Balancing Act of Reliability
Software development involves both creating and maintaining systems. Once you put anything into production, reliability becomes critical. When your systems are not reliable, you...
Building Trust in Engineering Teams
We all know that transparency builds trust. The lack of it? Well, that can lead to major issues. Engineers sometimes join teams and, from the start, struggle with trust. It’s as...
Ideal Number of Direct Reports
Amazon’s likely comes from a closer look at ratios. Were there too many managers with only 23 direct reports? That’s entirely possible. From my time at AWS, I didn’t see this mu...
Overriding a People Leader’s Decision
When managing managers or leaders, there will be times when you feel that the right course of action differs from their opinion. It could be related to rating an employee, decid...
From Misperception to Promotion
If you are in the realm of management, sooner or later, you will encounter someone who wants a promotion but isn’t quite ready for it. In fact, I have seen many cases where the...