Thoughts, lessons, and the occasional rabbit hole
Growing people, shaping teams, hiring, and leading through difficult decisions.
5 articles
Together with our Staff Engineers and Tech Leads, we had mapped technical risks, organizational bottlenecks and initiatives worth addressing. We used the classic Eisenhower Matrix in a workshop and agreed on what was important, what was urgent and which topics we wanted to address first. The week afterwards, none of the topic were in my calender.
When I became a Director of Engineering, people warned me that I would miss coding. What I really underestimated was how hard it would be to stay out of the details when I knew a topic well. I often caught myself thinking: ll just have a quick look at the repo and figure out how to solve this.
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 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.