There’s a usual hesitation to correct the words people use, particularly when there doesn’t seem to be a big difference from what we prefer. We don’t want to sound superficial nor pedantic so we choose to just let it go. I’ve personally had these moments when I hold myself back from correcting terminology. It is…
Category: Engineering Management
When Agile Doesn’t Make Sense
When I was teaching software engineering almost a decade ago, I always liked to compare building software to building a house. It was this mindset that differentiated a “programmer” from a “software engineer”, and explains why it’s best to catch a bug early (even before any code is written) as it gets incrementally expensive as…
Employee Retention Is A Terrible Metric
A lot of engineering managers get this as part of their KPIs – employee retention. I’ve definitely had to deal with it at some point in my career and it wasn’t a particularly motivating objective. Don’t get me wrong – I get why this is important to most companies. We spend months or even years…
Effective Meetings 101
Some people love meetings. Most dread them. But one thing for sure, everybody hates a bad meeting. You’ve been there. Those meetings have twenty people in the room, most of whom can hardly even hear each other talk. The meeting extends an hour past the schedule and ends without any definite conclusion. You’re left confused…
Closing The Loop: Product Design
To most, “closing the feedback loop” may sound like nothing more than management jargon. As a matter of fact, it is. But behind every management buzzword, there usually lies a simple truth that we could benefit from paying a little attention to. This series of articles talks about the concept of closing the loop, and…
A 4-R Framework To Motivation
Conducting 1-on-1 meetings with my team is a regular part of my job, and it’s a part that I look forward to week after week. Aside from the opportunity to make a positive difference in a co-worker’s career and life, I often find the 1-on-1 a very conducive time for me to self-reflect and somehow…