Thoughts, lessons, and the occasional rabbit hole
Growing people, shaping teams, hiring, and leading through difficult decisions.
5 articles
On Friday, we had aligned on the engineering risks that mattered most. Together with our Staff Engineers, we had mapped technical risks, organizational bottlenecks, and initiatives worth addressing before they became emergencies. Everyone agreed on the priorities. On Monday, none of them existed in my calendar.
One of the things I underestimated when becoming a Director of Engineering was how difficult it would be to stay out of topics I knew well. Most people told me it would be hard to stop coding. But the harder part was not writing code. It was resisting the temptation to use my technical expertise whenever a problem looked familiar enough.
Hiring is one of the most important responsibilities of an engineering leader. The people you hire shape how your organization works long after the interview is over.
One of the concepts that has influenced my leadership the most is psychological safety. The research is compelling. Psychological safety supports learning behaviours such as admitting mistakes, asking for help, challenging ideas, and voicing concerns. Amy Edmondson helped establish the modern, team-level concept, defining it as "a shared belief that the team is safe for interpersonal risk taking."
One of my responsibilities as an Engineering Manager was people development. At first, that felt fairly straightforward. If someone wanted to become a better engineer, I could often help by giving them the right opportunities: a technically challenging project, ownership of a new service, the chance to lead an incident, or an opportunity to present their work. Development happened naturally as part of everyday work.