The Spotify model wasn’t even a silver bullet for Spotify and it definitely wasn’t one for all the organizations that simply copied it.
Category: Leadership
A useful article that slices the valuable insights in High Output Management for non-managers (tech leads, seniors, etc.).
https://www.g9labs.com/2020/01/04/high-output-management-for-non-managing-tech-leads/
Companies insisting on long hours is probably only one thing holding women back, but this article goes deep on that one question and uncovers a panoply of assumptions and attitudes.
Research shows that a 24/7 culture creates discontent for women and men alike and that the “accommodations”solution, ironically, tends to derail the careers of highly qualified women, leaving companies’ senior ranks depleted of some of their brightest female stars. Studies show an additional irony: Long hours don’t raise productivity. In fact, they have been associated with decreases in performance and increases in sick-leave costs.
“When people say that telecommuting isn’t as efficient or as effective as working co-located, it’s probably because they don’t know how to do it well, not because it’s not doable. The thing is, it’s all learnable if people want to learn it. And I’d say it’s important to learn. Even before coronavirus, I’ve always felt that knowing how to manage well remotely was a competitive advantage.”
“The piece of advice that I give to new managers—and this sounds simple but it’s really hard—is you have to really listen to your people. They are telling you what they want, and you have to hear it. At the end of the day, it’s not about you. It’s what this human is telling you.”
https://www.welcometothejungle.com/en/articles/btc-michael-lopp-interview-management
“The best engineers can toggle back and forth between manager and IC roles. Make sure your technical foundation and fundamental skills are solid enough to pull that off.”
Raylene Yung drops a massive list of career trips for engineers and engineering managers.
It’s not that often that you see a guide how to hire engineering managers, let alone people at the DirEng/VPE level. That makes this guide by Rushab Doshi rare and useful.
https://rushabhdoshi.com/2019/11/04/hiring-engineering-leaders.html
You are indeed probably not communicating enough. My advice is to just communicate more. If you are communicating too much (highly unlikely that you would reach that point), people will let you know.
I usually get a lot of resistance when I suggest using monorepos but this article explains really well what cultural benefits that choice entails.
This is good advice for a Director of UX by Adrian Howard that generalizes well to any other kind of Director.