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Team Leadership
The people side, not the process side: one-on-ones, hard feedback, delegation, promotion and raise conversations, growing and shrinking a team. These are the decisions nobody explains when you move from developer to manager.
Every post ends with a checklist you can share with your team.
Technical Strategy: A No List, Not a Slide Deck
Five months after a 40-slide strategy, the answer was “Which strategy?”. One page: diagnosis, policy, steps and what we will not do this year.
LEADERSHIPThe Calendar: Focus Blocks, Not a Full Schedule
I cut meeting hours and focus time did not come back: what matters is not a full calendar but two-hour uninterrupted blocks.
LEADERSHIPEngineering Metrics: A Compass, Not a Report Card
A per-person PR dashboard got gamed in six weeks. The four DORA metrics at team level: speed and stability side by side, a direction rather than a grade.
LEADERSHIPPlatform Team: An Internal Product, Not Infrastructure
We built a platform team to end the waiting; six months later it had 63 open tickets. Golden path, internal customers and adoption rate.
LEADERSHIPRemote Teams: Written Culture, Not Cameras
The decision was made at the coffee machine; the remote engineer spent two days coding for behaviour that no longer existed.
LEADERSHIPReorgs: Choosing Communication Paths, Not Drawing Boxes
Three weeks after the reorg, the monthly statement job failed and its alert went to a team that no longer existed. An ownership map, not an org chart.
LEADERSHIPHow to Give Negative Feedback
Why does the sandwich fail? The event → impact → expectation pattern, with real dialogue.
LEADERSHIPCan You Measure Performance With OKRs?
Tie a bonus to a target and people shrink the target. Why story points inflate, and what to read instead.
LEADERSHIPNew-Generation Leadership: Authority Is Gone, Now What?
The information monopoly ended, dependence ended. What replaced them, and the power of "I do not know".
LEADERSHIPA New Engineer’s First 30 Days: The First Production Change, Not Orientation
I said “read the docs for two weeks first”; the first production change shipped on working day 23, and 14 of those days were waiting.
LEADERSHIPAI or Leadership?
Writing got cheap, verifying got expensive. The junior learning path and the leader's changed job.
LEADERSHIPSquad, Tribe, Chapter, Guild: Choosing an Org Model in One Week
The first target handed to me in a meeting with the CEO. 52 conversations, a one-sentence diagnosis, and what we left out of the Spotify model.
LEADERSHIPOne-on-Ones: An Early Warning System, Not a Status Meeting
Thirty minutes a week, and the agenda is theirs. Why "how is it going?" always returns "fine", and what to ask instead.
LEADERSHIPDeveloper to Manager: A Career Change, Not a Promotion
Promoting your best engineer can lose you twice. The right measure for how much code to keep writing.
LEADERSHIPProduct and Engineering: The Same Table, Not the Other Side
The product manager gave a date and I quietly cut the scope: the person who knows the value drops scope, and the date comes from the estimate.
LEADERSHIPDelegation: Letting Go of the Outcome, Not Handing Out Tasks
Hand work over and then hover, and you have not delegated. Authority with responsibility, and the ten-minute trap.
LEADERSHIPPsychological Safety: Measurable Behaviour, Not Good Intentions
Saying "speak freely" does not do it. Who speaks first, how late bad news arrives, and how incident reviews kill it.
LEADERSHIPLetting Someone Go: The Last Step, Not a Surprise
I told them the decision and they said “This is the first time I hear this”: written expectations, a six-week plan, a short final talk, the team and access.
LEADERSHIPConflict: Surface It, Don't Suppress It
Two senior engineers disagree on architecture and the team picks sides. Naming the conflict, separating ideas from people, and naming the decision owner in advance.
LEADERSHIPBurnout and Load: Sustainable Pace, Not Heroes
The person who saves every sprint is a single point of failure. On-call load and the signs of quiet overwork.
LEADERSHIPWhen You Depend on Another Team: A Contract, Not a Favour
“Sure, we can do that,” they said; five weeks later our work was number 23 in their backlog. Dependency maps, written commitments and joint escalation.
LEADERSHIPGrowing a Team: Five People and Fifteen Are Not the Same Job
Past seven, communication paths multiply. When to split, Conway's law, and what "two pizzas" really says.
LEADERSHIPManaging Up: Setting Expectations, Not Filing Reports
When do you say "the sprint will slip"? The arithmetic of early bad news, and shielding versus hiding.
LEADERSHIPCancelling a Project: A Decision, Not a Failure
I stopped a seven-month project three months too late: kill criteria, telling the team, and really deleting the code.
LEADERSHIPTech Lead: Not the Best Developer, the Owner of the Decision
I made our best developer the tech lead; three months later, 11 of 14 PRs were waiting for their approval.
LEADERSHIPWhen a Key Person Leaves: A Handover Plan, Not a Farewell
The only person who knew our reconciliation job resigned; I spent the first four of 30 handover days on a counteroffer, and we found the one line we missed 19 days later.
LEADERSHIPManaging Managers: A System, Not a Team
Running skip-levels without undermining the manager, filtered information, and two teams applying one rule differently.
LEADERSHIPThe Raise Conversation: Evidence, Not Bargaining
Why a counteroffer usually only delays the exit, what to say with no budget, and pay gaps at the same level.
LEADERSHIPNot a Mentor, a Sponsor
Advice is not enough: a sponsor says your name in the room you are not in, gives you visible work and takes the risk.
LEADERSHIPStaff Engineer: Scope of Impact, Not Seniority
The title changed, the calendar did not: a staff engineer’s job is to own the gap between teams.
LEADERSHIPThe Bottleneck Is Review, Not Writing: Team Speed After AI
PRs per week went from 19 to 34 and delivered work stayed flat. The bottleneck moved to review: WIP limits, the 400-line rule, the “why” section and lead time.
LEADERSHIPPostmortem: Change the System, Don’t Find the Culprit
A perfect six-page postmortem, and the same failure four months later. Where Five Whys breaks and why actions never close.
LEADERSHIPTechnical Interviews: A Rehearsal, Not a Quiz
I asked a whiteboard tree question, the candidate got stuck, we rejected them; six months later they were writing the service we integrated with. A 90-minute real task from your own codebase, a fixed question set, notes written before the meeting, and the question AI changed.
LEADERSHIPThe Career Ladder: An Expectations Table, Not a Promotion
“When do I become senior?” I said “we’ll see, you’re doing well”; four months later that sentence came back in a resignation conversation. Three axes (scope, autonomy, impact), two tracks at the same height, and why a promotion is a recognition.
LEADERSHIPTechnical Debt: The Same Queue, Not a Separate Backlog
We said “20% of every sprint goes to technical debt”; by sprint four it was zero and nobody cancelled the rule. Measuring debt by its interest instead of a percentage, three types of debt, and why not paying is a valid decision.