Posts tagged with Management
Beyond Servant Leadership
I've never liked the term "servant leadership." As I eased into my engineering director role, one of my main responsibilities was conducting interviews for a wide breadth of engineering and engineering-adjacent roles. With engineers, the technical…
The Staff Meeting Ritual
Ah, the dreaded staff meeting. Chances are, if you work for a company of a certain size, you'll have been pulled into a staff meeting at some point. I'm not talking so much about the scrum…
Founder Mode Rationalization
It's been some months since Paul Graham published his essay on "Founder Mode": the idea that there are times when founders should exercise their authority to orient a company's direction, and, for the lack…
Feedback Void
There is a certain allure to someone who marches to the beat of their own drum. Framed negatively, it's stubbornness or a refusal to heed the warning of others; positively, it's harboring deep conviction and blazing…
Review: Executive Engineering
A quick disclaimer: Jack Danger, the author of Executive Engineering , is a friend and former colleague. We worked together as fellow engineers and engineering managers at Square, and our paths have crossed serendipitously in subsequent years as we travel in…
Upwards Status Updates
An inevitability when conducting 1:1s is providing status updates. It's a safe default; if there isn't a set agenda or a set of immediate problems to solve, and neither party is up for diving deep…
