Knowledge shared by our community

Working From Home Can Be Fun and Productive When Done Right

The pandemic has caused a shift to working from home, which has added complexity to the work-life balance of employees. To mitigate the stress of deadlines, the team leader changed their management style to be more empathetic and flexible with deadlines, switched to a longer-term roadmap, and optimized the usage of tools. Additionally, the team held informal coffee chats to regain social interaction. The leader learned that trust and understanding team members triggers their strengths and helps to improve communication.

Why Leaders Should Focus on Strengths, Not Weaknesses

When a manager took responsibility for a team, they made the mistake of focusing on team members' weaknesses during performance evaluations. This caused stress and decreased team productivity. To remedy this, the manager used positive language to focus on team members' strengths and assigned projects that aligned with their skill sets. The manager also worked to understand each team member's motivation and offered resources to help them grow. Through these actions, the team was able to increase performance and productivity.

How to Create a Tailored Growth Plan For Your Teams

When joining a company with an unclear career ladder, the manager took action to ensure that their engineers had clarity on what constituted progress in their career. This included analyzing their strengths and weaknesses, setting clear goals, and identifying areas where their interests and the manager's goals could overlap. The outcome was that engineers had clarity on their goals and felt engaged and involved with the organization. The manager learned that it is important to be clear about goals at the start of a performance cycle, ask questions to team members, and build a specialized plan for engineers to help with retention.

Managing Tight Deadlines While Building a New Team

An Engineering Manager was tasked with managing a brand new team with a tight deadline to deliver a complex distributed orchestration platform. The EM took the time to build trust and relationships with the team, explain the utility of the system, prioritize needs, and conduct a build vs. buy analysis. The team was given ownership of the system, and the EM made sure to recognize and reward the team for their efforts.

How to Creatively Juggle Technical Debt and Product Priorities

A team faced a challenge of working in a fast-paced delivery environment with a clunky codebase that needed refactoring. To address this, the Engineering Manager and Product Manager discussed the importance of tackling technical debt and agreed to allocate more time and effort to it. A system was created to prioritize tech debt and refactors were included in the scope of new product development. The team learned the importance of having a trust-based relationship with the Product Manager and the need to surface the most problematic areas early in order to get the most out of time spent.

Promoting With a Career Ladder

This article discusses the challenge of providing tangible feedback to product managers in order to help them progress in their career. The author outlines the process of creating a career ladder with explicit criteria for each step, and how to use this ladder to provide feedback and structure growth sessions. The article also emphasizes the importance of shifting the mindset away from promotion as an incentive, and instead focusing on trust and personal development plans.

Investing in Improvement Vs. Investing in a Potentially High-Yielding Bet

This article discusses the importance of understanding how much of a company's resources should be invested in improvements versus new products that may fail. It is important to consider the company's current position in the market, the level of risk acceptance, and the overall resource investment in the product. In a start-up, all resources are invested in bets, but as the company matures, more resources should be invested in improvements. However, it is important to not become too risk-averse and to still invest in new projects.

How Context Evolves as You Advance as a Manager

This article discusses the challenges of transitioning from an individual contributor to a manager of other project managers. It outlines the key tasks of a manager, such as providing context for team members and pushing them to take risks. The article emphasizes the importance of communication and providing a shared context for decision-making. It also highlights the need to repeat and enrich the vision of the company to ensure everyone is in alignment.

Aligning Your Product Strategy With Your Company’s Overall Strategy

When working on product without the context of the organization, it can be difficult to prioritize and come up with a product strategy. One approach is to review what you're working on and what metrics you're striving for, and try to understand the bigger picture. Deliberate thinking allows you to understand how you're contributing to the company strategy, and to listen intently to what your team communicates as being important outside of your current scope. This helps determine where your work should be going in terms of unexplored areas of interest.

How to Delegate Effectively

When hiring a new employee, delegation is a key factor in their success. It is important to provide the right amount of context and to slowly build up their responsibilities. Shared ownership should be avoided, as it can lead to conflict. It is also important to remember that new hires may not have the same motivations as the founding team, and should be given the right support and context to succeed.

What Makes the Perfect One-on-One?

This article discusses how to effectively manage a small team by having frequent one-on-ones, creating transparency, and delegating resources. It also emphasizes the importance of understanding each team member's motivations, providing a safe space for them to express their feelings, and helping them to manage their time and resources in order to reach their career goals.

Designing a Leveling Rubric for a Small Company

This article discusses the challenge of developing a leveling rubric for a small company. The author spoke to peers outside of the company to gain insight on how to set up expectations with engineers. After drafting out the rubric, there was pushback from stakeholders. With the help of HR, the rubric was implemented and surveyed employees reported that they felt everything was much more fair. The author learned that having clear expectations made engineers more self-aware and that in a new start-up, the margin for error is very low.

How to Uplift a Competent Employee Troubled by Interpersonal Problems

A senior engineer on the team lacked interpersonal skills, so the manager took it upon themselves to observe and experience the problems first-hand. The manager then implemented a few tactics to help the engineer improve, such as introducing them to a toastmasters club, enrolling them in an external training class, shadowing the manager during meetings, and finding a mentor. Through these implementations, the engineer was able to improve and continues to do so. The manager learned that interpersonal skills can be developed, and that it is important to do one's homework before jumping to conclusions about poor performance.

Finding the Right Moment of Opportunity to Advance Yourself

After working as an individual contributor for many years, the author decided to pursue a career in management. They took the initiative to manage a junior team in their office for a three month period, and received positive feedback. Through this experience, they learned the importance of taking ownership of their career, being a solution provider, staying informed, and having conversations with their managers.

Testing, Learning, and Improving: Building a Successful System Progressively

A collective of six teams distributed across the world and several time zones needed to bridge knowledge gaps. To address this roadblock, the Spotify squad model was adapted to match the company's needs. This involved creating dynamic squads around customer-focused problem statements. After gaining buy-in from leadership and the engineering team, the new system was tested and improved upon. After three quarters, the problem was solved and the team leader gained a newfound sense of confidence in their ability to lead. The experience also taught the value of a test-and-learn approach to problem solving and improved communication skills.

Standing up for an Employee in Trouble

A conflict arose between two teams when one team wanted to contribute code to an application owned by the other team. One of the junior engineers made some optimization suggestions which were not taken well by the other team, leading to bullying. The manager of the first team intervened by getting the full story and speaking to the manager of the other team. The engineers apologized for their inappropriate language and the incident was used as an example of how not to behave. The manager learned the importance of conflict resolution and protecting their team.

Making the Most of User Data in Early-Stage Products

When tracking data in early-stage products, two main challenges are knowing what to measure and how to measure it, and being careful not to be blindsided by data. Product leaders should have a profound understanding of how a product will be used and set metrics accordingly, while also complementing data with qualitative metrics. Data can tell any story depending on how it is interpreted, so it should be coupled with a holistic understanding of a product and its users. People should approach data with a fresh mind and let it speak for itself, without letting presupposed narratives influence the interpretation.

Mentorship Troubles: Finding the Right Fit

Finding the right mentor is an important part of mentorship, and it can be difficult to find the right fit. Self-reflection and prioritization of problems can help narrow down the search. Additionally, there are various avenues to connect with potential mentors, such as formalized mentorship rings, Facebook groups, and experienced leaders in other departments. Ultimately, understanding the avenues of how and when to connect should precede who to connect with.

Switching Career From Engineering to Product Management

This article is about the journey of transitioning from a software engineering role to a product management role. The author studied online resources and took courses to better understand the role of a product manager, and talked to a number of product managers to gain a better understanding of the company context. They then had an open conversation with their manager about their career plan and gradually shifted their work ratio from 80/20 in favor of software engineering to 50/50. The author learned that there are many paths to product management and that companies often look for prior PM experience, which can include passion projects and side hustles. They also suggest applying for an associate PM role as many companies run programs welcoming people switching careers or coming from non-traditional backgrounds.

Balancing Expectations of Multiple Stakeholders

This organization's goal is to enable engineering teams to build and ship products faster and safer. The challenge is managing the expectations of multiple stakeholders to come up with solutions that benefit many teams. Actions taken include engaging with stakeholders, understanding their expectations, analyzing data, and finding a core solution that has the highest reach and biggest impact. Lessons learned include balancing expectations, being collaborative, and being honest.

Working From Home Can Be Fun and Productive When Done Right

The pandemic has caused a shift to working from home, which has added complexity to the work-life balance of employees. To mitigate the stress of deadlines, the team leader changed their management style to be more empathetic and flexible with deadlines, switched to a longer-term roadmap, and optimized the usage of tools. Additionally, the team held informal coffee chats to regain social interaction. The leader learned that trust and understanding team members triggers their strengths and helps to improve communication.

Why Leaders Should Focus on Strengths, Not Weaknesses

When a manager took responsibility for a team, they made the mistake of focusing on team members' weaknesses during performance evaluations. This caused stress and decreased team productivity. To remedy this, the manager used positive language to focus on team members' strengths and assigned projects that aligned with their skill sets. The manager also worked to understand each team member's motivation and offered resources to help them grow. Through these actions, the team was able to increase performance and productivity.

How to Create a Tailored Growth Plan For Your Teams

When joining a company with an unclear career ladder, the manager took action to ensure that their engineers had clarity on what constituted progress in their career. This included analyzing their strengths and weaknesses, setting clear goals, and identifying areas where their interests and the manager's goals could overlap. The outcome was that engineers had clarity on their goals and felt engaged and involved with the organization. The manager learned that it is important to be clear about goals at the start of a performance cycle, ask questions to team members, and build a specialized plan for engineers to help with retention.

Managing Tight Deadlines While Building a New Team

An Engineering Manager was tasked with managing a brand new team with a tight deadline to deliver a complex distributed orchestration platform. The EM took the time to build trust and relationships with the team, explain the utility of the system, prioritize needs, and conduct a build vs. buy analysis. The team was given ownership of the system, and the EM made sure to recognize and reward the team for their efforts.

How to Creatively Juggle Technical Debt and Product Priorities

A team faced a challenge of working in a fast-paced delivery environment with a clunky codebase that needed refactoring. To address this, the Engineering Manager and Product Manager discussed the importance of tackling technical debt and agreed to allocate more time and effort to it. A system was created to prioritize tech debt and refactors were included in the scope of new product development. The team learned the importance of having a trust-based relationship with the Product Manager and the need to surface the most problematic areas early in order to get the most out of time spent.

Promoting With a Career Ladder

This article discusses the challenge of providing tangible feedback to product managers in order to help them progress in their career. The author outlines the process of creating a career ladder with explicit criteria for each step, and how to use this ladder to provide feedback and structure growth sessions. The article also emphasizes the importance of shifting the mindset away from promotion as an incentive, and instead focusing on trust and personal development plans.

Investing in Improvement Vs. Investing in a Potentially High-Yielding Bet

This article discusses the importance of understanding how much of a company's resources should be invested in improvements versus new products that may fail. It is important to consider the company's current position in the market, the level of risk acceptance, and the overall resource investment in the product. In a start-up, all resources are invested in bets, but as the company matures, more resources should be invested in improvements. However, it is important to not become too risk-averse and to still invest in new projects.

How Context Evolves as You Advance as a Manager

This article discusses the challenges of transitioning from an individual contributor to a manager of other project managers. It outlines the key tasks of a manager, such as providing context for team members and pushing them to take risks. The article emphasizes the importance of communication and providing a shared context for decision-making. It also highlights the need to repeat and enrich the vision of the company to ensure everyone is in alignment.

Aligning Your Product Strategy With Your Company’s Overall Strategy

When working on product without the context of the organization, it can be difficult to prioritize and come up with a product strategy. One approach is to review what you're working on and what metrics you're striving for, and try to understand the bigger picture. Deliberate thinking allows you to understand how you're contributing to the company strategy, and to listen intently to what your team communicates as being important outside of your current scope. This helps determine where your work should be going in terms of unexplored areas of interest.

How to Delegate Effectively

When hiring a new employee, delegation is a key factor in their success. It is important to provide the right amount of context and to slowly build up their responsibilities. Shared ownership should be avoided, as it can lead to conflict. It is also important to remember that new hires may not have the same motivations as the founding team, and should be given the right support and context to succeed.

What Makes the Perfect One-on-One?

This article discusses how to effectively manage a small team by having frequent one-on-ones, creating transparency, and delegating resources. It also emphasizes the importance of understanding each team member's motivations, providing a safe space for them to express their feelings, and helping them to manage their time and resources in order to reach their career goals.

Designing a Leveling Rubric for a Small Company

This article discusses the challenge of developing a leveling rubric for a small company. The author spoke to peers outside of the company to gain insight on how to set up expectations with engineers. After drafting out the rubric, there was pushback from stakeholders. With the help of HR, the rubric was implemented and surveyed employees reported that they felt everything was much more fair. The author learned that having clear expectations made engineers more self-aware and that in a new start-up, the margin for error is very low.

How to Uplift a Competent Employee Troubled by Interpersonal Problems

A senior engineer on the team lacked interpersonal skills, so the manager took it upon themselves to observe and experience the problems first-hand. The manager then implemented a few tactics to help the engineer improve, such as introducing them to a toastmasters club, enrolling them in an external training class, shadowing the manager during meetings, and finding a mentor. Through these implementations, the engineer was able to improve and continues to do so. The manager learned that interpersonal skills can be developed, and that it is important to do one's homework before jumping to conclusions about poor performance.

Finding the Right Moment of Opportunity to Advance Yourself

After working as an individual contributor for many years, the author decided to pursue a career in management. They took the initiative to manage a junior team in their office for a three month period, and received positive feedback. Through this experience, they learned the importance of taking ownership of their career, being a solution provider, staying informed, and having conversations with their managers.

Testing, Learning, and Improving: Building a Successful System Progressively

A collective of six teams distributed across the world and several time zones needed to bridge knowledge gaps. To address this roadblock, the Spotify squad model was adapted to match the company's needs. This involved creating dynamic squads around customer-focused problem statements. After gaining buy-in from leadership and the engineering team, the new system was tested and improved upon. After three quarters, the problem was solved and the team leader gained a newfound sense of confidence in their ability to lead. The experience also taught the value of a test-and-learn approach to problem solving and improved communication skills.

Standing up for an Employee in Trouble

A conflict arose between two teams when one team wanted to contribute code to an application owned by the other team. One of the junior engineers made some optimization suggestions which were not taken well by the other team, leading to bullying. The manager of the first team intervened by getting the full story and speaking to the manager of the other team. The engineers apologized for their inappropriate language and the incident was used as an example of how not to behave. The manager learned the importance of conflict resolution and protecting their team.

Making the Most of User Data in Early-Stage Products

When tracking data in early-stage products, two main challenges are knowing what to measure and how to measure it, and being careful not to be blindsided by data. Product leaders should have a profound understanding of how a product will be used and set metrics accordingly, while also complementing data with qualitative metrics. Data can tell any story depending on how it is interpreted, so it should be coupled with a holistic understanding of a product and its users. People should approach data with a fresh mind and let it speak for itself, without letting presupposed narratives influence the interpretation.

Mentorship Troubles: Finding the Right Fit

Finding the right mentor is an important part of mentorship, and it can be difficult to find the right fit. Self-reflection and prioritization of problems can help narrow down the search. Additionally, there are various avenues to connect with potential mentors, such as formalized mentorship rings, Facebook groups, and experienced leaders in other departments. Ultimately, understanding the avenues of how and when to connect should precede who to connect with.

Switching Career From Engineering to Product Management

This article is about the journey of transitioning from a software engineering role to a product management role. The author studied online resources and took courses to better understand the role of a product manager, and talked to a number of product managers to gain a better understanding of the company context. They then had an open conversation with their manager about their career plan and gradually shifted their work ratio from 80/20 in favor of software engineering to 50/50. The author learned that there are many paths to product management and that companies often look for prior PM experience, which can include passion projects and side hustles. They also suggest applying for an associate PM role as many companies run programs welcoming people switching careers or coming from non-traditional backgrounds.

Balancing Expectations of Multiple Stakeholders

This organization's goal is to enable engineering teams to build and ship products faster and safer. The challenge is managing the expectations of multiple stakeholders to come up with solutions that benefit many teams. Actions taken include engaging with stakeholders, understanding their expectations, analyzing data, and finding a core solution that has the highest reach and biggest impact. Lessons learned include balancing expectations, being collaborative, and being honest.

Working From Home Can Be Fun and Productive When Done Right

The pandemic has caused a shift to working from home, which has added complexity to the work-life balance of employees. To mitigate the stress of deadlines, the team leader changed their management style to be more empathetic and flexible with deadlines, switched to a longer-term roadmap, and optimized the usage of tools. Additionally, the team held informal coffee chats to regain social interaction. The leader learned that trust and understanding team members triggers their strengths and helps to improve communication.

Why Leaders Should Focus on Strengths, Not Weaknesses

When a manager took responsibility for a team, they made the mistake of focusing on team members' weaknesses during performance evaluations. This caused stress and decreased team productivity. To remedy this, the manager used positive language to focus on team members' strengths and assigned projects that aligned with their skill sets. The manager also worked to understand each team member's motivation and offered resources to help them grow. Through these actions, the team was able to increase performance and productivity.

How to Create a Tailored Growth Plan For Your Teams

When joining a company with an unclear career ladder, the manager took action to ensure that their engineers had clarity on what constituted progress in their career. This included analyzing their strengths and weaknesses, setting clear goals, and identifying areas where their interests and the manager's goals could overlap. The outcome was that engineers had clarity on their goals and felt engaged and involved with the organization. The manager learned that it is important to be clear about goals at the start of a performance cycle, ask questions to team members, and build a specialized plan for engineers to help with retention.

Managing Tight Deadlines While Building a New Team

An Engineering Manager was tasked with managing a brand new team with a tight deadline to deliver a complex distributed orchestration platform. The EM took the time to build trust and relationships with the team, explain the utility of the system, prioritize needs, and conduct a build vs. buy analysis. The team was given ownership of the system, and the EM made sure to recognize and reward the team for their efforts.

How to Creatively Juggle Technical Debt and Product Priorities

A team faced a challenge of working in a fast-paced delivery environment with a clunky codebase that needed refactoring. To address this, the Engineering Manager and Product Manager discussed the importance of tackling technical debt and agreed to allocate more time and effort to it. A system was created to prioritize tech debt and refactors were included in the scope of new product development. The team learned the importance of having a trust-based relationship with the Product Manager and the need to surface the most problematic areas early in order to get the most out of time spent.

Promoting With a Career Ladder

This article discusses the challenge of providing tangible feedback to product managers in order to help them progress in their career. The author outlines the process of creating a career ladder with explicit criteria for each step, and how to use this ladder to provide feedback and structure growth sessions. The article also emphasizes the importance of shifting the mindset away from promotion as an incentive, and instead focusing on trust and personal development plans.

Investing in Improvement Vs. Investing in a Potentially High-Yielding Bet

This article discusses the importance of understanding how much of a company's resources should be invested in improvements versus new products that may fail. It is important to consider the company's current position in the market, the level of risk acceptance, and the overall resource investment in the product. In a start-up, all resources are invested in bets, but as the company matures, more resources should be invested in improvements. However, it is important to not become too risk-averse and to still invest in new projects.

How Context Evolves as You Advance as a Manager

This article discusses the challenges of transitioning from an individual contributor to a manager of other project managers. It outlines the key tasks of a manager, such as providing context for team members and pushing them to take risks. The article emphasizes the importance of communication and providing a shared context for decision-making. It also highlights the need to repeat and enrich the vision of the company to ensure everyone is in alignment.

Aligning Your Product Strategy With Your Company’s Overall Strategy

When working on product without the context of the organization, it can be difficult to prioritize and come up with a product strategy. One approach is to review what you're working on and what metrics you're striving for, and try to understand the bigger picture. Deliberate thinking allows you to understand how you're contributing to the company strategy, and to listen intently to what your team communicates as being important outside of your current scope. This helps determine where your work should be going in terms of unexplored areas of interest.

How to Delegate Effectively

When hiring a new employee, delegation is a key factor in their success. It is important to provide the right amount of context and to slowly build up their responsibilities. Shared ownership should be avoided, as it can lead to conflict. It is also important to remember that new hires may not have the same motivations as the founding team, and should be given the right support and context to succeed.

What Makes the Perfect One-on-One?

This article discusses how to effectively manage a small team by having frequent one-on-ones, creating transparency, and delegating resources. It also emphasizes the importance of understanding each team member's motivations, providing a safe space for them to express their feelings, and helping them to manage their time and resources in order to reach their career goals.

Designing a Leveling Rubric for a Small Company

This article discusses the challenge of developing a leveling rubric for a small company. The author spoke to peers outside of the company to gain insight on how to set up expectations with engineers. After drafting out the rubric, there was pushback from stakeholders. With the help of HR, the rubric was implemented and surveyed employees reported that they felt everything was much more fair. The author learned that having clear expectations made engineers more self-aware and that in a new start-up, the margin for error is very low.

How to Uplift a Competent Employee Troubled by Interpersonal Problems

A senior engineer on the team lacked interpersonal skills, so the manager took it upon themselves to observe and experience the problems first-hand. The manager then implemented a few tactics to help the engineer improve, such as introducing them to a toastmasters club, enrolling them in an external training class, shadowing the manager during meetings, and finding a mentor. Through these implementations, the engineer was able to improve and continues to do so. The manager learned that interpersonal skills can be developed, and that it is important to do one's homework before jumping to conclusions about poor performance.

Finding the Right Moment of Opportunity to Advance Yourself

After working as an individual contributor for many years, the author decided to pursue a career in management. They took the initiative to manage a junior team in their office for a three month period, and received positive feedback. Through this experience, they learned the importance of taking ownership of their career, being a solution provider, staying informed, and having conversations with their managers.

Testing, Learning, and Improving: Building a Successful System Progressively

A collective of six teams distributed across the world and several time zones needed to bridge knowledge gaps. To address this roadblock, the Spotify squad model was adapted to match the company's needs. This involved creating dynamic squads around customer-focused problem statements. After gaining buy-in from leadership and the engineering team, the new system was tested and improved upon. After three quarters, the problem was solved and the team leader gained a newfound sense of confidence in their ability to lead. The experience also taught the value of a test-and-learn approach to problem solving and improved communication skills.

Standing up for an Employee in Trouble

A conflict arose between two teams when one team wanted to contribute code to an application owned by the other team. One of the junior engineers made some optimization suggestions which were not taken well by the other team, leading to bullying. The manager of the first team intervened by getting the full story and speaking to the manager of the other team. The engineers apologized for their inappropriate language and the incident was used as an example of how not to behave. The manager learned the importance of conflict resolution and protecting their team.

Making the Most of User Data in Early-Stage Products

When tracking data in early-stage products, two main challenges are knowing what to measure and how to measure it, and being careful not to be blindsided by data. Product leaders should have a profound understanding of how a product will be used and set metrics accordingly, while also complementing data with qualitative metrics. Data can tell any story depending on how it is interpreted, so it should be coupled with a holistic understanding of a product and its users. People should approach data with a fresh mind and let it speak for itself, without letting presupposed narratives influence the interpretation.

Mentorship Troubles: Finding the Right Fit

Finding the right mentor is an important part of mentorship, and it can be difficult to find the right fit. Self-reflection and prioritization of problems can help narrow down the search. Additionally, there are various avenues to connect with potential mentors, such as formalized mentorship rings, Facebook groups, and experienced leaders in other departments. Ultimately, understanding the avenues of how and when to connect should precede who to connect with.

Switching Career From Engineering to Product Management

This article is about the journey of transitioning from a software engineering role to a product management role. The author studied online resources and took courses to better understand the role of a product manager, and talked to a number of product managers to gain a better understanding of the company context. They then had an open conversation with their manager about their career plan and gradually shifted their work ratio from 80/20 in favor of software engineering to 50/50. The author learned that there are many paths to product management and that companies often look for prior PM experience, which can include passion projects and side hustles. They also suggest applying for an associate PM role as many companies run programs welcoming people switching careers or coming from non-traditional backgrounds.

Balancing Expectations of Multiple Stakeholders

This organization's goal is to enable engineering teams to build and ship products faster and safer. The challenge is managing the expectations of multiple stakeholders to come up with solutions that benefit many teams. Actions taken include engaging with stakeholders, understanding their expectations, analyzing data, and finding a core solution that has the highest reach and biggest impact. Lessons learned include balancing expectations, being collaborative, and being honest.

Working From Home Can Be Fun and Productive When Done Right

The pandemic has caused a shift to working from home, which has added complexity to the work-life balance of employees. To mitigate the stress of deadlines, the team leader changed their management style to be more empathetic and flexible with deadlines, switched to a longer-term roadmap, and optimized the usage of tools. Additionally, the team held informal coffee chats to regain social interaction. The leader learned that trust and understanding team members triggers their strengths and helps to improve communication.

Why Leaders Should Focus on Strengths, Not Weaknesses

When a manager took responsibility for a team, they made the mistake of focusing on team members' weaknesses during performance evaluations. This caused stress and decreased team productivity. To remedy this, the manager used positive language to focus on team members' strengths and assigned projects that aligned with their skill sets. The manager also worked to understand each team member's motivation and offered resources to help them grow. Through these actions, the team was able to increase performance and productivity.

How to Create a Tailored Growth Plan For Your Teams

When joining a company with an unclear career ladder, the manager took action to ensure that their engineers had clarity on what constituted progress in their career. This included analyzing their strengths and weaknesses, setting clear goals, and identifying areas where their interests and the manager's goals could overlap. The outcome was that engineers had clarity on their goals and felt engaged and involved with the organization. The manager learned that it is important to be clear about goals at the start of a performance cycle, ask questions to team members, and build a specialized plan for engineers to help with retention.

Managing Tight Deadlines While Building a New Team

An Engineering Manager was tasked with managing a brand new team with a tight deadline to deliver a complex distributed orchestration platform. The EM took the time to build trust and relationships with the team, explain the utility of the system, prioritize needs, and conduct a build vs. buy analysis. The team was given ownership of the system, and the EM made sure to recognize and reward the team for their efforts.

How to Creatively Juggle Technical Debt and Product Priorities

A team faced a challenge of working in a fast-paced delivery environment with a clunky codebase that needed refactoring. To address this, the Engineering Manager and Product Manager discussed the importance of tackling technical debt and agreed to allocate more time and effort to it. A system was created to prioritize tech debt and refactors were included in the scope of new product development. The team learned the importance of having a trust-based relationship with the Product Manager and the need to surface the most problematic areas early in order to get the most out of time spent.

Promoting With a Career Ladder

This article discusses the challenge of providing tangible feedback to product managers in order to help them progress in their career. The author outlines the process of creating a career ladder with explicit criteria for each step, and how to use this ladder to provide feedback and structure growth sessions. The article also emphasizes the importance of shifting the mindset away from promotion as an incentive, and instead focusing on trust and personal development plans.

Investing in Improvement Vs. Investing in a Potentially High-Yielding Bet

This article discusses the importance of understanding how much of a company's resources should be invested in improvements versus new products that may fail. It is important to consider the company's current position in the market, the level of risk acceptance, and the overall resource investment in the product. In a start-up, all resources are invested in bets, but as the company matures, more resources should be invested in improvements. However, it is important to not become too risk-averse and to still invest in new projects.

How Context Evolves as You Advance as a Manager

This article discusses the challenges of transitioning from an individual contributor to a manager of other project managers. It outlines the key tasks of a manager, such as providing context for team members and pushing them to take risks. The article emphasizes the importance of communication and providing a shared context for decision-making. It also highlights the need to repeat and enrich the vision of the company to ensure everyone is in alignment.

Aligning Your Product Strategy With Your Company’s Overall Strategy

When working on product without the context of the organization, it can be difficult to prioritize and come up with a product strategy. One approach is to review what you're working on and what metrics you're striving for, and try to understand the bigger picture. Deliberate thinking allows you to understand how you're contributing to the company strategy, and to listen intently to what your team communicates as being important outside of your current scope. This helps determine where your work should be going in terms of unexplored areas of interest.

How to Delegate Effectively

When hiring a new employee, delegation is a key factor in their success. It is important to provide the right amount of context and to slowly build up their responsibilities. Shared ownership should be avoided, as it can lead to conflict. It is also important to remember that new hires may not have the same motivations as the founding team, and should be given the right support and context to succeed.

What Makes the Perfect One-on-One?

This article discusses how to effectively manage a small team by having frequent one-on-ones, creating transparency, and delegating resources. It also emphasizes the importance of understanding each team member's motivations, providing a safe space for them to express their feelings, and helping them to manage their time and resources in order to reach their career goals.

Designing a Leveling Rubric for a Small Company

This article discusses the challenge of developing a leveling rubric for a small company. The author spoke to peers outside of the company to gain insight on how to set up expectations with engineers. After drafting out the rubric, there was pushback from stakeholders. With the help of HR, the rubric was implemented and surveyed employees reported that they felt everything was much more fair. The author learned that having clear expectations made engineers more self-aware and that in a new start-up, the margin for error is very low.

How to Uplift a Competent Employee Troubled by Interpersonal Problems

A senior engineer on the team lacked interpersonal skills, so the manager took it upon themselves to observe and experience the problems first-hand. The manager then implemented a few tactics to help the engineer improve, such as introducing them to a toastmasters club, enrolling them in an external training class, shadowing the manager during meetings, and finding a mentor. Through these implementations, the engineer was able to improve and continues to do so. The manager learned that interpersonal skills can be developed, and that it is important to do one's homework before jumping to conclusions about poor performance.

Finding the Right Moment of Opportunity to Advance Yourself

After working as an individual contributor for many years, the author decided to pursue a career in management. They took the initiative to manage a junior team in their office for a three month period, and received positive feedback. Through this experience, they learned the importance of taking ownership of their career, being a solution provider, staying informed, and having conversations with their managers.

Testing, Learning, and Improving: Building a Successful System Progressively

A collective of six teams distributed across the world and several time zones needed to bridge knowledge gaps. To address this roadblock, the Spotify squad model was adapted to match the company's needs. This involved creating dynamic squads around customer-focused problem statements. After gaining buy-in from leadership and the engineering team, the new system was tested and improved upon. After three quarters, the problem was solved and the team leader gained a newfound sense of confidence in their ability to lead. The experience also taught the value of a test-and-learn approach to problem solving and improved communication skills.

Standing up for an Employee in Trouble

A conflict arose between two teams when one team wanted to contribute code to an application owned by the other team. One of the junior engineers made some optimization suggestions which were not taken well by the other team, leading to bullying. The manager of the first team intervened by getting the full story and speaking to the manager of the other team. The engineers apologized for their inappropriate language and the incident was used as an example of how not to behave. The manager learned the importance of conflict resolution and protecting their team.

Making the Most of User Data in Early-Stage Products

When tracking data in early-stage products, two main challenges are knowing what to measure and how to measure it, and being careful not to be blindsided by data. Product leaders should have a profound understanding of how a product will be used and set metrics accordingly, while also complementing data with qualitative metrics. Data can tell any story depending on how it is interpreted, so it should be coupled with a holistic understanding of a product and its users. People should approach data with a fresh mind and let it speak for itself, without letting presupposed narratives influence the interpretation.

Mentorship Troubles: Finding the Right Fit

Finding the right mentor is an important part of mentorship, and it can be difficult to find the right fit. Self-reflection and prioritization of problems can help narrow down the search. Additionally, there are various avenues to connect with potential mentors, such as formalized mentorship rings, Facebook groups, and experienced leaders in other departments. Ultimately, understanding the avenues of how and when to connect should precede who to connect with.

Switching Career From Engineering to Product Management

This article is about the journey of transitioning from a software engineering role to a product management role. The author studied online resources and took courses to better understand the role of a product manager, and talked to a number of product managers to gain a better understanding of the company context. They then had an open conversation with their manager about their career plan and gradually shifted their work ratio from 80/20 in favor of software engineering to 50/50. The author learned that there are many paths to product management and that companies often look for prior PM experience, which can include passion projects and side hustles. They also suggest applying for an associate PM role as many companies run programs welcoming people switching careers or coming from non-traditional backgrounds.

Balancing Expectations of Multiple Stakeholders

This organization's goal is to enable engineering teams to build and ship products faster and safer. The challenge is managing the expectations of multiple stakeholders to come up with solutions that benefit many teams. Actions taken include engaging with stakeholders, understanding their expectations, analyzing data, and finding a core solution that has the highest reach and biggest impact. Lessons learned include balancing expectations, being collaborative, and being honest.

Working From Home Can Be Fun and Productive When Done Right

The pandemic has caused a shift to working from home, which has added complexity to the work-life balance of employees. To mitigate the stress of deadlines, the team leader changed their management style to be more empathetic and flexible with deadlines, switched to a longer-term roadmap, and optimized the usage of tools. Additionally, the team held informal coffee chats to regain social interaction. The leader learned that trust and understanding team members triggers their strengths and helps to improve communication.

Why Leaders Should Focus on Strengths, Not Weaknesses

When a manager took responsibility for a team, they made the mistake of focusing on team members' weaknesses during performance evaluations. This caused stress and decreased team productivity. To remedy this, the manager used positive language to focus on team members' strengths and assigned projects that aligned with their skill sets. The manager also worked to understand each team member's motivation and offered resources to help them grow. Through these actions, the team was able to increase performance and productivity.

How to Create a Tailored Growth Plan For Your Teams

When joining a company with an unclear career ladder, the manager took action to ensure that their engineers had clarity on what constituted progress in their career. This included analyzing their strengths and weaknesses, setting clear goals, and identifying areas where their interests and the manager's goals could overlap. The outcome was that engineers had clarity on their goals and felt engaged and involved with the organization. The manager learned that it is important to be clear about goals at the start of a performance cycle, ask questions to team members, and build a specialized plan for engineers to help with retention.

Managing Tight Deadlines While Building a New Team

An Engineering Manager was tasked with managing a brand new team with a tight deadline to deliver a complex distributed orchestration platform. The EM took the time to build trust and relationships with the team, explain the utility of the system, prioritize needs, and conduct a build vs. buy analysis. The team was given ownership of the system, and the EM made sure to recognize and reward the team for their efforts.

How to Creatively Juggle Technical Debt and Product Priorities

A team faced a challenge of working in a fast-paced delivery environment with a clunky codebase that needed refactoring. To address this, the Engineering Manager and Product Manager discussed the importance of tackling technical debt and agreed to allocate more time and effort to it. A system was created to prioritize tech debt and refactors were included in the scope of new product development. The team learned the importance of having a trust-based relationship with the Product Manager and the need to surface the most problematic areas early in order to get the most out of time spent.

Promoting With a Career Ladder

This article discusses the challenge of providing tangible feedback to product managers in order to help them progress in their career. The author outlines the process of creating a career ladder with explicit criteria for each step, and how to use this ladder to provide feedback and structure growth sessions. The article also emphasizes the importance of shifting the mindset away from promotion as an incentive, and instead focusing on trust and personal development plans.

Investing in Improvement Vs. Investing in a Potentially High-Yielding Bet

This article discusses the importance of understanding how much of a company's resources should be invested in improvements versus new products that may fail. It is important to consider the company's current position in the market, the level of risk acceptance, and the overall resource investment in the product. In a start-up, all resources are invested in bets, but as the company matures, more resources should be invested in improvements. However, it is important to not become too risk-averse and to still invest in new projects.

How Context Evolves as You Advance as a Manager

This article discusses the challenges of transitioning from an individual contributor to a manager of other project managers. It outlines the key tasks of a manager, such as providing context for team members and pushing them to take risks. The article emphasizes the importance of communication and providing a shared context for decision-making. It also highlights the need to repeat and enrich the vision of the company to ensure everyone is in alignment.

Aligning Your Product Strategy With Your Company’s Overall Strategy

When working on product without the context of the organization, it can be difficult to prioritize and come up with a product strategy. One approach is to review what you're working on and what metrics you're striving for, and try to understand the bigger picture. Deliberate thinking allows you to understand how you're contributing to the company strategy, and to listen intently to what your team communicates as being important outside of your current scope. This helps determine where your work should be going in terms of unexplored areas of interest.

How to Delegate Effectively

When hiring a new employee, delegation is a key factor in their success. It is important to provide the right amount of context and to slowly build up their responsibilities. Shared ownership should be avoided, as it can lead to conflict. It is also important to remember that new hires may not have the same motivations as the founding team, and should be given the right support and context to succeed.

What Makes the Perfect One-on-One?

This article discusses how to effectively manage a small team by having frequent one-on-ones, creating transparency, and delegating resources. It also emphasizes the importance of understanding each team member's motivations, providing a safe space for them to express their feelings, and helping them to manage their time and resources in order to reach their career goals.

Designing a Leveling Rubric for a Small Company

This article discusses the challenge of developing a leveling rubric for a small company. The author spoke to peers outside of the company to gain insight on how to set up expectations with engineers. After drafting out the rubric, there was pushback from stakeholders. With the help of HR, the rubric was implemented and surveyed employees reported that they felt everything was much more fair. The author learned that having clear expectations made engineers more self-aware and that in a new start-up, the margin for error is very low.

How to Uplift a Competent Employee Troubled by Interpersonal Problems

A senior engineer on the team lacked interpersonal skills, so the manager took it upon themselves to observe and experience the problems first-hand. The manager then implemented a few tactics to help the engineer improve, such as introducing them to a toastmasters club, enrolling them in an external training class, shadowing the manager during meetings, and finding a mentor. Through these implementations, the engineer was able to improve and continues to do so. The manager learned that interpersonal skills can be developed, and that it is important to do one's homework before jumping to conclusions about poor performance.

Finding the Right Moment of Opportunity to Advance Yourself

After working as an individual contributor for many years, the author decided to pursue a career in management. They took the initiative to manage a junior team in their office for a three month period, and received positive feedback. Through this experience, they learned the importance of taking ownership of their career, being a solution provider, staying informed, and having conversations with their managers.

Testing, Learning, and Improving: Building a Successful System Progressively

A collective of six teams distributed across the world and several time zones needed to bridge knowledge gaps. To address this roadblock, the Spotify squad model was adapted to match the company's needs. This involved creating dynamic squads around customer-focused problem statements. After gaining buy-in from leadership and the engineering team, the new system was tested and improved upon. After three quarters, the problem was solved and the team leader gained a newfound sense of confidence in their ability to lead. The experience also taught the value of a test-and-learn approach to problem solving and improved communication skills.

Standing up for an Employee in Trouble

A conflict arose between two teams when one team wanted to contribute code to an application owned by the other team. One of the junior engineers made some optimization suggestions which were not taken well by the other team, leading to bullying. The manager of the first team intervened by getting the full story and speaking to the manager of the other team. The engineers apologized for their inappropriate language and the incident was used as an example of how not to behave. The manager learned the importance of conflict resolution and protecting their team.

Making the Most of User Data in Early-Stage Products

When tracking data in early-stage products, two main challenges are knowing what to measure and how to measure it, and being careful not to be blindsided by data. Product leaders should have a profound understanding of how a product will be used and set metrics accordingly, while also complementing data with qualitative metrics. Data can tell any story depending on how it is interpreted, so it should be coupled with a holistic understanding of a product and its users. People should approach data with a fresh mind and let it speak for itself, without letting presupposed narratives influence the interpretation.

Mentorship Troubles: Finding the Right Fit

Finding the right mentor is an important part of mentorship, and it can be difficult to find the right fit. Self-reflection and prioritization of problems can help narrow down the search. Additionally, there are various avenues to connect with potential mentors, such as formalized mentorship rings, Facebook groups, and experienced leaders in other departments. Ultimately, understanding the avenues of how and when to connect should precede who to connect with.

Switching Career From Engineering to Product Management

This article is about the journey of transitioning from a software engineering role to a product management role. The author studied online resources and took courses to better understand the role of a product manager, and talked to a number of product managers to gain a better understanding of the company context. They then had an open conversation with their manager about their career plan and gradually shifted their work ratio from 80/20 in favor of software engineering to 50/50. The author learned that there are many paths to product management and that companies often look for prior PM experience, which can include passion projects and side hustles. They also suggest applying for an associate PM role as many companies run programs welcoming people switching careers or coming from non-traditional backgrounds.

Balancing Expectations of Multiple Stakeholders

This organization's goal is to enable engineering teams to build and ship products faster and safer. The challenge is managing the expectations of multiple stakeholders to come up with solutions that benefit many teams. Actions taken include engaging with stakeholders, understanding their expectations, analyzing data, and finding a core solution that has the highest reach and biggest impact. Lessons learned include balancing expectations, being collaborative, and being honest.

Working From Home Can Be Fun and Productive When Done Right

The pandemic has caused a shift to working from home, which has added complexity to the work-life balance of employees. To mitigate the stress of deadlines, the team leader changed their management style to be more empathetic and flexible with deadlines, switched to a longer-term roadmap, and optimized the usage of tools. Additionally, the team held informal coffee chats to regain social interaction. The leader learned that trust and understanding team members triggers their strengths and helps to improve communication.

Why Leaders Should Focus on Strengths, Not Weaknesses

When a manager took responsibility for a team, they made the mistake of focusing on team members' weaknesses during performance evaluations. This caused stress and decreased team productivity. To remedy this, the manager used positive language to focus on team members' strengths and assigned projects that aligned with their skill sets. The manager also worked to understand each team member's motivation and offered resources to help them grow. Through these actions, the team was able to increase performance and productivity.

How to Create a Tailored Growth Plan For Your Teams

When joining a company with an unclear career ladder, the manager took action to ensure that their engineers had clarity on what constituted progress in their career. This included analyzing their strengths and weaknesses, setting clear goals, and identifying areas where their interests and the manager's goals could overlap. The outcome was that engineers had clarity on their goals and felt engaged and involved with the organization. The manager learned that it is important to be clear about goals at the start of a performance cycle, ask questions to team members, and build a specialized plan for engineers to help with retention.

Managing Tight Deadlines While Building a New Team

An Engineering Manager was tasked with managing a brand new team with a tight deadline to deliver a complex distributed orchestration platform. The EM took the time to build trust and relationships with the team, explain the utility of the system, prioritize needs, and conduct a build vs. buy analysis. The team was given ownership of the system, and the EM made sure to recognize and reward the team for their efforts.

How to Creatively Juggle Technical Debt and Product Priorities

A team faced a challenge of working in a fast-paced delivery environment with a clunky codebase that needed refactoring. To address this, the Engineering Manager and Product Manager discussed the importance of tackling technical debt and agreed to allocate more time and effort to it. A system was created to prioritize tech debt and refactors were included in the scope of new product development. The team learned the importance of having a trust-based relationship with the Product Manager and the need to surface the most problematic areas early in order to get the most out of time spent.

Promoting With a Career Ladder

This article discusses the challenge of providing tangible feedback to product managers in order to help them progress in their career. The author outlines the process of creating a career ladder with explicit criteria for each step, and how to use this ladder to provide feedback and structure growth sessions. The article also emphasizes the importance of shifting the mindset away from promotion as an incentive, and instead focusing on trust and personal development plans.

Investing in Improvement Vs. Investing in a Potentially High-Yielding Bet

This article discusses the importance of understanding how much of a company's resources should be invested in improvements versus new products that may fail. It is important to consider the company's current position in the market, the level of risk acceptance, and the overall resource investment in the product. In a start-up, all resources are invested in bets, but as the company matures, more resources should be invested in improvements. However, it is important to not become too risk-averse and to still invest in new projects.

How Context Evolves as You Advance as a Manager

This article discusses the challenges of transitioning from an individual contributor to a manager of other project managers. It outlines the key tasks of a manager, such as providing context for team members and pushing them to take risks. The article emphasizes the importance of communication and providing a shared context for decision-making. It also highlights the need to repeat and enrich the vision of the company to ensure everyone is in alignment.

Aligning Your Product Strategy With Your Company’s Overall Strategy

When working on product without the context of the organization, it can be difficult to prioritize and come up with a product strategy. One approach is to review what you're working on and what metrics you're striving for, and try to understand the bigger picture. Deliberate thinking allows you to understand how you're contributing to the company strategy, and to listen intently to what your team communicates as being important outside of your current scope. This helps determine where your work should be going in terms of unexplored areas of interest.

How to Delegate Effectively

When hiring a new employee, delegation is a key factor in their success. It is important to provide the right amount of context and to slowly build up their responsibilities. Shared ownership should be avoided, as it can lead to conflict. It is also important to remember that new hires may not have the same motivations as the founding team, and should be given the right support and context to succeed.

What Makes the Perfect One-on-One?

This article discusses how to effectively manage a small team by having frequent one-on-ones, creating transparency, and delegating resources. It also emphasizes the importance of understanding each team member's motivations, providing a safe space for them to express their feelings, and helping them to manage their time and resources in order to reach their career goals.

Designing a Leveling Rubric for a Small Company

This article discusses the challenge of developing a leveling rubric for a small company. The author spoke to peers outside of the company to gain insight on how to set up expectations with engineers. After drafting out the rubric, there was pushback from stakeholders. With the help of HR, the rubric was implemented and surveyed employees reported that they felt everything was much more fair. The author learned that having clear expectations made engineers more self-aware and that in a new start-up, the margin for error is very low.

How to Uplift a Competent Employee Troubled by Interpersonal Problems

A senior engineer on the team lacked interpersonal skills, so the manager took it upon themselves to observe and experience the problems first-hand. The manager then implemented a few tactics to help the engineer improve, such as introducing them to a toastmasters club, enrolling them in an external training class, shadowing the manager during meetings, and finding a mentor. Through these implementations, the engineer was able to improve and continues to do so. The manager learned that interpersonal skills can be developed, and that it is important to do one's homework before jumping to conclusions about poor performance.

Finding the Right Moment of Opportunity to Advance Yourself

After working as an individual contributor for many years, the author decided to pursue a career in management. They took the initiative to manage a junior team in their office for a three month period, and received positive feedback. Through this experience, they learned the importance of taking ownership of their career, being a solution provider, staying informed, and having conversations with their managers.

Testing, Learning, and Improving: Building a Successful System Progressively

A collective of six teams distributed across the world and several time zones needed to bridge knowledge gaps. To address this roadblock, the Spotify squad model was adapted to match the company's needs. This involved creating dynamic squads around customer-focused problem statements. After gaining buy-in from leadership and the engineering team, the new system was tested and improved upon. After three quarters, the problem was solved and the team leader gained a newfound sense of confidence in their ability to lead. The experience also taught the value of a test-and-learn approach to problem solving and improved communication skills.

Standing up for an Employee in Trouble

A conflict arose between two teams when one team wanted to contribute code to an application owned by the other team. One of the junior engineers made some optimization suggestions which were not taken well by the other team, leading to bullying. The manager of the first team intervened by getting the full story and speaking to the manager of the other team. The engineers apologized for their inappropriate language and the incident was used as an example of how not to behave. The manager learned the importance of conflict resolution and protecting their team.

Making the Most of User Data in Early-Stage Products

When tracking data in early-stage products, two main challenges are knowing what to measure and how to measure it, and being careful not to be blindsided by data. Product leaders should have a profound understanding of how a product will be used and set metrics accordingly, while also complementing data with qualitative metrics. Data can tell any story depending on how it is interpreted, so it should be coupled with a holistic understanding of a product and its users. People should approach data with a fresh mind and let it speak for itself, without letting presupposed narratives influence the interpretation.

Mentorship Troubles: Finding the Right Fit

Finding the right mentor is an important part of mentorship, and it can be difficult to find the right fit. Self-reflection and prioritization of problems can help narrow down the search. Additionally, there are various avenues to connect with potential mentors, such as formalized mentorship rings, Facebook groups, and experienced leaders in other departments. Ultimately, understanding the avenues of how and when to connect should precede who to connect with.

Switching Career From Engineering to Product Management

This article is about the journey of transitioning from a software engineering role to a product management role. The author studied online resources and took courses to better understand the role of a product manager, and talked to a number of product managers to gain a better understanding of the company context. They then had an open conversation with their manager about their career plan and gradually shifted their work ratio from 80/20 in favor of software engineering to 50/50. The author learned that there are many paths to product management and that companies often look for prior PM experience, which can include passion projects and side hustles. They also suggest applying for an associate PM role as many companies run programs welcoming people switching careers or coming from non-traditional backgrounds.

Balancing Expectations of Multiple Stakeholders

This organization's goal is to enable engineering teams to build and ship products faster and safer. The challenge is managing the expectations of multiple stakeholders to come up with solutions that benefit many teams. Actions taken include engaging with stakeholders, understanding their expectations, analyzing data, and finding a core solution that has the highest reach and biggest impact. Lessons learned include balancing expectations, being collaborative, and being honest.