Tag: career

  • The Tech Lead Trap

    - The tech lead role can become a dead end if you're not careful. How to spot when you're trapped, and what to do about it.

  • Managing Up

    - Your engineering manager needs information from you to do their job. What to tell them, how to advocate for your team, and how to influence decisions you don't control.

  • Your First 90 Days as Tech Lead

    - The first three months as a tech lead set the tone for what follows. What to focus on, what to ignore, and the mistakes most people make.

  • What is a Tech Lead?

    - The tech lead role means different things at different companies. At smaller organisations, it usually means doing both technical leadership and people work. Here's what that actually looks like.

  • Four Questions I Answer Every Week

    - How I use weekly updates to provide visibility, track productivity, and build trust with my manager.

  • Navigating Flight Levels

    - Why management isn't about climbing layers, it's about knowing when to zoom in and when to pull back.

  • Getting in the Room at a Remote Company

    - If you want to influence decisions, you need to get in the room. The challenge at a remote company is that the room isn't always visible.

  • Four Pillars of Engineering Leadership

    - The four pillars of engineering leadership: artisanship, strategy, culture and stakeholder engagement. Each one needs the one before it.

  • Estimation, Pragmatism, and the Real World

    - Why estimation isn't dead, and how to use it pragmatically to build trust and reduce surprise.

  • Doing Leveraged Work

    - Staff and Principal Engineers find work that keeps paying off long after they've moved on, multiplying what teams can achieve.

  • Stuff I learned at cinch

    - Today's my last day at cinch, where I was a Tech Lead across multiple teams for the past two and a half years. I've learned so much working there, and...

  • Notes on An Elegant Puzzle

    - Will Larson's excellent "An Elegant Puzzle" deep dives into every aspect of being a tech leader at modern software companies

  • Notes on A Manager's Path

    - Camille Fournier's "A Manager's Path" is a guide for navigating the technical career ladder