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Short stories from an engineering leadership. Pieces of advice for leaders and managers. Published a few times a week.

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Working from home changed my life

WFH changed my life. It helped me become a father I would have never been when working from an office. It's funny. I was always an office-first person. I still am. I work 2-3 days on-site because I prefer to. Yet thanks to the lockdown, I could fully experience what

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Is your manager a good role model for you?

Is your manager a good role model? Here are a few hints for how to assess if you get what you deserve. * You should have regular 1:1s. * You deserve clear goals and alignment with the company's strategy. * You should have more learning opportunities. * You deserve full autonomy in the

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Don't prevent risk, build ability to recover

As an engineering leader, you must give your teammates space to try and fail. There is no better way to learn, grow and take on new responsibilities. Don't try to prevent mistakes. Build an environment that guarantees a soft landing. Okay, what does it mean? * Cleanup noise in logs and

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Perfection is the enemy of good

Perfection is the enemy of good. We tend to overoptimize things that don't matter. We tend to polish something that is already good enough. We don't share our knowledge because we think it's irrelevant. We collect countless edge cases to cover before we even start working. Perfection makes us unhappy.

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SVB collapse makes the IT industry even harsher

Next to massive layoffs in the IT industry, we now face Silicon Valley Bank collapsing. As mid- or low-level managers, there is nothing we can do short term but wait. No one knows what will happen next, so all we can do as engineering leaders is to start preparing our

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Good manager is not busy all the time

🐝 Being constantly busy is not a characteristic of a good manager. When you sit down and watch your teams moving on, it's easy to experience imposter syndrome. But one of your duties is to be available when people need you. They need to be able to approach you with any

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Woman's Day and equality

Happy international women's day! 🌷 On that occasion, one hint at building equality. Mainly for leaders of all-white-male teams. Never assume you shouldn't hire the first woman (or any representative of a minority) to your team because they won't feel comfortable surrounded by men teammates. It's not a sign of care.

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By 2030 tech talent shortage will reach 4 million unfilled positions

Even though we will experience massive layoffs in tech in 2023, we should keep in mind the big picture. The tech talent shortage is going nowhere and may reach 4 mln unfilled positions in 2030, according to KornFerry (check their Global Talent Crunch report). It'll be a big challenge for

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1000x "whys" from your kid and leadership

How does being a father helps me be a better leader? 👨‍👧💡 One proven way to build children's self-esteem is not to force them to do things. Don't use the position of power, but inspire, explain, and acknowledge their feelings. Since my daughter started to perceive causality, she's been asking 1000x

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1 out of 3 IT students aspire to solve problems

According to Developer Nation Community survey, 1 out of 3 IT students aspires to solve problems. Think of it when planning career growth for your interns and junior engineers. Support them in becoming independent professionals who use their potential to the fullest rather than becoming your copy and/or task

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What to expect from Software Engineer

Supporting growth and planning goals for your teammates require an individual approach. But there is one root concept I use when working with every single software engineer. According to Wikipedia, "A software engineer is a person who applies the principles of software engineering to design, develop, maintain, test, and evaluate

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Deliver faster and increase quality

What's the most important objective for a tech company? Deliver products faster and increase their quality over time. Engineering teams too often focus on the "here and now." Deliver this or that feature quickly and forget it. More important than these quick wins is how fast you can iterate over

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I don't plan on Sundays

I don't plan my workweek on Sunday. And it seems to be an unpopular opinion in leaders' communities. I plan my week on Fridays before I finish my work or early morning Mondays. It wasn't always like this. There were times I was super excited about my job and times

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2hrs per week saved thanks to WFH

Thanks to working from home, we save about 2hrs a week (commute time savings). And 40% of this extra time is allocated and goes back to our jobs (either primary or secondary). These are facts from National Bureau of Economic Research. Not saying that the remote first job market will

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Engineering leader, go back coding

In this challenging year, with tightening budgets and leaner teams, engineering leaders should go back to coding. Go back to coding to understand the team's challenges better. Go back to coding to see how easy it is to onboard to the project. What are the gaps in documentation, or what's

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Three levels of engineering teams engagement

There are three levels of engineering teams' engagement. Interestingly, each sees themselves as high-performing contributors who work hard each day, using their professional skills to the fullest. 1st level of engagement - focus on input. Engineers are smart people, and they know how to solve problems. But they expect organizations

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How to stay rational under pressure?

There is no easy way to detach yourself from emotions, esp. when you experience a tough and stressful situation. What helps me make better decisions is acknowledging these emotions rather than trying to suppress them. When facing a difficult situation, I try to ask myself “I feel angry, how does

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Running too fast

What do running have in common with software development? I've been running short distances for years but pushing my 5km run by an additional one or two kilometers was such an exhausting experience. I couldn't understand how running 10 or 20, or 40 km could be a pleasure for anyone.

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Investing in the team's growth

Investing in a team's growth seems to be an obvious thing for engineering leaders. But in this challenging year, we need to double our efforts. Technical skills - yes, they are essential. So your people need to be better engineers or architects. But because the role of technology in a

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Planning a week

How to plan a week as an engineering leader? Here is the framework I've been using for years. 🧵👇 Start with one priority. There is only one, the most important subject to cover in the week. Timebox at least 4-8 hours for it in your calendar. At least one long block

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Weekend reset

There is no work vs. life. There is one life. Even though I do my best to work 8am-4pm, work and life spillover are not surprising. I keep thinking about work challenges and wins, I read professional books after hours, and my daily schedule is adjusted to my work schedule.

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The Eisenhower Matrix

My common use case of the Eisenhower matrix is to decide if I should bother my teammates. * Important/urgent - talk to them now * Important/not urgent - add to our 1:1s document, so we'll discuss it next meeting * Not important - just keep it in my head until

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Find solutions, not problems

No matter if you work in command&control or trust&inspire culture, there is one thing you can do to build empowerment in your engineering team almost immediately. During the next refinement sessions, observe what's dynamics between the team and the Product Manager. If it's this way: * She comes with

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Value of Continuous Delivery

The value of continuous delivery is not the number of releases per day but the opportunities it brings. As stated in a quote: "the goal for continuous delivery is to make it safe and economic to work in small batches". Higher quality and shorter lead time are outcomes of continuous

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No release on Friday

Do you have "no release on Friday" policy? One of teams I led pushed things to production almost every Friday. Sounds crazy, but I don't recally any major disaster. A few highlights of how the team did it. 🧵👇 1. Everyone owned quality. You create a feature, you test it. 2.