“Not all readers are leaders, but all leaders are readers.”― Harry S. Truman
Think it's easy finding a job after Twitter? Think again.
I love 1:1 meetings. It’s a chance to swap feedback and make sure our company is working. It’s also one of the reasons we built SoapBox bot — a bot to help people have productive 1:1 and team meetings. The reaction has been overwhelming: Managers from over 500 of the best companies in the world (Adobe, Intercom, Wayfair, etc…) are now using it with their teams.
Though people often think about the time it takes for a new engineer to start delivering value, they rarely ask themselves how long it takes for them to be fully ramped-up.
10x Developers exist, but that’s not the point. Let me explain …
The ultimate guide on how to manage young PMs in your team. Includes Dos and Don’ts, examples and modus operandi using which I wish I was led/managed early on when I started as a PM. Also, young PMs could takeaway lessons from here on what to expect and ask from your managers.
I’m writing this from my new “office” which is a small desk in a large closet located under the stairs of my house. Harry Potter style. We have our first baby on the way so I got kicked out of our 2nd bedroom and I’m embracing the office-under-the-stairs life.
And how it reduces the odds you frustrate your team to the brink of leaving
We’re all susceptible to miscalculation and misuse of time, so how do we use the tools available to make our time work for us?
BANI Leadership: what skills will be important, what knowledge should be acquired and what illusions should be abandoned in the new post-VUCA BANI world?
More often than not, developers and architects spend a large portion of their time in solving problems. The complexity involved in finding a solution varies from problem-to-problem and is directly proportionate to the individual’s or team’s ability in finding the solution. As a lead, architect or a senior architect, we need to instill the culture of solution-ing in our team.
The SPACE framework offers a holistic approach which takes into account wellbeing, collaboration and satisfaction alongside the usual performance metrics.
The average consumer’s attention is now worth billions of dollars because that’s how much companies spend on their user acquisition efforts.
These little-known, scientifically proven customer retention strategies ALWAYS work.
In this story, we’ll be exploring 7 of the issues that may face business leaders in 2022 and how best they can manage them.
What's the best way to learn? Think like a beginner! It’s time to take pride in being a beginner and seeking a plurality of viewpoints.
By knowing what motivates Gen Z employees, managers can better manage and retain this amazing young generation of talent.
“No” is often equated with being mean but “no” isn’t about shutting projects and people down. Here's how to say no in a corporate setting without sounding rude.
One of the things that all new managers who move from leading a team of engineers to leading managers have in common is, well, frustration.
I am sharing 10 practical ways to embrace mindfulness, focus on wellness, and maintain your mental well-being while in the office.
If you still dream of leaving your 9-5 job, being your own boss, and finally start pursuing your passion, then keep reading.
This year, leaders are being tested — on our ability to adapt, grow, and develop despite the obstacles, inspire and lead people to meaningful goals.
The Matthew Effect or Matthew Principle of accumulated advantage, is sometimes summarized by the adage "the rich get richer and the poor get poorer".
The term “second brain” refers to a way of thinking and working based on the idea of building a second brain.
IT teams must keep up with demand effectively and align business needs with user needs.
In this article we will briefly discuss why that is so important and a few ways you can conquer your fear of delegating and help your business and you thrive!
The capacity of a leader to envision, plan, direct, and get the most out of the resources at hand effectively is known as strategic leadership.
Sometimes it is difficult for us to simply accept that we're experiencing burnout, so it is important to be informed and aware that it exists.
FTX + SBF Chapter 11 Court Filing by John J. Ray III, Nov 17, 2022 is part of HackerNoon’s Legal PDF Series. Part 7/20: Events leading to chapter 11 filing.
Despite widespread growth in technology, the growth of women in tech remains stunted. This article explores the challenges women in tech brace and overcome.
I keep losing my best employees. I know I'm the reason, but I refuse to change. So how do I screw up my best people? I challenge and provide them with feedback.
In this article, Cheslav Novytskyi, an Engineering Manager at Innovecs, describes how to lead an engineering team during challenging times.
Planning ahead and having clarity about what you want to achieve can save you time and increase your outputs, especially as a leader in a large organisation.
How a Fintech startup levels the playing field for investors by providing analyst accountability and simplified research tools.
Want to inspire and motivate your individual contributors? Try setting clear goals and expectations, providing ongoing feedback and support, encouraging career
A conversation with Hillel Fuld, on marketing, the future of media, and his personal and professional endgame.
On today’s episode of Startups On Demand, I am joined by Ian Sanders, CEO and Co-Founder of Blue Cape, a stealth startup in the field of healthcare analytics.
A few ideas on how to maximise the real-world impact of your product work.
Companies that embrace AI will be able to test, learn, and iterate much faster, raising the competitive bar for learning.
Emotional Intelligence may take a back set to its more prominent sibling, the Intelligence Quotient but its no less important for leaders to cultivate.
I’m Amit Rapaport, the CEO, and Co-Founder of Compete; married; mother of 3 crazy boys. My husband is my Co-Founder and CTO.
It's important to make informed decisions that positively impact your organization. But how do you know when to rely on data and when to use intuition?
The Pursuit of Simplicity Only Serves to Manufacture Our Consent, Not Our Understanding.
Invest in managing software engineering efficiency, not only measuring individuals' performances.
Giving and receiving feedback is crucial to grow as a person, but it's not easy for everybody to take it. Here's an insight on the truth about feedback.
Valued employees are good employees. Simple things like public acknowledgement and being considerate of their needs are all you need to make them feel great.
Employee productivity helps an organization achieve its goals. Happy employees are vital resources in leading a business in the right direction.
Cutting manpower overheads makes sense in a recession but it may come at the expense of talent retention and other important factors to a company's success.
Strategic thinking is a critical skill in life.
Genuine deadlines are there to help the organization seize an opportunity. Let's explore how they impact engineering organization and how not to antagonize them
In this story, we analyze what makes up the role of a technical writing manager, how to improve your skills, and how to be a brilliant leader.
The content creator economy has grown by leaps and bounds since the world heard of it 5 years ago.
It’s ok, we all do it…
4 tips on what to do when your team is suddenly split across two or more locations
Here’s my recommendation when it comes to books that will help a technical person to get into management and executive functions.
When Peter Drucker said in 2006 that “Culture eats strategy for breakfast,” he did not mean that strategy is not important. Rather an effective strategy is crucial to organizational success. A good strategy is the key to successfully implementing the vision. But a strategy by itself cannot push any organization to achieve tremendous growth and success. What gives life to that strategy are its people.
“In these unprecedented times…” People build unprecedented products, and contribute to the internet in unprecedented ways. Go on, make a fellow human’s day and nominate the best YOUR best of 2020’s tech industry for a 2020 #Noonie, the tech industry’s most independent and community-driven awards: NOONIES.TECH. One such impressive human is Ori Keren from Israel: 2020 Noonie nominee in Future Heroes and Technology categories.
An interview with the co-founder and CEO of 1MRobotics, Eyal Yair. He runs a startup that specialises in robotics and shares his philosophy and strategy.
Developer productivity can be measured using the right tools. It doesn't need to be gauged solely by the number of features or fixes they could make at a time.
You have probably noticed that most management positions require previous management experience. How can you get that experience without getting the job?
Nataliia Zub shared her perspective about secure digital transformation, risk management in times of crisis, as well as Engineering Leadership as a mindset.
Founders and CEOs have a lot of tasks and responsibilities. Coaching the team, becoming a mentor for newcomers, and preparing for the end of the world.
This time of the year typically involves cocktails at rooftop bars, stunning city views, vacations in quaint European countries, or relaxing on the beach with a book. While the first three may be off limits this year, reading is one pleasure we can still enjoy. Most entrepreneurs we know are voracious readers, so we decided to round up a list of books that will make Summer 2020 more enjoyable and productive. Whether you’re headed to the beach, the mountains or the living room, these six books are bound to offer good ideas and a dose of inspiration.
Does your team feel its alignment with business where what it delivers solve business problems and achieve business desired outcome?
Organizations that thrive are run by leaders who see opportunity in uncertainty, who cut through ambiguity, and who lead with the mindset to gain clarity.
I spoke with Louis Carter, CEO Executive Coach, Organizational Psychologist, and CEO of Best Practice Institute to learn more about if leaders should change their styles during specific situations.
For most companies, growth marketing is the way of the future for leveraging data and agility to scale revenue and increase customer lifetime value.
Leadership is a craft, like medicine, writing, and bricklaying. Mantras can help you develop yours by signposting the way to deep truths.
It was a Friday morning and I was waiting in the conference room for my manager. We had just achieved a great milestone as a team and delivered a highly critical time sensitive project. It wasn’t an ordinary success as the entire organization was counting on this platform for a mega event.
High-performing teams proactively develop their engineers to address the team's skill gaps, using methods such as tutorials, mentorship and stretch assignments
In this hiring climate, you need to differentiate to attract candidates.
The following 5 rules of effective team management help develop our business not only in post-COVID times but in times of war in Ukraine as well.
Structuring your thoughts as a Product Manager is imperative to help you make the right decisions. We've collated some tips to help you do just that!
An Interview with a Fintech founder on scaling a product, measuring goals and practical productivity tips.
Wavveup is partnering with US Research Center Blackhawke Behavior Science to offer entrepreneurs the first tailored 360 leadership assessment.
How to transition from a software engineer to a manager and a leader of a team.
Mentorship requires at least 2 people. However, anyone who has ever queried information about software developer onboarding, could notice right away a strong focus on the onboardee. Most onboarding approaches are centered on guiding new hires through their first days, tasks or overcoming the hurdles of getting started. But this approach rarely highlights the troubles and challenges of the mentors*. We frequently hear about the “Sink or Swim” approach by which new engineers are “thrown into the deep end” with hands-on tasks on their first day in. The truth is, mentors are also treated this way, although unintentionally and with no buoy waiting for them.
You are the regional supervisor of ABC Co. and part of your job is to inspect different job sites.
10X developers are mythological creatures in the Startup world. I don’t really know if they exist but I can argue that 10X managers do!
TL;DR: A self-leader does everything that a leader should do, but for herself. She plans, motivates, listens, and cares for herself. She uses the S.A.M. framework to put her efforts into perspective by focussing on Skills, Attitude, and Mindfulness as the core of her self-leadership practice.
Saying “I can’t do” triggers a belief that she can never do it, it’s not within her reach. That makes her give up without trying hard enough.
Learn why code quality matters, the most important metrics you need to manage quality, and how to track and manage code quality issues.
If a leader isn’t authentic, they can’t really be effective.
A clearly articulated purpose is only effective when accompanied with an authentic process.
If you’re looking for ideas for being more creative or intentional about celebrating successes and milestones with remote teams, here are four tips.
There is always a breaking point in anything that tests people’s limitations. Some take action to make a change. Others become tolerant. Still, some become wiser. We saw this happen in the face of the merciless pandemic (in this case COVID-19), which broke plans for billions and deprived millions of their family members, friends, relatives, and loved ones.
As a kid I always wanted to be the best at what I did: school, sports, games, you name it. I remember playing cards with friends and if I lost and somebody laughed, I would get very upset and disappointed.
Rising energy costs mean that cash flow forecasts are liable to change considerably over time, and businesses may need to manage their gas and electricity usage
The need for a cohesive team is imperative and for many, that means installing an ITSM system for the first time and using Agile methodology.
In a period when deaths and serious injuries arise almost regularly in the workplace, employees will contend with at least three very distinct audiences. A fatality or traumatic injury at the workplace triggers the desire to connect with mourning people, including family members of the victim, eye witnesses of the tragedy, or co-workers who experience a sense of loss.
The success of a business is a journey, not a destination. It is a road that entails unconventional thinking and extraordinary measures. Several entrepreneurs opt for a startup each year, but only a small number of them manage to thrive. Most of us might anticipate the essential ingredients of a successful business. Though, the key lies in identifying the actions and proceedings required to implement that course.
How can one cultivate self-compassion and resilience by doing hard things?
Learning to lead and manage teams are essential skills for anyone looking to advance their career.
If you want something done right, you have to do it yourself, right? The perfectionist in you likes to be in control and is good at finding excuses - “Outcome won’t be as good.” “It will take me longer to assign and explain than to do it myself.” “I don’t have anyone with the right skills.” “No one in the team wants to do it anyway.”
Pluralistic ignorance is a psychological state in which we believe that our private thoughts, and feelings, are different from those of others.
We are in the age of the Agile revolution, even non-tech companies and non-tech departments are adopting agile practices and frameworks. The issue is that organizations are making these adoptions without changing the foundation that their companies are built on. One of these major pillars is performance appraisals and it is critical because it is very important to employees. We all want to do well, and get big bonuses, or even get that promotion that we have been working so hard towards. The issue is most companies do not have the Agile mindset and focus mainly on the individual and neglect the team aspect when it comes to performance. This directly hurts organizations that are looking to build mature Agile teams.
First principles thinking drives complex problem solving and workplace innovation through reverse engineering. Companies that employ first principles thinking are one step ahead as they plan and build for the future.
No strategy can help an organization thrive if the people in the organization aren’t resilient to change and chaos. Setbacks and challenging situations - a missed deadline, a lost deal, a failed project, a bad strategy - are everyday affairs at work, and only those who learn to get past them can grow professionally and personally.
The process of composing a development team can look a lot like starting a fighting game where you choose characters to fight your battles. Here are many tips
The difference between leaders who push their teams to the ground and those who take teams to great heights isn’t knowledge, capability, or competence.
Traits of an Emotionally Intelligent Entrepreneur
Never Trusting Anybody, and the Impact it Had on Me
Hypothetically, organizations should not be characterized by disorder or uncertainty, so they would seem ordered.
You can find your way to success from an entry-level to an executive-leadership position. You just have to take the route that compliments your attributes best
One-on-one meetings go wrong not because of lack of effort. They go wrong when you don’t pay attention to the little things that are needed to get them right.
It's a brief story of my journey from a low-income single-parent family in Taiwan to female leadership in the United States.
Being a CTO can be hard and frustrating, but also fun and satisfying. During my time in the last seven years as CTO, R&D manager, and software architect both at Walla!NEWS, Careerpage, and Appwrite, I have collected some insights that helped me do my jobs and achieve my company’s goals. For a long time, I have thought about sharing my ideas, and in this post, I will try my best to give away some of those insights based on my personal experiences.
What are the top five traits of new-age female founders of unicorn companies? How are they different from conventional traits?
The ‘About Me’ section of your website, LinkedIn profile, or your social media accounts is the most important copy you’ll ever write. Here's how to write it!
Does your team have psychological safety? This may be a much more important question than you think. It may seem unintuitive but safety is a critical ingredient to unlocking your team's potential. Google certainly believes so, and Amy Edmondson at Harvard Business School agrees.
When a South African school boy bullied for “being too smart” becomes a trailblazer for billion dollar companies in future — the world wants to peep into his mind.
To be the best of the best, Super Bowl championship teams need an elite level of consistency, trust, a culture of success, goals, measurement, and rewards.
The incredible impact that many women are capable of is greatly underestimated because women have been ignored for generations.
Roy Simmons coined that phrase and I like it a lot. “Most artists can’t draw.”
I have been a people person as far as I could remember. So when I first became a manager, I thought “How hard could this be?”
Key takeaways from transforming a monolithic team into three autonomous squads and much more.
You have a talented team, and your teammates both embrace your vision and are helping you shape a matching culture. Congratulations as these are two big ‘wins’ that many investors will rank above opportunity size.
I collected and analyzed employment data by race for 57 of the biggest tech employers in the US (1). Here are the top level conclusions:
Last week I had a conversation with a couple of friends about the issues they've been facing at their startup. These friends, like many others, have been affected by CoViD-19 related business impact, as well as the Work From Home situation. As you can guess, the biggest issues have been around communication, specially when it involves some sort of negotiation about what product features to prioritise, and how much effort to put into the same.
The chief technology officer’s role starts from the love of technologies and should sound like Chief Technology Lover. Indeed, the true love of technology is where most of the successful CTOs take place. They hack systems because of curiosity, read books because of the need for knowledge, trying new tools, programming languages, and environments. A CTO must also possess the ability to think effectively in conceptual terms, bring clarity, and strong leadership. A CTO must have team-building skills since long-term goals require accomplishing far more than one person can do.
It's really hard to get people on the same page! The concepts of serialization and state will level up your ability to keep humans in sync smooth discussion.
The new normal of remote work is here. While the option to work from home was available at many organizations before the COVID-19 pandemic hit, this way of working has become a forced reality in certain industries. Lockdown restrictions are starting to ease up, but many companies are still enforcing or allowing their teams to work from home full- or part-time.
The best way to avoid career burnout is for employees to prioritize taking care of their mental, physical, and emotional well-being.
In a fast-moving, ever-changing, dynamic work environment, the ability to collaborate effectively isn’t a necessity, it’s a superpower.
How to be a product leader: the difference between product leadership and product management
If you were asked to describe the qualities of a great boss, how would you respond? Better yet, why is this topic even worth addressing? An employee’s internal respect their manager influences 14% of their engagement while on the clock. Ultimately, bad leadership drives away employees as nearly 2 in 3 people have quit, or plan to, because of their boss. In fact, 77% of employees planning to resign from their job within the next year say it is due to poor management. Revisiting the initial question posed, how are employees describing the habits of highly effective leaders?
Planning as a principal engineer is all about bringing engineering, business, and people close together. Here are the things to consider.
Annie is a software engineering leader on Square’s platform & infrastructure engineering organization. Prior to Square, she worked at a number of startups across a spectrum of industries from consumer products to enterprise solutions, as well as a wide variety of teams from sales to engineering.
This blog post should not be considered authoritative in any way. It simply an imperfect attempt to highlight some guiding principles. I am convinced these guiding principles could be useful for you, your dear-ones and your team.
If you own a business but don't have a project manager on your team, find out all the benefits of having a specialist that can organize and direct development.
Patrick Campbell goes over why you shouldn't treat your team like children.
From being transparent, validating assumptions and co-creating with users, here are some easy-to-execute ways to stay user-focused as a Product Manager.
Work meetings are an obvious necessity for many reasons. However, these meetings can become overly frequent and pointless. How then can they be optimized?
The word control is very important for a leader who wants to generate a concrete result. Control plays a critical role in being productive.
Fear of not being included, fear of not knowing, fear of status, fear of failure, fear of unknowns, fear of criticism, fear of change, fear of being an imposter can cause a leader to act in undesirable ways. Leading from fear can create a toxic culture in which people play safe, avoid mistakes and lay low in effect creating an organisation that does not grow due to mediocre performance and unrealised potential.
Antonio Lucio during Brandweek Masterclass (photo credit: Adweek)
Ever wonder what it would be to end on a high? How about offering a Masterclass on your last day as global chief marketing officer for Facebook?! Yeah talk about mic drop.
Good leadership is the key to any successful business, let alone one that relies heavily on technological products.
We focus so much on external change - getting approval from executives or people on other teams. To enact real change, focus on what you can control.
Processes are essential for effective management. They keep people in sync, making it possible for team members to come together and achieve a shared goal. But they’re also dangerous. Processes can create the illusion that things are running smoothly because they’re moving along according to the shared understanding of how they’re “supposed to” run.
This is the Fallacy of Process — the idea that by adding consistency and predictability to a shared workflow, a given process is inherently valuable.
Too often, process becomes canon. A team develops an effective way of doing something, then returns to that framework indefinitely, long past its expiration date.
“Why does watching a dog be a dog fill one with happiness?” — Jonathan Safran Foer
Ginni Rometty, the first female CEO of IBM, stated “Some people call this artificial intelligence, but the reality is this technology will enhance us.” We couldn’t agree more with this statement given our mission is to enhance managers and their ability to lead teams through the insights provided by Peoplelogic.ai.
The next few months will be the most uncertain period business owners have faced. The coronavirus will change the economy and how we work. But I’ve been preparing for this time for more than a decade.
Below we will discuss how to become more efficient daily. There are always mistakes in a new business, but hopefully, this can alleviate some of them.
Here are some tips that I use to efficiently meet strict deadlines.
One of the last questions asked in a DevOps interview is usually "so, what does DevOps mean to you?" I think this is a smart question, because DevOps is wildly misunderstood by the greater IT community. Some may answer that it's Continuous Integration and Releases, another may say it's having everything in Git, and the last might say that it's having tests available. All of these technical solutions do represent a key aspect of DevOps which is the tool chain, but it is the least important.
5 easy steps to create a sustainable tech community in your company that everyone loves.
Kim Dotcom ponders whether a major global collapse is coming soon.
An organization's success depends not only on current capabilities but on the team's ability to grow and adapt. And this is facilitated by its leaders.
The most vital currency in today’s age is expression. I found the term “expressive capital” when reading Hugh MacLeods’ book, “Evil Plans”. It represents an attribute that some companies make use of on their products. Basically, the more personality and expressiveness the product has, which resonates with you — the consumer — the more valuable that asset is. Therefore expressive capital is a relevant metric.
As a manager, without a system in place to measure yourself and actively monitor how you’re doing, you can't identify all the areas that you need to improve on.
Despite tight economic situations worldwide, the API economy continues to grow.
Launching any business is a difficult and complex process but these 8 steps can help narrow down what you need to do to get your idea off the ground fast.
Books are the best resource for sharing knowledge in a not-assisted way. They go deep into a topic, or more briefly over a bunch of them. Although, as a Software Engineer, I learned a lot from blog posts, tweets, and conference talks, it was books that prepared me for the Tech Lead role.
You are a leader; therefore, you must understand: if your judgment is listened to and you, as an influencer, can impact the collective mood.
Just around 2012 is when I received a lesson of a lifetime, to appreciate culture differences and how very deep they can get.
In today’s fast-paced world, CFOs must be open to empowering their finance team with AI-based technologies for increasing efficiency and cost-effectiveness.
Being caught in the ‘busy trap’ makes it harder to see that productivity is not based on the number of hours you put in; it’s the time spent creating value.
Colette Wyatt is a Chief Technology Officer at Evolve, an award-winning UK-based software house with an R&D Centre in Ukraine. She's also a Co-Founder and COO of e-bate, a revolutionary platform for rebates management, which attracted £950,000 last year from Mercia Asset Management, the MEIF Proof of Concept & Early Stage Fund, and part of the Midlands Engine Investment Fund.
Use this easy exercise to figure out who is responsible for what. Handy for teams and individuals.
Some of the most toxic managers I have worked with had no clue they were contributing to a toxic work environment. Otherwise pleasant to talk to, these managers seemed to genuinely care about their people. However, what appeared on the outside was not in tune with what went inside their teams. Their good intentions didn’t always translate into the right action.
People with a growth mindset are constantly learning, refining their successes, and improving on their failures. The process is more important than the outcome.
Products are developed, provided, and enhanced by people, and effectively leading them is crucial to achieve product success. But leading stakeholders and development teams requires overcoming six product leadership challenges that range from lacking transactional power to guiding self-organising teams. The description of the challenges below is an extract from my new book How to Lead in Product Management.
Data is critically important for organizational success. As IT professionals, you understand the benefits of establishing clear metrics to gain visibility into how your organization is driving value. The right metrics provide insights into what the organization needs to change and where it is winning.
Being a manager isn’t easy, and anyone who tells you otherwise ain’t doing their job.
In this article, Anton Shashuk, Delivery Manager at Innovecs, shares his own experience and path to engineering leadership.
While making decisions, how often do we optimise for long term gain at the cost of short term pain? A good process for making decisions requires second order thinking which unravels the implications of our decisions by thinking about its consequences in the future. It requires solving problems in a manner that avoids unintentional and unforeseen outcomes.
You’re at the top of the world; you can’t be hurting… depressed… lonely… Can you? Overcome your loneliness through communication and community.
One of the most common mistakes early managers make is to focus on being a "shit shield". Learn why this backfires, and what to do instead.
Since this virus is so contagious that it spreads to other people by contact, the only way possible to curb its spread is to stay away from other people. To help you understand how dangerous this virus is, you need to have a look at Italy. Italy reported its 1st positive case on Feb 20 and till the date, it has One Hundred Four Thousand positive cases with more than Twenty Thousand deaths.
Understanding the severity of the situation, authorities have requested everyone to stay at their home and refrain from going outside. To promote this, companies have advised their employees to work from their home
Remote work (also called telework or telecommuting), has been growing in popularity over the past twenty years. Many organizations allow for flexible worksites on some level: employees work remotely for part of the week, as-needed for minor illness, or when school or childcare is unavailable. However, with a major health concern on the rise, companies of all sizes (including tech giants such as Twitter, Google, Amazon, Facebook, and Microsoft) have transitioned some or all employees to remote work to keep business moving while limiting unnecessary exposure to COVID-19.
For modern tech companies like Amazon and Apple, the infrastructure and policy need for remote working are unquestionably already in place and the vast majority of staff members are probably already laptop users.
For smaller organizations, however, the situation is likely to be different. Remote working is limited to software development and marketing companies. The education sector is a good case in point: universities have been delivering distance learning as a feature for some time, while high schools and others are mainly dependent on staff and pupils being on-site to learn.
Not all bosses are leaders. Right? There’s the difference between managing and leading? An oft-quoted talent expert Marcus Buckingham, saying “people leave managers, not companies.” According to a recent study by Robert Half, 49% of employees surveyed have quit their posts because of a bad boss.
12 tips that help ensure that even when your team is working from home, they will still have the chance to grow and develop despite the lack of physical contact
Every individual has strengths and weaknesses; it’s easy as a hiring manager to hire people who display similar strengths as yourself. That’s because these strengths are easier to identify since you have experience and interest in said area and more confidence in your evaluation. However, people like you may also have similar blindspots. These blindspots, amplified on a group of people, will become much more detrimental. As a manager, I would want to reduce the number of weak areas on my team.
Thinking of transitioning away from Engineering Manager to Individual Contributor? That is exactly what I did! Let me tell you a little bit about it.
A discussion on hurdles faced by women in achieving leadership goals and how to overcome them.
In our rapidly evolving work-from-anywhere world, employee downtime and productivity are rising concerns.
To reach Gen-Z, brands cannot ignore gaming as a channel. Some brands have already begun capitalizing on these platforms.
What are the key leadership qualities that inspire teams to build amazing products?
That's likely a question that you've never asked yourself, but as a manager, it's an important one. Career conversations are an important part of career development. We’re going to define 5 levels that will make it easier for you to have a better career conversation. Through self-reflection or 360 feedback, it should be relatively easy to know where you stand. You can then set the next highest level as a tangible goal to improve.
Have you ever thought that you have to develop pretty much the same skills if you want to become CMO, CCO, CPO, and basically Chief Anything Officer?
The PDIG framework covers the way people work together.
What makes an effective general manager?
When we think of giving feedback, we promptly think about correcting others. But giving feedback is as much about telling others what they are doing right as it is about telling them what they are doing wrong.
What can make us incredibly valuable at work - our willingness to disagree openly and commit to helping others succeed or sticking to our arguments even when others have moved forward and a decision has been made.
How to become a better data leader that the data engineers love?
One of the key things that makes leaders effective is the ability to orient themselves. Leaders make their own problems. This post shares how to do that.
For CEOs, letting go of employees is always one of the most difficult parts of the job. It is all the harder when layoffs are the result of external circumstances over which companies have no control, like the current global health crisis. As a result of the shrinking economy, many companies have had to make very difficult staffing reduction decisions.
The Unavoidable Essence of a Product Manager Role: How to succeed as a Change Manager through the power of Narratives.
What is Agile Data-Driven?
Humans are social creatures who seek personal validation based on how others interact with them. We feel good and important when others share our belief system and dejected when there’s a conflict of opinions.
Management and leadership in technical writing should not be either/or, and requires new perspectives on roles, hierarchy, vision and goals.
Here are 4 ways that an HR department can help overcome challenges in the workplace that hold back many businesses that do not have such facilities available.
TL; DR: Agile Leadership
We humans crave a perfectly ordered world though the chances of something going as intended is fairly rare. When there’s more than one human being involved in the equation, the predictability goes for a further toss. What do we do when things do not turn out as intended? Instead of being curious and trying to learn from the situation, our mind assumes the worst possibility.
During my tenure at Amazon, the teams I was leading used to follow a very effective scrum process. It was made possible by an internal tool called SIM, which was integrated with various other internal tools, enabling a seamless project management experience.
Starting in 2009, I've worked as a software engineer, lead developer, engineering manager, vice-president of engineering, and chief product officer. During this journey, I had the opportunity to support talented engineers in different career transitions, from individual contributor to lead developer, from lead developer to engineering manager. I found many shared struggles while mentoring them; that's why I'm writing a series on how to get prepared to move into these positions.
Lomit Patel, Chief Growth Officer at Tynker, provides an overview of the pros and cons when building or buying an AI martech solution to capitlise on growth.
Identity capital is the accumulation of our personal assets, in other words, a culmination of things that make us who we are.
Failure may be the most important part of the human experience. So why not run towards it?
Creativity goes hand-in-hand with innovation, and it’s hardly possible to imagine a startup without a spark of creative thought. But what if there are processes that are stifling your team’s full creative potential, making it harder to work, develop, and stay ahead of the competition? What are the key elements that inspire creativity within a team, and how can team leaders help? This practical guide summarizes the most effective methods, as well as mistakes to watch out for.
Annie leads the business operations platform engineering group within Square’s platform & infrastructure organization. Prior to Square, she worked at a number of startups across a spectrum of industries from consumer products to enterprise solutions, as well as a wide variety of teams from sales to engineering. Having worked with many different managers, she’s formed her own leadership philosophies.
You’re a manager and you want to add value. You want to help your team perform better and love their job at the same time. What can you do?
The science behind becoming your own personal tyrant
I was 24 years old. A baby.
Have you ever heard of the north-star, it's consistently present in the sky of northern hemisphere and was the traditional way sailors aligned their course corrections at nighttime. Your company leadership provide your north-star (Values and Objectives) for aiding decision making. Mid level managers need to learn to balance the feedback from the teams with the direction of leadership.
The Cynefin Framework helps leaders to make decisions in context, distinguishing different domains to match the reality before apply the right management tool.
Gathering context and showing empathy may be the most difficult parts of a performance review, but they’re also the most important — this year, more than ever.
Hank Scorpio achieved something special in The Simpsons.
He got Homer Simpson to CARE about his job.
How did he do it?
Your underperforming team needs help and you can create positive change by giving transformative constructive feedback to employees with these skills.
Balach Hussain is a founder and Product Manager from Germany, who’s been nominated in the Future Heroes Noonies Award Category. In this brief but wide-ranging interview, one of Hacker Noon's all-time top Contributors shares current personal perspectives on everything from AI and robotics to mindfulness and social equity.
For many leaders, recent progress can be difficult. It's not that we're not interested in performing at a high level and delivering the best results to our clients. Many of us ask ourselves:
Today's interview is with Marek Tihkan, CTO at Dashbird talking all about Dev team leadership and management.
Companies need to adapt to the changes necessary in a hybrid workspace to set employees up for success.
All managers struggle with the fine balance between doing work that achieves short term goals vs investing time in activities with long term benefits.
We gravitate towards people who are like us and will most likely believe what we believe. Doesn’t it feel good when others conform to our ideas? Who likes being told that they are not right or what they believe is far from reality?
Engineers often complain about product strategy, but this post goes through why it is so hard and how to avoid common pitfalls.
Recently, I read a blog post titled "VPE and CTO — The first 90 days". It’s a brief article in which James Turnbull shows a mind map with four areas that “every new technical leader needs to, at least, think about and explore when starting at a new organization.”
It’s hard to believe, but it has already been a year since Russia attacked Ukraine without any provocation, rhyme, or reason.
Leadership Defined: Deconstructing the Buzzword
As a Ukrainian company, "business as usual" has since lost its meaning. Here are some lessons we've learned under the immense pressure of a new normal.
Make a plan. Be transparent about the plan. Keep everybody updated as the plan unfolds and evolves.
The emergence of ChatGPT has stirred major buzz around the world and massive disruptions across multiple industries.
Mindfulness: Paying attention, on purpose, in the present moment, without judgement.
Process gates are a common leadership trap you may not even realize you’re making: adding steps that require someone to do something. They often backfire!
Hey, I've been nominated for the Noonies 2022 and this is my interview to help you know more about me and how I worked to become an engineering manager
Duke Leto might have been your favorite fictional character, but I'm not sure that you would like and support him as your business leader.
Some discomfort is natural if you have recently moved from an individual contributor to a manager position.
Here are five key skills needed for the modern CMO to succeed including the ability to be data-driven and an understanding of digital transformations.
Debugging in practice means getting lost on tangents, trying to look good in front of your subordinates and doing just a little bit of debugging on the side.
Reverse mentoring occurs when young people become mentors of executives to guide them on various topics of strategic and cultural relevance.
In this article, Taras Lazoriv, Advanced Software Engineer at Innovecs, shares his leadership experience and thoughts on growing an engineering team.
Taking on a management role in engineering may be daunting at first. Here are some tips for getting through the initial period, based on my experience.
Employee deceit comes as a serious stun, especially when you put time and cost in offering comfort and direction during the employer and employee business relationship. The double-crossing can be destroying both by and by and inside the setting of organization resources. At the point when charges of employee deceptive nature surface, make quick move to decide the veracity of the cases and the degree of misfortunes the organization may endure. In any case, don't come to untimely end results until a full work environment investigation is finished.
What motivates employees? 4 psychological theories of motivation show why intrinsic motivators such as leadership development are surpassing traditional perks.
Think of a leader who constantly gives you advice, occasionally asks a question only to respond with their own opinion without giving you a chance to speak up your mind, interrupts you and doesn’t let you complete your thoughts, pretends to listen by nodding their head or making sounds like “aha..hmm…” when you can see that they are clearly distracted or those who don’t bother to ask a single question and leave you wondering what to make out of the one-sided conversation.
Dr. Kimberly Janson | How To Unleash Your Leadership Potential
I learned the hard way that the secret to getting ahead is not just doing great work, it also requires the ability to navigate office politics, not in an insincere or manipulative way, but rather as a skill to better handle the politics that goes on inside your organization. You simply can’t win people based on logic and rationality.
Seven steps for planning, approaching and delivering bad news in the workplace
The advent of new algorithms, faster processing, and massive, cloud-based data makes it possible to use AI to drive better performance marketing results.
The system we grew up with is a mess.
If you are looking for opportunities to advance faster in your career, mentorship and executive sponsorship may be for you.
When you are part of a group, do you speak up and voice your opinion or avoid criticism and choose a path of less conflicts. When popularity takes priority over individual responsibility, people develop a tendency to conform to ideas and beliefs that lead to conservative thinking, ignore potential signs of failure, and make decisions with incomplete and biased information leading to groupthink.
If we wish to communicate effectively, we must understand how culture affects communication. Here's a communication design to avoid conflicts and uncertainty.
While the change demands letting go of our existing identity and embracing new ones with openness, it’s our mindset that determines what we make of our mindset.
At its heart, scaling a team is about matching skills to problems. In this piece, we share a guide about scaling backend API software development teams
Building and maintaining strong relationships can be a challenging endeavor.
The ability to think big is the first step to break out of our bubble of self-imposed limits and to channel our energies to explore a bigger and better future.
Self awareness may be the new key to both workplace success and mental health. Here's how self awareness training can improve productivity, empathy, diversity.
Best practices for building a data team at a hypergrowth startup, from hiring your first data engineer to IPO.
Given the breadth of applications for artificial intelligence in growth marketing, it’s essential to consider the benefits of leveraging marketing automation.
The most successful companies take the greatest care of their people. Here are few things your should take into consideration to enable your growth.
On June 30th, 2020 my new book, The Humility Imperative — Effective Leadership in an Era of Arrogance — will be released.
I explain why mentors are like magic mushrooms and share six of the main ways that getting a mentor can help you develop professionally and personally.
Leadership qualities like integrity, humility, focus, confidence, transparency, inspiration, passion, accountability, vision, innovation, patience, authenticity, open-mindedness, decisiveness, affectionate, generosity, persistence and insightfulness are beautiful words that look good on pictures and posters that adorn the wall of offices.
Andrii Poddubnyi, an Engineering Director at Innovecs, shared his trajectory and important lessons and outlined the role of people in his career path.
Are you being the best leader you can be? Is your leader effective? here are some useful tips on how to do better.
Why is time management important in a team?
Read the post to know the importance of developing reading habbit to lead in life. Online reading tutors helps a lot to success in the same.
Many articles, books, podcasts, and videos these days convey the importance of failure in shaping our future.
Leading and motivating remote teams will be crucial to being a successful leader in this new hybrid world. Let’s explore how to be a good leader today.
A strategic roadmap is a guide from your current state to your desired future state. It is a helpful tool to set up and every leader should have developed one.
Half of the world is in quarantine due to the corona-virus outbreak, and most of the people have no clue how to use this time for developing new skills.
Sharing my observation from watching Ford Vs Ferrari, how a Ford sports car team wins a 24 hours long car race and their journey to build solid product.
There are many contenders for the Oxford Word of the Year in 2020. The award - which can also be a phrase - is awarded as a reflection of the ethos, mood, or preoccupations of that particular year.
How do I balance myself on the confidence humility see-saw? What if my confidence is seen as arrogance or my humility as a sign of my lack of assertiveness. How do I come across right?
It’s an understatement to say that the world is facing never-before-seen problems. But never-before-seen problems have, and always will be, met with innovative solutions. Those solutions may come from startups, they may come from established companies, but regardless, the leaders of those companies no longer have to navigate this new landscape alone.
Conflict arises at the individual or team level in varying situations; it’s part of the human story of working together.
Here are six practical tips on how to bring authenticity into your startup's marketing strategy.
Being a successful Engineering Manager is not easy. Learn about 4 common pitfalls of failure that Engineering Managers need to watch out for.
The most popular goal-setting frameworks — FAST goals, SMART goals, OKRs — break when it comes to the engineering department.
The cornerstone of every framework is specificity, but most engineering departments run on benchmarks and estimations that are vague, subjective, or constantly in flux. Common project measurements, like story points or t-shirt sizes, lack objectivity. And while lists of completed features are definite cause for celebration, they’re too broad to provide insight into the actual work being done by the engineering department.
To get specific, you need data. With information from your VCS, it’s possible to gain visibility into your development workflow and spot opportunities for advancement.
Subjective measurements, like t-shirt sizes and story points, can be replaced with objective metrics that are comparable across projects and teams. For example:
There is an inherent conflict between the product leader and the CEO, which can often be summarized into one question: who has the final say. To start resolving
Following is the never-before published introduction for The Humility Imperative, releasing June 30th, 2020.
Marlene Ronstedt is the co-founder of the Data Union DAO.
The five methods of facilitation I use to create collaborative meetings from over a decade of experience as a software engineering leader.
Standard Operating Procedures are boring and the furthest thing from exciting but setting them up for your team will improve their performance significantly.
The most sought-after jobs for generations have generally been the more prestigious graduate positions with large corporate companies such as banks or law firms. This has seen countless talented graduates becoming stuck on that notorious conveyer belt of corporate life. But many graduates over recent years, especially millennials, are finding that these positions aren't that glamorous after all and are ditching corporate jobs to work for a startup instead.
Telling your team to stop bringing you problems creates an environment in which employees don’t feel safe talking about the real issues.
Project Economy is another new way people are learning to make money in the world buy working from one project to another, using their skills to add value.
There are too many agile meetings that tech teams use. Save by adopting the essential types of agile meetings I use on my teams.
IT was once thought of as a purely supportive function, one whose primary responsibility was “keeping the lights on,” so to speak. Today, however — as technology has come to permeate every element of our lives and our companies — IT has become a crucial business asset, fundamental to maintaining sound operations and to driving business forward more generally.
The leadership I’ve learned through life could be summed up and put on the front of a t-shirt, “95% of the leadership skills I learned, I learned in the Army.” If that saying isn't already a thing: ™️. Though I left the U.S. Army a little over 20 years ago, I still stand by that statement.
Your company leadership provide your north-star (Values and Objectives) for aiding decision making. Midlevel managers need to learn to balance the feedback from the teams with the direction of leadership.
High performers in any organisation aren’t easy to manage. With their uncanny ability to produce outstanding work and an appetite to solve tough problems, they demand even greater attention and engagement from their managers.
In a world where the fight for talent is fierce incentivising your developers in non-monetary ways is key to retain your best employees and encourage them on.
Raji Arasu is the visionary mind and engineering leader that occupies the position of SVP of Engineering at Intuit, making her one of the few female leaders at a major technology company. She is aware of this thing and supports women leaders in technology both within the company and across the industry.
Do You Know What Your Values Are?
How can we transform from the command and control style to leveraging the power of self-direction that energises and engages people?
Does it ever cross your mind that praise can be negative? I guess not. After all, it looks harmless and seems to be quite effective. Conventional wisdom says that if you praise people, they are motivated to do better.
You may have heard of People Intelligence platforms—albeit these solutions you may have encountered focused very much on the pre-hire stages of your employee experience versus the day-to-day post-hire segment of their experience. People Intelligence can be defined as the combination of strategies and technologies used by organizations for statistical and data-driven analysis of performance, productivity, and business information. People Intelligence platforms can make sense of disparate people-generated data by transforming the information into actionable insights that impact a business’ operations.
I once watched an intern deftly answer an offhand question faster and more thoroughly than a room full of big shots and tech veterans.
Since my previous article about COVID Innovations, in which I highlighted 20 ordinary professionals and companies undertaking extraordinary actions to drive change to tackle this pandemic, new change makers have emerged on the horizon. Acting as role models worthy of our admiration and attention, more and more industry giants are taking the lead, including:
Use this advice to lead an existing engineering team to success, regardless of different coding languages or systems.
Have you noticed what happens when someone asks you a really good open ended question? Your mood shifts and body language changes as your mind sets on a quest to look within, think deeply, and churn out ideas. The endorphin rush that comes from exploring uncharted territories triggers a positive feeling in the body.
In the professional world, your network is your biggest asset in creating or securing those career opportunities.
I vividly remember the day I read about Arianna Huffington, the founder and CEO of Thrive Global. She had collapsed from sleep deprivation and exhaustion, hit her head on the corner of her desk, broke her cheekbone and woke up in a pool of blood. I read the story many years later after it happened while working for a fast-growth startup feeling tired and exhausted from the daily demands and expectations from the job. I was someone who always prioritized my mental health and while I knew that I was nowhere close to being burnt out, the story left me with a trembling sensation, a feeling of fear and anxiety in that moment.
Conducting exit interviews correctly and taking retention actions can have an impact on the organisations' happiness and bottom-line profitability.
Emotional intelligence is critical for leadership success, employee performance, and teamwork. Learn to develop your EI with coaching app LIFE Intelligence.
It is important to realize that we have the ability to manufacture our own fate when we want to. We can… proceed when things look bad, or we can find plenty of reasons to quit if we don’t want to go forward. – Eric Haney, Inside Delta Force
Photo by Christian Wiediger on Unsplash
We feel vulnerable. But instead of embracing vulnerability, accepting our fears, and leading with curiosity, we put on a shield of protection.
We have all had relationships that are built on trust and those that are not. If you look back to those experiences, you can clearly say that there’s a significant difference between them. Not only in the quality of your experiences, but also the outcomes you achieved.
One of the essential qualities to Tom Brady’s game is his leadership skills to get the maximum talent and productivity out of his teams to become the GOAT.
Learn how to give positive feedback to colleagues with examples built off the SBIR process. Make it memorable by using specific examples.
Startups are all about the capabilities of a team. A company is not the creation of one individual, but rather the outcome collective contributions of a small army. Hence, hands down the most important thing you do as a startup founder is hiring the leaders who are responsible for building their respected functional teams.
The 50/10 method is simple. It says work for fifty minutes; rest for ten minutes.
One of the most harmful behaviors I’ve observed in ineffective leadership is a tendency to add chaos when one enters a room. Chaos comes in many flavors: A decision was reached about an important architecture question weeks ago, but someone suddenly insists that you revisit the project’s fundamental goals at the 11th hour. An executive insists that their project is most important, and pushes it onto the roadmap. Or maybe you leave a productive meeting without concrete next steps, and are right back where you started in a week.
Critical thinking is now frequently identified as one of the most essential skills, if not the most essential, to be successful as a leader in the 21st century
As a leader of an organisation, the question “what needs attention” was always top of my mind. I realised that without taking real inputs from people in the organisation, any decisions I make and the direction I provide will be nothing but my own biased view of what people want, not what they need.
In most organisations, big picture thinking comes off as a seasonal flavour often appearing every few months. Mental gymnastics that goes with determining the “why” - meaning or purpose of goals, promise of a better future, and the excitement of doing something new definitely gets the creative juices flowing. Though not for all, most people in the organisation find this phase highly energising and exhilarating. But does this motivation last long?
I have worked with two different kinds of leaders and managers over the years. The one who believes in fixed abilities and promotes a fixed mindset “those who don’t perform well can never do better” and the other who believes in growing those abilities thereby promoting a growth mindset “people can be coached into improving their skills.”
Is Scrum as universal as it seems to be?
Do we really consider promotion as an important decision of our life that requires careful evaluation aligned with our passions, interest levels and abilities? Is it even offered as a choice?
I have always enjoyed healthy disagreements about my own ideas and opinions at home and at work. They give me a peek into so many unique perspectives and help me see how different the world is around us. I do not agree with everything people say, but I am definitely open to hearing them around.
Philippe Peron is a Chief Delivery Officer of a Leicester-based software house Evolve. He has almost a decade’s experience with building and managing Agile development teams from both the customer and service provider perspectives.
Navigating the culture of a team is more art than science. Let's explore how a team can communicate and collaborate effectively.
Leadership comes in many shapes and forms, sizes, titles or lack thereof, and has a profound impact on whoever and whatever follows. Google defines leadership as "the action of leading a group of people or an organization", and to lead as "organize and direct", "be the principal player of a group", or "set (a process) in motion" among many similar definitions.
I’ve tech-led teams at Facebook, WhatsApp, and Twitter. I’m also a licensed private pilot and have found that there are many lessons from flying that can benefit software engineering teams. In this post, I’d like to share some of these lessons while also providing you an insight into aviation.
An argument with a coworker - conflict of opinion. Working on a project that doesn’t energize you - conflict of interest. Didn’t get the promotion - conflict of growth. Working super hard with no time for personal life - internal conflict. Saying yes to work that doesn’t align with your goals - conflict of priorities. Committed a mistake, but can’t come to terms with accepting responsibility - conflict of values. We don’t realize it, but most interactions at work lead to a major or minor conflict.
I have worked with some excellent managers, people who were not only good at what they did, but also had great leadership potential. Sadly though, these managers didn’t invest in their own growth. They were so busy attending to the daily demands of the management job - putting out fires, resolving production issues, solving for customer escalation, moving from one delivery timeline to another - that they failed to build the skills required to become a great leader some day.
When working in an agile development team, having effective communication is essential. In times of remote working, where teams are distributed, it’s important to ensure that all people on the team are aligned with the goals, sharing knowledge and risks when necessary. 1–1 meetings are a great way to connect and bring people closer. To make these meetings more effective, consider doing them frequently and adapting it and its recurrence according to the participants’ perception.
Everyone does remote meetings nowadays! The culture has changed from having a room with people, drinking coffee, typing at their laptops and guiding discussions through the multitude of subject matters that they have to cover and resolve to… them doing the same thing BUT through their screens.
Organisations spend a huge amount of time and resources to hire smart, talented and self-motivated individuals who show a strong passion and commitment towards their own growth and success of the organisation.
We speak more through our bodies than our words. The posture we assume, expression on our face, hand gestures and our eye movement conveys far more than we would like to expose.
From the desk of a brilliant weirdo #1: If you’re having a hard time getting your team on the same page, I want to let you know that you’re not alone.
Unfortunately, very effective and efficient software engineers are generally very intolerant towards extreme ineffectiveness or inefficiencies, so try hard
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