Too Liked to Be Useful
I often get surprised when I hear someone say they like a certain manager. I usually have very different reservations about them in my head. The gap between what I think and wha...
Articles tagged with Trust
Trust at work essays on reliability, transparency, follow-through, judgment, and the small signals that change how teams behave.
When Too Many Maps Overlap on One Person
You have a proposal. And someone suggested checking with Mike. It does not sound like a problem. It sounds like due diligence, like someone being careful, like a team that knows...
The Work Runs on Different Maps
A project can be obviously important, technically sound, budgeted, and still go nowhere. I don’t mean slowness. I mean the weird kind of stalled where everyone involved can poin...
Your Work Introduces You
Years ago, when I first joined Tripadvisor, we had a tool that moved data to Amazon Redshift. One of the engineers went on holiday, the tool had a few bugs, and people were bloc...
Trial By Fire
Teams spend months hiring a strong candidate. Sourcing, interviews, debriefs, approvals, compensation, notice period. Everyone treats the hire like a serious investment. Then th...
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....
What Good Looks Like
A few companies back, my manager and I inherited a group of teams after layoffs. Confidence was already low. People didn't believe in the systems we maintained. Stakeholders los...
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...
What Good Execution Looks Like
The other day I was talking with one of my directs. We ended up discussing something we’ve both learned over the years. When execution works, the environment is quiet. Not slow....
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...
AI Broke Interviews
Interviewing has always been a big can of worms in the software industry. For years, big tech has gone with the LeetCode style questions mixed with a few behavioural and rounds....
Prisoner's Dilemma
On September 3, 1949, a weather plane was flying over Japan. It detected traces of radioactive isotopes. These elements decay quickly, which means they had been created recently...
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...
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 people get it wrong a lot. You can throw the usual fluff a...
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...
PIP Manager Insights
I remember one of my directs stepping into a new manager role, only to inherit a team with one or two employees who just weren’t cutting it. From day one, it was a challenge. He...
Traits for EMs
Over the years, I’ve had the opportunity to work with many managers, and mentored a few. I was fortunate enough to learn from some great bosses. When I think about it, I feel li...
Simple Acts of Recognition Matter
I once worked with a brilliant software engineer who solved a major system issue in the middle of the night. By morning, no one even noticed there had been a crisis. Business as...
The Question I Ask Every New Report
When I take on a new management role, whether it’s through a reorganization, succession, or stepping into a new organization, I make it a priority to ask this question in my fir...
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...
Hiring Red Flags
Hiring is tough. It's one of the most important tasks a manager faces while growing their team. The problem with hiring is that a bad hire can significantly impact you financial...
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...
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...
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...
Operational Skills Needed
Over the years, I've interviewed many candidates. One crucial skill that often gets overlooked is operational reflexes during oncalls. Surprisingly, few companies test for this,...
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...
Should Dev Managers Code?
I often think about what it really means to be a good development manager. It's a bit like being the conductor of an orchestra. You don’t have to know how to play every single i...
Kindness is A Choice
Discussing leadership, we often overlook kindness, focusing more on power and wealth. Yet the leaders who leave a lasting impact are the ones who choose humanity over dominance....
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...
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...
The Power of Consistency
One of my friends from primary school didn’t go to high school. At first, it was a bit surprising, but his family was making kebap, and he wanted to run the family business. Bec...
The Path to Leadership
Leadership is not a position. It changes how you see yourself and the people around you. You begin as an individual contributor, focused on your own craft. Over time the path ex...
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...
Achieve More by Meeting Less
Meetings are part of leadership. We need them to align and understand. Yet, we often do it at the expense of action. The success lies in the milestones achieved. In essence, "Fe...
Turning Defensiveness Into Growth
As a leader, part of the job is helping people grow. That usually means giving feedback. And while we often picture feedback as a simple “I share, you listen,” the truth is it o...
Data as a Product is a Promise
Domaindriven design (DDD) has been around for quite a long time. In short, DDD focuses on domain to match domain requirements. One of the pillars of DDD is bounded context. A bo...
Promoting Learnings in Incidents
Incidents are the negative consequences of an action that fails to produce the expected outcome. For instance, code might be deployed to production to add a new feature or impro...
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...