Tech Lead

Restructuring a Team in Order to Allow for Scale

A team was spread thin due to rapid growth, so the team leader restructured the team to better align with product roadmaps and give individuals more ownership. The team was involved in the process and the changes allowed for more hiring and projects. The leader learned that it is important to get ahead of problems and involve the team early on.

Become a Manager on My Own: A Classic Tale of Being Thrown into a Management Role

This article is about the transition of an iOS engineer to a manager, and the lessons learned along the way. The author discusses the importance of understanding the company's higher-level vision, building trust with the team, delegating work, and finding mentors to help broaden their horizon. They also recommend three books to read to help with the transition. The author emphasizes the importance of patience and trust when shifting from maker to manager.

Why Establishing Long-Term Relationship With Your Manager Can Benefit You

In 2008, Mike was hired as a front-end developer and eventually moved into a management role. Over the years, the author and Mike developed a mentor-mentee relationship that allowed them to trust each other and have honest conversations. This relationship enabled them to move up in their respective roles and eventually Mike took over a more significant scope than the author. The author learned that the best way to build a team is by trusting people and that the relationships you establish are more important than any other work. It is also beneficial to have a mentor who can help you learn in a more efficient way.

Helping Your Reports Grow in Their Careers

This article discusses a management philosophy that focuses on building upon people's strengths and helping them become the best version of themselves. It also emphasizes the importance of understanding what the individual wants and what the company needs in order to create the best path for them. The article also provides lessons learned, such as not having a template to follow for guiding someone on their career path and getting comfortable with the fact that neither the manager nor the direct report knows the definitive answer on the best way to develop and grow.

Formalizing Processes to Gain Visibility in a Remote Organization

A director of engineering in a fully distributed company realized that they had very little visibility into the performance of individual contributors and that engineering managers were not objectively evaluating their teams. To gain better visibility, the director implemented four actionable steps: changing the 360 feedback mechanism, pivoting team-based skip-level meetings to skip-level one-on-ones, enforcing a tech lead role on every initiative, and having retrospectives for every project. These steps have allowed the director to gain better visibility into the performance of the team and to advocate for engineers who are going unrecognized by their manager.

Too Many Direct Reports

The author joined a small company eight years ago and, as the product scaled and more customers were acquired, the team grew and the author ended up with 20 direct reports spread across four teams. This was overwhelming and time-consuming, so the author took it upon themselves to drive the change and create a structure to groom people from IC to management. They mapped their responsibilities, wrote down role descriptions, advertised the roles internally, and provided thorough feedback to candidates. The author was able to take a step back and become more strategically oriented, and found immense enjoyment in coaching managers and being part of their personal and professional growth. They learned that if they see a problem, they should try to fix it and not wait for their managers to do that for them, and that investing in their own people is important.