Losing a Top Performer
Over time, I had to manage and help to manage many times when a top performer quits. It sucks but we need to be reasonable. Imagine you’re on a winning streak, your top striker,...
Engineering, Leadership, and Life
Page 14 of the latest articles.
Balancing Act of Reliability
Once something is in production, you are no longer just building software. You are also keeping it alive. That sounds obvious, but teams forget it all the time. We get excited a...
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...