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. https://codingsans.com/engineering-management-newsletter?utm_source=Podcast&utm_medium=platforms (Sign up to the Level-up Engineering newsletter!) In this interview we're covering: The importance of writing in engineering management Why is writing important in software engineering Why is writing important in meetings Improving your writing skills as a manager Writing tools for engineering managers Common mistakes of managers Teaching 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." https://codingsans.com/blog/importance-of-writing?utm_source=Podcast&utm_medium=platforms (Click here to read the full interview!)

Level-up Engineering

The Importance of Writing in Software Engineering

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. https://codingsans.com/engineering-management-newsletter?utm_source=Podcast&utm_medium=platforms (Sign up to the Level-up Engineering newsletter!) In this interview we're covering: The definition of systems thinking Applying systems thinking to leadership Key concepts and potential traps of systems thinking The steps of applying systems thinking The importance of exploration in systems thinking Tools for systems thinking Bonus advice to apply systems thinking in leadership Excerpt 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." https://codingsans.com/blog/systems-thinking?utm_source=Podcast&utm_medium=platforms (Click here to read the full interview!)

Leadership and Systems Thinking: Clear Sight for Complex Decisions

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. https://codingsans.com/engineering-management-newsletter?utm_source=Podcast&utm_medium=platforms (Sign up to the Level-up Engineering newsletter!) In this interview we're covering: The evolution of Product Hunt's structure Going from IC to leader Evaluating yourself as a leader The effects of the pandemic on remote work Leadership challenges in product development Learnings about product development And 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." https://codingsans.com/blog/leadership-stories?utm_source=Podcast&utm_medium=platforms (Click here to read the full interview!)

Scaling your Team and Product: Leadership Stories from Product Hunt

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. https://codingsans.com/engineering-management-newsletter?utm_source=Podcast&utm_medium=platforms (Sign up to the Level-up Engineering newsletter!) In this interview we're covering: Mistakes while creating an internship program for software engineers Recruiting to an internship program Evaluating candidates going into the program Evaluating candidates at the end of the program Choosing teams and mentors for interns Stages and expectations in an internship program Excerpt 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." https://codingsans.com/blog/creating-an-internship-program?utm_source=Podcast&utm_medium=platforms (Click here to read the full interview!)

Creating an Internship Program for Software Engineers - Case Study from Redbubble

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. https://codingsans.com/engineering-management-newsletter?utm_source=Podcast&utm_medium=platforms (Sign up to the Level-up Engineering newsletter!) In this interview we're covering: Definition of performance reviews Steps of a performance review process Preparation tips for giving and receiving feedback Rules to giving feedback based on a performance review Sharpening your skills in giving feedback Supporting your team to give feedback Excerpt 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." https://codingsans.com/blog/performance-review?utm_source=Podcast&utm_medium=platforms (Click here to read the full interview!)

Performance Review: Build Your Process and Master Feedback Delivery

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! https://codingsans.com/engineering-management-newsletter?utm_source=Podcast&utm_medium=platforms (Sign up to the Level-up Engineering newsletter!) In this interview we're covering: Definition of remote employees and distributed teams Integrating remote employees to distributed teams vs remote teams Challenges of managing remote employees in a distributed team Engaging remote employees in the office chit chat Engaging remote emplyoees in team building activities Tips to set up the office to better engage remote employees Managing the return to the office in distributed teams Increasing retention by getting remote employees engaged Excerpt 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." https://codingsans.com/blog/how-to-engage-remote-employees?utm_source=Podcast&utm_medium=platforms (Click here to read the full interview!)

How to Engage Remote Employees: Tips to Lead Distributed Teams

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. https://codingsans.com/engineering-management-newsletter?utm_source=Podcast&utm_medium=platforms (Sign up to the Level-up Engineering newsletter!) In this interview we're covering: Leadership takeaways from Slack The darkest day of Slack Tactical vs strategic focus as VP of Product Engineering Retaining your direct reports Creating processes before they're necessary The experience of Slack going public Story about telling the truth And 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..." https://codingsans.com/blog/leadership-stories?utm_source=Podcast&utm_medium=platforms (Click here to read the full interview!)

Leadership Stories from Slack by Michael Lopp

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. https://codingsans.com/engineering-management-newsletter?utm_source=Podcast&utm_medium=platforms (Sign up to the Level-up Engineering newsletter!) In this interview we're covering: Definition and qualities of entrepreneurial engineers Hiring entrepreneurial engineers Onboarding and retaining entrepreneurial engineers Nurturing the business mindset in software engineers Culturally supporting the business mindset Giving feedback to engineers Preventing burnout for entrepreneurial engineers Excerpt 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." https://codingsans.com/blog/entrepreneurial-engineers?utm_source=Podcast&utm_medium=platforms (Click here to read the full interview!)

How to Hire Entrepreneurial Engineers and Why You Need Them

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. https://codingsans.com/engineering-management-newsletter?utm_source=Podcast&utm_medium=platforms (Sign up for the Level-up Engineering newsletter!) In this interview we're covering: The optimal number of remote meetings daily Making remote meetings productive Structuring remote meetings Necessary extra meetings in a remote environment Tools to support remote meetings Meetings that don't work remotely Providing a flexibility of schedule in your company Excerpt 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." https://codingsans.com/blog/remote-meeting?utm_source=Podcast&utm_medium=platforms (Click here to read the full interview!)

How to Keep Remote Meetings Productive and Your Schedule Under Control

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! https://codingsans.com/engineering-management-newsletter (Sign up for the Level-up Engineering newsletter!) In this interview we're covering: Relationship between performance and autonomy Role of the leader in self-managed teams Description of self-managed teams Making time to coach your employees Measuring the manager's performance in self-managing teams Leadership strategies to build self-managed teams Communicating your expectations Building self-managed teams in a new company Building self-managed teams in an established organization Excerpt 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?" https://codingsans.com/blog/self-managed-teams (Click here to read the full interview!)

Building Self-Managed Teams: A Case Study from Riot Games

https://codingsans.com/state-of-software-development-2021 (State of Software Development 2021 report) Interview 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. https://codingsans.com/engineering-management-newsletter (Sign up for the Level-up Engineering newsletter!) In this interview we're covering: The effects of COVID-19 on the software industry Top challenges in software development Comparing the perception of managers and engineers Hiring and retention Performance management Outsourcing development

Software Development Trends 2021

Interview with https://twitter.com/EWonf (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 team Leadership challenges in a hybrid team Preparing your team for hybrid processes Extra support requirements in hybrid teams Future plans with the hybrid environment Key skills to lead hybrid teams Keeping the community alive in a hybrid environment Excerpt 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 kindness Good communication skills Proactivity Openness to feedback For 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." https://codingsans.com/blog/hybrid-team (Click here to read the full interview!)

Managing Hybrid Teams: How to Keep Your Team Engaged and Productive

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 hypergrowth Finding the right employees Key moments for a startup in hypergrowth Scaling management as the organization grows Planning hypergrowth Preparations for projected growth Excerpt 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." https://codingsans.com/blog/hypergrowth (Click here to read the full interview!)

Leadership in Hypergrowth: A Case Study from Shapr3D

https://codingsans.typeform.com/to/L5OvgflD (State of Software Development 2021 survey!) 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 Dashbird Challenges of going from engineer to CEO Essential skills for a CEO How his engineer background made him a better CEO How he improved the skills necessary to be a CEO Networking tips Excerpt 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 solutions Setting expectations toward solutions Learning from past activities Tracking variables The 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." https://codingsans.com/blog/how-to-start-a-tech-company (Click here to read the full interview!)

From Engineer to CEO: How to Start a Tech Company

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 Dashbird Challenges of going from engineer to CEO Essential skills for a CEO How his engineer background made him a better CEO How he improved the skills necessary to be a CEO Networking tips Excerpt 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 solutions Setting expectations toward solutions Learning from past activities Tracking variables The 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." https://codingsans.com/blog/how-to-start-a-tech-company (Click here to read the full interview!)

Level-up Engineering reveals actionable management secrets from some of the most successful tech leaders. This podcast brings you key insights from fellow engineering managers and tech leaders to level-up your management skills and to take your developer team to the next level. The podcast covers the biggest challenges engineering managers face, showing exactly how others overcame these challenges. Learn the best practices on engineering management to understand people and organizations as much as you understand code. We interview tech leaders and dive into the fundamentals behind hiring and retaining developers, motivating developers, scaling dev teams, mentoring developers and much more! The episodes are brought to you by Coding Sans, a software development agency building serverless web and cross-platform mobile apps. Check them out on https://codingsans.com. If you have any feedback or would like to be featured on Level-up Engineering please, drop us a line at levelup@codingsans.com.

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