🔸Unpacking Software Architecture

I help people deploy more value with less code.

Mike Thornton

R&D Team Leader | Writing the "Leading Developers" newsletter

Being a software team leader is HARD. There are so many things you have to juggle, and nobody prepares you for it.

I started my first engineering management role 7 years ago, and I was completely overwhelmed. on the surface, everything seemed ok, but I was barely keeping it together. 

So I decided to do something about it. I've read tons of books, talked to tens of other team leaders, and improved. 

In 2020 I started a new role as a developer, and in 3 years I got promoted twice to a director of engineering. 

Now, I want to help other fresh engineering managers, by sharing what worked for me (and what didn’t). 

In my free weekly articles, you'll find practical no BS advice that you could actually apply TODAY to create a much stronger team.

Anton Zaides

The CEO of a Hamming AI shared what happens when you 'protect' engineers' too much:
As the CEO, I used to talk a lot with customers. I was sort of translating what needs to be done for our engineers. 

I thought I was protecting engineering time, but I was creating a bottleneck.
I started to notice there was a lot of back and forth between the team and me, and many miscommunications. 

So I decided to try removing myself from the loop: I just added engineers to a bunch of different Slack channels. They talk to customers directly, and loop me in only when needed.

Yes, engineers now spend 15 minutes here, 30 minutes there, an hour there in customer conversations. But the rate of learning is so high that it’s not a waste - it’s the fastest path to the right solution.

The real waste was me playing telephone. 

When I summarized customer problems, engineers didn’t feel the pain customers felt, they felt my interpretation of the pain.

Engineers now often ship solutions the same day they hear the problem. The dopamine hit of talking to a customer, having an idea, and deploying it within hours is what helps drive velocity and a much higher learning rate.

I now believe that it’s critical to 𝗺𝗮𝘅𝗶𝗺𝗶𝘇𝗲 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝗯𝗮𝗻𝗱𝘄𝗶𝗱𝘁𝗵 𝗯𝗲𝘁𝘄𝗲𝗲𝗻 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝗽𝗲𝗼𝗽𝗹𝗲 𝘄𝗵𝗼 𝗵𝗮𝘃𝗲 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝗽𝗿𝗼𝗯𝗹𝗲𝗺, 𝗮𝗻𝗱 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝗽𝗲𝗼𝗽𝗹𝗲 𝘄𝗵𝗼 𝗰𝗮𝗻 𝗮𝗰𝘁𝘂𝗮𝗹𝗹𝘆 𝘀𝗼𝗹𝘃𝗲 𝗶𝘁. The more distance there is, the more waste happens.

---------------------------------------------------------

Anton here - those are a couple of paragraphs from a guest post of Sumanyu Sharma at manager.dev:
https://lnkd.in/diT53Niw

It was written 6 months ago, but I feel it's more true than ever.

Engineering Manager@HoneyBook | Founder@manager.dev | Writing and building for Engineering Managers

taplio

The Battle

Mike Thornton

Anton Zaides

Followers

Posts

Engagements

Likes

Performance ScoreAnton Zaides's LinkedIn Performance

Ready to grow your LinkedIn presence?

taplio

The Battle

Mike Thornton

Anton Zaides

Followers

Posts

Engagements

Likes

Performance Score.css-goub6s{font-size:var(--chakra-fontSizes-md);font-weight:500;color:var(--chakra-colors-gray-600);display:block;margin-top:var(--chakra-space-1);}Anton Zaides's LinkedIn Performance

Ready to grow your LinkedIn presence?

Performance ScoreAnton Zaides's LinkedIn Performance