the team leader created a weekly calendar to schedule tasks and sleep, and drew up a plan to get some of the tasks off his plate. He also sought advice on hiring people and bringing more voices to the process. The key lesson learned is to understand the new set up and adjust appropriately, stepping back to make a good analysis of the scenario and create a sound action plan.

Leaving your team in the hands of a new manager

An engineering manager transitioning to a full-time IC role needs to find the right balance between uncovering the performance of their direct reports and allowing the new manager to discover it on their own. The best way to achieve a successful transition is to be open-minded and organised, providing the new manager with an overview of the work performance of each team member, making themselves available for meetings or one-on-ones, and being transparent and upfront with the team about the change.

Being a new manager

This article provides advice on how to transition from a tech lead to an engineering manager, including performance reviews, compensation levels, and prioritization. It emphasizes the importance of soft skills, deep knowledge of the company, and focusing on bigger problems. It also suggests involving a group of managers in semestrial reviews to help objectively measure performance.

Team player vs. high performer

This story is about a tech contributor who was excellent at his job, but had a negative impact on the team due to his dismissive attitude. After a year of trying to figure out the source of the problem, the manager had conversations with the engineer and gave him direct feedback. Despite some improvement, the engineer had burnt too many bridges and eventually transferred out. The manager learned that it is better to have someone who is a better team player, even if they are not as strong technically.

Experimenting with management

An engineering manager needed to promote someone to add structure to his team, but none of his engineers were interested. He found a woman with a combination of technical and soft skills who was already acting as a mentor, and convinced her to take on the role on an experimental basis. She was well-received by the team and stayed in the role full-time at the end of the experiment. The lesson learned is that it is essential to find a way to get somebody to step up without hurting the team, and framing the role as an experiment is a great way to go.

The Importance of Aligning on Priorities with Your Manager

The author joined a team with a new roadmap that had technical constraints not accounted for. After brainstorming with engineers, they presented multiple sequencing options to the manager, recommending one that would deliver business impact the earliest. The manager agreed and the author learned the importance of getting alignment with the manager on priorities and presenting multiple solutions.

Gaining Respect from Engineers as a Product Manager

When joining a team without a product manager, the new PM took time to understand the team's needs and challenges. Through observation and conversations, the PM identified areas of improvement and presented solutions to the team. The PM learned that some engineers take more time to warm up to the new PM, and that the same process works for both low and high expectations.

Taking the Initiative to Transition from Engineering to Product

A technical program manager wanted to transition into a product management role, but faced bias from their company. To prove themselves, they built a strong relationship with a VP of product, took on a small project, and studied for interviews. In the end, they received the offer to become a product manager. The lesson learned is that it is best to transfer internally and find a sponsor on the product team who will support you through the transition.

Building a Remote B-to-C Support Team

When building a remote support team, the author initially hired experienced managers, but they lacked the specific domain knowledge required to do the job. The author then hired two entry-level technical resources and trained them, becoming a "working manager" in the process. To build team cohesion, the author organized quarterly meetings in different cities, combined with a company briefing and team-building activities. This approach exposed low performers and allowed the team to grow beyond 7 people. The author learned that it is important to be careful when hiring, that remote teams can work if done correctly, and to learn the product until you can do the job yourself.

Recruiting a Great Engineer

After posting a job and receiving a stream of resumes, the author questioned their own ability to lead the engineering team and reset their assumptions. They asked pointed questions to the interviewees about technology, teamwork, process, conflict, and trust, and chose someone they felt they could trust for the lead. The author learned that trust must be earned and maintained to have productive working relationships when hiring.

Small team + looming deadline = priorities

Working on a tight deadline to build a mobile chat app from scratch, the engineer had to judge which parts of the app were most likely to stay and which were important for dogfooding. This was a challenging task, but frequent communication with the team helped. The experience taught the engineer the importance of working smarter and faster, and that sometimes it is necessary to build things that will be replaced in the near future.

Better tooling, better UX

In 2015, Lead UI Engineer at Zazzle, faced with the challenge of explaining why certain things couldn't be done, decided to upgrade the tech stack. After researching various frameworks, React (and TypeScript) rose to the top. After making a compelling presentation to key stakeholders, the next flagship experience was built on React and now 95% of development is on the new React stack. The successful transition was due to the engineer's ability to frame the argument in a way that resonated with both Engineering and Product.

The departure of someone seen as essential for your team

In this case study, the Research and Development director had to face the challenge of one of his team members leaving the company for a year. He chose to be transparent with the team and worked on ways to share the team member's activities among the rest of the team. The director also had to adapt his management style to become closer to the team members and ensure what he said was more precise and detailed. The key lesson learned was to be transparent with the team and to turn a problem into an opportunity.

Training a developer to fill a management role

When a company grows quickly, it can be difficult to find someone with the right leadership skills to fill a new managerial role. In this case, the team leader hired a senior developer and spent eight months training them for the role before officially promoting them. This allowed the team to get used to the new manager and accept them as a legitimate leader. The lesson learned is that it is important to take the time to delegate properly and understand the impact that a new layer of management can have.

Work on strengths, not weaknesses

The manager identified the strengths and weaknesses of each engineer and discussed it with them during 1:1s. Instead of trying to force engineers to do things they don't enjoy and aren't good at, the manager focused on leveraging and developing their individual strengths. This was found to be more impactful and a better use of time for both the employee and manager.

Effective 1:1s

To keep track of his growing engineering team, the author implemented weekly 1:1s with each engineer to ask questions about their accomplishments, blocks, and what should and shouldn't be done. He also keeps a shared Google Doc to make the twice-yearly review process easier. The goal is to ensure no one gets blocked for long, get a pulse on what people are working on, and make sure people feel heard.

Manage Expectation of your stakeholders (Internal and External)

A manager was assigned a new responsibility without being informed and was sent emails with information that caused alarm. After researching the scope of the work, it became clear that the project was too big and vague. The manager had to explain to their boss that they couldn't take on the work and reached out to the other department to let them know. This experience taught the manager to pay attention to emails from senior positions and to understand the context of the work before taking it on.

The Importance of Empowering Data Engineers to See a Company’s Bigger Priorities

Data scientists and students often get excited to apply advanced tools to AI projects, without considering the company's problem that the product is meant to solve. This leads to inefficiencies and a lack of progress. To address this, an exercise is used to teach students, product managers, and ML engineers to think of a basic solution and measure its quality before applying complex tools. This helps them focus on the bigger picture and create a usable solution quickly.

Double Your Productivity by Having Remote Engineers Meet the Team in Person

In order to help remote engineers transition to the team, a team-building experience was created where the whole team meets up in the same space for a week every three months. This has had a huge impact on the team, as the engineers enjoy getting to know each other in person and collaborate better once they physically meet.

The Importance of Focusing On Customer Success

The company had no way to measure the success of their product line roll out and adoption, so they investigated and took action to identify levers to increase adoption and renewal rates. They used data from their system and customer interviews to analyze usage patterns and build a team of customer success managers to train customers and encourage long-term usage. This experience taught them to make this a broader problem and focus on the customer and people, instead of just technology.

Managing Typical Workload and Pressure when a Start-Up is Acquired

In this case study, a start-up team was acquired by an organization in a fast-evolving industry. The team was expected to continue to operate as a SAAS business and deliver on the AI front, creating a dual role and overwhelming expectations for the team leader. To address this, the team leader created a weekly calendar to schedule tasks and sleep, and drew up a plan to get some of the tasks off his plate. He also sought advice on hiring people and bringing more voices to the process. The key lesson learned is to understand the new set up and adjust appropriately, stepping back to make a good analysis of the scenario and create a sound action plan.

Leaving your team in the hands of a new manager

An engineering manager transitioning to a full-time IC role needs to find the right balance between uncovering the performance of their direct reports and allowing the new manager to discover it on their own. The best way to achieve a successful transition is to be open-minded and organised, providing the new manager with an overview of the work performance of each team member, making themselves available for meetings or one-on-ones, and being transparent and upfront with the team about the change.

Being a new manager

This article provides advice on how to transition from a tech lead to an engineering manager, including performance reviews, compensation levels, and prioritization. It emphasizes the importance of soft skills, deep knowledge of the company, and focusing on bigger problems. It also suggests involving a group of managers in semestrial reviews to help objectively measure performance.

Team player vs. high performer

This story is about a tech contributor who was excellent at his job, but had a negative impact on the team due to his dismissive attitude. After a year of trying to figure out the source of the problem, the manager had conversations with the engineer and gave him direct feedback. Despite some improvement, the engineer had burnt too many bridges and eventually transferred out. The manager learned that it is better to have someone who is a better team player, even if they are not as strong technically.

Experimenting with management

An engineering manager needed to promote someone to add structure to his team, but none of his engineers were interested. He found a woman with a combination of technical and soft skills who was already acting as a mentor, and convinced her to take on the role on an experimental basis. She was well-received by the team and stayed in the role full-time at the end of the experiment. The lesson learned is that it is essential to find a way to get somebody to step up without hurting the team, and framing the role as an experiment is a great way to go.

The Importance of Aligning on Priorities with Your Manager

The author joined a team with a new roadmap that had technical constraints not accounted for. After brainstorming with engineers, they presented multiple sequencing options to the manager, recommending one that would deliver business impact the earliest. The manager agreed and the author learned the importance of getting alignment with the manager on priorities and presenting multiple solutions.

Gaining Respect from Engineers as a Product Manager

When joining a team without a product manager, the new PM took time to understand the team's needs and challenges. Through observation and conversations, the PM identified areas of improvement and presented solutions to the team. The PM learned that some engineers take more time to warm up to the new PM, and that the same process works for both low and high expectations.

Taking the Initiative to Transition from Engineering to Product

A technical program manager wanted to transition into a product management role, but faced bias from their company. To prove themselves, they built a strong relationship with a VP of product, took on a small project, and studied for interviews. In the end, they received the offer to become a product manager. The lesson learned is that it is best to transfer internally and find a sponsor on the product team who will support you through the transition.

Building a Remote B-to-C Support Team

When building a remote support team, the author initially hired experienced managers, but they lacked the specific domain knowledge required to do the job. The author then hired two entry-level technical resources and trained them, becoming a "working manager" in the process. To build team cohesion, the author organized quarterly meetings in different cities, combined with a company briefing and team-building activities. This approach exposed low performers and allowed the team to grow beyond 7 people. The author learned that it is important to be careful when hiring, that remote teams can work if done correctly, and to learn the product until you can do the job yourself.

Recruiting a Great Engineer

After posting a job and receiving a stream of resumes, the author questioned their own ability to lead the engineering team and reset their assumptions. They asked pointed questions to the interviewees about technology, teamwork, process, conflict, and trust, and chose someone they felt they could trust for the lead. The author learned that trust must be earned and maintained to have productive working relationships when hiring.

Small team + looming deadline = priorities

Working on a tight deadline to build a mobile chat app from scratch, the engineer had to judge which parts of the app were most likely to stay and which were important for dogfooding. This was a challenging task, but frequent communication with the team helped. The experience taught the engineer the importance of working smarter and faster, and that sometimes it is necessary to build things that will be replaced in the near future.

Better tooling, better UX

In 2015, Lead UI Engineer at Zazzle, faced with the challenge of explaining why certain things couldn't be done, decided to upgrade the tech stack. After researching various frameworks, React (and TypeScript) rose to the top. After making a compelling presentation to key stakeholders, the next flagship experience was built on React and now 95% of development is on the new React stack. The successful transition was due to the engineer's ability to frame the argument in a way that resonated with both Engineering and Product.