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Management

Linear & Height are nice project management tools. I use GitHub issues for all my project management tasks. Want to build a nice desktop client app for GitHub similar to Ship.

Basecamp Employee Handbook has nice ideas.

Notes

As a CTO, my default loop is 'First, cycle through all my employees and make sure that I have equipped them to be happy and productive in their jobs. Second, find something to do. If possible, delegate it; if not, do it. Repeat.
Ideas are more important than age.
- Just because someone is junior doesn't mean they don't deserve respect and cooperation.
So much of good management is so simple: recognizing when your people need a challenge vs. when they need help.
Review of Ted Lasso show and Ted's focus on making everyone in the team being the best version of themselves.
Do you need to estimate the shit that needs to be done? No! It all needs to be done. The dev team will do it as fast as they can. Estimating the work will only waste time they could spend getting the shit done.
It’s taken me years to realise I do not aspire to manage, only to mentor.
Once a manager makes it clear they don’t value you, believe them. And move on.
Bad management is so endemic in tech companies that weak managers often don't even know they are weak, and power dynamics often mean they have no motivation to improve.
Don't be afraid to bring it up or leave under bad management.
How to have an effective 1:1? Stop doing status updates.
Unnecessary process drains people's energy so much that it becomes highly inconvenient to pay attention to any detail.
Adding value by asking "What does the success metrics look like for this?" meanwhile the opportunity is clear, the team is underresourced, and behind on execution.
That's the way it's always been" is never an adequate reason to continue doing something.
Звонок (тем более всей команды) — это очень дорогая операция. Нормального созвониться раз в неделю. Нормально созвониться, если есть конфликт.
At Shopify, we tend to do whatever our engineers want in this regard. My team meets weekly and looks at a kanban project board. If we need to adjust, we have retros, etc and change the process. We have the autonomy. IMO while you need some consistency to get alignment on goals at a high level and coarse quarter-level goals, at the team level you can more or less let the team decide and then judge them on their effectiveness. (Tweet)
Holding others accountable is overrated. Holding yourself accountable is underrated.
Organize to reduce context switch and communication overhead.
Two hardest problems in engineering management: 1. What's the priority? 2. How will we measure impact?
Annual planning: remember that goals must be set top down by the leader, and that bets (and resources) to hit the goals must be set bottoms-up by the team. And have weekly iterations for the two (goals and bets/resources) to converge.
Picard management tip: If you're on red alert every day, then red alert means nothing
Keep the decisions you're making visible and discoverable. When it's done well, all the other work is a lot easier.
It’s easy to be the nice manager that just says things that keep people happy. The only one unhappy is the future manager who gets the fun job of having to catch up on real feedback to help people grow.
I'm consistently surprised by how the single act of doing this as an eng manager or product manager makes incredible waves: Send an email explaining what your team did the past 1-2 weeks, what your plans are for the next period, blockers & lessons learned.
Performance will always fall to the minimum acceptable level

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