There’s a common mistake I see new engineering leaders make—especially those who’ve had success before. They show up to a new team, armed with something that worked at a previous company or with a different crew. And because it worked before, they assume it’s gold. It must work here too, right? But the truth is: […]
Why leadership isn’t about having answers—it’s about asking the right questions Leadership often feels like it should be about clarity. Having the answers. Pointing the way forward. But in reality, the best leaders are the ones who pause long enough to ask the right questions. Especially when everyone else is charging ahead. Whether you’re in
The hidden power of a fresh perspective—no matter how smart your team is. Ever stare at a bug for hours, only for a teammate to glance at it and go, “Oh, you missed a semicolon”? That moment right there—that’s the power of a fresh set of eyes. It happens at the micro level (a tricky
How Great Developers Follow Work to the Finish Line Most engineers stop too early. They finish writing code, get it reviewed and merged, and then immediately grab the next ticket. On paper, that looks productive. But in reality, it’s incomplete. The best developers—the ones who earn trust, get promoted, and receive the biggest bets—treat every
One of the fastest ways to accelerate your career in tech is simple to say but hard to master: build trust with the people above you. Whether you’re a tech lead, engineering manager, or aspiring staff engineer, your ability to manage up is just as important as managing your team. When your manager knows they
If you want to be happy in leadership—and help your team thrive—learn to set expectations and match them. That’s it. That’s the formula. It’s not glamorous, but it works. And most leaders either skip it entirely or do it halfway. When you set expectations too high or unrealistic, you create anxiety and burnout. When you
Work Through Your Team, Not Around Them If you’re stepping into engineering leadership—or already there—you’ll eventually face a hard truth: you can’t do it all yourself. Not even close. The Shift From Doer to Enabler Early on, you can juggle both. You’re hands-on, reviewing PRs, cranking out fixes, shipping features and managing your small team.
If there’s one trait that defines strong engineering leadership—whether you’re a team lead, EM, or CTO—it’s this: Follow-through You could call it consistency, dependability, ownership or trust. But at its core, it means this: When you say you’ll do something, people can count on it getting done. Period. That doesn’t just mean writing code or
If your alerts don’t have direct links to runbooks, you’re burning time. Every minute someone spends hunting through Confluence or Notion during an incident is time they could’ve spent fixing the actual problem. Let’s fix that. Two easy wins: These two changes will save your on-call engineers (and your sanity) more than you think. Runbook
Writing reviews used to be a grind. Blank screens. Foggy memory. Wasted hours staring at clunky HR systems that feel like they were built to make the process harder, not easier. Now? I knock out reviews in record time using the ChatGPT app and the talk-to-text feature on my phone. It’s personal, fast, and actually