Work is Just Other People
I found a pattern in myself. When work is going well, I do not talk about work. I talk about a bad joke, what someone cooked, how a Guinness pint tastes in different pubs, the t...
Articles tagged with Team Dynamics
Team dynamics writing on trust, conflict, incentives, and the behavior that surfaces when pressure rises and plans get hard.
Where the Automation Has to Stop
I keep seeing people running multiple agents, perfect setups with multiple skills, operating a fleet of assignments. First of all, this looks like science fiction. Besides that,...
The Engineer in the Half-Space
You are reading interview loop feedback. You are going through the notes and it looks like neither a nogo nor a go. You are divided in your head too. Mitch does not seem to scor...
Scaling Culture Without Dilution
As organizations grow across geographies, one thing becomes disproportionately important. Culture. We, engineers, often dismiss culture as soft and cushy. This is until you see...
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...
Most of What We Call Progress
Most of what we call progress in software is just motion. New tools, new frameworks, same problems. Maybe fancier logos. Our industry always has this collective thrill that a ne...
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...
Chasing Real Respect
You can fake a lot of things in business: authority, expertise, even competence. Respect is harder. Think about the managers you have worked with. You probably do not remember t...
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...
Management is a Lonely Place
Yes, it is. If you’re in it, you already know. It sucks. You can’t talk to your boss about many things because, let’s be honest, they probably don’t have that much time to hear...
Work-Life Balance as a Manager
As an IC, you close your laptop at 6 PM, log off, and forget about the work unless you are oncall. As a manager, you check Slack at 10 PM because someone might need you. Your ca...
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...
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,...
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...
Handling Competitive Dynamics
A healthy level of competition can fuel innovation and push people to do their best work. It turns problematic when it starts overshadowing the team. I don’t think competition i...
The Subtle Art of Listening
I remember being on a Zoom call with a mortgage advisor while he answered messages as I spoke. He did it several times in the same conversation. I manage people myself, so I und...
Leading Self Managing Teams
When I first started leading teams, I thought being a good manager meant being everywhere. I felt like checking every ticket, joining every status update and so on. I got exhaus...
Leadership Archetypes
I’ve had all kinds of bosses over the years. Some of them were visionaries. Some others were quiet geniuses. One thing I’ve learned is that if you want to survive and maybe even...
Hiring Harmony
Hiring is drag. Every open role slows the people around it, creates coverage gaps, and pulls your best performers into interviews instead of work. The instinct is to close that...
Risk Comes First
You probably saw many cliché stuff about risking everything. Not risking is the biggest risk and all. While there is a truth to that, risk needs to be an appetite. Remember what...
The Real Work Is Social
I get along with people. I talk, I joke, I do the normal office stuff. But even with that, something about how work actually works has always felt off. You think the job is most...
Smaller is Faster
“Smaller is faster” is a wellknown hardware design principle, as you might already know. Smaller pieces of hardware will be faster than larger ones because shorter distances mea...
Buggy Code on Production, Survived
Areca is the name of the billing engine I am working on for Turk Telekom. Funny enough, it is also the name of the flowers we bought to freshen the office. We wanted the office...