Pleased to meet you: Tips for managing an established team

A few months ago, I moved from one business area within Intercom to another, and in the process, I began to manage an existing team.

Inside the Dev Team Death Spiral

Not long ago, I set out to write an article about how to interview JavaScript developers. As I dug into it, I couldn’t help but sink deeper and deeper into the importance of avoiding classical inheritance. I advise people not to hire developers who insist on using classical inheritance.

A Guide to Better Meetings

Do you also hear that all the time? But stepping back, that’s like saying “screwdrivers are bad”. Meetings are a tool, and they are indispensable for effective, transparent communication. Transparency is critical if you want to build trust in your organization.

The skills gap nobody is talking about

Digital skills have quickly become one of the top currencies by which both businesses and people measure their future competitiveness and value.

Your Team Wants to Grow, Not to be Reminded of its Mistakes

Feedback is a journey into the future, not the past. “Your Team Wants to Grow, Not to be Reminded of its Mistakes” is published by Gustavo Razzetti in The Startup

The Anti-Mentor: How a bad boss influences our leadership style

Who’s the worst boss you ever had? Your answer to this question matters. It influences your leadership style in more ways than you think.

Career Considerations for CTOs

Whether you’re an engineering director, VP, or CTO, how can you craft your perfect career? What is a “good” career for an engineering leader? What are some common career paths for mid-career engineering leaders?

8 Ways to Address Your Workplace Stress You Can Start Today

Stress is something we all face every day. Whether the source is at home or at work, with your team, or your own tasks, it’s easy to get the best of you. Workplace stress in particular can be tough.

Rather Than a Micromanager or Absentee Manager, Be a Thought Partner

We call managers who have low, almost non-existent involvement in their team’s work absentee managers. Those with extremely (maybe excruciatingly) close involvement are micromanagers.

Why the Best Leaders Don’t Always Have a Plan

Stanley McChrystal is a retired U.S. Army general who commanded the Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC) in the mid-2000s. He is also senior fellow at Yale University’s Jackson Institute for Global Affairs, and the bestselling author of the recently released book, Leaders: Myth and Reality.

Fixed time, fixed scope projects always end in 1 of 3 ways. None of them good.

It turned out, not surprisingly, that I wasn’t the only one dealing with this failed project management approach.

Questioning Agile Dogma

With appropriate customization, the general approach is to guide the organization into the Predictive-Convergent quadrant, to an operating state we call “Basecamp One.” The goals are to stabilize the delivery system, establish meaningful metrics, and achieve planning predictability.

How to Build Product-Oriented Engineering Teams

Product-oriented engineering teams do more than just write code. They’re more than just a feature factory; they’re co-owners of the product experience. They look at the full picture to understand the value and impact of what they’re building. They talk to customers.

Myth: The Product Backlog is Maintained Exclusively by the Product Owner

Scrum is intended as a simple, yet sufficient framework for complex product delivery. Scrum is not a one-size-fits-all solution, a silver bullet or a complete methodology.

Do Infrastructure Teams Need Product Management?

I’ve been mulling this for a while, recently prompted by thoughts from Josh Robb  and Amy Nguyen. Many infrastructure development teams don’t have a product manager, or have a fractional product owner/analyst working primarily on detailed technical requirements.

Succeeding as a data scientist in small companies/startups

It’s nothing like at a big mature company. I’ve spent almost 12 years now at companies sized between 15–150 wearing various hats of “data analyst, engineer, and occasionally, scientist.

The French Burglar Who Pulled Off His Generation’s Biggest Art Heist

Long before the burglar Vjeran Tomic became the talk of Paris, he honed his skills in a graveyard. Père Lachaise, the city’s largest cemetery, is a Gothic maze of tombstones, in the Twentieth Arrondissement, that covers more than a hundred acres.