Management is NOT responsible for you being an idiot. Hopefully these stories help.
What do you think, how long do programmers actually work per day? Most people would say that the answer is 8-9 hours. Some say that they work 12 hours or more per day. While that is somewhere true, it’s not the amount that most programmers actually work, because you can’t consider browsing the web as working, right?
Though people often think about the time it takes for a new engineer to start delivering value, they rarely ask themselves how long it takes for them to be fully ramped-up.
If you are not sure what a Doorknob effect is, you probably want to keep reading. Either you’ve seen it before and didn’t act properly, or worse you just missed it.
The 3 main types of technical debt are: deliberate, accidental/outdated design, and bit rot.
The most effective way to maximize the productivity of your development team is to use collaboration tools. Software developers these days are not expected to work full-time without even contacting or communicating with each other for long. If there is no collaboration among the workers, your million-dollar worth of a product cannot sustain since it’s been developed in a communication-restrictive environment.
One of the most handy tools in a blogger’s tool belt is a blog planner.
In the last article, which you can read here, I was talking about which PC components are crucial for programmers. Basically, I listed all the components to worry about, but I’ve also said that you need to keep the Bottleneck in mind. Because, there’re a lot of people who don’t know what is a bottleneck, in this article, I’ll try to explain what that is.
It was a Friday morning and I was waiting in the conference room for my manager. We had just achieved a great milestone as a team and delivered a highly critical time sensitive project. It wasn’t an ordinary success as the entire organization was counting on this platform for a mega event.
Software engineers create all those great platforms and tools for every other industry, and yet, engineering leaders struggle to understand the work of their engineering teams. They struggle to correlate engineering output to business value.
How to Use - and NOT Abuse - Software Engineering Metrics
My team meeting is crucial. I get everyone in a room and get everything I need out of them — with the added bonus of the team getting in sync, right? Wrong. Turns out, managers are blind to how crucial that meeting is to others. Only 4–9% of problems are known to managers... gulp
I love 1:1 meetings. It’s a chance to swap feedback and make sure our company is working. It’s also one of the reasons we built SoapBox bot — a bot to help people have productive 1:1 and team meetings. The reaction has been overwhelming: Managers from over 500 of the best companies in the world (Adobe, Intercom, Wayfair, etc…) are now using it with their teams.
Engineers need feedback so they can improve skills and deepen knowledge. According to the editor of the Inc. Magazine, Jeff Hayden, traditional metrics can be misleading, as they do not always offer a clear result. Evaluating the work of staff used to be difficult, before Git Analytics tools, such as Waydev came up with a data-driven approach to engineering leadership to help you bring out the best in your engineers.
The Matthew Effect or Matthew Principle of accumulated advantage, is sometimes summarized by the adage "the rich get richer and the poor get poorer".
The Pursuit of Simplicity Only Serves to Manufacture Our Consent, Not Our Understanding.
Why web development is stupidly complicated, and why the solutions are stupidly simple
Does your team have psychological safety? This may be a much more important question than you think. It may seem unintuitive but safety is a critical ingredient to unlocking your team's potential. Google certainly believes so, and Amy Edmondson at Harvard Business School agrees.
What does tech management at Slack, HubSpot, Netflix, Etsy, Shopify, InVision, and more have in common? A lot, apparently!
The ultimate guide on how to manage young PMs in your team. Includes Dos and Don’ts, examples and modus operandi using which I wish I was led/managed early on when I started as a PM. Also, young PMs could takeaway lessons from here on what to expect and ask from your managers.
You know that the digital project management field is growing, so companies require a fantastic project manager (PM). In case you are a programmer, then you know about the working of digital tools, tight-knit teams, competing deadlines and outside clients. Therefore you can become a proper PM and fulfill the requirements of the company. In the modern era, the majority of the people are looking for programming as their careers, so you must have to find a path to stand out. It is possible that you get tired of optimizing user experience (UX) by debugging codes, and now you want a different type of challenge.
Learn everything about DAOs (Decentralized Autonomous Organizations), and how they could disrupt your industry.
Here’s my recommendation when it comes to books that will help a technical person to get into management and executive functions.
Crossover for Work advertises dozens of jobs all the time, many of them highly paid, many for senior developers and architects. Everyone works from home.
Hello, Hacker Noon people! Technology guilds are a popular but still fresh way of implementing communities of practices in companies. Still, there are many questions, especially related to guild responsibilities and organization. Together with Andrew Kozin, I've prepared this post for you as a summary of our personal experience and understanding of the role of a technology guild nowadays.
I love to build stuff online, but do I have too many side projects?
Bright CEOs belong in the past. Web3 is talent-centric and doesn't need a "charismatic leader" to become successful. Well, are we right, or are we right?
A tribe of Cannibals arrives at New York City.
RACI is a framework that helps to clarify who does what in a project.
This is Minard's analysis of the fall of Napoleon's Grand Army at the French invasion of Russia in 1812, considered a masterpiece of analytic design:
The problems with promo-culture
You can find your way to success from an entry-level to an executive-leadership position. You just have to take the route that compliments your attributes best
Employee productivity helps an organization achieve its goals. Happy employees are vital resources in leading a business in the right direction.
The ability to launch and scale a project efficiently is a practice mastered with experience and, in most cases, a whole portfolio of failures.
In this story, we analyze what makes up the role of a technical writing manager, how to improve your skills, and how to be a brilliant leader.
Delivery speed results in cost reduction; confidence enables speed; confidence requires quality.
Nataliia Zub shared her perspective about secure digital transformation, risk management in times of crisis, as well as Engineering Leadership as a mindset.
Many times, the best problem solvers in an organization never get a chance to contribute their creativity, so a lot of potential goes undiscovered.
WorkPatterns is a toolkit for people managers that guides 1:1s, continuous feedback, recognition, and goal setting.
The next few months will be the most uncertain period business owners have faced. The coronavirus will change the economy and how we work. But I’ve been preparing for this time for more than a decade.
Team productivity drives success to companies in all industries. The role of the team leader is to help the team achieve better results without a professional burning-out. How do you increase team productivity and keep a healthy atmosphere in the office?
This year, leaders are being tested — on our ability to adapt, grow, and develop despite the obstacles, inspire and lead people to meaningful goals.
In this article we will briefly discuss why that is so important and a few ways you can conquer your fear of delegating and help your business and you thrive!
I am sharing 10 practical ways to embrace mindfulness, focus on wellness, and maintain your mental well-being while in the office.
Technical debt, approaches to its rapid repayment, and minimization on previous and current projects.
Open up Twitter or any dev forum really, have a little scroll, and it will not take you long at all to find developers being unpleasant to each other.
Code monkeys are notoriously strong-willed, and can be particularly hard to break. Here, we’ll outline a few ways in which you can whip your code monkeys into shape.
First things first, don’t trust them as far as you can throw them. Code monkeys will go off on a lark at the first opportunity, not returning for days on end as you wonder what’s going on. Oftentimes, they’ll come back with some godawful interface for doing some obscure thing you don’t care about, something that has nothing to do with your bottom line.
The sales department is a huge factor in the company's success. Here are 5 steps on increasing its' effectiveness and thus company's revenue
What makes an effective general manager?
Bullet issues… Each IT project has tasks of this type. They are small, simple, but once you forget about them, something gets killed suddenly.
Strategic thinking is a critical skill in life.
Managing people, meh. Building teams, now that's fun. It is really interesting to think about how individuals can make others better.
Justin Caldbeck of Binary Capital explains similarities between basketball game and a venture capital firm.
Productivity comes from an engaged workforce. HR needs a 360-degree solution that measures EX to understand make the environment for a productive workforce
If you have worked long enough, chances are you have encountered a bad manager yourself. What was it about them that irked you the most - were they unforgiving, critical, demanding, abusive, aggressive, neglectful, grumpy, lousy or plain inept? Was it their attention seeking behaviour, attitude to blame and insult others, inability to trust or lack of integrity that caused you the most mental agony.
Congratulations! You’ve been hired or promoted into a management role, and need to quickly transition from being an individual contributor to actually leading, inspiring and managing people. Not so confident about what to do next, and how to ensure your team and you are successful?
A few weeks ago we finished another company retreat. It was our best one yet.I’m sad to see it come to an end, but also breathe a sigh of relief — After all, a lot of time goes into 48h of pure company bonding time.
Being a new engineer can be challenging, but you can rock the role if you know how. Hint: not deleting the production database helps.
We need to create human-machine teams that work together. The key to achieving that is recognizing that our we all suffer from data-tunnel-vision.
Defining Product Goals and Metrics for Product Managers. Solving Product Execution Problems and Cases for PM interviews.
What ACTUALLY happens when your manager writes your quarterly performance review? Learn their tricks to get the promotion you deserve.
Don't wait for an invitation to do product strategy, because you won't get it.
The Internet of Things is a new world.
Our concepts of Lead Time and Cycle Time came from the field of Operations Management and Production Engineering. As such, I think it’s beneficial to all of us to maintain coherent with them and use the same semantics in Software Engineering Management as well.
When you’re first starting out, everything is a mistake. Everything is a failure and life sucks. But, the mistakes are actually a personal godsend, because you learn from them. You overcome challenges. You make a better thing, or service, because you made mistakes that helped you to grow.
a project's minimum person is the project's maximum
And how it reduces the odds you frustrate your team to the brink of leaving
Management is just doing The D.A.M.N job: providing Direction; fostering Alignment; maintaining Motivation, and making sure there's No Blockers.
Every significant business result consists of micro-level metrics that one can and should manage daily. Learn how to increase your revenue with small steps.
I am reviewing a practice we’re all aware of: code review.
Getting hired needs applicants to complete some steps; writing resume/CV, cover letter, popular interview questions, general interview advice, choosing a job.
Virtual Events have become every organization’s preferred method of hosting events. The number of virtual events has significantly increased in the last two years, and now even people have adapted to this method of attending events.
In the previous article, we looked at the macro trends that make tech debt inevitable. However, even though tech debt is a fact of life, technical bankruptcy doesn't have to be. So this time, let's look at the methods we can employ to avoid technical bankruptcy and save everyone a lot of grief, time, and money.
More often than not, developers and architects spend a large portion of their time in solving problems. The complexity involved in finding a solution varies from problem-to-problem and is directly proportionate to the individual’s or team’s ability in finding the solution. As a lead, architect or a senior architect, we need to instill the culture of solution-ing in our team.
Are you frequently feeling stressed out? If so, this article discusses some of the physiological symptoms associated with stress and offers tips for reducing
Having been in the VC business for 22 years now, we have had the misfortune of living through at least two major downturns. While each has its own unique characteristics, there are a few lessons that may be relevant in responding to the latest crisis.
Seems like everything has been written about effective one-on-one meetings. There are classes available, workshops suggesting ultimate know-hows, and experts offering their services to corporate and HR managers.
Hey everyone, welcome to the first edition of The Mirror. This week we’re looking at a different way to approach goal setting. Ideas are adapted from Atomic Habits and How to Fail at Almost Everything And Still Win Big. Views are my own.
PM is not just a very important person from the C-suite. They play a crucial role in the live cycle of any product of the company and they are really supposed to wear suits, but they don’t. Because product managers are responsible not just for the technical side of the product, but of its heart and soul. The main difference of PM from any management position is the necessity to be involved in the product creation directly. The manager is not about producing, but about understanding the techniques and showing the direction for all the teams, as the PM should have the final image of the product.
Everyone wants to go Agile today. Teams want to put the user in the centre of their product development process while building products. After all, you are building the product for your users, right?
The quality control department provides a window into a company's development and L' Ron Hubbard's Scientology framework is a useful model.
Product management is a specialized role with an intelligent blend of business, tech and user experience. A product manager is mostly tasked with the duty of successfully managing the development of a product from start to launch, above other tasks.
If investors only know how to spot short-term, moonshot yields, is it possible that the overwhelming majority of successful startups get overlooked?
Well unfortunately, I’m not good enough to be on the best team ever. I think the best starting 5 ever would be Steph Curry, Michael Jordan, LeBron James, Larry Bird & Bill Russell.
If you are looking to manage your software licenses better, Read on to know how you can track and document software used in your company with ease.
When your company scales from 10 to 50+ employees, you have to change your leadership approaches. Here are 8 valuable tips referring to team management.
After scouring the internet and tapping into whatever is I've learned about building teams and leveling up the purpose of work, I came up with 20 questions for the Hacker Noon team to reflect on the year behind and improve for the year ahead. Maybe they can help your startup or team too? So, I'm publishing them here.
Choosing the right facility maintenance strategy greatly depends on understanding your organization demands, legal requirements, the software you use and cost.
When working in an agile development team, having effective communication is essential. In times of remote working, where teams are distributed, it’s important to ensure that all people on the team are aligned with the goals, sharing knowledge and risks when necessary. 1–1 meetings are a great way to connect and bring people closer. To make these meetings more effective, consider doing them frequently and adapting it and its recurrence according to the participants’ perception.
You only have one life, make it big!
The definition and content of activities of the software development manager can vary widely.
Good leadership is the key to any successful business, let alone one that relies heavily on technological products.
In the 21st century, many companies are outsourcing their IT-related tasks.
The conflict of top star developers is almost inevitable if you have several top people with identical specialization in one team.
These guys are tech stars and they know just everything about the technology that is used. They are used to command the technical solution and others usually recognize their talents and follow their ideas. The problem is when these top guys meet in one team where they have to cooperate closely.
“Diversity in counsel, unity in command.”, Cyrus the Great — inspired me to share a story of understanding unity itself.
You know, that the software development process is not simple, sometimes frustrating, and exhausted with strict deadlines and requirements.
Planning means more than just “staying organized”
Learning to lead and manage teams are essential skills for anyone looking to advance their career.
I keep losing my best employees. I know I'm the reason, but I refuse to change. So how do I screw up my best people? I challenge and provide them with feedback.
To be the best of the best, Super Bowl championship teams need an elite level of consistency, trust, a culture of success, goals, measurement, and rewards.
Ransomware has become one of the greatest cyber threats facing organizations in 2022.
To handle a remote team, you have to understand different personalities.
"All I want to know is where I'm going to die so I'll never go there." - Charlie Munger
The ultimate key to success is stupidity. This is not rational. This should not work. None of this should work, so you have to be dumb enough to keep doing it.
Suppose you have to add a new major feature to an app.
Up until pretty recently my company’s tech team managed its projects through a Kanban-board. In practice this entailed that we’d come up with a product roadmap for the 12 months ahead and would start working on this from top to bottom, moving tickets through the usual swimming lanes as we went.
If you’ve been anywhere close to a computer engineer, you’d have definitely noticed them drop the term - API. A software engineer would use the term for so many varied purposes that it’s easy to lose the track of the conversation and left hanging in there, wondering, “Why the heck we need APIs?”
Have you ever heard of the north-star, it's consistently present in the sky of northern hemisphere and was the traditional way sailors aligned their course corrections at nighttime. Your company leadership provide your north-star (Values and Objectives) for aiding decision making. Mid level managers need to learn to balance the feedback from the teams with the direction of leadership.
I have been a people person as far as I could remember. So when I first became a manager, I thought “How hard could this be?”
I love movies - Particularly ones that can be referenced to bring a point home in a professional discussion. Such is the case with the movie “Whiplash” and the debate over the “sink or swim” methodology in engineer onboarding.
Here are some of the reasons you should create a plan and layout your project before you get started.
Time management does not mean managing time, rather it means managing yourself. Well, we have a 24 hours time span every day, but how we will use the time depends entirely on us. Time management can help you to use the time precisely and handle your work within your assigned time. You need to plan the work first, then track and manage your work.
Master these Self-Management areas to become a better investor: Goals management | Time management | Energy management | Focus management | Emotional management
It's really hard to get people on the same page! The concepts of serialization and state will level up your ability to keep humans in sync smooth discussion.
At its heart, scaling a team is about matching skills to problems. In this piece, we share a guide about scaling backend API software development teams
Disclaimer: All characters and events depicted in this article are entirely real (and represents the protagonist i.e. the author himself). Any similarity to actual events or persons, living or dead, is strictly intentional.
By knowing what motivates Gen Z employees, managers can better manage and retain this amazing young generation of talent.
Working remotely is now standard practice at offices around the globe.
Most engineers have heard of the 'boyscout rule': 'Always leave the code better than you found it.' It's often been heralded as a magic cure for technical debt; if only all software engineers behaved like good citizens, our software wouldn't deteriorate so relentlessly.
Given the breadth of applications for artificial intelligence in growth marketing, it’s essential to consider the benefits of leveraging marketing automation.
Performance reviews help ensure competitive compensation packages for specialists and keep them motivated. But it always gives managers headaches. Here’s why.
In a world driven by tech giants that locked-in digital distribution pipelines to reach billions of people across the globe, the gatekeeper hypothesis states that small businesses will need to pass through those nodes to reach key customers.
If you’ve ever been involved in sprint planning and argued to carve out time to pay back some technical debt (i.e. define a tech debt budget), this is how to go about it.
Thinking of transitioning away from Engineering Manager to Individual Contributor? That is exactly what I did! Let me tell you a little bit about it.
I have a confession to make: I was on Twitter over the winter holidays when I should have been spending time with my family. What was the trending topic that caught my eye, you might ask? Last minute Christmas gift ideas? Pictures of pets in Santa hats? No, but I wish I could say it was one of those things. Instead, it was about work culture toxicity in tech.
During the last several years working in the global corporate world I have come across a repeating challenge for distributed coders to efficiently work together as early as the beginning of their ramp up.
75% of cross-functional teams are dysfunctional — starts an article in Harvard Business Review. The detailed study that served as a basis of the article investigated 95 teams in 25 leading companies that revealed the dreadful numbers. These companies were from a wide range of industries, including communication, software, pharmaceuticals, agricultural, retail, government, and banking. What they’ve discovered is that most of the teams in there giant companies had no clear goals or didn’t meet their specification (i.e. schedule, budget or were unable to achieve results expected by the management). Moreover, many of the surveyed companies weren’t even aware or concerned about these problems.
Here are some top dos and don'ts for startup founders, alongside some management tips for startup founders from successful entrepreneurs.
A Key Performance Indicator, also known as KPI, is a value that can be estimated or measured, which shows the effectiveness of your business in meeting and exceeding its key objectives.
What happens if your development team is hit by a bus? A short explanation of the Bus Factor and how to hold its score at safe levels and why you should.
Design systems are a crucial success factor for digital businesses. Calculate the ROI of any design system with this ready-to-use formula.
Stewart Kohl is Co-Chief Executive Officer of The Riverside Company, a global private equity firm based in Cleveland, Ohio with offices across North America, Europe and the Asia-Pacific region. The Riverside Company has more than $7 billion in assets under management and oversees a global portfolio of more than 80 companies. Prior to joining Riverside in 1993, Kohl served as vice president of Citicorp Venture Capital and COO of the National Cooperative Business Association in Washington, D.C
General Introductions to Remote Working (... you can contribute here).
If you want something done right, you have to do it yourself, right? The perfectionist in you likes to be in control and is good at finding excuses - “Outcome won’t be as good.” “It will take me longer to assign and explain than to do it myself.” “I don’t have anyone with the right skills.” “No one in the team wants to do it anyway.”
All managers struggle with the fine balance between doing work that achieves short term goals vs investing time in activities with long term benefits.
Pain can be difficult to deal with, but there are different management options for pain depending on person, gender and clinical conditions. Read about pain.
Can you remember when you used to gather in person with your team to define your roadmap and reassess your company’s collective priorities? Every quarter, our team at Pillar VC convenes for a strategic planning session to decide how we’ll invest our time and energy in the months ahead; last week, we held this meeting for the first time over Zoom. While we’ve only been working remotely for a few weeks, it feels like the world around us has changed at lightning speed.
High-performing teams proactively develop their engineers to address the team's skill gaps, using methods such as tutorials, mentorship and stretch assignments
The quest to achieve a work-life-balance is never-ending, but if you understand the problem, the solution isn't that far away.
Project management systems are supposed to make the life of teams easier and the work process faster and more efficient.
If you’ve never had this experience you have my envy. You’re on a development team and one of the developers does sloppy work and there is nothing you can do about it.
Note: Although there are many articles about the pros and cons of outsourcing, I found nothing useful to inform the product owners about fraud prevention. It's about time to fix this. Imagine the situation: you find a suitable developer, work with them for a few weeks, then you end up seeing their code quality become poor. What is that? Lack of motivation? Dark times personally which reflect in their work? The stars aligned wrong? Or is it shadow mode?
There’s something I’ve been saying since SoapBox was first born: employee surveys are dumb. They’re really, frustratingly dumb. They’re not the solution to the employee engagement crisis. They’re part of the problem.
These simple, easy-to-follow productivity tips will improve your output dramatically.
Mind mapping is a diagram that helps you organize your thoughts. Mind maps can be used for brainstorming, studying, planning, and writing.
Work meetings are an obvious necessity for many reasons. However, these meetings can become overly frequent and pointless. How then can they be optimized?
How emotions, ego and aspirations influence technological choices. How to answer these psychological need with an objective method.
In this hiring climate, you need to differentiate to attract candidates.
Eduardo Mignot from Spain has been nominated for a 2020#Noonie in the Future Heroes and Technology categories.
One of the last questions asked in a DevOps interview is usually "so, what does DevOps mean to you?" I think this is a smart question, because DevOps is wildly misunderstood by the greater IT community. Some may answer that it's Continuous Integration and Releases, another may say it's having everything in Git, and the last might say that it's having tests available. All of these technical solutions do represent a key aspect of DevOps which is the tool chain, but it is the least important.
Why do so many digital transformation initiatives stall or fail? The answer might lie at the bottom of this iceberg…
Every organization uses technology, software, and services to run their ship. However, it's important to keep track and to manage all of it.
Mentorship requires at least 2 people. However, anyone who has ever queried information about software developer onboarding, could notice right away a strong focus on the onboardee. Most onboarding approaches are centered on guiding new hires through their first days, tasks or overcoming the hurdles of getting started. But this approach rarely highlights the troubles and challenges of the mentors*. We frequently hear about the “Sink or Swim” approach by which new engineers are “thrown into the deep end” with hands-on tasks on their first day in. The truth is, mentors are also treated this way, although unintentionally and with no buoy waiting for them.
To reach Gen-Z, brands cannot ignore gaming as a channel. Some brands have already begun capitalizing on these platforms.
The process of composing a development team can look a lot like starting a fighting game where you choose characters to fight your battles. Here are many tips
Hey there! In this article, I'm sharing my thoughts about Deno as a bad runtime system for enterprise applications. At least for now.
Misalignment of Vision
The demand for software developers is ever-increasing, with many industries turning to IT for help concerning marketing, automation processes, etc. It's estimated that by the end of 2019, the total number of software developers will count over 26 million. Scattered around the globe, managing them online could prove to be a difficult job for managers.
Being caught in the ‘busy trap’ makes it harder to see that productivity is not based on the number of hours you put in; it’s the time spent creating value.
Just around 2012 is when I received a lesson of a lifetime, to appreciate culture differences and how very deep they can get.
With 283% growth over a three-year period, no one would be faulted in believing that Sashen’s theories and intuitions are at the heart of Xero Shoes' success.
Disclosure: Sam is Engineering Manager at Touchlab, a mobile innovation consultancy based in NYC with expertise in Kotlin Multiplatform.
Performance reviews play a big role in the operation of the organization.
It’s not a one solution for everyone situation: Remote working may suit some, but others will want time in the office. Here are some tips to stay flexible.
And their 4 areas of responsibility
Apparently, data has become more ubiquitous than the stars in the sky. In fact, the amount of data produced daily via the Internet is set to top 44 zettabytes. As you might assume, that’s more data than you could possibly fathom or use.
Getting and hiring the right remote worker can be a difficult task, for most businesses and organizations.
Before he realized what happened, the company was seeing seven figure sales monthly. Focusing on growth, profitability and investing in people have been keys...
Today, there are so many ways to learn how to be a better product manager. There are books, courses and articles which will teach you the various skills and techniques you need to know. But in this article, I don't want to talk about these. Instead, I want to share some ideas from other disciplines, like economics, psychology and manufacturing that changed the way I think and made me a better product manager. I hope they spark interest and do the same for you!
You have probably noticed that most management positions require previous management experience. How can you get that experience without getting the job?
12 tips that help ensure that even when your team is working from home, they will still have the chance to grow and develop despite the lack of physical contact
In this Pandemic, Businessman is losing so much money they know it. If your elementary business base on offline, then their barely any chance of making money however If your business on online, then you can make some money because the e-commerce websites are helping out of there are services. I know some startup company their primarily based on online. One of my close friends, he shares some cold facts, how he manages his business in this pandemic.
Andrii Poddubnyi, an Engineering Director at Innovecs, shared his trajectory and important lessons and outlined the role of people in his career path.
Building a product that solved the enormous inefficiencies in digital advertising seemed like a win-win for everyone: consumers, marketers and publishers alike.
This article is about the approach one could take to ensure the autotests initiative is not rejected.
The classic code review process contains several severe flaws and should be redesigned. The story depicts how to do so.
The relevance and priority of a new idea to management depends heavily on how you package it. Here is a step-by-step guide to get them excited about your idea.
An organization's success depends not only on current capabilities but on the team's ability to grow and adapt. And this is facilitated by its leaders.
Pluralistic ignorance is a psychological state in which we believe that our private thoughts, and feelings, are different from those of others.
Tips on how to be an effective Contributor to Open Source.
A guide for engineering managers (and ICs) about the different types of compensation schemes as well as the advantages and disadvantages of those schemes.
If you run a search for a "content manager" on the Internet, you will not get a clear understanding of what they do and what skills they are expected to have.
The PDIG framework covers the way people work together.
Vita Baryshnikova is a Head of HR at Skyeng where 90% of employees and contractors work remotely. Vita shares her experience of creating effective processes for remote teams. These simple tips can help you prevent burnout and add transparency to your work.
You know the feeling, don’t you? You dearly wish to reach some business goal, complete an important project, learn a wanted skill. Finally, perhaps after reading some inspirational articles here on Medium, you decide to get up and go. You’re full of enthusiasm, determined to finally JUST DO IT, and all that stuff.
1/13/2023: Top 5 stories on the Hackernoon homepage!
Key Account Management is a strategy to help you serve your most important clients.
Every new year brings a shift in technology along with uncertainty about the future tech world. Keeping up with the changes calls for learning and development.
“No” is often equated with being mean but “no” isn’t about shutting projects and people down. Here's how to say no in a corporate setting without sounding rude.
A story of how we turned a regular company into a global network of professionals working toward a common goal -- and the lessons we learned along the way.
How to transition from a software engineer to a manager and a leader of a team.
Here is everything you might want to know about what a management consultant does and how much someone can earn in the role.
There are many ways to approach fostering a culture of belonging in the workplace, and affinity groups are a great place to start.
Some discomfort is natural if you have recently moved from an individual contributor to a manager position.
please delete this
At the moment due to coronavirus, all Skyeng teams work from home. For us, the shift to remote work was much easier than for many teams who are used to the office environment. At Skyeng, 90% of employees and contractors have been working remotely since their first day.
Taking on a management role in engineering may be daunting at first. Here are some tips for getting through the initial period, based on my experience.
Alex Omeyer from the United States has been nominated for TWO 2020 Noonies in the Future Heroes and Development award categories. Without further ado, we present to you, this big techy world, from the perspective of Alex - right after this ad break:
Technical debt exists on each project if it’s more than 1–3 months old. Having technical debt doesn’t necessarily mean that software engineers are not performing well. Technical debt can appear because of business pressure, lack of requirements, lack of interaction between team members etc. However, good software engineers know how to manage the technical debt and do that. Bad software engineers simply hide the tech debt from managers and customers, hoping that the project will be completed before it gets out of hand.
Productivity is a volatile thing in the office. It comes and goes. Just like there are ups and downs in life, some days are more rewarding than others at the workplace too. There will be times when your team would get in a slump and you will have to jumpstart them back to life.
Use this easy exercise to figure out who is responsible for what. Handy for teams and individuals.
One of the most important aspects of building great product organisations is to design a system where builders thrive. A group of well-organized, ambitious yet humble, smart folks is an unstoppable force.
Building and maintaining strong relationships can be a challenging endeavor.
The bread and butter of knowledge work is figuring out what needs to be done, in what order, and what can be cut.
Make a plan. Be transparent about the plan. Keep everybody updated as the plan unfolds and evolves.
When it comes to data security, Salesforce sandbox Data Mask is a mighty tool, which is largely used by the Salesforce developer and admins lately.
Every individual has strengths and weaknesses; it’s easy as a hiring manager to hire people who display similar strengths as yourself. That’s because these strengths are easier to identify since you have experience and interest in said area and more confidence in your evaluation. However, people like you may also have similar blindspots. These blindspots, amplified on a group of people, will become much more detrimental. As a manager, I would want to reduce the number of weak areas on my team.
Military minds understand their armies are really only as good as their sergeants. Sure an army needs officers, but often lower ranking officers are usually young and inexperienced. Though they outrank the sergeant, they lack the experience of real world execution. The sergeant, the non-commissioned officer, is also a leader of men. Their paths to this leadership position can be a much longer slog doing the same work as the mainline enlisted.
One of the key things that makes leaders effective is the ability to orient themselves. Leaders make their own problems. This post shares how to do that.
Process gates are a common leadership trap you may not even realize you’re making: adding steps that require someone to do something. They often backfire!
You are a leader; therefore, you must understand: if your judgment is listened to and you, as an influencer, can impact the collective mood.
We asked our Product Management community, ‘Do Product Managers Need SQL/ Python?' Read all about what they had to say.
Patrick Campbell goes over why you shouldn't treat your team like children.
After the uncertainty of the year 2020, we have to admit: the new order came up from the chaos, and as a result, the business priorities were reconfigured too.
The 50/10 method is simple. It says work for fifty minutes; rest for ten minutes.
It has been demonstrated throughout our history that an organized group of people can be more than the sum of its parts and can achieve more than a single human
This is the second part of the series File management with python. We pick up from where we left last time Part 1, where we organized files according to the extension. So, let's get started.
These simple steps will help you to avoid common mistakes during a presentation, catch stakeholder's attention and receive the green light for your project.
Hey, I've been nominated for the Noonies 2022 and this is my interview to help you know more about me and how I worked to become an engineering manager
2020 will go down in history as the year that turned the trend that was working from home into the norm for businesses across the globe. Everyone who can feasibly work from home is now doing so.
A month ago saying that running a company through the crisis caused by this pandemic has been hard would be an understatement. I’m sure this has been unchartered territory for most of us. I mean, most workplaces don’t even have work from home policies that they had to design from scratch.
Conducting exit interviews correctly and taking retention actions can have an impact on the organisations' happiness and bottom-line profitability.
I was recently asked to engage in a debate over whether or not there are deadlines in agile. There were a few folks involved in the debate and the predominant perspective seemed to be that true agile efforts have no external deadlines - all deadlines are self-imposed by the team in the form of an iteration commitment or a scope negotiation with the Product Owner.
Modern organizations need complex IT infrastructures to provide goods and services at the expected levels. Any malfunctioning component can have damning effects
Ginni Rometty, the first female CEO of IBM, stated “Some people call this artificial intelligence, but the reality is this technology will enhance us.” We couldn’t agree more with this statement given our mission is to enhance managers and their ability to lead teams through the insights provided by Peoplelogic.ai.
By understanding your own team, audience, and goals, you can select technology that meets your organization's needs.
Once you begin your startup business, then comes the toughest part! To sustain and grow to a leading organization by managing the same with some brilliant ideas. Many of the leading management gurus have written a lot about how to achieve the same.
The best way to avoid career burnout is for employees to prioritize taking care of their mental, physical, and emotional well-being.
In this story, we’ll be exploring 7 of the issues that may face business leaders in 2022 and how best they can manage them.
What can make us incredibly valuable at work - our willingness to disagree openly and commit to helping others succeed or sticking to our arguments even when others have moved forward and a decision has been made.
A business's inventory is one of its most important and valuable assets. In this article, you will explore six ways to improve inventory management.
The most popular goal-setting frameworks — FAST goals, SMART goals, OKRs — break when it comes to the engineering department.
The cornerstone of every framework is specificity, but most engineering departments run on benchmarks and estimations that are vague, subjective, or constantly in flux. Common project measurements, like story points or t-shirt sizes, lack objectivity. And while lists of completed features are definite cause for celebration, they’re too broad to provide insight into the actual work being done by the engineering department.
To get specific, you need data. With information from your VCS, it’s possible to gain visibility into your development workflow and spot opportunities for advancement.
Subjective measurements, like t-shirt sizes and story points, can be replaced with objective metrics that are comparable across projects and teams. For example:
As a manager, without a system in place to measure yourself and actively monitor how you’re doing, you can't identify all the areas that you need to improve on.
A lot of the people I know, have been asking me questions regarding pre-sales / Solution engineering and how to succeed in it
Giving and receiving feedback is crucial to grow as a person, but it's not easy for everybody to take it. Here's an insight on the truth about feedback.
After scouring the internet and tapping into whatever it is I've learned about building teams and leveling up the purpose of work, I came up with 20 questions for the Hacker Noon team to reflect on the year behind and improve for the year ahead. Maybe they can help your startup or team too? So, I'm publishing them here.
Key takeaways from transforming a monolithic team into three autonomous squads and much more.
Today's interview is with Marek Tihkan, CTO at Dashbird talking all about Dev team leadership and management.
The Scrum Guide is quite clear on one important thing: for one product there is only one Product Owner and only one Product Backlog:
We are in the age of the Agile revolution, even non-tech companies and non-tech departments are adopting agile practices and frameworks. The issue is that organizations are making these adoptions without changing the foundation that their companies are built on. One of these major pillars is performance appraisals and it is critical because it is very important to employees. We all want to do well, and get big bonuses, or even get that promotion that we have been working so hard towards. The issue is most companies do not have the Agile mindset and focus mainly on the individual and neglect the team aspect when it comes to performance. This directly hurts organizations that are looking to build mature Agile teams.
As managers, we easily get frustrated with developers. Maybe they can't build a certain feature; or a bug fix you deemed critical to your business is too far down the backlog for comfort.
If everything is functioning well right now, why mess with it?
If you run a nonprofit, you're no stranger to the idea of wearing many hats at your organization.
Hypothetical thinking can help you trust in a more flexible, mature, and proactive manner.
It’s hard for CEOs to manage the growing threat of cybersecurity across their businesses, especially considering more pressing company concerns. That’s why some forward-thinking business leaders are establishing frameworks for shared cybersecurity responsibility. In the article, Tamas Kadar, Founder and Chief Executive Officer at SEON talks about the operational benefits of adopting this approach.
10X developers are mythological creatures in the Startup world. I don’t really know if they exist but I can argue that 10X managers do!
How to build a proactive and happy engineering team? What should you know to manage and lead the team of engineers more effectively? Here we’re going to share the startup guide with the helpful tips to make you a better manager and leader.
There is a lot of information about the "Eat the Frog" method, here is what I found after following it for 6 weeks.
Companies need to adapt to the changes necessary in a hybrid workspace to set employees up for success.
Are you compromising? You should!
As an industry, we need to work together more effectively, communicate clearly, and solve problems with less conflict. In short, we need stronger people skills.
Whether you're managing stakeholders or just want to get a project out the door, good communication is essential to creating great products.
Leading and motivating remote teams will be crucial to being a successful leader in this new hybrid world. Let’s explore how to be a good leader today.
Airbyte, the open-source data integration platform, shares how they performed on their OKRs for Q1 2021, and what their new OKRs for Q2 2021 are.
The hybrid work model is appearing more and more often in companies' return-to-office plan. What is it and how do you prepare your team for this new norm?
All large organizations be it multinational corporations, big corporate houses, or global production units are applying Six Sigma techniques to better their business processes, nowadays. However, a huge misconception that ‘Six Sigma methodology doesn’t work for startups’ spins around it. Well, the universal nature of Six Sigma techniques and their effectiveness in process optimization and quality control make them an indispensable tool for organizations of all sizes.
In the professional world, your network is your biggest asset in creating or securing those career opportunities.
Every business - and everyone - encounters problems, whether it's too few customers, a product now working, or a team not functioning as it should.
In today’s new office normal, legacy process management techniques stand up to the test. How do we keep processes intact when stakeholders are scattered around the globe, or show up occasionally just to check in on the progress made?
Over-reliance on Pulse surveys as the only practice for employee feedback and management accountability will hurt the organization. here are some alternatives.
In this article, you'll find some important items to add to your hybrid team meeting agenda
We see hard-working product teams struggling all the time, even under the best of conditions. Often, it’s not due to a deficiency or lack of skill within the team. Rather, the team has fallen into one—or more—of the most common dysfunctions in product management.
Strengthening the supply chain management will directly boost the entire business and the digitize approach in supply chain management will do that for your ven
It’s hard to believe, but it has already been a year since Russia attacked Ukraine without any provocation, rhyme, or reason.
Data is everywhere. In the business world alone, we use it to track search engine traffic, monitor website activity, land sales, improve customer service.
We focus so much on external change - getting approval from executives or people on other teams. To enact real change, focus on what you can control.
Some of the most toxic managers I have worked with had no clue they were contributing to a toxic work environment. Otherwise pleasant to talk to, these managers seemed to genuinely care about their people. However, what appeared on the outside was not in tune with what went inside their teams. Their good intentions didn’t always translate into the right action.
How do you measure quality in software engineering? I guess this is the question there will always be a debate on. There are so many approaches to this question that finding only one answer is just impossible. In this article, we will be listing the quality-related metrics that the top engineering teams have been keeping track of, and see when and how you should use them.
How Active Investment Strategies Keep Scaling Businesses from Stalling
"Clients do not come first. Employees come first. If you take care of your employees, they will take care of the clients and your business." – Richard Branson
One of the things that all new managers who move from leading a team of engineers to leading managers have in common is, well, frustration.
What's your background?
Most agile teams do sprint retrospectives at least once a month, to iterate and improve on their software development process and workflow. However, a lot of those same teams rely only on their feelings to “know” if they have actually improved. But you need an unbiased reference system if you want to compare how two sprints went.
One characteristic that truly distinguishes today’s employees from old generations is the understanding of and alignment with modern technologies
Scrum is a buzzword, the virtue signal of choice for middle-management in software organizations.
Have you ever thought that you have to develop pretty much the same skills if you want to become CMO, CCO, CPO, and basically Chief Anything Officer?
As artificial intelligence becomes more and more integrated into our workplace and daily life, it will fundamentally disrupt the way we live and work. A recent survey of 5,700 Harvard Business School alumni found that even in the elite group, 52% believe that the number of employees in general companies will decrease in the three years from now.
In a fast-moving, ever-changing, dynamic work environment, the ability to collaborate effectively isn’t a necessity, it’s a superpower.
Well-written multitier applications consist of multiple layers. The most widespread three-tier architecture divides our code into a presentation, business and data access tiers. Like it or not, but the business layer is where we, developers, spend the most time on a daily basis. This is the place where all processes and decisions our application depends on take place. Therefore, requirements for the business layer change more often than in any other layer. What hurts us, developers, most is that with every change, even the smallest ones, we need to recompile and rebuild our app. It usually takes a piece of the valuable time that we could use for more interesting things. What if we could move a business logic out of our code and let non-technician people change it?
This blog post should not be considered authoritative in any way. It simply an imperfect attempt to highlight some guiding principles. I am convinced these guiding principles could be useful for you, your dear-ones and your team.
Hypothetically, organizations should not be characterized by disorder or uncertainty, so they would seem ordered.
Here are 4 ways that an HR department can help overcome challenges in the workplace that hold back many businesses that do not have such facilities available.
A Mini-M is a group of managers that meet weekly or biweekly. The meeting is a combination support group and working session.
Traits of an Emotionally Intelligent Entrepreneur
Finally, HRMS software is becoming more global. This means that it can be used to manage employees in different countries.
Your company leadership provide your north-star (Values and Objectives) for aiding decision making. Midlevel managers need to learn to balance the feedback from the teams with the direction of leadership.
I was 24 years old. A baby.
Most of us have had that one experience where we had a ton of dis-organized files in our machines. It happens. One minute, you're opening a large zip file, the next thing you know, the files are everywhere in the directory, mixing with all your important files and randomly placed leaving you with the task of manually sorting what needs to go where. It's a real pain. To ease this process, we're going to delve into file management with python the smart way.
The hiring managers goal for onboarding new employees is to get them productive as soon as possible, using a 30-60-90 day plan.
It’s easy to pay lip service to company culture. But few companies actively consider those few cultural characteristics that make a meaningful difference to performance—because that’s the hard part.
In this article we will talk about using Gantt charts for Project Management. How this tool functions, and outlines its main benefits and drawbacks.
Being a manager isn’t easy, and anyone who tells you otherwise ain’t doing their job.
Believe most of us are already aware of what is expected of a Product Manager profile in any internet company, starting from being a mini CEO of the product to be the interface between business, UX & technology. Here in addition to those common attributes of a PM profile I am going to point out few not so common traits but important qualities a Product Manager should possess.
I often wondered about the difference between junior, mid-level, and senior developers, so I decided to write a short article about the topic.
The following 5 rules of effective team management help develop our business not only in post-COVID times but in times of war in Ukraine as well.
Does your team feel its alignment with business where what it delivers solve business problems and achieve business desired outcome?
Dare to Change your Recruitment Strategy](https://hackernoon.com/learn-the-truth-about-software-developers-and-dare-to-change-your-recruitment-strategy) You can hire the best of the best if you try to understand the current preferences of software developers and update their strategy. Let`s learn how!
Use your sense of autonomy to feel in control of your situation and employ effective problem-solving strategies to resolve the conflict.
How to Take Your Startup from Foundation to Flourish
I had to settle a performance discussion within my team. Because of a simple PR, I started a 2 weeks journey in the dark twists and turns of javascript. To save you a lot of pain and frustrating questions, I sum up my research in this really long post. I tried my best to show you the train of thoughts but if you don’t care about the details, you can jump to the end for the TL;DR section.
It’s ok, we all do it…
We hear about scalability all the time: Zillions of data, billions of hits on a website, millions of tweets, etc. With everything around us scaling to never seen before, the limiting element in all this is organization. Can we apply the knowledge of scaling software to scaling an organization?
Can anyone be a Product Owner (PO)? What’s the best position in the company to fill that role? With Scrum you have one and only one product owner for a given product – not a committee, but the effectiveness of the product owner will vary depending on the PO’s organizational enablement, understanding of the product, and involvement with the Scrum Team.
Salesforce Territory Management is a tool that forms a part of the Sales Cloud. Salesforce enables you to model sales territories into logical structures.
As someone who’s been the CEO for years, I think I might be of some help here. Over these years, I saw hundreds of things not working out the way I initially planned but, knowing that I was in the middle of a process kept me going.
What is a secret sauce of innovation for big companies and how to integrate new techniques and solutions to outdated workflows?
What work does a data engineer actually do? Let me tell you one thing: it’s not what you think they should be doing, especially not the part where they are running around collecting data for you or building yet another one of those dashboards that will only be used for a few weeks.
2021 has brought a lot of change into the lives of people from all walks of life. Most of us have been bound to our homes until it’s deemed safe to return to our usual way of life. One of the areas that have been affected by this change is how and where we work.
Duke Leto might have been your favorite fictional character, but I'm not sure that you would like and support him as your business leader.
Excellent problem-solving skill is very essential for a Product Manager, because in the real day to day as a Product Manager will face a lot of complex problems that require deeply thinking for finding the root cause of problems, not only user’s problems but also internal problems such as slow development process, increase growth rate, increase retention rate, etc.
Originally published on melvinkoh.me
You are the regional supervisor of ABC Co. and part of your job is to inspect different job sites.
Companies that embrace AI will be able to test, learn, and iterate much faster, raising the competitive bar for learning.
Project "Carpool"
This has been burning for a while.
Illustration by Mat Voyce
In this article, you’ll discover why communication is a critical skill for a manager and seventeen skills to improve communication at work
Intro
The gap between how you view your behaviors and actions and how others perceive you is always huge.
The performance of verification and configuration management is essential to the ARP4754A document and other avionics development documents. ARP4754A, officially titled Guidelines for Development of Civil Aircraft And Systems, is concerned with “the development of aircraft systems taking into account the overall aircraft operating environment and functions.”
One-on-one meetings go wrong not because of lack of effort. They go wrong when you don’t pay attention to the little things that are needed to get them right.
The most successful companies take the greatest care of their people. Here are few things your should take into consideration to enable your growth.
Big Data is changing human resource management for good. We explore 4 major ways data analytics is upending & expanding the role of human resource departments.
How to tell between important and unimportant and don’t get lost in data smog.
In the nearest future, worldwide economies will face one of the most powerful financial crises since 2008. There are a lot of reasons for it, but the root cause is coronavirus covid-19.
Product managers are responsible not just for the technical side of the product, but of its heart and soul.
PM is not just a very important person from the C-suite. They play a crucial role in the live cycle of any product of the company and they are really supposed to wear suits, but they don’t. Product managers are responsible not just for the technical side of the product, but of its heart and soul.
Companies can run for many years without strategy sessions, and be fine. Yet if they start doing that – they will inevitably see greater success and growth and just overall business improvement. Albina Zhdanova, the COO of Tools for Brokers, shares their insights into organizing a productive strategy session.
Do You Know What Your Values Are?
A strategic roadmap is a guide from your current state to your desired future state. It is a helpful tool to set up and every leader should have developed one.
People with a growth mindset are constantly learning, refining their successes, and improving on their failures. The process is more important than the outcome.
If your project is considering PaaS, then you may be worried about how this change might impact your team—and rightfully so. Switching to PaaS often results in major shifts in roles and responsibilities.
After a year in people management roles, I discovered that people are the toughest part of it all. You can find perfect tools to automate your routine tasks or build fantastic processes causing you no trouble. You can get all other issues resolved, but the human factor will still be your biggest risk.
Payroll taxes are in the news. President Donald Trump said he wanted to defer the collection of employee portion of the Social Security portion of the payroll tax in order to provide pandemic-related economic relief to workers. The Congress didn’t agree, so he issued an executive order to do just that on August 13. Much is unclear about how his order is supposed to work, and there are questions about whether it is legal.
Since this virus is so contagious that it spreads to other people by contact, the only way possible to curb its spread is to stay away from other people. To help you understand how dangerous this virus is, you need to have a look at Italy. Italy reported its 1st positive case on Feb 20 and till the date, it has One Hundred Four Thousand positive cases with more than Twenty Thousand deaths.
Understanding the severity of the situation, authorities have requested everyone to stay at their home and refrain from going outside. To promote this, companies have advised their employees to work from their home
Remote work (also called telework or telecommuting), has been growing in popularity over the past twenty years. Many organizations allow for flexible worksites on some level: employees work remotely for part of the week, as-needed for minor illness, or when school or childcare is unavailable. However, with a major health concern on the rise, companies of all sizes (including tech giants such as Twitter, Google, Amazon, Facebook, and Microsoft) have transitioned some or all employees to remote work to keep business moving while limiting unnecessary exposure to COVID-19.
For modern tech companies like Amazon and Apple, the infrastructure and policy need for remote working are unquestionably already in place and the vast majority of staff members are probably already laptop users.
For smaller organizations, however, the situation is likely to be different. Remote working is limited to software development and marketing companies. The education sector is a good case in point: universities have been delivering distance learning as a feature for some time, while high schools and others are mainly dependent on staff and pupils being on-site to learn.
Collaborative learning is an approach based on the teamwork of the employees' group to achieve a joint purpose. Such an approach allows one to learn from the experience of others, helps to generate more ideas, as well as establishes a solid rapport within a company.
DAO stands for a Decentralized Autonomous Organization. The definition is right there in the name; it’s an internet-native organization where the management is decentralized, and the decisions are autonomous thanks to its programmed logic.
Goal setting is one of the most important ways to foster growth, let’s look at some key concepts and frameworks.
Skilled IT workers are challenging to find and keep – and the talent shortage is bound to continue in 2022. But there’s a recipe that’s guaranteed to work...
Monitoring employees’ productivity is a key to success at any company, be it a startup or a huge enterprise. CEOs and HR Managers know how important employee tracking is. Some modern technology and classic proven methods will help you keep an eye on employees’ activity. Here’s the list of the best ways to keep track of your team’s productivity.
tl;dr In this game of startups; some win, some lose.
That's likely a question that you've never asked yourself, but as a manager, it's an important one. Career conversations are an important part of career development. We’re going to define 5 levels that will make it easier for you to have a better career conversation. Through self-reflection or 360 feedback, it should be relatively easy to know where you stand. You can then set the next highest level as a tangible goal to improve.
The software development market is gigantic and has a lot to offer us
Managing Guidance From The Diary of an Amateur (not anymore) CEO Who Runs a Six Million Revenue BusinessWhy invent the wheel when someone has already invented a bicycle? Whether in business or any other category, learning from others’ experiences increases your chances of success along with saving you time, resources, and money.
In our previous blog post, we wrote about Agile, a philosophy for managing projects and teams. In that text, we mentioned Agile methods, one of them being Scrum.
Why is time management important in a team?
I have always enjoyed healthy disagreements about my own ideas and opinions at home and at work. They give me a peek into so many unique perspectives and help me see how different the world is around us. I do not agree with everything people say, but I am definitely open to hearing them around.
Remote work has become the most transformative labor trend of our lifetime. Long before ‘social distancing’ became a household term, businesses chose to operate with remote teams because of its benefits.
How likely are our customers to recommend our products to others? - a simple yet powerful tool customer service teams use to gauge and sense.
Dvir has over 20 years of executive experience leading technology and internet companies.
^^^ Photo Credit, The Office (the internet's most streamed show) ^^^
Oleg is nominated for HackerNoon Contributor of the Year - Management, in the technology category.
“Core hours” defeat the purpose of working — but what about ensuring that work is done?
Project Economy is another new way people are learning to make money in the world buy working from one project to another, using their skills to add value.
Clayton Christensen is one of the greatest business minds of our time. His recent passing caused me to reflect on all I learned from him. His life was dedicated to his family, his faith, and the theories he taught. He personified servant leadership.
We all want to have a good relationship with our managers, work on impactful projects that help us advance our career, want to be highly regarded in our line of work and be trusted and respected by others. But, how often do we take charge of our own growth?
One thing that surprises me over and over is how many startup founders don’t use models and equations in their business. I always get strange looks when invariably I ask my favorite business questions: “So, what is the equation here? What variable are you hoping to affect by doing this?”
One of the most harmful behaviors I’ve observed in ineffective leadership is a tendency to add chaos when one enters a room. Chaos comes in many flavors: A decision was reached about an important architecture question weeks ago, but someone suddenly insists that you revisit the project’s fundamental goals at the 11th hour. An executive insists that their project is most important, and pushes it onto the roadmap. Or maybe you leave a productive meeting without concrete next steps, and are right back where you started in a week.
I couldn't find any good resources on how to interview prep for a management role in cybersecurity, so I decided to make one.
The leadership I’ve learned through life could be summed up and put on the front of a t-shirt, “95% of the leadership skills I learned, I learned in the Army.” If that saying isn't already a thing: ™️. Though I left the U.S. Army a little over 20 years ago, I still stand by that statement.
First principles thinking drives complex problem solving and workplace innovation through reverse engineering. Companies that employ first principles thinking are one step ahead as they plan and build for the future.
The world of today requires trendy technology in order to beat the odds because of the competitive pressure existing among business organizations. This has made business people get out of their comfort zone to make sure they stay at the top. Giving the customers great products and services in an easy and satisfying way can only happen to businesses that are ready to undergo digital transformation.
When we think of giving feedback, we promptly think about correcting others. But giving feedback is as much about telling others what they are doing right as it is about telling them what they are doing wrong.
High performers in any organisation aren’t easy to manage. With their uncanny ability to produce outstanding work and an appetite to solve tough problems, they demand even greater attention and engagement from their managers.
While the change demands letting go of our existing identity and embracing new ones with openness, it’s our mindset that determines what we make of our mindset.
Learn how B2B and SaaS product managers solve business users problems by building features for enterprise solutions
Giving difficult feedback is the most difficult thing you may have to do at work, but building this skill is like building muscle.
Managing a remote team can be difficult, but if you do it correctly, your team can have an enjoyable and productive work-from-home life. My team is scattered all over the world. Sometimes I can be discussing a bug with a QA engineer who is 6,034 miles away from me, in the US, while I’m here in Siberia. But in just 20 minutes, we’ll find a solution and in a week, the bug will be fixed.
Management and leadership in technical writing should not be either/or, and requires new perspectives on roles, hierarchy, vision and goals.
I started this blog post on disaster communications initially in response to the wildfires in Australia and earthquakes in Puerto Rico (seems a lifetime ago doesn't it?). But, of course, we're now also thinking about the COVID-19 global pandemic, which, like a disaster, is displacing people from their normal ways of operating.
Over the last six months, I’ve learned how the best software engineers and leaders manage technical debt. I've interviewed more than 200 experts, to understand how tech debt is handled at growing software companies.
Seven steps for planning, approaching and delivering bad news in the workplace
Leadership qualities like integrity, humility, focus, confidence, transparency, inspiration, passion, accountability, vision, innovation, patience, authenticity, open-mindedness, decisiveness, affectionate, generosity, persistence and insightfulness are beautiful words that look good on pictures and posters that adorn the wall of offices.
No strategy can help an organization thrive if the people in the organization aren’t resilient to change and chaos. Setbacks and challenging situations - a missed deadline, a lost deal, a failed project, a bad strategy - are everyday affairs at work, and only those who learn to get past them can grow professionally and personally.
What’s stopping you?
There is an inherent conflict between the product leader and the CEO, which can often be summarized into one question: who has the final say. To start resolving
Having too much Work in Process, also known as Work in Progress (WIP), is a remarkably common issue. In my experience, management often encourages this behavior. I don’t know if it is the notion that we will get more done if we work on more things simultaneously. Or perhaps there is a fear we won’t get enough things done unless we work on several of them at once.
“You only have to do a few things right in your life so long as you don’t do too many things wrong.” — Warren Buffett
You’re a manager and you want to add value. You want to help your team perform better and love their job at the same time. What can you do?
Improving online sales metrics can be done through improving basic things such as scripts and by taking extra care over closing deals made by the sales team.
We tried to carry out corporate training for a long time, but all our attempts were a one-time story. We couldn't manage to "churn out" our lectures.
Reverse mentoring occurs when young people become mentors of executives to guide them on various topics of strategic and cultural relevance.
I don’t mean to toot my own horn, but I’m actually convinced I managed to create a dream team, the best one in my whole company. Read on to do it too.
The work of IT teams is done for the people who are paying to them, i.e. clients. Even if you are working on an internal product, everything has its customer and buyer.
We speak more through our bodies than our words. The posture we assume, expression on our face, hand gestures and our eye movement conveys far more than we would like to expose.
If you are looking for opportunities to advance faster in your career, mentorship and executive sponsorship may be for you.
10 Important Psychology lessons from Mom and Pop Stores
Looking for ways to boost your team's performance? Consider three critical principles that will help maximize productivity and avoid burnout in the workplace.
One of the most common mistakes early managers make is to focus on being a "shit shield". Learn why this backfires, and what to do instead.
Internships are not about coffee runs, you can get a great experience that can make you stand out when applying for your first job out of University.
Modern methods of software measurement do not provide a strong base for continuous improvement. This article tries to fill this gap.
PR coupled with a strong product and well-functioning teamwork can bring good results: increase investor interest, and attract an audience.
Organizations that thrive are run by leaders who see opportunity in uncertainty, who cut through ambiguity, and who lead with the mindset to gain clarity.
In this article, you’ll find 8 proven ways to become a better manager.
One of the things, I had decided, was that during the lockdown I would sharpen my skills around Product Management. For this, I have been religiously attending many webinars and doing some online courses. One of the courses that hit the chord was this course
The Cynefin Framework helps leaders to make decisions in context, distinguishing different domains to match the reality before apply the right management tool.
Humans are social creatures who seek personal validation based on how others interact with them. We feel good and important when others share our belief system and dejected when there’s a conflict of opinions.
How can we transform from the command and control style to leveraging the power of self-direction that energises and engages people?
Do we really consider promotion as an important decision of our life that requires careful evaluation aligned with our passions, interest levels and abilities? Is it even offered as a choice?
Useful tips on how to properly manage a team, for first time managers as well as, managers working with a new company or organization.
Renovation projects have a lot of moving parts that must work simultaneously. No wonder, large projects take 20% longer to finish than scheduled and are 80% over budget. From planning to budgeting to hiring to the actual remodeling, all processes have to be coordinated for the whole project to be completed.
What is Agile Data-Driven?
If you are running a startup or a tech business, outsourcing the execution of your product is a critical business decision. You can’t fail and there are many factors to consider to ensure you choose the right agency to outsource software development. This is part of the inherent risk whenever outsourcing anything that is not a commodity.
Just imagine that right at this moment your best employee is sending someone his CV or updating his profile on Upwork, or even worse, negotiating a time for an interview with your competitor. Would you like to know why? And how to deal with this?
How We Accomplish More While Working Less
One of the essential qualities to Tom Brady’s game is his leadership skills to get the maximum talent and productivity out of his teams to become the GOAT.
Inspired by James Clear’s Goal Setting Method, Motion helps you set better goals using 4 main strategies.
Use this advice to lead an existing engineering team to success, regardless of different coding languages or systems.
You may have heard of People Intelligence platforms—albeit these solutions you may have encountered focused very much on the pre-hire stages of your employee experience versus the day-to-day post-hire segment of their experience. People Intelligence can be defined as the combination of strategies and technologies used by organizations for statistical and data-driven analysis of performance, productivity, and business information. People Intelligence platforms can make sense of disparate people-generated data by transforming the information into actionable insights that impact a business’ operations.
There was a time when businesses relied on academic education systems to hire employees for different roles. After a basic orientation, any graduate would be considered employable and fit for the relevant roles.
How do I balance myself on the confidence humility see-saw? What if my confidence is seen as arrogance or my humility as a sign of my lack of assertiveness. How do I come across right?
An article that I read recently stated that 41% of businesses struggle to turn data into decisions. This got me thinking about my own experience with product analytics.
“The best executive is the one who has sense enough to pick good men to do what he wants done, and self-restraint to keep from meddling with them while they do it.” – Theodore Roosevelt
Setting up a skip level meeting for interns can be a great way to add value to the intern, their mentor, and the mentor’s manager.
Much has been said about the effectiveness of VR vs. traditional training. VR is cost effective due to scalability, inexpensive equipment to simulate location, objects and even trainers. It’s simply more effective due to its interactivity and complete immersion.
I vividly remember the day I read about Arianna Huffington, the founder and CEO of Thrive Global. She had collapsed from sleep deprivation and exhaustion, hit her head on the corner of her desk, broke her cheekbone and woke up in a pool of blood. I read the story many years later after it happened while working for a fast-growth startup feeling tired and exhausted from the daily demands and expectations from the job. I was someone who always prioritized my mental health and while I knew that I was nowhere close to being burnt out, the story left me with a trembling sensation, a feeling of fear and anxiety in that moment.
If you do a good job as a leader, the people you mentor will eventually outgrow their original roles. Some will rise within their departments; others will go on to lead new teams. Many will go on to work for other businesses.
A developer with low salary and monotonous work is likely to end up burned out, it’s obvious. Yet what about overpaid workers with no relevant skills or experie
Robert Iger, now Executive Chairman of The Walt Disney Company is the former CEO of Disney. During his 15 years as CEO of Disney and as President of ABC Television prior to that, he led the company to amazing new heights. Under his leadership, Disney’s market capitalization increased from $48 billion to $257 billion. He oversaw the acquisition of Pixar in 2006, Marvel entertainment in 2009 and many more after that. He is the perfect exemplar of a leader who has proved himself over an extended period of time.
The rise of flexible job roles, digital tech careers and more freelance opportunities around the world has led more people into working from the comfort of their home, especially during this Covid19 pandemic. However, in order to get the best and ensure quality service deliveries, remote workers need the right tools to assist their craft.
These little-known, scientifically proven customer retention strategies ALWAYS work.
72% of managers prefer their subordinates to be in the office. Why are bosses so against remote work? Find out what our readers think might be the issues here.
When global circumstances required our team to go completely remote, we knew things would be tough. Team members wouldn’t just be working from home; they’d be working from home during a time of intense fear and uncertainty, with a myriad of new concerns and distractions. We expected that engineering activity would decline as a result, and we were understanding — as our VP of Engineering, Ale Paredes, explained during a panel on working remotely through the crisis, “We're not trying to behave as if it's business as usual, because it's not business as usual.”
But when Ale checked the team’s productivity metrics in Velocity, our engineering analytics platform, she was surprised by what she found. After we made the switch to a distributed workflow, many engineers actually started working more. Still, despite logging more time in the codebase, they were getting less done.
To find out why the team wasn’t making progress, Ale dug deeper into the data. Not only did she find answers, she used that information to develop better ways to support the team.
Many candidates have never been in the interviewer chair I'm hoping to share a different perspective with candidates so they can prepare accordingly and it can act as a guide to hiring managers.
I used to think mission statements were laughably gratuitous and "frou-frou". Over time I realized a good mantra can save your company.
We feel vulnerable. But instead of embracing vulnerability, accepting our fears, and leading with curiosity, we put on a shield of protection.
We have all had relationships that are built on trust and those that are not. If you look back to those experiences, you can clearly say that there’s a significant difference between them. Not only in the quality of your experiences, but also the outcomes you achieved.
The five methods of facilitation I use to create collaborative meetings from over a decade of experience as a software engineering leader.
Annie leads the business operations platform engineering group within Square’s platform & infrastructure organization. Prior to Square, she worked at a number of startups across a spectrum of industries from consumer products to enterprise solutions, as well as a wide variety of teams from sales to engineering. Having worked with many different managers, she’s formed her own leadership philosophies.
I learned the hard way that the secret to getting ahead is not just doing great work, it also requires the ability to navigate office politics, not in an insincere or manipulative way, but rather as a skill to better handle the politics that goes on inside your organization. You simply can’t win people based on logic and rationality.
Have you noticed what happens when someone asks you a really good open ended question? Your mood shifts and body language changes as your mind sets on a quest to look within, think deeply, and churn out ideas. The endorphin rush that comes from exploring uncharted territories triggers a positive feeling in the body.
Even though a group of individuals is called a team, they are not. People do not know exactly which direction they are going and may pursue different goals.
As a leader of an organisation, the question “what needs attention” was always top of my mind. I realised that without taking real inputs from people in the organisation, any decisions I make and the direction I provide will be nothing but my own biased view of what people want, not what they need.
Organisations spend a huge amount of time and resources to hire smart, talented and self-motivated individuals who show a strong passion and commitment towards their own growth and success of the organisation.
I have worked with two different kinds of leaders and managers over the years. The one who believes in fixed abilities and promotes a fixed mindset “those who don’t perform well can never do better” and the other who believes in growing those abilities thereby promoting a growth mindset “people can be coached into improving their skills.”
Roy Simmons coined that phrase and I like it a lot. “Most artists can’t draw.”
Many remote team management theories offer the following model structure. It starts with:
It is important to realize that we have the ability to manufacture our own fate when we want to. We can… proceed when things look bad, or we can find plenty of reasons to quit if we don’t want to go forward. – Eric Haney, Inside Delta Force
Every person at some point in their career may need to ask themselves “Do I really want to be a manager?” The question may seem straightforward, but the answer is not. It requires digging deeper and finding answers for ourselves without relying on what others believe is the right thing for us to do.
Companies transitioning to the work-from-home model became the recurring theme of the last month. I've spent more than half of the previous decade working in remote teams and have seen quite a few transitioning from the office to full-remote processes. Actively advocating remote work to everyone I know, I feel having to put a few cents into the tip jar.
I have worked with some excellent managers, people who were not only good at what they did, but also had great leadership potential. Sadly though, these managers didn’t invest in their own growth. They were so busy attending to the daily demands of the management job - putting out fires, resolving production issues, solving for customer escalation, moving from one delivery timeline to another - that they failed to build the skills required to become a great leader some day.
As you attempt to derive growth strategies for your field service business, it is important to focus on the right things.
Ever since the pandemic began, and workforces went home for what turned out to be a long period of remote work (which has yet to fully end), we’ve been asking ourselves a lot of questions about the future of work. How are we adapting to this new environment? Do we need new skills? Will technology help us or hurt us over the long term? Is it OK to prioritise a healthier work-life balance when the world seems to be ending? What careers will be on the ascent when this is over, and which ones should be avoided?
When talking about marketing, link building is what that takes most of the time. And that's why the majority of small businesses struggle with building quality links.
What's it like to be a CTO? 😱 Amy Tom talks to Ravi Mayuram, CTO of Couchbase, about the CTO mindset, Ravi's career journey to CTO, and skill trends in tech. Amy and Ravi talk about education, trends in data, building trust, and more.
Soft skills will help you become the life and the soul of the party and reach your career and professional goals
Visit the /Learn Repo to find the most read stories about any technology.