Leading Teams

The danger of being too useful

Stepping in can solve the immediate problem, but it can also hide the reason the work was stuck in the first place

Finding the line between top-down and bottom-up decisions

On organizational design, team ownership, and deciding who gets to decide

When "I'm just being direct" becomes an excuse

The invisible gun gets dangerous when you refuse to holster it on principle

Saying no to good ideas

The hardest no isn't to a bad idea. It's to a good one, and it's one of the most important choices you make

What your absence reveals about delegation

Time away is a stress test for your leadership system

The system is shaping your team more than you are

Most problems aren’t individual failures, they’re system failures

The hard parts of engineering management

The messy, very human challenges behind the job and how to stay steady through conflict, uncertainty, and loneliness

Performance management as an engineering manager

Performance isn’t just PIPs and promotions. It’s clear expectations, timely feedback, and coaching people to own outcomes without burning out.

Interviewing & hiring engineers

How I run fair, high-signal interviews, and what I’m actually evaluating beyond code

Managing a remote team of engineers

Remote teams don’t work by accident. Here’s how to set expectations, communicate well, protect focus, and keep people healthy across time zones.

Your team’s project is getting deprecated. Now what?

A roadmap for helping your team navigate disappointment, salvage wins, and move forward with clarity

How to lead when you have zero context

Starting fresh doesn’t have to mean starting with absolutely nothing

Stop doing it all yourself

If you don't delegate, you'll spend time doing the work you shouldn't do

How to run a useful project kickoff meeting

A good kickoff meeting leads to a well-executed project

8 thoughts on leadership

Why delegation is critical for taking time off

Stepping away from work shouldn't mean everything grinds to a halt.

Get out of your team's way

Help your team be more creative and solve their own problems

The never-ending battle of technical debt

And how to advocate for its destruction

How to manage a distributed team

And why your "partially-distributed" team is just a fully-distributed team pretending to have an office

Mastering delegation in engineering

How to identify tasks that can be delegated and delegate effectively without losing control

Managing technical debt in an agile environment

Practical approaches to address and manage technical debt while maintaining agile practices

Balancing a large number of direct reports

Learn some quick tips and tricks for staying on top of managing several people.

Running effective team meetings

Your team meetings don't have to be a waste of time and money!

How to prepare for getting hit by a bus

Also known as how to have continuity plans in place so you're not the sole owner of critical company information and processes

Hiring internationally

Hiring internationally is hugely valuable to an organization but is easy to get wrong. This week on Lessons in Engineering Leadership I break down some of the best tips I've learned over my time building international teams.