Capacity Is the Roadmap
When I was young, I worked in carpentry during the summers. Summer was busy. New buildings had to go up. Stables needed repairs. Barns needed extensions. Sheds had to be built o...
#Stakeholder Management
Writing on aligning stakeholders, handling pressure, and reducing coordination friction.
The Roadmap Is Not the System
A few years ago, my father decided to build a house in the . On the surface, it was easy to like the idea. A quiet place. A porch. A garden. Somewhere to disappear for a while....
Escaping Status Theater
I still think about one migration project where everything was green until the final month. We did not have the luxury of extending the deadline. This was tied to external regul...
Why Politics Appear
Ancient Athens did not solve uncertainty with better communication. They solved it by removing people. Once a year, citizens gathered to vote on exile. Not for crimes. Not for f...
How to Work with Me
In 1935, Boeing had a new bomber prototype, the Model 299, which later became the B17. It was impressive, and it was also easy to mess up because it had more switches and steps...
Multi-Horizon Delivery Framework
If you’ve been in leadership for a while, you know the drill: a line manager reports team progress along with the PM, anyone above reviews it in cadence and sees how things are...
Managing Your Manager
Managers change more often than you realize, especially when a company is growing or downsizing. New roles, new org charts, new reporting lines. Other times, you’re shopping aro...
Onboarding Your Engineering Manager
Bringing on a new leader to your organization is always tricky. It starts with . Then comes the real part. Onboarding! I always think bringing in a new leader without context is...
Technical Deep Dives
When someone asks for a technical deep dive, they don’t care if . They want proof that you actually understand the beast you’ve built. Can you walk me through the system like yo...
Representing the Business
The other day, someone asked me why we even need managers. What do they actually do? I think it’s a fair question, and honestly, people get it wrong a lot. You can throw usual f...
The Invisible Difference
There are plenty of skills you can pick up along the way. Some come from , some through experience. A lot of it is just trial and error. And some from . You figure things out su...
Engineering Manager Interview Preparation
Layoffs seem to be everywhere these days. You scroll through feeds, and it’s another round of cuts, another company restructuring. If you're a seasoned manager, losing your role...
Bridging the Management Disconnect
I’ve seen this happen over and over. A successful engineer . They are eager to build great teams and support their people. They know some of the leaders before didn't do that. T...
Bridging Ideals and Reality
Have you ever been in an engineering discussion where someone starts pointing out all the ideals and how much the company sucks? Complaining about all the mistakes the company m...
Subteam Tenets
Over the years, working across multiple organizations, I developed the concept of subteam tenets. I’ve tweaked it along the way to fit each company's unique quirks, but I still...
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...
Perception vs Perspective
Have you ever found yourself questioning someone's decision, only to realize later that you didn't have the full picture? You know it's really easy to get caught up in our own w...
From Engineer to Manager
I often get asked whether someone should transition into management. In the past, this might have been the only viable growth path. However, in most large organizations today, t...
Working with Dependencies
If you are part of a large organization, the term "dependencies” probably means more than . In a big organization, when we talk about "dependencies," we're diving into more than...
Should Dev Managers Code?
As someone who's been navigating the world of software development for a while, I often think about what it really means to be a good development manager. It's a bit like being...
Leading from Where You Are
When we were building Areca, a realtime billing engine for Turk Telekom, we were a small team competing against giants like Amdocs. They had the brand recognition, the scale, an...
Estimation Accuracy
Estimating software projects is basically the tech equivalent of arguing about Irish weather. Everyone has an opinion, nobody really knows anything, and the forecast changes all...
Addressing Technical Debt
Tech debt occurs when we solve a software problem with our limited understanding of the business at the time. We start building a solution to get feedback as early as possible....
Building a Technical Vision
A technical vision is the compass of an engineering organization. It sets the longterm direction. I believe it should define the "why" and "where" behind the technical choices t...
Manager as a Service
What would a manager as a service look like? What kind of systems would a manager resemble? How can you describe a manager’s responsibility through various systems? Here’s my ta...