I make software in Durham, North Carolina. This is my site where I write about engineering leadership and productive product teams. If you're interested seeing more, feel free to subscribe.
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There are 3 primary reasons why one human may be more effective than another in a given work situation. Caring - All things being equal, somebody who cares more about a problem / product will generally be more effective1. Caring can range from “startup founder” level obsession to being …
I read 13 “work related” books in 20221. They’re broken up by category below. I didn’t think any of these books were bad, but the ones I would recommend have a star next to them. Decision Making ⭐ How To Decide by Annie Duke - Annie Duke takes her poker background and applies …
I’ve been working for the past month on some updates to this site designed to make it easier for me to post a bit more. The key pieces you should know if you follow this blog: I’ve pulled the name of the newsletter I ran last year (Herding Lions) into the blog – this is now …
This article was first published in my newsletter, Herding Lions At this point I’ve spent the large majority of my career working in startups at different stages. While life can look very different in a 15 person early stage startup and a 300 employee growth stage startup, one thing that is constant …
This article was first published in my newsletter, Herding Lions In my last post I listed some process tips for how to manage your time as an engineering leader. Continuing that thought, in the spirit of new habits in the new year this week will explore the question of how to choose what to focus on …
This article was first published in my newsletter, Herding Lions One of the biggest challenges every engineering leader faces is making decisions on how best to use their time. Every engineering team I’ve ever seen has more opportunities than capacity, and leaders can always do more. My day always …
This article was first published in my newsletter, Herding Lions I recently had the pleasure of working with a team to help define Kustomer’s engineering values. We went through a brainstorming process, got feedback from the team and ended up with a set of values that we believe reflect the best of …
This article was first published in my newsletter, Herding Lions In Thinking In Systems Donella Meadows observed that when maintaining a system the properties you can choose to optimize for include productivity, stability, and resiliency. Productivity is about producing outputs – for a software team …
This article was first published in my newsletter, Herding Lions There’s something deeply human about wanting to excel at the work we find ourselves doing. When we aspire to be effective at our jobs, how we describe and understand the key concepts in our work matters a lot. Last week I talked about …
This blog has always been a bit of an eclectic assortment of topics that have reflected my shifting interests over time. Recently I’ve been primarily interested in writing about Engineering Management, my role for the last 3.5 years. I’ve also been craving more conversation on these …
I recently read Thinking Fast & Slow by Daniel Kahneman, and it was my favorite read of this year. I had been generally familiar with Behavioral Economics previously, but this was the deepest I’d gotten into it. Kahneman is a very strong writer, and it left me with lots of things to think …
👋 Hi There! It’s been a bit of a quiet year on the blog as I’ve been figuring out life with 2 children, work and a pandemic that doesn’t seem like it wants to go away. I’m going to try writing a bit more soon, but in the meantime wanted to add a quick plug for Kustomer. …
I’m currently taking some time away from my job on parental leave, and it seemed like a good time to reflect on the lessons I’ve learned the last few years about engineering management. This is my fifth post, you can see a list of past posts on the series page Giving good feedback to …
I’m currently taking some time away from my job on parental leave, and it seemed like a good time to reflect on the lessons I’ve learned the last few years about engineering management. This is my fourth post, you can see a list of past posts on the series page In my last post I …
I’m currently taking some time away from my job on parental leave, and it seemed like a good time to reflect on the lessons I’ve learned the last few years about engineering management, this is my third post, you can see a list of past posts on the series page When moving into an …
I’m currently taking some time away from my job on parental leave, and it seemed like a good time to reflect on the lessons I’ve learned the last few years about engineering management, this is my second post here, a followup to my post on What EMs do In my last post I listed a bunch of …
I’m currently taking some time away from my job on parental leave, and it seemed like a good time to reflect on the lessons I’ve learned the last few years about engineering management, starting with a base assumption of what it is that engineering managers actually do There are a lot of …
I recently had a conversation with a coworker where they mentioned that they didn’t feel like they had the same power to change other people’s behavior that I did since I was a manager. It’s a common sentiment that has some truth but usually will make a manager start laughing or …
This fall ESPN published an article about Steelers QB Ben Roethlisberger’s high school stint as a Wide Receiver and how it benefited him as he moved forward in his career. Before he set records as a quarterback his senior year, before he became the Pittsburgh Steelers' top draft pick out of …
2020 was the 7th full year of this blog, and it was by far the quietest in terms of output. For reasons that are both obvious (global pandemic!) and personal (toddler, puppy, still learning a new job) writing has been on the backburner for a year. I hope to change that in 2021, but with another …
I recently discovered John Cutler’s Twitter and blog. Everything I’ve read from him so far is excellent and highly recommended, but this table in particular felt like it was worth sharing. 13/13 Feels like fast ... is actually faster pic.twitter.com/c87USFeu6b — John Cutler …
I have a one question triage process when I’m concerned that I or one of my teammates is headed towards burnout: If you take the pace & quality of the last 2 months of your life and repeated it again and again, how long would you be able to sustain it? Why 2 months? It’s long enough to be a …
I’m currently reading Doublas Hubbard’s How To Measure Anything and it is driving home a point I’ve observed anecdotally throughout my career; when people don’t know something exactly, they often throw away a ton of things that they do know. You can see this in project …
Although I don’t read Hacker News much these days, I do subscribe to a newsletter that rounds up the best links every week, and there are almost always one or two gems in there. This week my favorite link was this roundup of Essays on Programming I Think About A lot by Ben Kuhn, cataloguing …
I’ve always enjoyed sites that had easter eggs in their consoles, whether they’re simple and whimsical like Ponyfoo.com or practical like Facebook’s I’m also part of a fast growing company and we’re always hiring, so I thought I’d see if I could leave a fun message in the console, and play …