A critical step in managing a professional relationship is setting clear expectations from the outset. Whenever I begin a new reporting relationship, one of the first things I do is start a conversation about exactly that. As an employee, I want to know what exactly what I need to deliver…
So yeah, you're 80 minutes into an hour-long meeting. The team is trying to settle on the design for their next project. There are two different proposals on the table, and each has someone quite senior advocating for it. Perhaps there are factions, with team members clearly siding with one…
Making the leap from individual contributor to management is challenging in the best of circumstances. When I made the transition myself, I honestly felt like I was starting over in my career. I suddenly needed a completely different set of skills to deal with a new set of challenges. It…
"How do I get promoted?" as a software developer can be a tricky question, and the answer is often highly dependent on where you work. Each organization has its own processes, and especially at higher levels, budget and politics can often (unfortunately) come into play. But if we consider the…
Consider the plight of this hypothetical employee: for years, they have worked for the same employer, and for most of that time they have been tasked with operating and maintaining an important, if unloved, system. Perhaps that system is necessary for compliance, or maybe customer support, but certainly not a…
Failure is, of course, the greatest teacher. In reflecting on my "difficult year, professionally" that followed Being Acquired, I found it valuable to walk through my struggles during that period, and consider how I might have proceeded more effectively. The Same, But DifferentOne interesting aspect of the acquisition in question…
In my professional career, I've written my share of documentation. Some of it has turned out to be very useful, while other documents have ended up being a waste of my time. When I consider what the most useful docs had in common, I find that they generally fall into…
Any organization (or individual, for that matter) that desires to improve needs to be able to both have a frank discussion of what went wrong after a failure, as well be able to generate and execute on actionable steps to take that would prevent or mitigate the same failure in…
I've had several iPhones for years, but in all that time, I've never used Siri, and I think I may have used Alexa once. It's not that the software is bad, or doesn't work well (I honestly don't know!), but rather something more fundamental -- I don't want to talk…
I've been managing software engineering teams for a few years now, and one of the conversations that I keep having over and over with different people centers around delegation of responsibilities. Whether I'm trying to help someone grow into a management role themselves, or just trying to spread the load…