Transforming teams doesn’t go without its challenges.Let’s look at Tinder’s example. In this episode, Chris O'Brien, Director of Engineering at Tinder, shares his insights on building and leading engineering teams, particularly focusing on turning around existing teams. He discusses transforming teams, transitioning into a leadership role, Tinder’s culture and hiring process and a lot more.Sign up to the Level-up Engineering newsletter!In this interview we're covering:Building a new team by turning another one aroundTransitioning into a leadership roleTinder’s cultureKeeping business, customer and team needs alignedTinder’s hiring processExcerpt from the interview:“Change isn't easy for anyone, especially in the workplace where stability and predictability matter. Switching teams suddenly can be unsettling, and it takes time for people to adapt and build trust with their new colleagues. That's why I've always believed in prioritizing relationship-building. It's something my mentor taught me early on, and it's proven to be invaluable. When there's already a foundation of trust and camaraderie, transitions become smoother, and teams become stronger.”

Scaling engineering teams can happen in a lot of different ways. Let’s take a look at a real-life example, how Fleetio scaled their product and team over the years.Their Principal Software Engineer, Richard Young shares what challenges they faced, the strategies they implemented and gives valuable tips to those who consider joining or scaling a startup. Sign up to the Level-up Engineering newsletter!In this interview we're covering:Fleetio’s approach to scalingFleetio’s approach to hiringMentorship programsScaling as a startupCross-functional collaborationBonus advice for scaling engineering teamsAdvice for engineers joining startupsExcerpt from the interview:“Unlike many startups driven by external investor pressure to rapidly expand, Fleetio charted its own course, prioritizing autonomy and organic growth. This autonomy allowed us to make decisions aligned with our vision and pace of development, a significant draw for me when I joined the company.Navigating the demands of a small engineering team posed its own set of challenges. With just a handful of us, balancing the delivery of customer features with support across various departments like sales, marketing, and product marketing became crucial. Our engineering efforts weren't limited to coding; we had to be nimble in assisting other teams to ensure customer satisfaction and sustained growth.”

Liam Martin, Co-Founder of Time Doctor, debunks myths around remote work and shares valuable tips on managing remote engineering teams so they remain well-aligned in an asynchronous environment. Sign up to the Level-up Engineering newsletter!In this interview we're covering:Finding unbiased informationSocial implicationsState of remote workingAsynchronous team managementRemote work is here to stayExcerpt from the interview:"If you try to force employees back to the office, you'll likely end up with a team of B players, as the top talent will have the freedom to choose how they want to work. Right now, it's a seller's market, especially for engineers.For managers uncomfortable with leading a remote engineering team, I don't have any comforting solutions. The reality is, if you insist on running your engineering team from the office, it's likely to fail. It's a tough truth, but there's no way around it."

Ian Tien, CEO and Co-Founder of Mattermost, talks about these core principles and their impact on his company. He highlights the importance of customer obsession, self-awareness, transparency and earning trust, just to name a few.Sign up to the Level-up Engineering newsletter!In this interview we're covering:Customer-centric approach and its impactEngineering principlesFollowing the engineering principles in day-to-day processesStories of the engineering principles in real life The role of managersFinding the right engineering principles for MattermostAre engineering principles set in stone?Excerpt from the interview:“Great companies are always changing and improving. We never reach a point where we say, "That's it, we've learned everything we need to know." Our values and principles are always evolving as we learn more and as our needs change. For example, we used to have a principle called high standards. It was important when we were struggling with quality issues early on. But as we improved our quality and introduced other principles like earned trust, having high standards started to cause confusion.High standards were sometimes in conflict with our other values. For instance, it clashed with customer obsession when we needed to release features quickly. It also conflicted with high impact when we focused too much on polishing things instead of delivering important changes. So, we decided to remove high standards from our principles. We realized that its role could be filled by other values and that it was causing more confusion than clarity.This shows that our values aren't set in stone. We're always willing to reassess and make changes when needed. Our goal is to create a culture that meets the needs of our team and our customers both now and in the future.”

Gil Broza, Value Delivery & Agile Leadership Expert, gives actionable advice for leaders who want truly great product development. He emphasizes the importance of putting people first, creating a culture of continuous improvement and a lot more.Sign up to the Level-up Engineering newsletter!In this interview we're covering:Why isn’t product development great yet?Improving your software delivery system step by stepPutting people first in practiceThe right mindset for better product deliveryValue delivery system - Next stepsFitness for purposeRevising your value delivery systemReal-life examples of the strategiesExcerpt from the interview:"Success in software development requires continuous improvement, yet many companies seem to plateau after adopting certain methodologies. Few actively strive to enhance their practices throughout the development lifecycle. New methodologies like Scrum, Kanban, and DevOps emerge, but their adoption is often partial and not fully effective. Implementing changes can create unintended consequences, leading to stalled progress. (...)Oftentimes, there's no unified approach to developing successful products, which is concerning for the industry's future success."

Magda Miu, Senior Engineering Manager at Adobe, discusses the importance of mentoring and shares her experiences as both a mentor and mentee. She highlights the benefits of mentoring, explains how she created a program at Adobe, and offers tips for others looking to organize something similar in their organization.Sign up to the Level-up Engineering newsletter!In this interview we're covering:Magda’s personal experience with mentoringHow to seek mentorsMagda’s mentoring program at AdobeKey takeaways from the programExcerpt from the interview:"Many people view mentoring as a one-way street, and understanding that it’s actually a two-way street only comes after you’ve been on both sides: being a mentee and a mentor later on. As a mentee, you may think your mentors won’t gain anything from helping you, but the reality is different. Being a mentor improves your communication skills, so that you can resonate with all sorts of people. You also gain knowledge, because your mentee will share stories and challenges from their industry. If there’s an age gap between the mentor and mentee, it’s also a chance to get new perspectives from a different age group. Last but not least, the feeling of helping others and giving back is just extremely rewarding. It’s an amazing feeling to see your mentee improve in their career."

Dave Yeager, Director of Data Infrastructure at Recurve, shares aspects of healthy organizations, lists some signs of unhealthy ones and gives you actionable tips that you can implement today to make your company a better place to work at. Sign up to the Level-up Engineering newsletter!In this interview we're covering:Creating healthy work environments in bigger vs. smaller organizationsSome aspects of a healthy cultureSpotting an unhealthy cultureThe impact of managersAdvice for managersExcerpt from the interview:“One thing I find very interesting about continuous integration is that it only works if the tests are successful. However, there are endless stories about engineers not understanding why the release failed on the test, so they change the test itself. It’s a good example of a broken company culture - instead of being vulnerable and admitting there’s an unsolved problem that the team needs to address, we just twist the tests around to meet a deadline. This way, nobody’s going to learn anything. Pull requests should be an opportunity for engineers to walk each other through the task, discuss solutions and overcome potential hurdles.”

Mayakrishnan Chakkarapani, Senior Director of Software Engineering at Salesforce, shares interesting insights on how his organization uses Agile to meet business goals and empower developers while doing so. Sign up to the Level-up Engineering newsletter!In this interview we're covering:Agile in SalesforceSome benefits of implementing Agile What to keep in mind when implementing AgileHow to empower developers when following AgileSetting up and managing virtual teamsExcerpt from the interview:"View your organization as a doctor and your customers as patients; getting your customers’ desired business outcomes means you treated a patient. If one of your patients needs surgery, you need to focus on ensuring they recover as quickly as possible. Agile is nothing but an operational procedure ensuring you’re doing the operation methodically and iteratively.  It means you’re running a diagnosis first, then you come up with various techniques, and finally, you perform the operation the best way possible.  But just because you have a thorough pre-surgery process, it doesn’t mean you can neglect postoperative care. You still have to monitor the patient, and if something seems off, you have to do the process all over again. A lot of times, I’ve seen people taking Agile for granted, thinking it’ll solve everything on its own without thinking about the culture or empowering their teams. It leads them to just force people to do more, causing lots of engineers to burn out eventually. What happens with these dysfunctional organizations is that the operation may succeed because they followed Agile, but the patient still died."

Robert Hodges, CEO of Altinity, discusses various important aspects of open source software development. He talks about the decisions every company should make before embarking on an open source journey, the unresolved issues within the community, some interesting predictions about the future of OSS, and a lot more. Sign up to the Level-up Engineering newsletter!In this interview we're covering:Robert’s open source journeyEarly vs. current principlesThe benefits of open sourceCurrent trends in the open source communityOpen source concerns & adviceMain challenges in the future of open sourceExcerpt from the interview:"Releasing your software openly and letting people do anything they want to do with it definitely scares some people. Maybe it’s less of an issue for developers who are just writing a piece of code - as an individual, if someone finds my work useful, I’m pretty happy about it. However, when businesses make their software open source, they might worry about others using it to build a competing product.The problem is, open source software is typically licensed in a way that you can do anything you want with it. You can build a new business out of it, competing against the people who wrote the code in the first place. This can cause real tension, and it’s not fully resolved at this point within the community. To grasp this issue from a philosophical standpoint, Cicero claims that there’s never a conflict between your own interests and doing the right thing. If you shape the problem the correct way, you can do the right thing, and that can also serve you at the same time."

Peter Anderton, Founder of Internal Alignment, shares actionable tips to become a better leader by creating alignment, fighting your own ego, improving your listening skills and appreciating the differences within your team.Sign up to the Level-up Engineering newsletter!In this interview we're covering:Strategies for leadersCreating true diversity comes down to truly appreciating differences  Presenting constructive criticismMore tips for leadersCommon mistakesExcerpt from the interview:"A lot of people talk about leadership as if there’s a magic tool that’ll make everything fall into place. Here’s a secret: it doesn’t exist. In fact, looking for another tool or another technique to solve all of our management problems just creates even more confusion for teams. We need to stop looking for the secret tool and realize that leadership is about mindset. It isn’t a hat you put on when you come into work; it’s the way you think. Until leaders fully grasp this rule, attentive listening might remain a challenge. Leaders will probably think they’re great listeners, but their teams would say otherwise."

Level-up your software engineer career development through other professionals’ stories: meet Max Rudman, CEO of Prodly, who went from IC to CEO over the years and has even founded a startup of his own. He shares interesting details about his career development and gives valuable advice to people interested in a similar path. Sign up to the Level-up Engineering newsletter!In this interview we're covering:Max’s career development Skills for software engineering career developmentChoosing between different opportunities Is being CEO for everyone?Advice for aspiring managersAdvice for aspiring foundersChallenges of CEOsLegacy aimsExcerpt from the interview:"Both in entrepreneurship and product management, you have to say no to a lot more things than you say yes to. How to decide between a yes and a no boils down to what you’re focusing on: what kind of customers you’re serving or what problems you’re trying to solve. Based on this, you can differentiate between opportunities and see what would make your solution stand out in the market. At the beginning of the founding journey, your resources are usually very limited, so you’ll have to be very picky about what you say yes to."

Interview with Varun Mohan, CEO & Co-Founder of Exafunction and Codeium. He gives valuable insights on the considerations of AI deployment in the enterprise and shares his own thoughts and predictions on what the future holds for these models.Sign up to the Level-up Engineering newsletter!In this interview we're covering:Considerations of AI deploymentBenefits of deploying AI in the enterpriseConcerns regarding AI deploymentTypical mistakes when deploying AIExcerpt from the interview:"When I think about the last 40 years, there hasn’t been a sparsity of software in the world; there are just more and more software companies providing more and more value. Every ten years, we’re having larger IPOs, and more companies are building systems that can automate different parts of enterprises. There’s more software that can be consumed and generated across companies, but that doesn’t reduce the need for employees. It’ll just increase the value businesses can provide. Perhaps in the future, AI systems are going to understand more and more company-wide context over time, which is a big gap in their knowledge currently. When they’re able to piece together more information from your systems, your documents in the cloud and your other products, they’ll aid humans to be even more productive and perhaps even enable stronger cross-functional collaboration."

Interview with Dan Lines, CPO and Co-Founder of LinearB. He talks about the importance of representing engineering teams and gives valuable advice on how to start communicating your team’s impact.Sign up to the Level-up Engineering newsletter!In this interview we're covering:The importance of communicating your engineering team’s impact Tips to get started on representing your engineersCommunication channels to useTypical mistakesStorytime: Founding LinearB to track KPIsExcerpt from the interview:"We’re in the golden era of engineering leadership. I don’t think there’s ever been a better time to be VP of Engineering or a manager or director. The reason is, a lot of companies are product-focused, and software is the key to their success - when you’re an engineering leader in that environment, the business is relying on your expertise a lot. There’s a stereotype that executives tell engineering teams what they want, and they just build it without any desire to be at board meetings and have a say in business-level goals. That’s not the case anymore. It’s becoming more and more expected from engineering leaders to be actively involved in business discussions, as they drive one of the most impactful and expensive departments of the company. Being part of these conversations also helps tech leaders allocate their engineering resources more effectively."

Interview with Joey Wilhelm, Security Engineer at Pinwheel. He talks about the benefits of open source software and gives great advice for companies who want to join the open source community. Sign up to the Level-up Engineering newsletter!In this interview we're covering:Getting to know open sourceBenefits of open source softwareOpen source vs. proprietary software from a security perspectiveCommon mistakes of releasing open source software Storytime: Becoming an open source advocateOpen source at PinwheelExcerpt from the interview:"There’s a common misconception about contributing to open source projects. A lot of people will say that it’s just altruism; you’re expected to work on projects for free. However, that’s not entirely true. By being active in the open source community, you’re building a public portfolio - even if you don’t work for prestigious companies like Google or Microsoft, you can contribute to their products, which improves your software engineer resume. As you build more, you’ll build an impressive library of contributions, which will help you stand out from the crowd in any job application. "

Interview with Yaron Perlman, author of the book DevStreams: Scaling Software Delivery. Naturally. He talks about the main ideas of DevStreams - a new paradigm for scaling software delivery. Sign up to the Level-up Engineering newsletter!In this interview we're covering:Defining DevStreamsMain ideas of the book DevStreamsDevStream’s impactWhat type of companies benefit most from DevStreamsImplementing DevStreams Common objections regarding DevStreamsExcerpt from the interview:"After publishing the book, some VPs told me they liked the concept, but didn’t find it realistic to have streams where everyone does everything proficiently. My answer is, how do you know? Have you tried it?When you start experimenting with the paradigm, you'll see that it’s not that far-fetched. Especially with today’s technological advancements in AI, it’s easier to pick up new skills than it was a year ago. We have so many tools available to make our work more effective, and our technology landscape is changing rapidly that it really merits a new paradigm. "

Interview with Alan Watkins, CEO and Founder of Complete. He talks about managing workplace stress through breathing techniques and overcoming our animal instincts.Sign up to the Level-up Engineering newsletter!

Interview with Morgan Teachworth, VP of Engineering at Cisco Meraki. He shares valuable insights on building and managing innovation-oriented teams.Sign up to the Level-up Engineering newsletter!In this interview we're covering:Defining innovationEncouraging innovation at workBuilding teams that prioritize innovationCommon pitfalls when focusing on innovation

Interview with Gopal Erinjippurath, CTO and Head of Product at Sust Global. He shares valuable insights on how to build and manage analytics engineering teams.Sign up to the Level-up Engineering newsletter!In this interview we're covering:Analytics engineering 101Success metricsAssembling analytics engineering teamsProcessesToolsCommon pitfallsExcerpt from the interview:"We’re a mission-driven team that wants to serve the environment and businesses as well. We’re looking at business impact and expertise, so we like to hire engineers who have the required skill set of climate modeling, remote sensing, machine learning and platform engineering and who also resonate with our mission. There’s an increased drive across junior and mid-level engineers to work in a climate-related field and to use technology to combat the climate crisis. There has never been a better time to get into the field of climate, and it benefits both parties. The companies are very lucky to have access to this kind of talent, and engineers who want to work in this field can choose from a lot of jobs recently."Click here to read the full interview!

Interview with Sophie Wade, Founder of Flexcel Network. She talks about quiet quitting and how empathy can help employees and leaders deal with difficult workplace situations. Sign up to the Level-up Engineering newsletter!In this interview we're covering:Defining quiet quittingQuiet quitting vs. Acting your wageQuiet quitting nowadays vs. in the pastHow to prevent quiet quitting as an employeeHow to prevent quiet quitting as a leaderExcerpt from the interview:"If a particular area of your job motivates you, you can tell your manager you’d like to do more of that. Offer some suggestions and see what you can do to contribute to the company in a way that keeps you motivated. It’s a win-win situation: not only will the company benefit from your work, but you can also surround yourself with enjoyable tasks and projects while improving your skillset, which makes you a better professional in your field. People may quiet quit because they had already made such suggestions to their bosses, but their ideas got shut down and they were stuck with a role that no longer fulfilled them. It might be true that the company is not interested in doing what they brought up, but too many nos take a toll on people’s motivation, and they might decide they aren’t going to bother coming up with new ideas anymore."Click here to read the full interview!

Interview with Hadi Hariri, VP of Developer Advocacy at JetBrains. He talks about the challenge of dealing with the constant influx of information, creating processes to manage information overload, and the importance of interpersonal skills in the workplace.Sign up to the Level-up Engineering newsletter!In this interview we're covering:Defining information overload Dealing with information overloadPossible drawbacks of poor information managementMethods to track relevant informationDealing with information overload as EMs and ICsJetBrain's approach to managing informationFinding the golden meanExcerpt from the interview:"Tooling doesn’t help you decide what to push and what to pull, because the issue isn’t rooted in your tech stack. It’s a people problem, and it has to be approached as such. When we talk about leadership and management, one of the characteristics that a leader must have is being able to see the bigger picture. They don’t just focus on the team they manage, but how their work relates to other teams’ work inside the company, and how that relates to products and services. Having this company-wide vision contributes to deciding what’s important and what’s unnecessary noise for each team."Click here to read the full interview!

Interview with Rod Garcia, VP of Engineering at Slack. He talks about the importance of understanding the big picture before implementing processes, shares the steps he uses to determine if a process needs improvement, and tells stories of process management from previous projects and from his current workplace.Sign up to the Level-up Engineering newsletter!In this interview we're covering:Process management 101Creating engaging processesMaking sure your processes workCommon mistakes in process managementAutomating processes at SlackCreating more efficient and engaging processes - StorytimeExcerpt from the interview:"We often feel the need to balance every confusing behavior with a process. The outcome isn’t great because a process doesn’t improve human behavior. Instead of processes, behavior problems can be solved by coaching conversations or retrospective team meetings. Processes enable us to collaborate much easier, but it’s the trust among teammates that powers the process. These two aspects have a snowball effect: when the challenges in behavior continue despite having a process in place, the team gets frustrated, which causes even more problems, so they introduce additional processes. It becomes a slippery slope, and it doesn’t help teams to do their work effectively."Click here to read the full interview!

Interview with James Stanier, Director of Engineering at Shopify. He talks about setting yourself up for success by planning for the unexpected, goal- and achievement tracking and keeping your calendar under control. Sign up to the Level-up Engineering newsletter!In this interview we're covering:Reasons to manage your energy, not your timeTips to manage your energyAspects of managing your energy, not your time Energy management for senior leaders vs. ICsCommunication with colleagues while managing your energyExcerpt from the interview:"I have flexibility over my calendar. I’m in a high-intensity environment, but I have more time than I used to. I have noticed that my previous habits didn’t suit my current situation, and I realized that managing my energy was more important than managing my time. "Click here to read the full interview!

Interview with Steven Lopez, VP of Engineering, Technology and Operations at Deem. We go through real life examples and take a deep dive into choosing the right tech stack for your business and team, especially while leading a digital transformation.Sign up to the Level-up Engineering newsletter!In this interview we're covering:Parts of a tech stackChoosing a tech stack for a project vs. digital transformationOther tools to consider when choosing a tech stackHow to choose a tech stack connected to company valuesThe process of digital transformationCommon mistakes in digital transformationStory of choosing Deem’s tech stackExcerpt from the interview:"You need to make sure to customize the tech stack according to the company’s industry. Each industry has different needs when it comes to choosing the right tech stack. For example, in fields that use credit cards, you have to take PCI security standards into account.Ten to 15 years ago, digital transformations were different. People came up with a tech stack, and they would implement it right away. Technologies are moving so fast nowadays that I recommend defining the tech stack only after you do your due diligence and digital transformation experts have looked at your company thoroughly.In the age of agile implementations, we have to be flexible enough to try new things. We set hypotheses, and we try out whether they work, and we make necessary updates."Click here to read the full interview!

Interview with Álvaro Moya, Founder of LIDR.co. He shares his approach to building high-performance teams. He talks about the importance of clearly defined values and goals within the company, and shares which areas can be improved to foster high performance.Sign up to the Level-up Engineering newsletter!In this interview we're covering:Defining high performance Measuring high performance in software engineeringBuilding high-performance teamsImproving a team's performance Priorities in high-performance teams Advice for leaders on building high-performance teamsSpotting high performers Building a high-performance team from scratchExcerpt from the interview:"Code is easy to alter to make it work better. Doing the same with people takes a lot of time and effort. The more people you have on your team, the more difficult your job is as a leader. You’ll have to make a conscious effort to allocate time for your team.If you want to create a high-performance atmosphere, you have to be consistent. Day after day, you have to be clear about what you value and what you don’t tolerate. Your team will align with these values, and you’ll create psychological safety and a collaborative work environment as a result."Click here to read the full interview!

Interview with Sergej Kunz, Co-founder of 1inch Network. He shares valuable advice on how to start a DAO, and talks about his own experience creating such organization in the DeFi space.Sign up to the Level-up Engineering newsletter!In this interview we're covering:DAO 101The story of 1inch NetworkLessons from starting a DAOParticipating in 1inch NetworkCommunication within the networkExcerpt from the interview:"We built our project over two nights, and we didn’t sleep at all. We went through the hackathon, and pitched our idea to everyone. Someone said that it was going to be the next big thing. A few days later, we recognized that people started using 1inch. They did swaps because they got better rates there than on other platforms. It became famous because we solved a problem with it. When you build something that solves a problem, people will use it because it helps."Click here to read the full interview!

Interview with Lloyd Moore, VP of Engineering at Blockdaemon. He talks about building and keeping well-aligned teams, planning for success, and reacting to the quick changes of the blockchain field. Sign up to the Level-up Engineering newsletter!In this interview we're covering:Introducing BlockdaemonPreparing for scaling Building successful teamsOutsourcing 101Leadership challenges at BlockdaemonResponding to market changes and competitorsExcerpt from the interview:"Having a plan is better than no plan, even if there are some obstacles while executing it. Our plan was to be in a position where we could pivot depending on market needs. We’ve always tried to make plans that enabled us to grow organically instead of creating a grand plan for the next few years. We’ve built some of our components knowing that we may or may not need them in the future, but they allowed us to react to market changes as they were happening."Click here to read the full interview!

Interview with Somer Esat, Senior Engineering Manager at Blizzard. He talks about the role of engineering managers in engineer coaching and career development.Sign up to the Level-up Engineering newsletter!In this interview we're covering:Managers in engineer coachingDaily engineer coachingCoaching engineers in their career developmentSteps in engineers' career developmentCoaching engineers to be flexibleCoaching engineers when choosing tracksChallenges of the leadership trackExcerpt from the interview:"The key is that you’re working with people; they’re not just resources. People have things that happen in their lives, within and outside of work as well. Both are important, because they determine how they feel. You must be ready to manage your team’s feelings. They’re humans, and sometimes they’ll be more excited to be at work, and other times, they’ll be more focused on their personal lives. Engineering managers can ensure that the team is able to talk about these feelings. If you’re not mindful of that, you might as well have robots working with you."Click here to read the full interview!

Interview with Jehanzeb Khan, Senior Software Engineering Manager at Electronic Arts. He shares his tips and experience on implementing OKR performance management.Sign up to the Level-up Engineering newsletter!In this interview we're covering:OKR performance management 101OKRs in practiceOKR-driven vs. non-OKR-driven organizationsChoosing the right goal-setting methodIntroducing OKRs to your teamCommon OKR performance management mistakesExcerpt from the interview:"A few years ago, we were trying to shift to a more quantitative approach in performance management. We wanted to see how the input from engineers added up and how they contributed to the quality and the value of our product. (...)We realized that setting up SMART goals - Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, and Time-Bound goals - wouldn’t be as aligned. For example, we wanted to be the best place for the best people, and provide the best opportunities, but it was hard to set the goals to achieve all these aims. Being “the best place for the best people” is a difficult goal to measure for anyone who’s not a manager working directly with people. It’s challenging to break it down into actionable steps."Click here to read the full interview!

Interview with Ritendra Datta, Director of Engineering at Meta. He gives valuable advice on improving cross-functional collaboration by holding empathy sessions and scaling cross-functional teams mindfully. Sign up to the Level-up Engineering newsletter!In this interview we're covering:Different cross-functional rolesCross-functional collaboration in practiceTips to improve cross-functional collaborationEncouraging respect among cross-functional partners Cross-functional empathy sessionsCommon mistakes during cross-functional collaborationScaling cross-functional teamsInvolving management in growing cross-functional teamsHiring leaders for scalingExcerpt from the interview:"We have cross-functional empathy sessions, where people get together for 4 hours and represent all cross functions. The key tech lead, an IC, a manager, a product manager, a data scientist and a UX researcher will meet somewhere outside of the office, and spend the day talking to each other.They could discuss what they do on a daily basis, and what’s frustrating about it. The representatives of each function gain a better understanding of the different positions, and why the work of each function is valuable and challenging in its own way. Every time we have these cross-functional empathy sessions, everyone goes home humbled by what others are doing and the struggles they’re facing. They realize that everyone is working hard. They often describe it as “an eye-opening experience.” "Click here to read the full interview!

Interview with Tyler Hartley, Director of Software Engineering at Johnson & Johnson. He talks about the philosophies, habits and challenges of truly agile organizations.Sign up to the Level-up Engineering newsletter!In this interview we're covering:The definition of agileCharacteristics of agile organizationsTruly agile practicesBehaviours to encourage When not to choose agileAgile products at J&JChallenges of agile organizationsCommon mistakesBecoming an agile organization - J&J's storyMeasures of success in an agile environmentExcerpt from the interview:"Our team was working on a video recording feature, and we thought that including a passcode would be useful. Surgeons would have exclusive access to the recording tool, and they could ensure that they were the only ones who could start and stop the video.The feedback we got was an unequivocal no. They told us that they wouldn't care about pushing buttons in that high-stress environment, and that they would probably put the passcode on a sticky note on the device, making it pointless. We removed the feature because it didn’t add value. It only created friction."Click here to read the full interview!

Interview with Steve Tauber, CTO at madewithlove. He shares his secrets to productive IT audits from preparation to execution. Sign up to the Level-up Engineering newsletter!In this interview we're covering:The basics of tech auditsDifferent approaches to IT auditsMaking the most out of the IT audit processFlexmail's tech audit storyWhat auditors observeHow to prepare for an IT auditExcerpt from the interview:"We were teaching people how to communicate in a more agile way, and to collaborate effectively. We made sure the code was well-tested, and that everything was documented so we didn’t lose important information.It was more about team shaping and making sure that the work was flowing in a proper way. Of course, there were technical challenges as well, but those were manageable.Since then, the company has grown immensely. We worked with them for a long time, but we’ve stepped away, and they’re thriving.For us, this is success. They took the lessons to heart, they understood our philosophy, and they continue to build on it."Click here to read the full interview!

Interview with Pau Minoves, CTO at Typeform. He talks about leaders' role in managing culture change in the workplace during rapid growth in a company's scaleup phase.Sign up to the Level-up Engineering newsletter!In this interview we're covering:Establishing the right environment for growthCulture change management as a leaderBenefits of strong company cultureChallenges of culture change in the workplaceIntroducing new standards Importance of team autonomyScaling tipsExcerpt from the interview:"When I joined Typeform, there was 20% time dedicated for personal projects on Fridays. It wasn’t working. People try to do things, but there is always somebody missing, and you lose context from Friday to Friday. So we tried a different approach. Instead of working on those projects on Fridays, we dedicated the last 10 days of the quarter to them. Suddenly, people got their Fridays back to do their normal work. On the other hand, they dedicate all their attention to their side projects in these dedicated sprints. During the side project sprints,  on Mondays, we kicked off ideas, and had the demo on the second Friday. It blew our minds: without even asking, around 60% of the projects were product oriented."Click here to read the full interview!

State of Engineering Management 2022 reportInterview with Dylan Hansen, Senior Director of Engineering Enablement & Engagement at Salesforce dicussing the results of the State of Engineering Management 2022 report. We analyze the most interesting findings to get more insight and commentary from a fellow engineering leader.In this interview we're covering:Self-improvement in leadershipHiring and retentionPeople and performance managementEngineering brandRemote workSign up for the Level-up Engineering newsletter!

Interview with David Siegel, CEO at Meetup. He talks about ways the leaders at Meetup and he has been utilizing to motivate employees and combat the Great American Resignation.Sign up to the Level-up Engineering newsletter!In this interview we're covering:Takeaways from the pandemicImproving employee retention and motivationCommunication in a hybrid environmentSupporting leaders at MeetupImproving work-life balanceBuilding a communityCommunicating your mission rightExcerpt from the interview:"I received an email a few days ago from a Meetup organizer. The subject line said, ”Thanks for Meetup.”The email read, "David, I'm grateful for Meetup. My mom is in the hospital, and she's probably going to die. Because of all the great friends I've made through running my groups, I'm not alone. People come over to support me at this difficult time. Thank you!"This is a real story. Every few weeks, I get a few powerful emails like this. As a leader, you need to connect with your customers, and you need to find ways to tell these stories to your team, so they connect with the customers as well."Click here to read the full interview!

Interview with Charles Roman, Technical Director at Respawn Entertainment. He talks about setting up, leading, and scaling the engineering team behind Respawns' upcoming Star Wars FPS with no official title yet.Sign up to the Level-up Engineering newsletter!In this interview we're covering:The path to Respawn EntertainmentAdapting to remote managementHiring video game engineersProcess changesUtilizing feedback in video game engineeringExcerpt from the interview:"Video game development is a cross-disciplinary process. You have artists, designers, and engineers, and you have to keep them aligned. For example, an artist may do something that impacts the performance of the game, so you have to get in front of these problems.This is difficult to manage with a team of 60 people. You can't have a conversation with each of them, so you have to rely on your engineers to gather information on the ground level. You need to create an environment for that and focus on building relationships with other department heads, so the information flow works on each level."Click here to read the full interview!

Interview with Zoe Sobin, Senior Engineering Manager at HubSpot. She tells her story of turning an engineering project into a centralized platform solution and how he managed communication, prioritization and every other challenge along the way.Sign up to the Level-up Engineering newsletter!In this interview we're covering:Signs that you need a platformGetting buy-in for a platform productCommunication in platform engineeringPrioritization in platform engineeringNecessary skills for platform engineersExcerpt from the interview:"The original idea for our project was to have one place for all the core reports. It didn’t start out as a platform engineering project; we just realized along the way that we couldn’t easily plug other reports into one place. We needed to build an end-to-end tool, and we had an opportunity to turn it into a centralized platform that scaled across data types, report types and teams.We built a core reporting platform first, then we worked on our own customer facing applications on top of it. Afterwards, we started talking to teams that had point solutions for reporting about getting these supported by our infrastructure.The difficulty of building a tool for everyone is that it won’t be perfect for anyone. For example, the email team knows what type of reports their customers prefer, and the centralized tool may not fit their needs. In platform engineering, you have to compromise on some functions and build a central solution that works for 80-90% of use cases."Click here to read the full interview!

Interview with Anand Safi, Senior Engineering Leader at Mark43. He covers methods and metrics for building trust in virtual teams while telling his story of taking over a newly founded remote team and scaling it up.Sign up to the Level-up Engineering newsletter!In this interview we're covering:Definition of trust in the workplaceDifferences between building trust in virtual teams vs the officeMethods for building trust in a virtual teamEncouraging team members to build trust among each otherMeasuring trust in a virtual teamFeedback channels in virtual teamsAnand's story of building trust in his virtual teamExcerpt from the interview:"At the organizational level, the metric can be transparency around communication. Once you’ve built trust with individuals, you can build organizational trust on the back of that.As an engineer, I used to think, “I wish leadership would tell us about every problem; there is no reason not to.” As a leader partaking in some of these conversations, I’ve had to realize how fluid strategic decisions are. I prefer going to my reports with concrete information rather than updates on discussions that may change by next week.I put effort into coaching my team to understand the leadership's position. I assure them that we’re working on a strategy, and I’ll make sure to update them when we have a plan to execute. Their reaction lets you know how much they trust the organization."Click here to read the full interview!

Interview with Robert C. Martin a.k.a. Uncle Bob. He explains his views and ideas about the need for a set of software engineering ethics, universal quality standards and how they may translate to reality.Sign up to the Level-up Engineering newsletter!In this interview we're covering:Importance of ethicsApplying ethics to software engineeringCurrent ethical problems in the software industrySelling companies on software engineering ethicsCornerstones of software qualityThought experiments with software engineering ethicsRole of the individuals in creating software ethicsThe deadline on software engineering ethicsExcerpt from the interview:"Currently, software developers carry the lifeblood of civilization. Nothing can function without software, and developers' behavior isn’t in line with that responsibility. I want us programmers to behave in a stalwart way, and acknowledge our responsibility which is likely to keep growing.There have been high profile calamities caused by software over the past decades. Software developers need to start discussions about what may be done before a disaster happens that takes control out of our hands.I expect a disaster to happen eventually that overtakes politics and causes legislation to constrain the software industry. We need to get ahead of this and be ready with a code of ethics and a set of standards by the time the politicians come to regulate us."Click here to read the full interview!

Interview with Ankit Patel, SVP of Engineering at Foursquare. He explains how he realized that Foursquare's decision making process requires a rehaul, and what he did to completely restructure the entire organization to create more efficient decision making.Sign up to the Level-up Engineering newsletter!In this interview we're covering:Organizational decision making issuesNew organization structureFinding the solutionRole of leadership in rebuilding organizational decision makingGetting buy-in from the teamsChanges in hiringCommon mistakes in organizational decision making Excerpt from the interview:"The challenge was enabling fast decision making based on the customers’ needs. Foursquare has been in hypergrowth, and we’d been developing teams based on profession. You often had to cross VP boundaries just to discuss a product feature, and our products require a lot of this type of collaboration.We were slow to innovate, which made it difficult to drive change. You needed at least three to four teams to work together to get anything done. This caused a cascading effect where delays in one team impacted other teams as well.This also made prioritization difficult. When you had an emerging idea, you often needed executive involvement to set up priorities. This slowed down innovation and the overall workflow."Click here to read the full interview!

Interview with Maura Kelly, VP of Engineering at Mailchimp about injecting customer obsession into software engineering. She details organizing an event to actualize customer obsession and promote it across every level of the company and shares everything she's learned along the way.Sign up to the Level-up Engineering newsletter!In this interview we're covering:Customer obsession in software engineeringCustomer obsession eventOrigins of the customer obsession eventGetting buy-in from leadershipGetting buy-in from software engineersFeedback for the customer obsession eventLasting changes on the development processPitfalls of customer obsession Excerpt from the interview:"This idea didn’t originate from one person. It came from different parts of the company. People on different teams and different levels started thinking about similar ideas, and we all came together and made it happen. It came from engineering, management, and from our support team.I had co-conspirators who helped me plan it out and make it happen. Shout out to Mehdi, Lee, Cal, and Ariana for all the help. They were working on their own pitches about similar ideas.We all got together and worked out the common patterns across our ideas that resulted in this event."Click here to read the full interview!

Interview with Mike Seavers, VP of Online Development at Epic Games about becoming a manager of managers. He talks about his hardships as a new director, he tells the story of overcoming them, and shares other stories about coaching other leaders to turn them into great directors.Sign up to the Level-up Engineering newsletter!In this interview we're covering:Differences between managing ICs and managing managersStory of transitioning from manager to directorNecessary skills to managing managersCommon mistakes of new directorsWarning signs for new directorsChoosing from director candidatesSupport from executive leaders to new directorsStory of coaching a director new to managing managersBonus advice to managing managersExcerpt from the interview:"I first became a director and started managing managers about 17 years ago. My team consisted of five sub-teams, about 50 people combined, and I had six or seven managers reporting to me. We were going through an Agile transformation.I spent all my time focusing internally, working with my team. I attended stand-ups, we were teaching Scrum and we were introducing new tooling to manage the Agile process. We changed our release method and other internal processes.I was proud of what we managed to accomplish, but when it came time for performance reviews, I received the worst review of my career. My peers and everyone around me outside my team said in their feedback that they had no relationship with me. They didn’t know what I was doing, they just saw me making changes in engineering without involving the leaders of the project management team, the release management team, or the QA team."Click here to read the full interview!

Interview with Jossie Haines, VP of Engineering and Head of DEI at Tile. She talks about the place of empathy in leadership and in the workplace in general, and shares her stories about mastering empathy and coaching others to lead with empathy as well.Sign up to the Level-up Engineering newsletter!In this interview we're covering:Defining empathy in the workplaceDefining empathetic leadershipInfusing leadership with empathyChallenges of leading with empathy remotelyStory of learning about the importance of empathetic leadershipCoaching leaders towards empathetic leadershipCommon mistakes when leading with empathyExcerpt from the interview:"As a leader, you need to be willing to put yourselves in other people’s shoes, and process what they’re going through. Leaders, especially former engineers, often get into the habit of trying to fix everything.When I switched from engineer to manager, I thought my job was to fix things, but I was wrong. I had to learn that my colleagues don’t need me to fix everything. They need me to help them fix their own problems.The first step towards leading with empathy is listening, reflecting and acknowledging how the other person is feeling."Click here to read the full interview!

Interview with Joseph Gefroh, Engineering Director at HealthSherpa. He goes into detail about preparing a team to scale up. He shares his experiences and tells stories about what processes do you need to put in place, why they're necessary and how you can sell your teams on them.Sign up to the Level-up Engineering newsletter!In this interview we're covering:Defining a team that's ready to scaleThe first challenges of scaling a teamImproving knowledge sharing to scale your teamTop processes to standardize before scaling your teamCreating alignment in your team as you scaleStory about standardizing communication channelsBuilding management as you scale your teamIntroducing new management layers as you scale upProcess to reiterate standardized processesExcerpt from the interview:"At one point, I was in a fundraising company that had no intake process. We had different functions, like finance operations, account management, sales, product, etc.Whenever someone in a different department wanted something from engineering, they directly messaged an engineer or had a conversation with them in the office. The engineers usually agreed to help out, and the rest of the company took it as a commitment that engineering would get them what they needed.This led to weird commitments that nobody was tracking and no one was working on. When the deadlines passed, the teams that made these requests got mad and blamed engineering for committing to help in the first place. The engineering organization turned into a black box, and from the perspective of the rest of the company, we were missing deadlines that we didn’t even know about."Click here to read the full interview!

Interview with James Trunk, VP of Engineering at Griffin. He talks in-depth about coming up with his principles of decision making, the ways you can do the same, and their utility in leadership.Sign up to the Level-up Engineering newsletter!In this interview we're covering:Utilizing your principles of decision makingRole of decision principles in leadershipUsing decision principles with your teamUsing decision principles with your peers and managerDangers of using decision principlesOrigins of the decision principlesTips to create your own decision principlesEvolving your principles of decision making over timeExcerpt from the interview:"I don’t think my principles should be applied by everyone. For example, if you keep picking safe bets, you’ll probably fail to create a competitive advantage as a startup. However, in a corporate environment, safe bets might be a better path for your career.I’ve been collecting my decision principles over time, and they’re based on my experiences. I’ve done a lot of reflection on what has and hasn’t gone well, and which principles have helped me make better decisions and which haven’t. They change over time, and I’ve been keeping track of them over the years.I recommend every leader to come up with their own principles of decision making. You don’t have to treat them as absolute truth. Use them as guidelines that remind you to stop and reflect on whether you’re headed in the right direction."Click here to read the full interview!

Interview with Dylan Hansen, Senior Director of Engineering Enablement and Engagement at Salesforce. He talks about leadership and work-life balance, telling stories and tips about improving it in your own life, and supporting your team in achieving a better work-life awareness as well.Sign up to the Level-up Engineering newsletter!In this interview we're covering:The definition of work-life balanceThe process of improving work-life balance in leadershipStrategies for a healthy work-life balance in leadershipUsing a sabbatical to improve work-life balanceWork-life balance tips for new managersSpotting the signs of burnout in a remote environmentHelping your team improve work-life balanceAsking your team to sacrifice from work-life balanceAction plan for employees failing to hit deadlinesExcerpt from the interview:"When I came back from my sabbatical, I decided to set guardrails around my work time, and I wouldn’t check any work email before 7:00 AM or after 5:30 PM. When I was done, I shut down my laptop and picked it up the next day.This started making me anxious when at 5:00 PM, I found myself with more to do and in the flow, so I knew I could get it all done by 6:00 PM. That goes 30 minutes beyond my pre-set stopping time. These situations made me go through a lot of mental gymnastics.As I examined the situation, I realized that boundaries are great, but you have to be able to flex them to fit in an extra 30 minutes when necessary. You have to be able to make yourself available for irregular events on both sides of the work-life balance."Click here to read the full interview!

Interview with Allison McMillan, Director of Engineering at GitHub. She shares her best virtual offsite ideas, hands out some tips you can try yourself and warns you of the pitfalls to avoid. Real life stories from behind the scenes at GitHub.Sign up to the Level-up Engineering newsletter!In this interview we're covering:Definition of virtual offsitesGround rules for virtual offsitesRealistic expectations for virtual offsitesChallenges of virtual offsitesPreparations for virtual offsitesVirtual offsite ideasExcerpt from the interview:"I consider an offsite a state of mind rather than a physical location.Going to a different location can help you achieve this state of mind. Depending on your preference, it may be a different location at your house, a coffee shop, a coworking location, or a different continent.The idea is to get yourself away from daily tasks and to put your brain into a different gear."Click here to read the full interview!

Interview with Jose Roca, VP of Product and Engineering at Prezi. He tells his story about going from shy kid to great engineering leader, building and scaling Prezi's platform team, overcoming internal resistance on different levels, and much more.Sign up to the Level-up Engineering newsletter!In this interview we're covering:Getting into leadership at PreziScaling yourself with your companyFinding mentors and mentoring othersOvercoming internal resistanceKey leadership skillsBalancing the dual role of VP of Product and EngineringScaling in and out of the officeExcerpt from the interview:"My most controversial move was adding the first full-time product manager to an infrastructure team. The resistance mostly came from the engineers. They didn’t understand what the product manager was going to do, or they didn't think they needed that type of help.I explained everything step by step. We went through everyone’s roles and responsibilities, but the infrastructure engineers have been working without product help for so long, I couldn’t convince them it was going to be helpful. On the other side, I worked closely with the first product manager to make sure he fit into the team, and in time, the engineers started seeing the value of his work.Today, our platform teams always work with product managers and they like it, because they understand what tasks they take off the table, so the engineers can focus more on writing code. Some of the platform engineers enjoy doing interviews with product engineers, but most of them are relieved that the product managers take care of it."Click here to read the full interview!

Interview with Camille Fournier, Managing Director and Head of Platform Engineering at Two Sigma. She talks about the role of platform teams, the most important skills for platform engineers, creating smooth communication with product teams and more!Sign up to the Level-up Engineering newsletter!In this interview we're covering:Definition of a platform engineering teamDifferences between product and platform engineeringPriority differences for product and platform teamsCommunication channels between product and platform teamsCommunication challenges in platform teamsNecessary skills for platform engineersThe time to create a platform engineering teamExcerpt from the interview:"Communication works best when a product team reaches out directly to a team in the platform organization. They can communicate quickly about what they need and find a solution. The more you involve senior leadership in early stages, the slower and more complex the process can be.Sometimes you don’t have a choice but to escalate the situation because the platform team you’re in contact with lacks the bandwidth to address your problem. I aim to provide flexibility for my platform teams to work with their product counterparts, but it has to be balanced.If the platform team is constantly working on fulfilling one-off requests, it hurts productivity. If you see that happening, you need to figure out what the product teams are trying to do, and plan ahead to provide the necessary tooling."Click here to read the full interview!

Interview with Erica Greene, Senior Engineering Manager at Etsy about the importance of writing in software engineering. She goes into details about why you need to write well, how to get good at it, how to coach your team in writing and much more.Sign up to the Level-up Engineering newsletter!In this interview we're covering:The importance of writing in engineering managementWhy is writing important in software engineeringWhy is writing important in meetingsImproving your writing skills as a managerWriting tools for engineering managersCommon mistakes of managersTeaching your team about the importance of writing Excerpt from the interview:"Recently, I had a disagreement with a project manager regarding a project. We had a meeting about it and it was productive, but we didn’t manage to completely resolve the conflict. He suggested that we continue the discussion in a document.We wrote down the points that we agreed on, and the points we disagreed about, and we started a back and forth. He wrote his response and sent it to me, and I could answer when I found some time, and then send it back. We resolved the conflict in about four to five rounds.It was a misunderstanding, and we came to a compromise. It was an efficient way of working out a conflict in written format, which we probably wouldn’t even have tried pre-pandemic, working fully on-site."Click here to read the full interview!

Interview with Pat Kua, former engineering leader, current leadership coach about applying systems thinking to management. We start from the defintion systems thinking and discuss applying it to leadership with clear steps and concrete examples.Sign up to the Level-up Engineering newsletter!In this interview we're covering:The definition of systems thinkingApplying systems thinking to leadershipKey concepts and potential traps of systems thinkingThe steps of applying systems thinkingThe importance of exploration in systems thinkingTools for systems thinkingBonus advice to apply systems thinking in leadershipExcerpt from the interview:"Systems thinking focuses on emergent behavior. It’s about qualities that the individual parts alone don’t possess.Human life is a good example for this. We’re made up of parts, such as skin, brain, etc., but none of these parts can be alive on their own. Life only happens when you combine them.The reductionist view is still important and valuable. Systems thinking is a complement to the classic scientific view. It can help you take a holistic approach to understand complex systems."Click here to read the full interview!

Interview with Radoslav Stankov, Head of Engineering at Product Hunt. He tells stories about him going from IC to Head of Engineering, the different stages he led through Product Hunt, the challenges he faces in product development, his leadership journal and much more.Sign up to the Level-up Engineering newsletter!In this interview we're covering:The evolution of Product Hunt's structureGoing from IC to leaderEvaluating yourself as a leaderThe effects of the pandemic on remote workLeadership challenges in product developmentLearnings about product developmentAnd more!Excerpt from the interview:"I have a technique that I call my manager journal. I write a log of everything that happens every week.This includes the general things, like what I was doing or what core events happened to our system. I also use it to keep track of what I’m worried about that week. For example, there might have been an outage, or an argument in my team, or some of my points didn’t go through.For example, my concern right now is the design system we’re building. My main concern was balancing its flexibility with performance. I write these in my journal every week and check back every month to track how my concerns have changed and to see whether they’d been resolved."Click here to read the full interview!

Interview with Tom Sommer, Director of Engineering at Redbubble about creating an internship program for software engineers. Tom tells stories about setting up the internship program at Redbubble and the iterations they've gone through over the years to give you a headstart at building your own program.Sign up to the Level-up Engineering newsletter!In this interview we're covering:Mistakes while creating an internship program for software engineersRecruiting to an internship programEvaluating candidates going into the programEvaluating candidates at the end of the programChoosing teams and mentors for internsStages and expectations in an internship programExcerpt from the interview:"Early on, we put the new interns into their own team, gave them a task to rewrite a system or a project for us, and checked in on them periodically. The point wasn’t to test whether they could do it, but we thought it was a good way to gain experience.It didn’t work out well.This is why we transitioned to embedding interns into teams to give them the full experience of working on a product engineering team."Click here to read the full interview!

Interview with Lara Hogan, legendary leadership coach and former engineering leader about building a performance review process. Lara goes into detail about building a process from the bottom up and takes a deep dive into synthesizing and delivering feedback to your direct reports for maximum effectiveness.Sign up to the Level-up Engineering newsletter!In this interview we're covering:Definition of performance reviewsSteps of a performance review processPreparation tips for giving and receiving feedbackRules to giving feedback based on a performance reviewSharpening your skills in giving feedbackSupporting your team to give feedbackExcerpt from the interview:"You want to make a performance review discussion a two-way conversation.I’ve seen people say that you should end your feedback with a request like, “Could you pick up more tickets, please?” I consider this a terrible way to deliver feedback that shuts down any chance of a conversation.Leading questions may serve you well in a toxic situation, or when working out a performance improvement plan. When it comes to delivering constructive criticism in a regular performance review, make it a two-way conversation. This is the best you can do for everybody."Click here to read the full interview!

Interview with Greg Dick, Senior Engineering Manager at Hudl about building engagement with remote employees in distributed teams. They miss out on a lot of professional and personal interactions, and don't integrate well into the team. Check out Greg's tips to learn how you can kickstart that process as a manager!Sign up to the Level-up Engineering newsletter!In this interview we're covering:Definition of remote employees and distributed teamsIntegrating remote employees to distributed teams vs remote teamsChallenges of managing remote employees in a distributed teamEngaging remote employees in the office chit chatEngaging remote emplyoees in team building activitiesTips to set up the office to better engage remote employeesManaging the return to the office in distributed teamsIncreasing retention by getting remote employees engagedExcerpt from the interview:"A few years ago, I had a remote member on my team who left the company after about a year. I asked him what happened and he said, “I saw all the cool stuff you all were doing in the office and I wanted that too.” It turns out, he considered moving to Lincoln to work with us in the office, but he had family ties, so he ended up joining a local company that had a similar culture to ours.This left me wondering how much of this is our fault for bombarding him with reminders and videos of the office events. These might feed his feeling of being left out. Holding events every few weeks was an integral part of our engineering culture, but you had to be in Lincoln to partake.Currently, we make our events visible in a way that if somebody is interested, it’s easy to find them. This is valuable to remote employees when they’re looking for times to visit headquarters. Looking at the calendar and picking the events they like makes this choice easier."Click here to read the full interview!

Interview with Michael Lopp, Rands about his time as VP of Product Engineering at Slack. He tells stories about the darkest day of Slack, the mistakes he made along the way and how he grew into his executive role.Sign up to the Level-up Engineering newsletter!In this interview we're covering:Leadership takeaways from SlackThe darkest day of SlackTactical vs strategic focus as VP of Product EngineeringRetaining your direct reportsCreating processes before they're necessaryThe experience of Slack going publicStory about telling the truthAnd much more!Excerpt from the interview:"I suggest executives in growing companies tell the truth as quickly as possible.It’s great advice, but this story is about how it backfires. Really, this was a failure on my part as a senior leader, and it flowed from this approach. If I get a question, I answer it. If you ask, “How are we doing on hiring women in engineering?” I’ll say, “Here’s the answer and here’s the data.”At Slack, we had a lot of data come in about hiring in a big spreadsheet. It’s data like the number of people hired, diversity in hiring, and so on..."Click here to read the full interview!

Interview with Mark Kinsella, VP of Engineering at Opendoor about what makes entrepreneurial engineers great and how to lead them. We go in-depth from the definition through the key qualities of entrepreneurial engineers, hiring and retaining them, and much more.Sign up to the Level-up Engineering newsletter!In this interview we're covering:Definition and qualities of entrepreneurial engineersHiring entrepreneurial engineersOnboarding and retaining entrepreneurial engineersNurturing the business mindset in software engineersCulturally supporting the business mindsetGiving feedback to engineersPreventing burnout for entrepreneurial engineersExcerpt from the interview:"At Opendoor, we need to ingest a large amount of data. Real estate data is public, so we need to process all that data to make informed decisions. We had a hard time importing MLS and home data because it was so messy.At the end of the day, a few of our engineers went to shadow agents at a different company who were importing this data. They tried to understand the customer’s perspective and what they were doing. They took the insights they’d collected, and managed to build a better data ingestion pipeline.Understanding their customer made it possible to build a faster and scalable tech solution. This initiative and creative thinking got us to the point where we could ingest more data with higher reliability. This is an example of why we want to work with entrepreneurial engineers."Click here to read the full interview!

Interview with Jean Hsu, VP of Engineering at Range about structuring, scheduling and making your remote meetings productive. Learn from her stories about handling an avalanche of remote meetings, and what she's learned along the way about transforming these meetings and supporting her team.Sign up for the Level-up Engineering newsletter!In this interview we're covering:The optimal number of remote meetings dailyMaking remote meetings productiveStructuring remote meetingsNecessary extra meetings in a remote environmentTools to support remote meetingsMeetings that don't work remotelyProviding a flexibility of schedule in your companyExcerpt from the interview:"This is my rule of thumb: remove status updates and announcements from meetings, and communicate them as asynchronous updates. You can use a tool like Loom for this. Leaders can record a short video message, and the employees can watch it at any time and leave comments.Use async channels with anything that doesn’t require discussion, or where you can start out without a discussion.Don’t rely too much on meetings; move everything you can to asynchronous updates. For example, it’s easier for me to reply to an email than it would be to find 15-30 minutes to discuss the same thing in a video call."Click here to read the full interview!

Interview with Mike Seavers, former CTO at Riot Games about building self-managed teams for high performance. Learn from a seasoned leader about making sure you have the right people, and coach them the right way to empower them so you can stop holding their hands. Unlock your team's potential and unleash them to do great work!Sign up for the Level-up Engineering newsletter!In this interview we're covering:Relationship between performance and autonomyRole of the leader in self-managed teamsDescription of self-managed teamsMaking time to coach your employeesMeasuring the manager's performance in self-managing teamsLeadership strategies to build self-managed teamsCommunicating your expectationsBuilding self-managed teams in a new companyBuilding self-managed teams in an established organizationExcerpt from the interview:"In a self-managed team, even the most junior employee is empowered to make a meaningful decision that affects the team’s performance. They’re not dependent on management to make all the decisions. No winning team requires the coach to explain how to kick the ball; the coaching happens before and after the game.Leadership’s job is to make the vision and the goals clear. In my one-on-one meetings, I always ask these questions from my reports:Is the company vision clear?Are the company goals clear?Do you understand what we’re trying to accomplish and the near-term objectives?"Click here to read the full interview!

State of Software Development 2021 reportInterview with John Ford, VP of Engineering and Country Leader at LogMeIn discussing emerging industry trends based on data from the State of Software Development 2021 report. We touch on the effects of COVID-19 on the industry, old and new challenges, hiring, retention and more.Sign up for the Level-up Engineering newsletter!In this interview we're covering:The effects of COVID-19 on the software industryTop challenges in software developmentComparing the perception of managers and engineersHiring and retentionPerformance managementOutsourcing development

Interview with Ellen Wong, Director of Engineering at Calm about leading partially remote and partially on-site hybrid teams. She shares her experience in hiring the right people for hybrid teams, creating processes, and handling all the day-to-day difficulties of the hybrid environment.In this interview we're covering:Advantages and disadvantages of a hybrid teamLeadership challenges in a hybrid teamPreparing your team for hybrid processesExtra support requirements in hybrid teamsFuture plans with the hybrid environmentKey skills to lead hybrid teamsKeeping the community alive in a hybrid environmentExcerpt from the interview:"I joined Calm remotely, and I’ve hired the majority of my team for remote work. My previous company was focused on working from the office, so we chose carefully who we allowed to work remotely. We came up with certain criteria, which I use when hiring for my hybrid team.Look for these qualities in your interview:Inclusivity and kindnessGood communication skillsProactivityOpenness to feedbackFor example, if they have issues conveying their points, and you have to keep asking follow-up questions, they may not be a good fit for remote work."Click here to read the full interview!

Interview with Ákos Kapui, VP of Engineering at Shapr3D. He talks about running an engineering organization in hypergrowth, doubling its employee count every year. Pick up his tips, tricks, and learn from his experience as he goes into detail on recruitment, decision making at scale, and planning while in hypergrowth.In this interview we're covering:Challenges in hypergrowthFinding the right employeesKey moments for a startup in hypergrowthScaling management as the organization growsPlanning hypergrowthPreparations for projected growthExcerpt from the interview:"Startups often don't recognize that the teams in the frontline should make their own decisions. The top leaders are far from the problem, their insight is limited, and their knowledge of the ground level work may be outdated. Micromanagement has its place, but it often leads to bad decisions.As you grow from 20 people to 40 and 100, you need to start making decisions differently. As a high level leader, your job is to help your employees make decisions, show them how to align a good decision, spot a bad one, and help them learn from their mistakes.Cities don’t involve the prime minister in details, and the frontline workers make the big decisions. The problem is that people lack experience in making decisions quickly, sticking with them, learning from them, and taking responsibility for them."Click here to read the full interview!

Interview with Taavi Rehemägi, co-founder and CEO of Dashbird. He tells the story of founding Dashbird, and what it took for him to go from software engineer to CEO. Learn how he built his network and found success in a completely different role!In this interview we're covering:How they came up with the idea of DashbirdChallenges of going from engineer to CEOEssential skills for a CEOHow his engineer background made him a better CEOHow he improved the skills necessary to be a CEONetworking tipsExcerpt from the interview:"A CEO has to continuously learn just like a software engineer. My background in engineering helped me with the following:Iterating different solutionsSetting expectations toward solutionsLearning from past activitiesTracking variablesThe first years of a new tech company are about learning what strategy is viable on your market. Your best bet is using data and making logical decisions. Engineers are good at this."Click here to read the full interview!

Interview with Gergely Hodicska "Felhő", VP of Engineering at Bitrise. We take a deep dive with him into leadership soft skills and his story about finding his weaknesses and turning them into superpowers. We cover common weaknesses, methods to improve yourself and others around you, and more.In this interview we're covering:Importance of soft skills in engineering leadershipEssential leadership soft skillsStory about building up leadership soft skillsPractices to improve leadership soft skillsCommon challenges for engineering managersHelping direct reports improve their leadership skillsIntegrating leadership soft skills into your engineering cultureExcerpt from the interview:"I had a heated argument with a friend of mine at Ustream, and he told me, “This is why I don’t like working with you.” At first, I thought, I’m just trying to find the best solution, but really I was defending my ego in that conversation.Moments like that made me realize that I should improve, and research why I react the way I do in certain situations. That’s when I started to learn about my psychological drivers.The first step I took was learning about personality types. This didn’t give me a lot of answers, but it helped me understand why others are stupid..."Click here to read the full interview!

Interview with Jerie Shaw, Senior Technical Program Manager at Shopify about building a remote onboarding process to suit the needs of remote software engineers. Coming up with new ways to get developers familiar with the job, keep energy and engagement high, and integrate them into the team while they're often continents apart.This is how Shopify deals with onboarding remotely.In this interview we're covering:Differences between remote onboarding and in-person onboardingMethods to integrate new hires into a group remotelyStakeholders in the remote onboarding of new hiresBreakdown of Shopify's remote onboarding processTracking the progress of new hiresMistakes when setting up the remote onboarding processExcerpt from the interview:"Solving problems together energizes people. On the other hand, spending an entire day on a video call drains their energy. Knowing this, we redesigned the onboarding experience to be active, synchronous, and hybrid.We give a group of new employees a real challenge, like ship a dashboard or build a data pipeline. They work on it together at the same time. We provide them with support structures like a virtual pod for better collaboration, and experts on the topic to answer their questions via Slack.This gives them a sense of being with a group and working on an interesting problem without being trapped in a video call for eight hours straight."Click here to read the full interview!

Interview with John Ford, VP of Engineering and Site Leader at LogMeIn about his management framework to turn around underachieving teams and improve overall team performance. Learn from his practical tips and tricks while listening to some of the stories from his decades worth of engineering leadership experience!In this interview we're covering:Assessing team performanceVelocity goals for a productive engineering teamFocus points for underperforming teamsPeople improvementsProcess improvementsTechnical improvementsA story about turning around an underachieving teamBonus adviceExcerpt from the interview:"My advice for engineering managers and leaders is to keep an open mind because there might be many reasons for suboptimal performance. There are lots of differences between companies in engineering culture, team history, management, etc.If you’ve been running your team for a while, and the performance is dropping off, the reason is often a lack of clarity around the high-level objectives. In this case, you need to link the product or company strategy to the daily work of the team, and to provide direction about the higher-level strategy. Consider these questions:What's important for my manager?What’s the team doing..."Click here to read the full interview!

Interview with Balázs Balázs, former Engineering Manager at Facebook about the knowledge sharing strategies he's used over the years with his engineering teams. You'll get tips, tricks and real stories from behind the scenes about how knowledge sharing works with real people, rather than how it should work in an ideal situation.In this interview we're covering:Picking the right methods for sharing knowledge in your teamThe best knowledge sharing methods in engineering teamsThe rules of using documentationThe best methods to help junior engineers growOnboarding software engineers to your teamMaking time for knowledge sharingTools for knowledge sharing in engineering teamsEncouraging engineers to partake in knowledge sharingThe key to Facebook's success in sharing knowledgeExcerpt from the interview:"Facebook has offices all over the world and employees get to travel to other offices for free with business reasons. As it turns out, software engineers are very innovative when it comes to figuring out business reasons for free travel.My team was based in London, and we worked with a team in New York for a while. We were struggling with effectively analyzing data. One of my engineers came up with the idea to fly our team to New York, and hold a data week, where the two teams analyze data together.I'm pretty sure that the motivation was to get a free week in New York. Still, it was the most productive week we’d had for a long time. It took a lot of preparation, but people didn’t mind, because the traveling made it fun.This is just an example; there are far more affordable ways to make knowledge sharing fun..."Click here to read the full interview!

Panel discussion interview with Sarah Milstein, Sr. Director of Engineering at Mailchimp, and Tanisha Barnett, Director of Engineering at Mailchimp. They get into the details of holding skip level meetings, let them be one-on-ones or group meetings.Here's everything you'll ever need to know about why you want to have your own skip level meetings, what they look like, what questions to ask, how to break the ice, keep track of them all, and much more. Master skip level meetings to become a great engineering leader yourself!In this interview we're covering:Skip level meeting definitionThe reason they started doing skip level meetingsSkip level one-on-one meeting and regular one-on-one comparisonChoosing the people to schedule skip level meetings withNotifying the in-between manager about skip level meetingsSkip level meetings' role at Mailchimp's engineering cultureKeeping track of the content of skip level meetingsSkip level meeting questionsIcebreakers for skip level meetingsSensitive topics at skip level meetingsAdvice for new leaders on skip level meetingsSkip level meeting storiesExcerpt from the interview:"Even though a key reason for the meeting is to talk about the manager, I don't want to support gossiping. It's a structured meeting that we use for giving feedback, not to talk trash behind people’s backs.When I get feedback about what employees wish their manager would do, I listen, but I try not to reinforce it in any inappropriate way. I say things like, "That sounds difficult," or "I understand why you want that," while I avoid saying, "Your manager really screwed up." I have to be..."Click here to read the full interview!

Interview with Jurgen Appelo, leadership speaker, writer and entrepreneur. He is an expert on the topic of managing teams to maximize happiness, which heavily bolsters productivity. Learn his tips, tricks and strategies in making it happen, and make your own team happier so you all win.In this interview we're covering:Connection between happiness and performancePrerequisites for high performanceCreate a company culture based on experimentationMethods for managers to learn their team's needsSurveys and measuring team happinessThe process to build a management system for happinessSigns of a happy teamMethods to engage employees to take action for their happinessExcerpt from the interview:"There isn’t one process to manage for happiness.The best way is to think outside the box and to do the things you enjoy and others might enjoy as well. Here are some examples of what I did as an engineering manager:I invited people for dinner at my house and surprised them with the fact that we would cook together.I put a bell in the office..."Click here to read the full interview!

Interview with Gergely Orosz, self-employed author of 'The Tech Resume Inside Out', former Engineering Manager at Uber.He shares unique insight into the process of hiring for a big tech company. We also look at tips to stand out from the crowd with your software engineer resume, and what companies should do differently to find talent more effectively.Giveaway ended.In this interview we're covering:The importance of a software engineer resumeThe goal of a software engineer CVHighlights in a great tech resumeThe resume review process in a big tech companyThe role of referrals in the tech industryWhy you get no response to your applicationRemaining objective for hiring managersImproving the hiring process in a tech companyExcerpt from the interview:"Before COVID-19, resumes were less important for software engineers, especially with a few years of experience. Engineers new to the industry have always needed a resume that represented them fairly. But COVID-19 changed the way we work, and it made resumes more important than before.The challenge when recruiting engineers, especially with a few years of experience, used to be to get them interested in your company. This was true even for Uber.COVID-19 unfortunately brought layoffs, even to the tech world, and resulted in fewer companies hiring. Now these people are applying for jobs, and they need to submit a CV."Click here to read the full interview!

Interview with Jonathan Rasmusson, ex-Spotify engineer and author of 'Competing with Unicorns' about the key elements of making the Spotify model work.Squads, tribes and guilds are the essential elements of the Spotify model, but there is a lot more to it. Leadership is the force that drives all the elements, makes the model come alive and deliver a great product. You get all the answers here about how that works.Giveaway ended.In this interview we're covering:Comparing traditional organizations vs the Spotify modelThe keys to effective engineering in the Spotify modelWhat makes the squad system successfulContribute as an engineering managerRole of engineering leaders in the Spotify modelIncentives to keep up developer motivationPerformance management in the Spotify modelHow to improve when you're missing deadlinesExcerpt from the interview:"In 2014, Sony came to Spotify to set up a partnership, because their music service was shutting down. This instantly became our biggest project, and a lot of squads started working on making Spotify work on PlayStation. I was coaching a team working on this.At one point, I realized that the launch date was coming up, and we were behind schedule. I thought we were in trouble. At the next all-hands meeting, I told everyone that the deadline was in jeopardy.In any other company I’ve been part of before, this would have been a big deal. Instead, the program director said, “Thank you for the information. We'll let the team tell us if they think there's a problem.” Then she simply moved on.This left me puzzled, because I expected the CEO and everyone else to get up in arms and demand action. This showed me how much trust Spotify puts in their teams."Click here to read the full interview!

Interview with Tim Olshansky, EVP of Product & Engineering at Zenput on creating a software engineer career ladder for your own team.This isn't a template you can just copy and paste, then forget it ever even existed. This is a guide to creating a meaningful engineering career ladder from Tim, who has been through it more than once.In this interview we're covering:Building a software engineer career ladder at ZenputThe first steps of building a career ladderPeople to involve in the processKey differences between the career levelsThe importance of experience in the career ladderThe transition to engineering managementThe role of engineering leaders and managers in the career ladderUpdating your engineering career ladderCommon mistakes in creating software engineer career laddersExcerpt from the interview:"The first four levels of the engineering career ladder are about writing code. Engineers on these levels do their part in supporting their team too, but it isn’t their focus. As they move beyond the senior engineer level, supporting the team becomes their priority.Either they choose engineering management and do one-on-ones, feedback sessions, and everything that comes with it, or they pick technical leadership, and help people make the right technology decisions.They end up working with people on the highest levels either way."Click here to read the full interview!

Interview with Ola Sitarska, Engineering Lead at Onfido about addressing diversity and inclusion at the base level: integrating these values into your recruitment process.Why do you want to put up the effort? How do you balance it with hiring the most competent developers? What goals are realistic? You get these answers and more right here.In this interview we're covering:The difference between diversity and inclusionHow to balance hiring for diversity and competenceWhat makes an inclusive hiring processObstacles in implementing diversity in recruitingFirst steps to make your hiring process more diverseHow to make your interviews inclusiveHow to encourage your team to be more inclusiveExcerpt from the interview:"When you’re running a business, you always want to hire the best candidates. Increasing diversity and inclusion broadens the pool of qualified candidates applying to work at your company.If the pool is limited, then your ability to hire the best is limited as well. You always want to work towards broadening the pool of exceptional people who may have gone through a non-traditional path in their career.My story is an example of this..."Click here to read the full interview!

Software engineers, like any other person can get stuck. Their personal development slows down, their career may not move in the direction they want to go to.Great engineering managers and leaders can do a lot to stop that from happening, facilitate growth for their developers and advancement from junior engineer to the senior level and beyond that. Get the know-how from Farhan Thawar, VP of Engineering, Shopify!In this interview we're covering:Differences between a junior and a senior engineerThe best way to level up coding skillsPotential career roadmaps in software developmentA manager's methods to develop the career of their engineersA company's options to facilitate professional developmentCreating a career plan in software engineeringMotivating developers to keep honing their craftIncorporating soft skills trainingExcerpt from the interview:"I was talking to one of our senior developers about a promotion. The next career level from there is either staff engineer or engineering manager. This person was interested in the staff engineer route.We figured out that to move up the ladder, this person at this time needed to have an impact beyond his group. Helping with building software for Shopify in a broader context is the job of a staff engineer. So this person shifted focus toward that.We checked in again after six months. He was doing well, and he was about to receive the promotion, but it turns out that he didn’t enjoy the staff engineer work. He saw how it would broaden his skills, how he’d work with other groups, and he didn’t want to do that.Here's what we did..."Click here to read the full interview!

GitHub versus Facebook feedback culture comparison with a breakdown of their key elements and cultural differences. Learn the secrets of a healthy feedback culture both on an organizational and personal level from Ryan Nystrom, Director of Engineering at GitHub.In this interview we're covering:The essential elements of a big company's feedback cultureGitHub vs Facebook feedback culture comparisonFormal performance reviews at GitHubThe benefits of a healthy feedback cultureCrucial elements to build a feedback cultureKeeping feedback usefulHandling strong emotional reactions to feedbackA leader's role in a good feedback cultureGathering feedback as an engineering leaderWhen to avoid giving feedback face to faceHR's involvement in GitHub's feedback cultureExcerpt from the interview:"When I’m encouraging people to share feedback, I tell them to consider their feedback a data point. I used to be nervous about giving critical feedback about others, because I didn’t want to cause trouble for them.As a director, if I hear one thing from one person, but I don’t hear it from anyone else, I consider it a small issue. I’ll look into it and ask around if others are observing the same thing. If I see more corroborating evidence, only then will I consider acting on it.No one is exclusively responsible for the consequences coming from their feedback."Click here to read the full interview!

Avoid the rookie mistakes engineering managers and engineering leaders make at running one-on-one meetings. James Stanier, SVP of Engineering at Brandwatch, and author of "Become an Effective Software Engineering Manager" will teach you how to handle one-on-ones with both introverts, and people who complain all the time, along with many more tips and tricks.The raffle is closed.In this interview we're covering:The goal of a one on one meetingThe ideal frequency of one on one meetingsOne on one preparation tips for engineering managersHandling challenging personalitiesDocumenting your one on onesCritical feedback at one on onesCommon mistakes of engineering managersWalking versus sitting one on onesOne on one meeting with a new team memberOne on one meetings questions and topicsDoing one on ones with individual contributors vs managersPreparing engineering managers to run one on onesHow direct reports should prepare for one on onesExcerpt from the interview:"Remember; venting to your manager is fine. Sometimes people get frustrated and need to blow off steam in a private setting. You should support this.If it becomes a recurring thing though, it's your duty as a manager to turn this into constructive energy. In this situation, you rarely have anything to say; you're just listening to a frustrated person. Sometimes you try to turn the conversation in a positive direction, but they just vent more, and you end up getting frustrated yourself.I’ve dealt with employees who were venting all the time. I’m a good listener, but it can backfire when I run into these people. The first time I had a team member doing this early in my management career, I had no idea what to do.Many weeks went by until I finally said..."Click here to read the full interview!

Building trust across the board and becoming familiar with the whole context of a company is a common challenge for engineering leaders and managers as they transition to a new workplace. Nadia Alramli explains HubSpot's process to set up newly hired managers for their role.In this interview we're covering:The challenges of transitioning to a new company as an engineering leaderHubSpot's engineering leader onboarding processThe idea behind the processDifferences between the leadership onboarding and the engineer onboarding experienceThe documentation of the processThe crucial factorsMeasuring the successAlternatives of HubSpot's manager onboarding processExcerpt from the interview:"Engineering leaders during the embedding process don’t have privileged access to information, nor management responsibilities. They’re expected to focus exclusively on doing an individual contributor’s job. They take the same training courses and go through the same engineer onboarding process as everyone else.Leaders and managers are switching between the different engineering teams they will be responsible for in this period. They’re building features, fixing bugs, and reporting to the manager of the team they’re working with at the time.The embedding experience is a great way to learn HubSpot’s tech stack, the product details, and the guiding principles. But really, it’s all about the relationships you get to build with the engineers. The whole point is the trust you build."Click here to read the full interview!

Learn how to build an engineering team that not only survives under pressure, but consistently gets better. Adam Wolff explains the key ideas you need to know to make your team antifragile, and shows you how they've worked out through his personal experience from Robinhood and Facebook.In this interview we're covering:Concepts of antifragilityInternal and external sources of stress for engineering teamsNecessary characteristics of an antifragile engineering teamAgile methods and antifragilityHow to measure antifragility in an engineering teamThe leader's contribution to antifragilityHow to make an agile team antifragileHiring for antifragilityExcerpt from the interview:"What I don't like about agile is that it's become more like a cult than a set of ideas. It has great basics, like the team should get together every day to discuss what they're doing, or to run development in a few weeks of increments. Agile also preserves optionality well if development doesn’t go smoothly.What I sometimes miss from agile software development is the longer arc.Agile can be surprisingly short-sighted. You set a goal, and you work towards that in two-week increments. It lacks the moments where you consider a black swan event and the monthly checkpoints where you make sure if you’re still building the right product..."Click here to read the full interview!

Learn the basics of engineering leadership from seasoned veteran and praised writer of the leadership world: Michael Lopp a. k. a. "Rands". Everything you need to know is in this interview, so you won't have to learn the hard way, like Michael did.In this interview we're covering:The biggest challenge in leadershipMastering the finer points of leadershipThe biggest takeaway from decades of leadership experienceTraits and skills of great engineering leadersDaily practices of engineering leadershipBuilding your influenceCommon mistakes in engineering leadershipBuilding a personal brand as a leaderDelegating effectivelyExcerpt from the interview:"Engineering leadership is all about your ability to delegate, and it’s hard to do.You get a big task, hand it to an engineer on your team, and you’re not doing the actual work. Maybe you slice it up into different tasks, and then give it to others. This is fundamentally tough for engineers, because we like building things ourselves.Leaders don't get to do any of this work. Management is a ton of work, but you don’t do testing, don’t improve performance, don’t do anything that’s been your work as an engineer."Click here to read the full interview!

Do you want access to the best talent out there in the tech world? Obviously. This is why you need to build your engineering employer brand. You aren't Google or Netflix, you may not even become them, but you can make yourself visible in the right way to the right people, and you can get them into your organization. Learn pro tips from Sarah Wells, Technical Director at Financial Times!In this interview we're covering:Synchronizing the engineering brand coexisting with the company brandThe challenges of building an engineering employer brandThe key elements of a powerful engineering brandThe tools to build your engineering brandThe first steps to building your employer brand in engineeringInvolving your employees in facilitating your brandKeeping your employer brand consistent across different officesOrganizing an internal tech conferenceThe results of investing into the FInancial Times' engineering brandExcerpt from the interview:"The Financial Times came up with a list of cultural values about a year ago that we wanted to demonstrate. I attended a workshop with people from all over the company to figure out how to demonstrate these values. Some key values were creativity, trust and integrity; I focused on creativity.I found it interesting that many suggestions coming from other departments were ones engineering had been doing naturally. The 10% days came up as an idea, but in product and technology, we've been doing 10% days for a long time.This shows there’s a fit in our overall values, but each department ends up being specifically focused on their own area. We write software and operate systems, so that leads to inherent differences."Click here to read the full interview!

Learn the top time management and productivity tips, tricks, hacks and practices engineering managers use to get on top of their endless mountain of work. Profit from the hard-earned experience of Matt Martin, CEO of Clockwise to become the best manager you can be!In this interview we're covering:Time management 101 for managersHow to do a calendar auditHow to use time dedicated to proactive managementMetrics of productivity for managersHow to develop team membersDelegating tasksHow to handle your emailsHow to lead meetings productivelyProductivity myths managers should avoidThe signs of good time management for managersExcerpt from the interview:"I've struggled with delegating effectively in the past. It's easy for managers at all levels to take on more work than they need to.The toughest thing about delegating is that you’re often better at doing a task. Usually, you get promoted for a reason. You know the context, you have the information, and you've probably been a great individual contributor.You might be the best person for a task, but that doesn't mean you should do it. If there's an opportunity to put a task on a team member, think critically about delegating it to them."Click here to read the full interview!

Learn the steps of creating a culture document for an engineering company! In this interview Rob Volk reveals why Foxbox Digital needed a culture document, and what impact it had on their day-to-day work.In this interview we're covering:What's Included and excluded in the Foxbox culture documentWhy do you need a company culture document?The steps of creating a culture documentThe impact of a culture document on an engineering teamHow does the document help to sustain the cultureHow to change your copmany cultureHow to check for cultural fitWhether it's better to hire for diversity or for cultural fitExcerpt from the interview:"We've always had a strong company culture, but early on, it was accidental. I hired engineers who I thought were great, and the engineering culture formed organically.By now, we've had cultural miss-hires, some contentions and issues. These are signs of a bad culture.So, we tried to distill the good parts of our culture down to a cultural document. The purpose was to be able to maintain the culture as we scale up."Click here to read the full interview!

Master these 3 leadership styles to build an amazing engineering team and maximize your own potential as well. In this interview with Shawn Fair, you'll learn how, when, and why to use the democratic, autocratic, and free rein leadership styles for optimal results.In this interview we're covering:The 3 base leadership stylesDetermine the best leadership style for your developer teamHow to train yourself to always find the right leadership styleCommon mistakesHow the leadership styles improve team performance and employee retention5 core leadership attributesBonus adviceExcerpt from the interview:"If you demonstrate both the three leadership styles and the five critical leadership attributes, your people will be more productive and more likely to stick around.If you become a leader doing all this to meet the needs of every individual working for you, you’re a fair boss and a rare commodity.You'll find one or two of those leaders in your lifetime in corporate America."Click here to read the full interview!

Utilize social engineering tactics to make your developer team stronger and more productive than ever before. In this interview, Olivia Liddell from Amazon Web Services shows you how to use social engineering for good.In this interview we're covering:How to measure the strength of an engineering teamThe definition of social engineeringThe process of using social engineering to build your teamExamples of social engineering in a positive contextCommon mistakes when using social engineering in managementHow to use social engineering with a new teamPossible conflicts when using social engineering on your teamThe timeframe to successfully use social engineeringExcerpt from the interview:"I used to work in higher education as a learning technologist with online courses for universities. I was on a team with 12 different program directors from areas like accounting and healthcare. I needed all program directors to give me information to get their courses up and running.Some directors gave me what I needed right away, but I had to track others down and work hard to get them to give me what I needed. As you might imagine, this resulted in delays, and I had no idea why they'd make it hard for me.Then I looked at it from the social engineering perspective. I started thinking about why these different directors would want to give me what I needed..."Click here to read the full interview!

Leading vs managing comparison, true stories of failures, shortcomings, struggles and solutions that lead to success in an executive leadership position. András Fincza, VP of Engineering, Emarsys shares his invaluable experience to tell you what you've never heard about leadership before.In this interview we're covering:The difference between managing developers and leading engineering managersHow to get direct information as an executive leaderHow to transition from engineering management to leadershipWhat new tech leaders should do in their first 60 daysHow to build trustCharacteristics of a great engineering managerHow to evaluate the performance of your engineering managersAnd more!Excerpt from the interview:"I felt overwhelmed. I felt I couldn't finish anything. I didn't feel safe making decisions.One night, in the midst of my agony, I started to write down all my duties, tasks, initiatives, and everything I couldn't finish. There were hundreds of items, and I put them into 20 categories and 80 subcategories. Then I buried my face in my hands, and the only thing I could think was, "What am I doing?"It was insane.I grabbed the list, and the next day, I reached out to my boss and mentor and asked to go out for a coffee or beer. He saw that I was upset, and I threw everything at him. The list, my feelings about it—I told him I was thinking of resigning because I couldn’t handle the pressure."Click here to read the full interview!

Clean code is the most essential part of building great software with your team. In this interview Uncle Bob shares half a century worth of experience and practical tips about measuring code quality, leading your team, having them write clean code, and selling clean code standards to impatient clients.In this interview we're covering:Definition of clean codeMetrics of clean codeConsequences of bad codeTips for engineering managersCommunication tipsOn-boarding to clean codeScaling with clean codeClean code vs deadlinesAnd more!Excerpt from the interview:"The underlying theme is that if you want to go fast, meet schedules, and keep your customers and your managers happy, keep your code as clean as possible. Nothing will make you work faster than keeping your workspace clean.One of the most important things a developer can say to a manager is the word no. You must be able to look your manager in the eye with all the empathy and sympathy you can muster, and say, “The answer is no.” You will save a lot of money if you say no at the right time.Never promise to do something you know you can't do. They will believe you, bet a lot on your ability to do it, and you will let them down."Click here to read the full interview!

You've just become a manager, and don't know where to start? You're close to a promotion, and want to be ready? It's unclear what you should focus on, how to get accepted, and how to streamline your ocean of tasks?Jeff Perry has faced all these problems, and he'll help you find the way to success in this new role.In this interview we're covering:Challenges of becoming an engineering managerMisconceptions about becoming a managerThe process to transition to managementCommon mistakes of new engineering managersNecessary skills for a great engineering managerHow to get accepted as a new managerHow to manage former teammatesAnd more!Excerpt from the interview:"Listening is critical for leaders. I struggle with this because I'm quite a talker. It’s amazing what you can learn when you ask a question and truly listen to the other person without interrupting or letting your mind wander.Here’s a quote from Stephen R. Covey, “Seek first to understand and then be understood.” We’ll understand more if we start by listening more than we talk.To help with this, I have an exercise the whole team can do together..."Click here to read the full interview!

Download the full State of Software Development 2020 report here!Discussion about the latest trends in the software industry, including the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic with Camille Fournier (Managing Director at Two Sigma) and Juan Pablo Buriticá (taking a break, running his consultant company, ex-VPE at Splice) based on the State of Software Development 2020 report.In this panel discussion we're covering:The effects of COVID-19 on the software worldThe state of remote workThe top industry challengesThe latest recruitment trendsAnd more...Follow our guests, Camille Fournier and Juan Pablo Buriticá on Twitter!

In this interview Steven McCord, Senior Vice President of Technology explains the ins and out of entering the role of a tech leader. This is how you win at your first 100 days.In this interview we're covering:Challenges of becoming a tech leaderEarly priorities when becoming a tech leaderFocus areas for a tech leaderThings you'd do differentlyCommon mistakes for tech leadersHow can a company help you transition?Bonus advice for tech leadersExcerpt from the interview:"You have to make sure you figure out your architecture. But you shouldn't rush it. First, you need to understand the business problems.Wherever I go, I build trust and culture around me. This is interesting in WhyHotel, because it isn't a tech company. Most people here come from real estate and hospitality. It’s a challenge because we’re from different worlds.I try to breed trust by making decisions so I don’t tear people apart. I don’t just go and question, “Why did you make this decision?” Instead, I say, “I'm sure there were reasons why we made these decisions. Let's talk about them.You need to prove yourself a team player. I believe as an executive, you have to lead by example. This is how you build the culture.You have to show them that you're open and transparent about communication. You need to be empathetic and you use your emotional intelligence before you expect it from others. I demonstrate my core values of being accountable and transparent to show my reports the way.Doing this is very softy-feely. It may sound weird from a technologist, but if you can set this tone and build trust across the organization, a lot of things become easier long-term."Click here to read the full interview!

Interview with Sally Lait, Senior Engineering Manager at Monzo. Their engineering culture is well-known in the industry for being one of the best. In this podcast you'll learn how to improve your engineering culture and what red flags to look for.In this interview we're covering:Key elements of a great engineering cultureMonzo's engineering cultureCultural on-boardingEngineering culture metricsBuilding your engineering cultureSigns of a weak engineering cultureDangerous behaviorsImproving your engineering cultureImplementing changes to your cultureScaling your engineering cultureExcerpt from the interview:"My favourite thing in the culture here is that defaulting to transparency is a key value for us. It doesn’t mean everything is transparent, but we keep as much in the open as possible. This includes engineering proposals as well.When somebody is looking to make a change to the architecture or to the culture, they write a proposal, and anybody in the company is free to comment and to share their views. This way, everyone can see what's going on. Everything goes through Slack, so everything is visible.Slack is an important tool from a cultural point of view as well. One of our senior engineers built the Guys bot, which pings up on Slack if anybody uses the word “guys.” It’s not an inclusive phrase.We've built these things into our wider culture by using our engineering skills to create tools. I love how these gently nudge people to live out the key company values."Click here to read the full interview!

Interview with Greg Sabo, Engineering Manager at Asana. Learn how Asana is overcoming the lack of developers on the workforce market, and get your recruitment process to the next level!In this interview we're covering:  How to build your employer brand?  Asana's steps to recruiting engineers  How to make the final decision?  Key elements to recruiting engineers  Top channels to recruiting engineers  Intern program  What skills and traits do you need to recruit developers?  How do you evolve your recruitment process?Excerpt from the interview:"We do what we call a huddle-meeting, where everyone who has interviewed the candidate gets in a room. Each interviewer has an impression to start with, whether they think the person would be a fit for the rule, and we all discuss it.The final decision comes down to the facilitator of the huddle based on the interviewers opinions. The facilitator hasn’t interviewed the candidate, so they bring a fresh mindset to the discussion. We train our engineers to facilitate meetings and make decisions collaboratively with a group.It doesn't have to be a complete consensus."Click here to read the full interview!

Handling conflicts and giving feedback are two of the most important things a manager needs to do. It has to be a given to lead a productive developer team. So we interviewed Tom Bartel, Engineering Team Leader at trivago to share some of the tips he picked up over the years he spent as a manager.In this interview we're covering:  Common conflicts in an engineering team  How to step in and handle conficts as a manager?  Steps to prevent conflicts  Rules for giving feedback  How to give feedback to help improvement?  Common mistakes at giving feedback  Bonus advice  How to get feedback as an engineering manager?Excerpt from the interview:"At one point I had a new developer join a team of senior developers. The new guy was a junior both in skill level and age. The senior team members were used to each other and worked very well together, but the new guy didn't fit in well.It was partly the new developer’s fault. Sometimes he joked around in ways that would annoy the others, and didn't take the learning opportunities seriously enough. When his first round of feedback came, it was mostly bad. He didn't see it coming and he was devastated.I did what I talked about earlier, and got them all in the same room. We had a painful and awkward but ultimately healthy conversation. Everybody got to name what they didn't like about the situation, let it be behaviors or anything else. It resolved some misunderstandings too, because often problems are just that.I also had a one on one conversation with the new engineer. My expectations were clear: he had to stop with certain behaviors, and he had to take some things more seriously.To my surprise, he did everything I asked, and turned himself around. He applied himself, and improved the situation dramatically..."Click here to read the full interview!

In software development when capacity is the problem, most managers think they need to hire more developers. But you can push engineering productivity higher by creating the right context for your existing developers.We interviewed Camille Fournier on the topic of productivity, to learn what she's been doing as a tech leader to keep it high in her developer teams.In this interview we're covering:Defining engineering productivityHow to measure engineering productivityChallenges for managers with engineering productivityOn-boarding for maximum engineering productivityEffects of mentoring on engineering productivityKeeping engineering productivity highHow to improve engineering productivityExcerpt from the interview:"Many engineering managers struggle with setting goals. They think about goal setting in a way that’s inspiring to their team without making it easy or pushing too hard.Some managers say the way to build a productive team is to hire smart people and get out of their way. I have never seen that work. It might work in theory if you have clear goals and if you motivate people to achieve those goals.Most managers aren’t good at setting clear goals. When you're always adjusting your goals, you can’t expect to just hire smart people, get out of their way, and watch them be productive.Most engineers don't learn how to be productive on a team without having experienced it. If you've never been an engineer on a hyper-productive team, you won’t know what it’s like or what you could do to make a productive team happen."Click here to read the full interview!

Scaling is a massive challenge for an engineering manager to overcome, let alone scaling in a distributed environment. Juan Pablo Buriticá had done it, and in this interview he shares how he managed to pull it off. You'll get his insights and actionable tips to overcome all the issues a tech leader will face when scaling distributed engineering teams.In this interview we're covering:Challenges of scaling distributed engineering teamsSteps of scaling distributed engineering teamsDifference between scaling from small to medium, and medium to large sizeHow did you scale distributed engineering teams at Splice?How to change a process while scaling distributed engineering teams?Your key takeaways from scaling distributed engineering teamsBonus advice for scaling distributed engineering teamsExcerpt from the interview:"Scaling an organization requires a lot of work with no tangible output. It’s about building a culture and processes; it requires a lot of attention, moderation, curation, and loads of conversations with humans. Humans can be exhausting with insecurities and all the stuff we bring with ourselves, because we're not machines.As a leader, that falls on you. I’ve done it twice, and if I had to do it again, I may use some shortcuts, but it's going to be different, and still a lot of work. That’s the first takeaway. Looking back, it was worth it, because it was exciting. It’s rewarding when you get it to work well, and I'm proud of our team.When scaling distributed engineering teams, be ready for a lot of work, repetition, communication, convincing and loads of complaints. Some people have followed me through teams. We agreed that when they complain, I ask, “Do you want me to solve this?” If they say yes, I do, but then they have to look for something else to complain about. We just laugh at that.I like complaints, because it's feedback as we're scaling. I've seen other leaders who can't deal with it."Follow Juan on his Twitter!Click here to read the full interview!

In software development it's more likely now than ever, that as a manager, you'll face the challenge of leading a fully or at least partially distributed developer team. It's a brand new thing for everyone, but Tim Olshansky, current VP of Engineering at Zenput has faced this already. In this interview he shares what he learned on managing distributed developer teams over the years, and gives you actionable tips on making it work as well as possible.In this episode, we're covering:Challenges of managing a distributed developer teamOn-boarding remote engineersBalancing synchronous and asynchronous workManaging distributed developer teamsMeasuring productivity at distributed developer teamsGiving feedback in distributed developer teamsRunning meetings in distributed developer teamsManagement tools at distributed developer teamsExcerpt from the interview:"I don't measure productivity specifically. It’s been a struggle, because the definition of productivity is a difficult one, particularly in the software engineering world. Is fixing a hundred bugs or implementing ten features better? What if none of those features affect the company positively?Firstly, I start by making sure we're working on the right things. If not, I try to fix that, because all the productivity in the world working on the wrong things is not going to get us where we need to be.The next question: are we working the right way? Are we doing things that are going to cost us in the long run? This is a classic technical debt conversation.Do we have the infrastructure to support the team to be productive? Does the team have to overcome difficulties to demonstrate what they've done? I try to assess those things and remove the impediments. Then the team can focus on doing what they like, which is problem-solving, and building new things.When all this is sorted, I look at the individual level. There, I see that if they say they're going to do something , do they get it done? If not, why not? Sometimes, folks need to be held accountable for what they commit to..."Click here to read the full interview!

Training engineering managers doesn't get the attention it deserves. It's extremely valuable to keep and grow your own talent, rather than get all your tech leaders from a competitive workforce market. We interviewed Matt Greenberg, who has gained years of experience training new engineering managers.In this episode, we're covering:How to make sure an engineering manager prospect is ready?Challenges of training engineering managersChallenges of transitioning to engineering managementCommon mistakes in training engineering managersHow to build a system for training engineering managersExcerpt from the interview:"People tend to think of engineering management as an opportunity to become a leader.In reality, accomplished engineers are also leaders; they’re involved in everything. You get opportunities to mentor and you have a say in project leadership decisions and technical decisions, whether you're an individual contributor or a people manager.Being a people manager entails all the administrative aspects of leadership. So, a lot of it comes down to hiring and firing people, performance management, dealing with HR or legal issues, finance, budgets and all these other things.I think a lot of people want to become software engineering managers for the wrong reason. Also, many people get out of it once they realize what they're doing. You should look at the end goal. Do you want to be a senior leader managing hundreds of people, or do you want to be an accomplished person on a small team?"Click here to read the full interview!

How do you build psychological safety in your team? Why is it important?We sat down for an interview with Dan Rummel. He is currently the Senior Director of Engineering at One Medical, and he’s held engineering and leadership positions at various Bay Area startups. He shares this invaluable insight with you on creating a workplace with psychological safety, so you get to understand his way of thinking and pick up actionable tips you can apply at your company.In the interview we're covering:Why is psychological safety important?The difference between psychological safety and the comfort zoneRequirements for psychological safetyHow did Dan build psychological safety?How to promote psychological safety as a leader?Excerpt from the interview:Leading by example"Leading by example is often neglected. It’s a real challenge for leaders and managers because their typical personality types can take up a lot of space in the room. I think leading by example means making space for others.We need to actively make space for others to chime in during meetings. It also helps a lot to show vulnerability, talk about some of your challenges, or throw out the occasional wild or even silly idea. Even if you know it will likely be shot down, this lets your team know you’re fair game for debate as well.Perhaps the most important thing to do is to admit when you're wrong, and not make it a big deal. Just saying, “I was wrong; you've got it,” helps the healthy debate and makes it comfortable to rumble through ideas and to find the best outcomes.The reason healthy teams produce better outcomes is that there's a diversity of experiences and perspectives that come to the table. When people can build mental models with everyone else's experiences, your outcomes get exponentially better, and you get beautiful results from those debates."Click here to read the full interview!

Working with a remote team has many upsides, but managing a remote developer team is one tough job to have. There are loads of challenges you wouldn’t have to worry about in an office, like possible time zone differences or making sure people feel part of the company. It requires a lot of attention to keep everything on track.We sat down with Katie Womersley, the VP of Engineering at Buffer. She’s managing many remote engineering teams, and she shared a lot of invaluable experience she picked up over the years in dealing with all the obstacles of working with distributed teams.In this episode, we're covering:Usual challenges remote developer teams faceKey elements to make a remote team workDOs and DONTs of managing a remote teamHandling time zone differencesOn-boarding people new to remote workRemote rewardsExcerpt from the interview:The dark side of managing a remote developer team:“Remote developer teams often have mental health issues that people don't talk about. It could make your teammates less productive, less healthy, and more likely to quit and go work somewhere in an office where they feel better. Anxiety and depression correlate with feeling lonely or being isolated. Naturally, when working remotely, people often work from home most of the time.Many but not all developers find themselves a bit more introverted, a bit more on the quiet side, so they’re not going out every day with a ton of friends. One thing we see is that the rate of anxiety and depression is higher with remote workers, so the most practical advice is to be very open in talking about mental health with people, because it really affects their work and their ability to be a successful teammate on the job.Remember, a manager is not a therapist; it's not your job to solve the issue, but it’s your job to be aware of it and to make sure your teammate gets proper help. Make sure they go see a doctor, go to a co-working space, get out and do some exercise, or get an actual therapist before it ends up becoming a real health problem.”Click here to read the full interview!

Software companies often grow quickly, which means developer teams often suffer to manage scaling at the pace of growth and necessary workload. We sat down with Rich Archbold to pick his brain on how they scaled developer teams at Amazon, Facebook and Intercom.In this episode we’ll be covering:Biggest challenges when scaling a developer teamHow he overcame these challengesFirst steps to scaling teamsHow to get hiring rightExcerpt from the interview:Common mistakes when scaling engineering teams..."I would say the biggest one is not putting enough emphasis on hiring for behavior and attitude. It’s the most expensive one too. Understand the team you're hiring for, and what's the balance you need to have in there.The mistake we made in the past is hiring too many juniors. Unless you've got two seniors to match every eight juniors, you don't have a viable team. I call it guns and bullets. There's no point having a lot of bullets, if you don't have any guns to fire them, or the other way around.Hiring 10 junior engineers can reduce the capacity in your organization, because your best people who were executing at a high rate, now have to mentor juniors. It takes a lot of their time for about six to nine months, and the overall capacity takes a hit. Make sure you understand the balance of strengths in your organization, and you're not just thinking about adding people, but strengthening the team."Click here to read the full interview!

Mentoring is underutilized in the software development industry today. So, we did an interview with Gergely Orosz, currently an engineering manager at Uber, who has gained a lot of experience with mentoring over his years as a developer/manager.In this episode, we're covering:Mentoring in tech todayHis approach to mentoringChallenges in mentoringHow to build a mentoring programExcerpt from the interview:How do you think a company could implement a mentoring program?"I've not seen many companies with good mentorship programs and this includes Uber. It's a work in progress, but at least there's something. On the other hand, despite the fact that there's not much structure or best practices, I hear people talk about mentorship all the time, so somehow it’s working. It means that people really want mentoring and it has real value, but I think companies have a long way to go.At companies, there are two ways a process can go: from the bottom up, or from the top down. Mentoring has to be voluntary, so neither of them will fully work. It cannot just be fully organic, because you might have some teams where people mentor each other, but it will not spread to other parts of the company. You surely can’t make it mandatory.The number one thing that helps a lot is tying mentoring into performance. Good mentoring happens in a lot of places, but often it’s left unrecognized. The most obvious place to recognize it is when you have your performance review or promotion conversation. That makes it tangible. If mentoring doesn’t come up there, it turns into a side project some people will do and others won’t."Click here to read the full interview!