As a software engineering manager, Dev Leader aims to provide perspective on software engineering from someone in this role.
This article is in response to an answer I wrote on Quora. As an engineering leader, does it make sense to approach things as hands-on management and writing code? Let's see when it makes sense, and when it doesn't.
At a Glance - What are OKRs? If you've arrived at this post, you've probably heard of OKRs but maybe you're looking for a bit more of an introduction to them. Not to worry! We'll keep this light and practical for getting started. OKRs are a framework for helping define, communicate, and measure progress towards goals. Their intention is to not be specifically top-down, but instead there's goal setting and transparency that works both ways. Objectives, the 'O' in OKRs, are essentially single sentence that communicates what you’re trying to achieve. These should drive the point home at a high level, and there's nothing wrong with making them feel exciting. Key Results, the 'KR' part of OKRs, are the metrics that you will be using to gauge how successful you are to achieving your objective. Usually you group about 3-5…
This is a question that I see get asked all of the time and I figured I'd chime in on my perspective on it. Specifically, this is with the perspective of a software engineering manager in a tech organization. So, what are the primary responsibilities of an engineering manager at a tech company? Well before I dive in, I'll explain my background and then I'll offer up my perspective about the key parts to an engineering manager role. My Background as an Engineering Manager First off, here's full disclosure that I have only been an engineering manager at two different companies. However with that said, I have been an engineering manager at two extremely different types of organizations for just under a decade now. My role at Magnet Forensics as an engineering manager started off as a team-leadership role when…
2020 has been an interesting year for everyone, without a doubt. For me, 2020 involved a career change that wasn't something I was expecting at the start of the year. I had been comfortable with my past employer, Magnet Forensics, for just shy of 8 years and had the opportunity to work on many high-impact projects as part of a mission to help with saving children and assisting law enforcement. But at the end of August, I started my first day in my next adventure with Microsoft. I wanted to write a couple of posts about getting up and running at Microsoft so I figured I'd start with some high level points. This post will be focused on what it was like to join a tech giant after helping scale a startup to hundreds of people internationally. Meeting the Team…
Background I'm a "middle manager" where I work, but that means a whole bunch of things. My everyday tasks primarily consist of programming, but I do a bunch of work to interface with other departments and teams, and I play a role in managing people on... well, the "people" side of things. For the latter part, I refer to that as people leadership. I think it's pretty easy to look at some of the aspects of people leadership and dismiss them as "fluffy" or needless... I consider myself a logical/technical thinker, so I have that frame of mind sometimes. However, I do see the value in actually being able to support my team so that they can operate at the best of their abilities. I try to find ways to do that without it seeming to them like I'm doing "fluffy leadership things",…
Continuing With Continuous Improvement I wrote about continuous improvement before and how I've been trying to tie that into my leadership role through changes to my one on one process. To recap, at our organization we try to roll continuous improvement into most things that we do. We're well aware that we're not going to get things perfect the first time, so as long as we have a process in place to learn, reflect, and adapt, then we can make changes to better our situation. It's something that's ongoing and it doesn't really have an end. So long as your organization is growing and changing over time, or the environment in which your organization is changing over time, having continuous improvement baked into your culture is key to success. Previously, I mentioned that at Magnet Forensics I hold regular one…
Continuous Improvement - Baby Steps! Our development team at Magnet Forensics focuses a lot on continuous improvement. It's one of the things baked into a retrospective often performed in agile software shops. It's all about acknowledging that no system or process is going to be perfect and that as your landscape changes, a lot of other things will too. The concept of continuous improvement isn't limited to just the software we make or the processes we put in place for doing so. You can apply it to anything that's repeated over time where you can measure positive and negative changes. I figured it was time to apply it to my leadership practices. The One on One I lead a team of software developers at Magnet, but I'm not the boss of any of them. They're all equally my peers and…
Leadership Everyone has their own variation of what leadership means. For me, leadership means empowering others to accomplish their goals and providing assistance when they need it. There were a few articles that came up on LinkedIn this week that I wanted to share with everyone and discuss how they fit into my perspective on leadership. Articles Does Your Team Work With You Or For You?: Kwame Manu-Antwi opens up the article in an interesting fashion. When I read the title of the article, I figured this was going to be the typical leadership vs management debate. However, Kwame goes into describing a scenario where he had a humbling experience from one of his team that made some sacrifices for him. This was truly an example of working for him. The entire second half of the article shares a bunch of…
Charity Water We have a lot of pretty awesome people at Magnet Forensics, and every day I'm reminded just how awesome. A colleague of mine, Danielle Braun, had what I thought was an incredible idea for her birthday. For Danielle's birthday, she's not asking for more new clothes, for her parents to get her a car, for help with paying off tuition, or for some new fancy tech gadgets. But she's not asking for nothing. Danielle is asking for your support with Charity: Water this year. Charity: Water is a non-profit organization with the goal of bringing clean water to people in developing nations that don't have access to it. Reading their mission page probably opens your eyes a fair bit about the lack of access to drinking water in other countries. They're not about some complex and elaborate plan…
Performance Reviews It's almost the end of the year, and performance reviews for many companies are just around the corner. This will be the first time for me sitting on the other side of a performance review. I'm excited, and to be honest, a little nervous about how it will all play out. I know our HR manager has done an excellent job putting together our initial take on performance reviews, but it's still going to be up to me to ensure that all aspects of a performance review are communicated properly to my team. It's definitely going to be an interesting time of year! I've started doing a little bit of reading on performance reviews. From what I can tell, the general consensus is that most performance review systems are flawed and nobody knows the perfect way to do…