├── 20-leadership-quotations-by-elon-musk ├── README.md └── index.md ├── 44-engineering-management-lessons ├── README.md └── index.md ├── 50-ideas-that-changed-my-life-by-david-perell ├── README.md └── index.md ├── 57-startup-lessons ├── README.md └── index.md ├── 8-essential-interview-questions-ceos-swear-by ├── README.md └── index.md ├── 8-essential-qualities-that-define-great-leadership ├── README.md └── index.md ├── CITATION.cff ├── CODE_OF_CONDUCT.md ├── README.md ├── amazon-leadership-principles ├── README.md └── index.md ├── ask-for-advice-not-permission ├── README.md └── index.md ├── doing-a-job-by-adm-hyman-g-rickover ├── README.md └── index.md ├── engineering-manager-problems ├── README.md └── index.md ├── ge-mckinsey-9-box-matrix ├── README.md └── index.md ├── how-to-give-a-senior-leader-feedback ├── README.md └── index.md ├── how-to-win-friends-and-influence-people ├── README.md └── index.md ├── leadership-principles-by-united-states-marine-corps ├── README.md └── index.md ├── leadership-styles-by-harvard-business-review ├── README.md └── index.md ├── lessons-learned-by-emmett-shear ├── README.md └── index.md ├── manager-metrics-quotations └── index.md ├── periodic-table-by-mike-mears └── periodic-table-by-mike-mears.jpg ├── qualities-of-leadership-by-peter-economy ├── README.md └── index.md ├── solution-focused-questions ├── README.md └── index.md ├── the-25-micro-habits-of-high-impact-managers-by-first-round-review ├── README.md └── index.md ├── the-9-traits-that-define-great-leadership ├── README.md └── index.md ├── the-evolution-of-management-by-kate-matsudaira ├── README.md └── index.md ├── the-most-important-leadership-compentencies ├── README.md └── index.md └── the-webflow-tech-lead-guide ├── README.md └── index.md /20-leadership-quotations-by-elon-musk/README.md: -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 1 | index.md -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- /20-leadership-quotations-by-elon-musk/index.md: -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 1 | # 20 Leadership Quotations by Elon Musk 2 | 3 | “When Henry Ford made cheap, reliable cars, people said, ‘Nah, what’s wrong with a horse?’ That was a huge bet he made, and it worked.” 4 | 5 | “Don’t delude yourself into thinking something’s working when it’s not, or you’re gonna get fixated on a bad solution.” 6 | 7 | “It’s very important to like the people you work with, otherwise life and your job is gonna be quite miserable.” 8 | 9 | “You have to say, ‘Well, why did it succeed where others did not?” 10 | 11 | “You shouldn’t do things differently just because they’re different. They need to be better.” 12 | 13 | “If you’re trying to create a company, it’s like baking a cake. You have to have all the ingredients in the right proportion.” 14 | 15 | “Starting and growing a business is as much about the innovation, drive, and determination of the people behind it as the product they sell.” 16 | 17 | “My biggest mistake is probably weighing too much on someone’s talent and not someone’s personality. I think it matters whether someone has a good heart.” 18 | 19 | “We have a strict ‘no-assholes policy’ at SpaceX.” 20 | 21 | “Being an entrepreneur is like eating glass and staring into the abyss of death.” 22 | 23 | “People should pursue what they’re passionate about. That will make them happier than pretty much anything else.” 24 | 25 | “What makes innovative thinking happen?… I think it’s really a mindset. You have to decide.” 26 | 27 | “When something is important enough, you do it even if the odds are not in your favor.” 28 | 29 | “If you get up in the morning and think the future is going to be better, it is a bright day. Otherwise, it’s not.” 30 | 31 | “Really pay attention to negative feedback and solicit it, particularly from friends… Hardly anyone does that, and it’s incredibly helpful.” 32 | 33 | “I don’t create companies for the sake of creating companies, but to get things done.” 34 | 35 | “There’s a tremendous bias against taking risks. Everyone is trying to optimize their ass-covering.” 36 | 37 | “I think it’s very important to have a feedback loop, where you’re constantly thinking about what you’ve done and how you could be doing it better.” 38 | 39 | “Persistence is very important. You should not give up unless you are forced to give up.” 40 | 41 | “Some people don’t like change, but you need to embrace change if the alternative is disaster.” -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- /44-engineering-management-lessons/README.md: -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 1 | index.md -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- /44-engineering-management-lessons/index.md: -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 1 | # 44 engineering management lessons 2 | 3 | By Slava Akhmechet ([coffeemug@gmail.com](mailto:coffeemug@gmail.com), [coffeemug](https://github.com/coffeemug), [spakhm](https://twitter.com/spakhm)) on 2014-10-03 4 | 5 | [Link](http://www.defmacro.org/2014/10/03/engman.html) 6 | 7 | Welcome to engineering management. It’s fun, it’s exhausting, it’s rewarding — but most importantly it’s new! What worked for you before won’t work now. You’ll have to acquire a new set of skills, and shed some bad habits in the process. Here is a short guide to get you started. 8 | 9 | ## Do 10 | 11 | Attract, nurture, coach, and retain talent. Talk to engineers to tease out concerns early, then fix them if you can. 12 | 13 | Communicate to every engineer the next most important issue for them to work on. 14 | 15 | Be the tiebreaker when the development team can’t reach consensus. 16 | 17 | Be the information hub. Know what every engineer is working on, and help connect the dots that wouldn’t otherwise get connected. 18 | 19 | Provide administrative support. Schedule issues, coordinate releases, and make sure the bureaucratic machine keeps ticking. 20 | 21 | Enforce behavioral and performance standards. Fire bullies and underperformers. 22 | 23 | 24 | ## Don’t 25 | 26 | Personally fix bugs and ship features. You have to write code to remain an effective tiebreaker, but that’s where your coding responsibilities end. 27 | 28 | Supervise the quality and volume of people’s work. Software engineering isn’t an assembly line. If you find yourself supervising too often, you haven’t attracted the right people or given them the right incentives. 29 | 30 | 31 | ## Motivation and culture 32 | 33 | You’re the one who makes hiring and firing decisions. Everything that happens on your team is your responsibility. 34 | 35 | Engineering is a seller’s market: people work for you because they believe in you. Access to their talent is a privilege. 36 | 37 | Authority isn’t bestowed freely. It’s earned by making good decisions over time. 38 | 39 | Don’t make decisions unless you have to. Whenever possible, allow the team to explore ideas and make decisions on its own. 40 | 41 | Do make decisions when it’s necessary. Few things are as demoralizing as a stalled team. 42 | 43 | Don’t shoot down ideas until it’s necessary. Create an environment where everyone feels safe to share and explore ideas. The folks writing the code have a lot of information you don’t. Rely on your team and you’ll make better decisions. 44 | 45 | Building intuition on how to make good decisions and cultivating a great relationship with your team will get you 95% of the way there. The plethora of conceptual frameworks for organizing engineering teams won’t make much difference. They make good managers slightly better and bad managers slightly worse. 46 | 47 | 48 | ## Emotions and people 49 | 50 | Management happens to be prestigious in our culture, but it’s a skill like any other. Prestige is a distraction — it’s fickle and arbitrary. Guard against believing you’re any better than anyone else. The sooner you get over prestige, the sooner you can focus on doing your job well. 51 | 52 | Management also attracts scorn. Ignore it — the people who believe managers are useless don’t understand the dynamics of building a winning human organization. 53 | 54 | If you feel something’s wrong, you’re probably right. Don’t let anyone bully you into ignoring your feelings. 55 | 56 | If you find yourself blaming someone, you’re probably wrong. Nobody wakes up and tries to do a bad job. 95% of the time you can resolve your feelings by just talking to people. 57 | 58 | Most people won’t easily share their emotions. Have frequent informal conversations, and tease out everything that might be wrong. Then fix it if you can. 59 | 60 | Your team looks to you for leadership. Have the courage to say what everyone knows to be true but isn’t saying. 61 | 62 | You’re paid to discover and fix cultural problems your team may not be aware of. Have the courage to say what everyone should know but doesn’t. 63 | 64 | Hire great people, then trust them completely. Evaluate performance on monthly or quarterly basis, then fire if you have to. Don’t evaluate people daily, it will drive everyone (including you) insane. 65 | 66 | Most intellectual arguments have strong emotional undercurrents. You’ll be dramatically more efficient once you learn to figure out what those are. 67 | 68 | 69 | ## Tiebreaking and conflict 70 | 71 | Don’t judge too quickly; you’re right less often than you think. Even if you’re sure you’re right in any given case, wait until everyone’s opinion is heard. 72 | 73 | Once everyone is heard, summarize all points of view so clearly that people say “Thanks, I wish I’d thought of putting it that way.” List any points of agreement with each view, and state what you’ve learned from everyone. Then make your decision. 74 | 75 | Once you’ve made your decision, enforce it. Don’t let the team waste time going in circles to placate disproportionally strong voices. 76 | 77 | Reopen the discussion if there is significant new information. 78 | 79 | When disagreement gets personal or people don’t accept well-reasoned decisions, it turns into conflict. 80 | 81 | Most conflict happens because people don’t feel heard. Sit down with each person and ask them how they feel. Listen carefully. Then ask again. And again. Then summarize what they said back to them. Most of the time that will solve the problem. 82 | 83 | If the conflict persists after you’ve gone to reasonable lengths to hear everyone out and fix problems, it’s time for a difficult conversation. 84 | 85 | 86 | ## Difficult conversations 87 | 88 | Have difficult conversations as soon as possible. Waiting will only make a bad situation worse. 89 | 90 | Never assume or jump to conclusions. Never demonize people in your mind. Never blame, yell or vilify. 91 | 92 | Use non-violent communication — it’s the best method I know of to critique people’s behavior without offending them. It smells like a management fad, but it really works (I promise). 93 | 94 | Have the courage to state how you feel and what you need. People are drawn to each other’s vulnerability but repelled by their own. Vulnerability isn’t weakness. 95 | 96 | Expect people to extend you the same courtesy. If someone makes you feel bad for stating your needs and feelings, it tells you more about them than about yourself. 97 | 98 | 99 | ## Rough edge 100 | 101 | People will push and prod to discover your boundaries. Knowing when to stand back and when to stand firm is half the battle. 102 | 103 | Occasionally someone will push too far. When they do, you have to show a rough edge or you’ll lose authority with your team. 104 | 105 | A firm “I’m not ok with that” is usually enough. 106 | 107 | Don’t laugh things off if you don’t feel like laughing them off. Have the courage to show your true emotions. 108 | 109 | If you have to firmly say “I’m not ok with that” too many times to the same person, it’s your job to fire them. 110 | 111 | Unless you’re a sociopath, firing people is so hard you’ll invent excuses not to do it. If you’re consistently wondering if someone’s a good fit for too long, have the courage to do what you know is right. 112 | 113 | Don’t let people pressure you into decisions you don’t believe in. They’ll hold you responsible for them later, and they’ll be right. Decisions are your responsibility. 114 | 115 | Believe in yourself. You can’t lead a cavalry charge if you think you look funny on a horse. 116 | -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- /50-ideas-that-changed-my-life-by-david-perell/README.md: -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 1 | index.md -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- /50-ideas-that-changed-my-life-by-david-perell/index.md: -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 1 | 50 ideas that changed my life - By David Perell 2 | 3 | These are my guiding principles and the light of my intellectual life. All of them will help you think better, and I hope they inspire curiosity. 4 | 5 | 1. Inversion: Avoiding stupidity is easier than trying to be brilliant. Instead of asking, “How can I help my company?” you should ask, “What’s hurting my company the most and how can I avoid it?” Identify obvious failure points, and steer clear of them. 6 | 7 | 2. Doublespeak: People often say the opposite of what they mean, especially in political language. It allows people to lie while looking like they’re telling the truth. As George Orwell famously wrote in 1984, “War is peace. Freedom is slavery. Ignorance is strength." 8 | 9 | 3. Theory of Constraints: A system is only as strong as its weakest point. Focus on the bottleneck. Counterintuitively, if you break down the entire system and optimize each component individually, you’ll lower the effectiveness of the system. Optimize the entire system instead. 10 | 11 | 4. Preference Falsification: People lie about their true opinions and conform to socially acceptable preferences instead. In private they’ll say one thing. In public, they’ll say another. 12 | 13 | 5. Faustian Bargain: A man once sold his soul to a demon in exchange for knowledge. At first, it seemed like a smart trade. But the man lost in the long-run. Tragically, what the man lost was more valuable than what he earned. In short, he won the battle but lost the war. 14 | 15 | 6. Mimetic Theory of Desire: Humans are like sheep. We don’t know what we want, so we imitate each other. Instead of creating our own desires, we desire the same things as other people. The entire advertising industry is built on this idea. 16 | 17 | 7. Mimetic Theory of Conflict: People who are similar are more likely to fight than people who are different. That’s why Civil Wars and family feuds create the worst conflicts. The closer two people are and the more equality between them, the greater the potential for conflict. 18 | 19 | 8. Talent vs. Genius: Society is good at training talent but terrible at cultivating genius. Talented people are good at hitting targets others can’t hit, but geniuses find targets others can’t see. They are opposite modes of excellence. Talent is predictable, genius is unpredictable. 20 | 21 | 9. Competition is for Losers: Avoid competition. Stop copying what everybody else is doing. If you work at a for-profit company, work on problems that would not otherwise be solved. If you’re at a non-profit, fix unpopular problems. Life is easier when you don’t compete. (Hint: don’t start another bottled water company). 22 | 23 | 10. Secrets are Hidden in Plain Sight: Most people think of secrets as Easter eggs. They assume that if a secret is important, it’s necessarily going to be hard to find. The best ideas can come from things that are so well-known that they aren’t well-seen. 24 | 25 | 11. The Never-Ending Now: The structure of our social media feeds blinds us to history, as it causes us to live in an endless cycle of ephemeral content consumption. The structure of the Internet pulls people away from age-old wisdom. 26 | 27 | 12. Demand Curves Slope Down: The harder something is to do, the fewer people will do it. For example, raise the price of a product and fewer people will buy it. Lower the price and more people will buy it. Economics 101. 28 | 29 | 13. Look for Things That Don’t Make Sense: The world always makes sense. But it can be confusing. When it is, your model of the world is wrong. So, things that don’t make sense are a learning opportunity. Big opportunities won’t make sense until it’s too late to profit from them. 30 | 31 | 14. The Wisdom of Paradox: Logic is the key to scientific truths, but paradoxes are the key to psychological ones. When it comes to the human condition, the deepest truths are often counter-intuitive. When you find two opposites that are both true, start exploring. 32 | 33 | 15. Law of Shitty Click-Through Rates: Most marketing strategies have a short window of success, as click-through rates decrease as tactics mature. For example, the first banner-ad has a click-through rate of more than 70%. Now we avoid them with ad-blockers. 34 | 35 | 16. Russell Conjugation: Journalists often change the meaning of a sentence by replacing one word with a synonym that implies a different meaning. For example, the same person can support an estate tax but oppose a death tax — even though they are the same thing. 36 | 37 | 17. Opportunity Cost: By reading this tweet, you are choosing not to read something else. Everything we do is like this. Doing one thing requires giving up another. Whenever you explicitly choose to do one thing, you implicitly choose not to do another thing. 38 | Friday Finds 39 | 40 | I publish a newsletter called Friday Finds where I share my favorite links from the week. 41 | 42 | In it, you'll find books, articles, videos, podcasts, and more. 43 | 44 | After you enter your email, I'll send a sheet of reading recommendations which you won't find anywhere else. 45 | 46 | 18. Overton Window: You can control thought without limiting speech. You can do it by defining the limits of acceptable thought while allowing for lively debate within these barriers. For example, Fox News and MSNBC set limits on what political thoughts they consider acceptable, but in the grand scheme of things, they’re both fairly conventional. The political spectrum stretches far beyond the ideas they entertain, but ideas outside their limits are shunned. 47 | 48 | 19. Planck’s Principle: Science doesn’t progress because people change their views. Rather, each new generation of scientists has different views. As old generations pass away, new ideas are accepted and the scientific consensus changes. 49 | 50 | 20. Bike-Shed Effect: A group of people working on a project will fight over the most trivial ideas. They’ll ignore what’s complicated. They’ll focus too much on easy-to-understand ideas at the expense of important, but hard to talk about ideas. For example, instead of approving plans for a complicated spaceship, the team would argue over the color of the astronaut's uniforms. 51 | 52 | 21. Table Selection: This idea comes from poker, where you’re advised to choose your opponents carefully. That means you shouldn’t compete against the best people. You don’t need to get good at doing difficult things if you get good at avoiding difficult things. If you want to win, pick an easy table and nail your execution. 53 | 54 | 22. Goodhart’s Law: When a measure becomes a target, it ceases to be a good measure. One hospital took too long to admit patients so a penalty was given for 4+ hour wait times. In response, ambulance drivers were asked to slow down so they could shorten wait times. 55 | 56 | 23. Gall’s Law: A complex system that works is invariably found to have evolved from a simple system that worked. A complex system designed from scratch never works and cannot be patched up to make it work. You have to start over with a working simple system. 57 | 58 | 24. Hock Principle: Simple, clear purpose and principles give rise to complex and intelligent behavior. Complex rules and regulations give rise to simple and stupid behavior. 59 | 60 | 25. Parkinson’s Law: Work expands to fill the time available. People don’t want to look like they’re lazy, so they find extra tasks to tackle, even if they’re trivial. If you have six months to complete a project, it will take six months to complete. Set deadlines accordingly. 61 | 62 | 26. The Second Law of Thermodynamics: The world tends towards disorder. That’s why your room becomes messier and messier over time. It’s also why an engine converts only ~35% of its energy into useful work. Time moves towards increasing one direction: increasing entropy. 63 | 64 | 27. The Paradox of Specificity: Focus isn’t as constraining as it seems. In the age of the Internet, when everybody has Google search and personalized social media feeds, differentiation is free marketing. The more specific your goal, the more opportunities you’ll create for yourself. Narrowing your aperture can expand your horizons. 65 | 66 | 28. Emergence: When things interact, they often birth new, unpredictable forms. Therefore, the sum total of a system is more than its competent parts. As a system evolves, its structure can transform — just like how water becomes cold water until it turns into ice. 67 | 68 | 29. Occam's Razor: If there are multiple explanations for why something happened and they are equally persuasive, assume the simplest one is true. In the search for truth, remove unnecessary assumptions. Trust the lowest-complexity answer. 69 | 70 | 30. Hickam’s Dictum: The opposite of Occam’s Razor. In a complex system, problems usually have more than one cause. For example, in medicine, people can have many diseases at the same time. 71 | 72 | 31. Hormesis: A low dose of something can have the opposite effect of a high dose. A little bit of stress wakes you up, but a lot of stress is bad for you. Lifting weights for 30 minutes per day is good for you, but lifting weights for 6 hours per day will destroy your muscles. Stress yourself, but not too much. 73 | 74 | 32. Robustness Principle: Be conservative in what you do, be liberal in what you accept from others. It’s a design guideline for software and a good rule for life: Hold yourself to a higher standard than you hold others to. 75 | 76 | 33. Legibility: We are blind to what we cannot measure. Not everything that counts can be measured, and not everything that can be measured counts. But people manage what they can measure, so society repeats the same mistakes. 77 | 78 | 34. Horseshoe Theory: Extreme opposites tend to look the same. For example, a far-right movement and a far-left movement can be equally violent or desire a similar outcome. People on both sides are more similar to each other than they are to people in the center. 79 | 80 | 35. Availability Cascade: A self-reinforcing cycle that creates collective beliefs. An idea will gain traction once it enters the mainstream, which triggers a chain reaction, which causes lots of people to adopt it not because it’s true but because it’s popular. 81 | 82 | 36. Creativity Begins at the Edge: Change starts away from the spotlight. Then, it moves towards the center. That’s why the most interesting ideas at a conference never come from the main stage. They come from the hallways and the bar after sunset 83 | 84 | 37. The Copernican Principle: The more we learn about astronomy, the less it seems that earth is special. It's a small part of the universe, and each human is a small part of the earth. We are all spinning through the solar system — nowhere near the beginning or end of time. 85 | 86 | 38. Personal Monopoly: Corporations reward conformity, but the Internet rewards people who are unique. If you work in a creative field, strive to be the only person who does what you do. Find your own style, then run with it. Create intellectual real estate for yourself. 87 | 88 | 39. The Paradox of Consensus: Under ancient Jewish law, if a suspect was found guilty by every judge, they were deemed innocent. Too much agreement implied a systemic error in the judicial process. Unanimous agreement sometimes leads to bad decisions. 89 | 90 | 40. Penny Problem Gap: Economists assume demand is linear, but people’s behavior totally changes once an action costs money. If the inventors of the Internet had known about it, spam wouldn’t be such a problem. If sending an email cost you $0.001, there’d be way less spam. 91 | 92 | 41. The Invisible Hand: Markets aggregate knowledge. Rising prices signal falling supply or increased demand, which incentivizes an increase in production. The opposite is true for falling prices. Prices are a signal wrapped in an incentive. 93 | 94 | 42. Base Rate: The average outcome for an event over time. They're like batting averages for life, and they work best with big sample sizes. For example, if you’re starting a business, avoid the restaurant business where margins are low and competition is high. 95 | 96 | 43. Circle of Competence: Define the limits of your knowledge. Hint: the limits are smaller than you think. That’s because being an expert in one area doesn’t make you an expert in anything else. Be clear about what you know and don’t know. 97 | 98 | 44. Convexity: If you want to be lucky, look for opportunities with big upsides and low downsides. In addition to increased optionality, your errors will benefit you more than they harm you. Convex payoffs let you tinker your way to success and innovation. 99 | 100 | 45. The Go-For-It Window: Large gaps between accelerating technologies and stagnating social norms create lucrative new business opportunities. But they are only available for a short time when people can capitalize on the difference between the real and perceived state of the world. For example, 2007 was the perfect time to launch the iPhone, but Google Glasses launched too early. 101 | 102 | 46. Via Negativa: When we have a problem, our natural instinct is to add a new habit or purchase a fix. But sometimes, you can improve your life by taking things away. For example, the foods you avoid are more important than the foods you eat. 103 | 104 | 47. The Medium Is the Message: We pay too much attention to what is being said. But the medium of communication is more impactful. For example, the Internet’s impact on humanity has a bigger influence than anything that’s said on the Internet. 105 | 106 | 48. Resource Curse: Countries with an abundance of natural resources such as diamonds and fossil fuels tend to have less economic growth and worse development than countries with fewer natural resources. 107 | 108 | 49. The Paradox of Abundance: The average quality of information is getting worse and worse. But the best stuff is getting better and better. Markets of abundance are simultaneously bad for the median consumer but good for conscious consumers. 109 | 110 | 50. The Map Is Not the Territory: Reality will never match the elegance of theory. All models have inconsistencies, but some are still useful. Some maps are useful because they’re inaccurate. If you want to find an edge, look for what the map leaves out. 111 | 112 | 51. Baker’s Dozen: The key to good hospitality is to delight your guests with an unexpected gift. If you run a hotel, leave a chocolate on the bed. If you run a bakery, give your customers one extra bagel. If you write a tweetstorm, share an extra idea. 113 | -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- /57-startup-lessons/README.md: -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 1 | index.md -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- /57-startup-lessons/index.md: -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 1 | ## 57 startup lessons 2 | 3 | By Slava Akhmechet ([coffeemug@gmail.com](mailto:coffeemug@gmail.com), [coffeemug](https://github.com/coffeemug), [spakhm](https://twitter.com/spakhm)) on 2013-07-23 4 | 5 | [Link](http://www.defmacro.org/2013/07/23/startup-lessons.html) 6 | 7 | There are already very good lists of startup lessons written by really talented, experienced people (here and here). I’d like to add another one. I learned these lessons the hard way in the past four years. If you’re starting a company, I hope you have an easier path. 8 | 9 | 10 | ## People 11 | 12 | If you can’t get to ramen profitability with a team of 2 – 4 within six months to a year, something’s wrong. (You can choose not to be profitable, but it must be your choice, not something forced on you by the market). 13 | 14 | Split the stock between the founding team evenly. 15 | 16 | Always have a vesting schedule. 17 | 18 | Make most decisions by consensus, but have a single CEO whose decisions are final. Make it clear from day one. 19 | 20 | Your authority as CEO is earned. You start with a non-zero baseline. It grows if you have victories and dwindles if you don’t. Don’t try to use authority you didn’t earn. 21 | 22 | Morale is very real and self-perpetuating. If you work too long without victories, your investors, employees, family, and you yourself will lose faith. Work like hell not to get yourself into this position. 23 | 24 | Pick the initial team very carefully. Everyone should be pleasant to work with, have at least one skill relevant to the business they’re spectacular at, be extremely effective and pragmatic. Everyone should have product sense and a shared vision for the product and the company. 25 | 26 | The standard you walk past is the standard you accept. Pick a small set of non-negotiable rules that matter to you most and enforce them ruthlessly. 27 | 28 | Fire people that are difficult, unproductive, unreliable, have no product sense, or aren’t pragmatic. Do it quickly. 29 | 30 | Some friction is good. Too much friction is deadly. Fire people that cause too much friction. Good job + bad behavior == you’re fired. 31 | 32 | 33 | ## Fundraising 34 | 35 | If you have to give away more than 15% of the company at any given fundraising round, your company didn’t germinate correctly. It’s salvageable but not ideal. 36 | 37 | If you haven’t earned people’s respect yet, fundraising on traction is an order of magnitude easier than fundraising on a story. If you have to raise on a story but don’t have the reputation, something’s wrong. 38 | 39 | Treat your fundraising pitch as a minimum viable product. Get it out, then iterate after every meeting. 40 | 41 | Most investor advice is very good for optimizing and scaling a working business. Listen to it. 42 | 43 | Most investor advice isn’t very good for building a magical product. Nobody can help you build a magical product — that’s your job. 44 | 45 | Don’t fall in love with the fundraising process. Get it done and move on. 46 | 47 | 48 | ## Markets 49 | 50 | The best products don’t get built in a vacuum. They win because they reach the top of a field over all other products designed to fill the same niche. Find your field and be the best. If there is no field, something’s wrong. 51 | 52 | Work on a problem that has an immediately useful solution, but has enormous potential for growth. If it doesn’t augment the human condition for a huge number of people in a meaningful way, it’s not worth doing. For example, Google touches billions of lives by filling a very concrete space in people’s daily routine. It changes the way people behave and perceive their immediate physical surroundings. Shoot for building a product of this magnitude. 53 | 54 | Starting with the right idea matters. Empirically, you can only pivot so far. 55 | 56 | Assume the market is efficient and valuable ideas will be discovered by multiple teams nearly instantaneously. 57 | 58 | Pick new ideas because they’ve been made possible by other social or technological change. Get on the train as early as possible, but make sure the technology is there to make the product be enough better that it matters. 59 | 60 | If there is an old idea that didn’t work before and there is no social or technological change that can plausibly make it work now, assume it will fail. (That’s the efficient market hypothesis again. If an idea could have been brought to fruition, it would have been. It’s only worth trying again if something changed.) 61 | 62 | Educating a market that doesn’t want your product is a losing battle. Stick to your ideals and vision, but respect trends. If you believe the world needs iambic pentameter poetry, sell hip hop, not sonnets. 63 | 64 | 65 | ## Products 66 | 67 | Product sense is everything. Learn it as quickly as you can. Being good at engineering has nothing to do with being good at product management. 68 | 69 | Don’t build something that already exists. Customers won’t buy it just because it’s yours. 70 | 71 | Make sure you know why users will have no choice but to switch to your product, and why they won’t be able to switch back. Don’t trust yourself — test your assumptions as much as possible. 72 | 73 | Ask two questions for every product feature. Will people buy because of this feature? Will people not buy because of lack of this feature? No amount of the latter will make up for lack of the former. Don’t build features if the answer to both questions is “no”. 74 | 75 | Build a product people want to buy in spite of rough edges, not because there are no rough edges. The former is pleasant and highly paid, the latter is unpleasant and takes forever. 76 | 77 | Beware of chicken and egg products. Make sure your product provides immediate utility. 78 | 79 | Learn the difference between people who might buy your product and people who are just commenting. Pay obsessive attention to the former. Ignore the latter. 80 | 81 | 82 | ## Marketing 83 | 84 | Product comes first. If people love your product, the tiniest announcements will get attention. If people don’t love your product, no amount of marketing effort will help. 85 | 86 | Try to have marketing built into the product. If possible, have the YouTube effect (your users can frequently send people a link to something interesting on your platform), and Facebook effect (if your users are on the product, their friends will need to get on the product too). 87 | 88 | Watch Jiro Dreams of Sushi, then do marketing that way. Pick a small set of tasks, do them consistently, and get better every day. 89 | 90 | Reevaluate effectiveness on a regular basis. Cut things that don’t work, double down on things that do. 91 | 92 | Don’t guess. Measure. 93 | 94 | Market to your users. Getting attention from people who won’t buy your product is a waste of time and money. 95 | 96 | Don’t say things if your competitors can’t say the opposite. For example, your competitors can’t say their product is slow, so saying yours is fast is sloppy marketing. On the other hand, your competitors can say their software is for Python programmers, so saying yours is for Ruby programmers is good marketing. Apple can get away with breaking this rule, you can’t. 97 | 98 | Don’t use supercilious tone towards your users or competitors. It won’t help sell the product and will destroy good will. 99 | 100 | Don’t be dismissive of criticism. Instead, use it to improve your product. Your most vocal critics will often turn into your biggest champions if you take their criticism seriously. 101 | 102 | 103 | ## Sales 104 | 105 | Sales fix everything. You can screw up everything else and get through it if your product sells well. 106 | 107 | Product comes first. Selling a product everyone wants is easy and rewarding. Selling a product no one wants is an unpleasant game of numbers. 108 | 109 | Be relentless about working the game of numbers while the product is between the two extremes above. Even if you don’t sell anything, you’ll learn invaluable lessons. 110 | 111 | Qualify ruthlessly. Spending time with a user who’s unlikely to buy is equivalent to doing no work at all. 112 | 113 | Inbound is easier than outbound. If possible, build the product in a way where customers reach out to you and ask to pay. 114 | 115 | 116 | ## Development 117 | 118 | Development speed is everything. 119 | 120 | Minimize complexity. The simpler the product, the more likely you are to actually ship it, and the more likely you are to fix problems quickly. 121 | 122 | Pick implementations that give 80% of the benefit with 20% of the work. 123 | 124 | Use off the shelf components whenever possible. 125 | 126 | Use development sprints. Make sure your sprints aren’t longer than one or two weeks. 127 | 128 | Beware of long projects. If you can’t fit it into a sprint, don’t build it. 129 | 130 | Beware of long rewrites. If you can’t fit it into a sprint, don’t do it. 131 | 132 | If you must do something that doesn’t fit into a sprint, put as much structure and peer review around it as possible. 133 | 134 | Working on the wrong thing for a month is equivalent to not showing up to work for a month at all. 135 | 136 | 137 | ## Company administration 138 | 139 | Don’t waste time picking office buildings, accountants, bookkeepers, janitors, furniture, hosted tools, payroll companies, etc. Make sure it’s good enough and move on. 140 | 141 | Take the time to find a good, inexpensive lawyer. It will make a difference. 142 | 143 | 144 | ## Personal well-being 145 | 146 | Do everything you can not to attach your self esteem to your startup (you’ll fail, but try anyway). Do the best you can every day, then step back. Work in such a way that when the dust settles you can be proud of the choices you’ve made, regardless of the outcome. 147 | 148 | Every once in a while, get away. Go hiking, visit family in another city, go dancing, play chess, tennis, anything. It will make you more effective and make the people around you happier. 149 | -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- /8-essential-interview-questions-ceos-swear-by/README.md: -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 1 | index.md -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- /8-essential-interview-questions-ceos-swear-by/index.md: -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 1 | # 8 Essential Interview Questions CEOs Swear By 2 | 3 | [Source](https://sloanreview.mit.edu/article/eight-essential-interview-questions-ceos-swear-by/?post=fbleadgen&utm_source=facebook&utm_medium=paid&utm_campaign=EmailGrowth25&utm_id=6301981532000&utm_content=6578232342600&utm_term=6301981532600) 4 | 5 | Edited and elided based on real world usage. 6 | 7 | 8 | ## 1. Why Do You Really Want to Work Here Specifically? 9 | 10 | * 1.1. What have you learned about our company beyond what you’ve read on the website? 11 | 12 | * 1.2. What do you think you might be able to do that’s different from what we’re already doing? 13 | 14 | * 1.3. Why is our company and this job the right next step in your professional and personal journey? 15 | 16 | 17 | ## 2. What Makes You Tick? 18 | 19 | * 2.1. What shapes you as a leader and colleague? 20 | 21 | * 2.2. What do you enjoy the most and the least in your current job? 22 | 23 | * 2.3. How do you define professional fulfillment? 24 | 25 | 26 | ## 3. How Is Your Accountability and Determination? 27 | 28 | * 3.1. What's a hard problem you’ve faced, and how did you handle it? 29 | 30 | * 3.2. What leadership muscles did you build or strengthen during the intense period of disruption caused by the pandemic? 31 | 32 | * 3.3. How have you led change in previous roles? 33 | 34 | 35 | ## 4. How Hungry Are You to Learn and Build New Skills? 36 | 37 | * 4.1. What idea, challenge, or question has captured your interest and is driving you to learn more about it now? 38 | 39 | * 4.2. If your core expertise is your “major,” what is your professional “minor”? What interests you and why? 40 | 41 | * 4.3. How do you want to be better at your job over the next two years? What will you do to achieve that? 42 | 43 | 44 | ## 5. Are You a Team Player? 45 | 46 | * 5.1. What is your playbook for influencing people who don’t report to you? 47 | 48 | * 5.2. What was the best and worst team you’ve worked on? What were the dynamics of each of them? 49 | 50 | * 5.3 How do you deal with difficult interpersonal issues at work? 51 | 52 | 53 | ## 6. Are You Self-Aware? 54 | 55 | * 6.1. What’s the most surprising negative feedback you’ve received, and what did you do about it? 56 | 57 | * 6.2. What are your triggers, and how do you manage them? 58 | 59 | * 6.3. How do you challenge your own assumptions? 60 | 61 | 62 | ## 7. Will You Thrive in Our Organization? 63 | 64 | * 7.1. What did you like the most and least about previous organizational cultures where you worked? 65 | 66 | * 7.2. How did you “merge into traffic” with a new organizational culture when you changed jobs in the past? 67 | 68 | * 7.3. What are the lasting fingerprints you’ve left in previous companies where you’ve worked? 69 | 70 | 71 | ## 8. How Are Your Leadership Capabilties? 72 | 73 | * 8.1. When you start with a new team, what do you tell the people are the three most important values to you as a leader, and why those values are important to you? 74 | 75 | * 8.2. When you mentor and coach people, what are the most common themes that come up in those conversations? 76 | 77 | * 8.3. How do you ensure that your teams operate like true teams? 78 | -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- /8-essential-qualities-that-define-great-leadership/README.md: -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 1 | index.md -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- /8-essential-qualities-that-define-great-leadership/index.md: -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 1 | # 8 Essential Qualities That Define Great Leadership 2 | 3 | [Link](https://www.forbes.com/sites/kimberlyfries/2018/02/08/8-essential-qualities-that-define-great-leadership) 4 | 5 | By Kimberly Fries 6 | 7 | Company leaders are facing a crisis. Nearly one-third of employees don’t trust management. In addition to this, employers now have to cater to the needs of the millennial generation. On average, after graduating from college, a millennial will change jobs four times before they are 32. Most of them also don’t feel empowered on their current jobs. 8 | 9 | It’s clear that many leaders are failing to foster a sense of trust and loyalty in their employees. Fortunately, that doesn’t have to be the case. Managers who show great leadership qualities can inspire their teams to accomplish amazing things, according to Daniel Wang, the creator of Loopring Protocol and founder of the Loopring Foundation. Loopring is a decentralized automated execution system that trades across the crypto-token exchanges. The platform reduces the cost of trading and shields users from counterparty risk. I’ve distilled my conversation with Wang to eight of the most essential qualities that make a great leader. 10 | 11 | ## 1. Sincere enthusiasm 12 | 13 | True enthusiasm for a business, its products, and its mission cannot be faked. Employees can recognize insincere cheerleading from a mile away. However, when leaders are sincerely enthusiastic and passionate, that’s contagious. For instance, someone who worked with Elon Musk on the early stages of his SpaceX project said that the true driver behind the success of the project was Musk’s enthusiasm for space travel. 14 | 15 | Wang says being enthusiastic helps a leader identify existing key problems in his industry. “Any innovation starts from these problems and ends with products and services, with some of the key issues resolved,” he said. 16 | 17 | 18 | ## 2. Integrity 19 | 20 | Whether it’s giving proper credit for accomplishments, acknowledging mistakes, or putting safety and quality first, great leaders exhibit integrity at all times. They do what’s right, even if that isn’t the best thing for the current project or even the bottom line. 21 | 22 | “When people see evidence that leaders lack integrity, that can be nearly impossible to recover from,” Wang said. “Trust lost is difficult to get back.” 23 | 24 | 25 | ## 3. Great communication skills 26 | 27 | Leaders must motivate, instruct and discipline the people they are in charge of. They can accomplish none of these things if they aren’t very skilled communicators. Not only that, poor communication can lead to poor outcomes. 28 | 29 | Leaders who fail to develop these skills are often perceived as being weak and mealy-mouthed, according to Wang. It’s also important to remember that listening is an integral part of communication. 30 | 31 | 32 | ## 4. Loyalty 33 | 34 | The best leaders understand that true loyalty is reciprocal. Because of this, they express that loyalty in tangible ways that benefit the member of their teams. True loyalty is ensuring that all team members have the training and resources to do their jobs. It’s standing up for team members in crisis and conflict. 35 | 36 | “Great leaders see themselves as being in a position of service to their team members,” Wang said. “Employees who believe leadership is loyal to them are much more likely to show their own loyalty when it matters.” 37 | 38 | 39 | ## 5. Decisiveness 40 | 41 | A good leader isn’t simply empowered to make decisions due to their position. They are willing to take on the risk of decision making. They make these decisions and take risks knowing that if things don’t work out, they’ll need to hold themselves accountable first and foremost. 42 | 43 | Further, bosses who aren’t decisive are often ineffective. Too much effort working on consensus building can have a negative effect. Rather than simply making a decision, many leaders allow debate to continue, and then create a piecemeal decision that satisfies no one. 44 | 45 | 46 | ## 6. Managerial competence 47 | 48 | Too many organizations try to create leaders from people who are simply good at their jobs. To be clear, those who emerge as being very good workers often have important qualities. They are the ones who have a strong understanding of the company’s products and services. They understand company goals, processes, and procedures. All of these are important. 49 | 50 | On the other hand, being good at one’s job doesn’t prove that someone possesses the other competencies they need. For example, can they inspire, motivate, mentor and direct? Wang illustrates with major league baseball. While nearly all coaches have backgrounds as major league players, the most winning players aren’t necessarily the most successful coaches. 51 | 52 | 53 | ## 7. Empowerment 54 | 55 | A good leader has faith in their ability to train and develop the employees under them. Because of this, they have the willingness to empower those they lead to act autonomously. Wang says this comes from trusting that their team members are fully up to any challenges they face. 56 | 57 | When employees are empowered, they are more likely to make decisions that are in the best interest of the company and the customer as well. This is true, even if it means allowing workers to go a bit off script. 58 | 59 | 60 | ## 8. Charisma 61 | 62 | Simply put, people are more likely to follow the lead of those they like. The best leaders are well-spoken, approachable and friendly. They show sincere care for others. 63 | 64 | “People at all levels of an organization find it easy to relate to them and follow their lead,” Wang concluded. 65 | 66 | 67 | ## Conclusion 68 | 69 | Every one of these qualities is absolutely essential to great leadership. Without them, leaders cannot live up to their full potential. As a result, their employees will never perform as well as they can either. Because of this, organizations must learn the best ways to identify and also to develop these necessary traits in existing and emerging leaders. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- /CITATION.cff: -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 1 | cff-version: 1.2.0 2 | title: Leadership 3 | message: >- 4 | If you use this work and you want to cite it, 5 | then you can use the metadata from this file. 6 | type: software 7 | authors: 8 | - given-names: Joel Parker 9 | family-names: Henderson 10 | email: joel@joelparkerhenderson.com 11 | affiliation: joelparkerhenderson.com 12 | orcid: 'https://orcid.org/0009-0000-4681-282X' 13 | identifiers: 14 | - type: url 15 | value: 'https://github.com/joelparkerhenderson/leadership/' 16 | description: Leadership 17 | repository-code: 'https://github.com/joelparkerhenderson/leadership/' 18 | abstract: >- 19 | Leadership 20 | license: See license file 21 | -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- /CODE_OF_CONDUCT.md: -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 1 | 2 | # Contributor Covenant Code of Conduct 3 | 4 | ## Our Pledge 5 | 6 | We as members, contributors, and leaders pledge to make participation in our 7 | community a harassment-free experience for everyone, regardless of age, body 8 | size, visible or invisible disability, ethnicity, sex characteristics, gender 9 | identity and expression, level of experience, education, socio-economic status, 10 | nationality, personal appearance, race, caste, color, religion, or sexual 11 | identity and orientation. 12 | 13 | We pledge to act and interact in ways that contribute to an open, welcoming, 14 | diverse, inclusive, and healthy community. 15 | 16 | ## Our Standards 17 | 18 | Examples of behavior that contributes to a positive environment for our 19 | community include: 20 | 21 | * Demonstrating empathy and kindness toward other people 22 | * Being respectful of differing opinions, viewpoints, and experiences 23 | * Giving and gracefully accepting constructive feedback 24 | * Accepting responsibility and apologizing to those affected by our mistakes, 25 | and learning from the experience 26 | * Focusing on what is best not just for us as individuals, but for the overall 27 | community 28 | 29 | Examples of unacceptable behavior include: 30 | 31 | * The use of sexualized language or imagery, and sexual attention or advances of 32 | any kind 33 | * Trolling, insulting or derogatory comments, and personal or political attacks 34 | * Public or private harassment 35 | * Publishing others' private information, such as a physical or email address, 36 | without their explicit permission 37 | * Other conduct which could reasonably be considered inappropriate in a 38 | professional setting 39 | 40 | ## Enforcement Responsibilities 41 | 42 | Community leaders are responsible for clarifying and enforcing our standards of 43 | acceptable behavior and will take appropriate and fair corrective action in 44 | response to any behavior that they deem inappropriate, threatening, offensive, 45 | or harmful. 46 | 47 | Community leaders have the right and responsibility to remove, edit, or reject 48 | comments, commits, code, wiki edits, issues, and other contributions that are 49 | not aligned to this Code of Conduct, and will communicate reasons for moderation 50 | decisions when appropriate. 51 | 52 | ## Scope 53 | 54 | This Code of Conduct applies within all community spaces, and also applies when 55 | an individual is officially representing the community in public spaces. 56 | Examples of representing our community include using an official e-mail address, 57 | posting via an official social media account, or acting as an appointed 58 | representative at an online or offline event. 59 | 60 | ## Enforcement 61 | 62 | Instances of abusive, harassing, or otherwise unacceptable behavior may be 63 | reported to the community leaders responsible for enforcement at 64 | [INSERT CONTACT METHOD]. 65 | All complaints will be reviewed and investigated promptly and fairly. 66 | 67 | All community leaders are obligated to respect the privacy and security of the 68 | reporter of any incident. 69 | 70 | ## Enforcement Guidelines 71 | 72 | Community leaders will follow these Community Impact Guidelines in determining 73 | the consequences for any action they deem in violation of this Code of Conduct: 74 | 75 | ### 1. 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Permanent Ban 108 | 109 | **Community Impact**: Demonstrating a pattern of violation of community 110 | standards, including sustained inappropriate behavior, harassment of an 111 | individual, or aggression toward or disparagement of classes of individuals. 112 | 113 | **Consequence**: A permanent ban from any sort of public interaction within the 114 | community. 115 | 116 | ## Attribution 117 | 118 | This Code of Conduct is adapted from the [Contributor Covenant][homepage], 119 | version 2.1, available at 120 | [https://www.contributor-covenant.org/version/2/1/code_of_conduct.html][v2.1]. 121 | 122 | Community Impact Guidelines were inspired by 123 | [Mozilla's code of conduct enforcement ladder][Mozilla CoC]. 124 | 125 | For answers to common questions about this code of conduct, see the FAQ at 126 | [https://www.contributor-covenant.org/faq][FAQ]. Translations are available at 127 | [https://www.contributor-covenant.org/translations][translations]. 128 | 129 | [homepage]: https://www.contributor-covenant.org 130 | [v2.1]: https://www.contributor-covenant.org/version/2/1/code_of_conduct.html 131 | [Mozilla CoC]: https://github.com/mozilla/diversity 132 | [FAQ]: https://www.contributor-covenant.org/faq 133 | [translations]: https://www.contributor-covenant.org/translations 134 | 135 | -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- /README.md: -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 1 | # Leadership 2 | 3 | This repository has articles about leadership and management, collected from various sources. 4 | 5 | Articles: 6 | 7 | * [8 Essential Qualities That Define Great Leadership](8-essential-qualities-that-define-great-leadership/) 8 | * [20 Leadership Quotations by Elon Musk](20-leadership-quotations-by-elon-musk/) 9 | * [44 Engineering Management Lessons](44-engineering-management-lessons/) 10 | * [50 Ideas That Changed My Life by David Perell](50-ideas-that-changed-my-life-by-david-perell/) 11 | * [57 Startup Lessons](57-startup-lessons/) 12 | * [Amazon Leadership Principles](amazon-leadership-principles/) 13 | * [GE McKinsey 9-box matrix](ge-mckinsey-9-box-matrix/) 14 | * [Engineering managers, what are the problems you face?](engineering-manager-problems/) 15 | * [How To Win Friends and Influence People](how-to-win-friends-and-influence-people/) 16 | * [Leadership styles by Harvard Business Review](leadership-styles-by-harvard-business-review/) 17 | * [Lessons Learned by Emmett Shear](lessons-learned-by-emmett-shear/) 18 | * [Leadership principles by United States Marine Corps](leadership-principles-by-united-states-marine-corps) 19 | * [Periodic Table of Elements of Leadership and Management by Mike Mears](periodic-table-by-mike-mears/) 20 | * [Qualities of leadership by Peter Economy](qualities-of-leadership-by-peter-economy/) 21 | * [The Evolution of Management by Kate Matsudaira](the-evolution-of-management-by-kate-matsudaira/) 22 | * [The Most Important Leadership Competencies](the-most-important-leadership-compentencies/) 23 | * [The 9 Traits That Define Great Leadership](the-9-traits-that-define-great-leadership/) 24 | * [The Webflow Tech Lead Guide](the-webflow-tech-lead-guide/) 25 | * [Solution-Focused Questions](solution-focused-questions/) 26 | * [8 Essential Interview Questions CEOs Swear By](8-essential-interview-questions-ceos-swear-by/) 27 | * [Ask for advice, not permission](ask-for-advice-not-permission/) 28 | * [How to give a senior leader feedback](how-to-give-a-senior-leader-feedback) 29 | -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- /amazon-leadership-principles/README.md: -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 1 | index.md -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- /amazon-leadership-principles/index.md: -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 1 | # Amazon Leadership principles 2 | 3 | https://www.amazon.jobs/content/en/our-workplace/leadership-principles# 4 | 5 | We use our Leadership Principles every day, whether we’re discussing ideas for new projects or deciding on the best way to solve a problem. It’s just one of the things that makes Amazon peculiar. 6 | 7 | ## Customer Obsession 8 | 9 | Leaders start with the customer and work backwards. They work vigorously to earn and keep customer trust. Although leaders pay attention to competitors, they obsess over customers. 10 | 11 | ## Ownership 12 | 13 | Leaders are owners. They think long term and don’t sacrifice long-term value for short-term results. They act on behalf of the entire company, beyond just their own team. They never say “that’s not my job.” 14 | 15 | ## Invent and Simplify 16 | 17 | Leaders expect and require innovation and invention from their teams and always find ways to simplify. They are externally aware, look for new ideas from everywhere, and are not limited by “not invented here.” As we do new things, we accept that we may be misunderstood for long periods of time. 18 | 19 | ## Are Right, A Lot 20 | 21 | Leaders are right a lot. They have strong judgment and good instincts. They seek diverse perspectives and work to disconfirm their beliefs. 22 | 23 | ## Learn and Be Curious 24 | 25 | Leaders are never done learning and always seek to improve themselves. They are curious about new possibilities and act to explore them. 26 | 27 | ## Hire and Develop the Best 28 | 29 | Leaders raise the performance bar with every hire and promotion. They recognize exceptional talent, and willingly move them throughout the organization. Leaders develop leaders and take seriously their role in coaching others. We work on behalf of our people to invent mechanisms for development like Career Choice. 30 | 31 | ## Insist on the Highest Standards 32 | 33 | Leaders have relentlessly high standards — many people may think these standards are unreasonably high. Leaders are continually raising the bar and drive their teams to deliver high quality products, services, and processes. Leaders ensure that defects do not get sent down the line and that problems are fixed so they stay fixed. 34 | 35 | ## Think Big 36 | 37 | Thinking small is a self-fulfilling prophecy. Leaders create and communicate a bold direction that inspires results. They think differently and look around corners for ways to serve customers. 38 | 39 | ## Bias for Action 40 | 41 | Speed matters in business. Many decisions and actions are reversible and do not need extensive study. We value calculated risk taking. 42 | 43 | ## Frugality 44 | 45 | Accomplish more with less. Constraints breed resourcefulness, self-sufficiency, and invention. There are no extra points for growing headcount, budget size, or fixed expense. 46 | 47 | ## Earn Trust 48 | 49 | Leaders listen attentively, speak candidly, and treat others respectfully. They are vocally self-critical, even when doing so is awkward or embarrassing. Leaders do not believe their or their team’s body odor smells of perfume. They benchmark themselves and their teams against the best. 50 | 51 | ## Dive Deep 52 | 53 | Leaders operate at all levels, stay connected to the details, audit frequently, and are skeptical when metrics and anecdote differ. No task is beneath them. 54 | 55 | ## Have Backbone; Disagree and Commit 56 | 57 | Leaders are obligated to respectfully challenge decisions when they disagree, even when doing so is uncomfortable or exhausting. Leaders have conviction and are tenacious. They do not compromise for the sake of social cohesion. Once a decision is determined, they commit wholly. 58 | 59 | ## Deliver Results 60 | 61 | Leaders focus on the key inputs for their business and deliver them with the right quality and in a timely fashion. Despite setbacks, they rise to the occasion and never settle. 62 | 63 | ## Strive to be Earth’s Best Employer 64 | 65 | Leaders work every day to create a safer, more productive, higher performing, more diverse, and more just work environment. They lead with empathy, have fun at work, and make it easy for others to have fun. Leaders ask themselves: Are my fellow employees growing? Are they empowered? Are they ready for what’s next? Leaders have a vision for and commitment to their employees’ personal success, whether that be at Amazon or elsewhere. 66 | 67 | ## Success and Scale Bring Broad Responsibility 68 | 69 | We started in a garage, but we’re not there anymore. We are big, we impact the world, and we are far from perfect. We must be humble and thoughtful about even the secondary effects of our actions. Our local communities, planet, and future generations need us to be better every day. We must begin each day with a determination to make better, do better, and be better for our customers, our employees, our partners, and the world at large. And we must end every day knowing we can do even more tomorrow. Leaders create more than they consume and always leave things better than how they found them. 70 | -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- /ask-for-advice-not-permission/README.md: -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 1 | index.md -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- /ask-for-advice-not-permission/index.md: -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 1 | # Ask for Advice, Not Permission 2 | 3 | https://boz.com/articles/advice-not-permission 4 | 5 | One of the most common anti-patterns I see that can create conflict in an otherwise collaborative environment is people asking for permission instead of advice. This is such an insidious practice that it not only sounds reasonable, it actually sounds like the right thing to do: “Hey, I was thinking about doing X, would you be on board with that?” 6 | 7 | The problem with permission is that you are implicitly asking someone else to take some responsibility for your decision. You aren’t inviting them to participate in its success — permission is hardly seen as a value adding behavior — but if it goes wrong you might end up involving them in the failure: “Hey, I asked that team and they said it was fine.” 8 | 9 | As a consequence, someone being asked for permission will feel a burden to do some diligence and may be resentful of it. That may mean second guessing work that has already been done to ensure they are supportive which is likely a waste of time. In the best case, they will ultimately agree but this process will nonetheless feel disrespectful and appear to demonstrate a lack of trust to the team asking permission. In the worst case, they will decline to give their permission which is not just a matter of rejection but also of loss given all the thought that had already been put into the issue before bringing it to them. Worse still, if your goal is permission you’ll have a strong instinct to present information in a way that favors the outcome you want which can come across as dishonest and further undermine trust. All around, this is a bad situation that breeds antagonism. 10 | 11 | Advice, on the other hand, is easy. “Hey, I was thinking about doing X, what advice would you give me on that?” In this instance you are showing a lot of respect to the person you are asking but not saddling them with responsibility because the decision is still on you. Your obvious goal with this approach is to do the best you can, so they are going to trust you aren’t hiding any gritty details and therefore aren’t going to waste time second guessing your premises. They are going to feel comfortable giving you all their honest feedback knowing the responsibility lies with you, and your ego will remain intact because you invited the criticism on yourself directly. 12 | 13 | Asking for advice is also a much better way to create advocates for your approach as those who have contributed their ideas will feel some personal ownership over the result much more than if they were just another approval in a long chain. It gives them a personal stake in the resulting success or failure. 14 | 15 | The world is full of gatekeepers who think they have veto rights. Don’t believe them. If you need them to invest time or resources then they deserve to have a say, otherwise the responsibility remains with you to decide how to proceed and to suffer the consequences or reap the rewards, as the case may be. 16 | 17 | Pitbull got it right: “Ask for money, get advice. Ask for advice, get money twice.” -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- /doing-a-job-by-adm-hyman-g-rickover/README.md: -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 1 | index.md -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- /doing-a-job-by-adm-hyman-g-rickover/index.md: -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 1 | # Doing a Job - By Adm. Hyman G. Rickover 2 | 3 | Human experience shows that people, not organizations or management systems, get things done. For this reason, subordinates must be given authority and responsibility early in their careers. In this way they develop quickly and can help the manager do his work. The manager, of course, remains ultimately responsible and must accept the blame if subordinates make mistakes. 4 | 5 | As subordinates develop, work should be constantly added so that no one can finish his job. This serves as a prod and a challenge. It brings out their capabilities and frees the manager to assume added responsibilities. As members of the organization become capable of assuming new and more difficult duties, they develop pride in doing the job well. This attitude soon permeates the entire organization. 6 | 7 | One must permit his people the freedom to seek added work and greater responsibility. In my organization, there are no formal job descriptions or organizational charts. Responsibilities are defined in a general way, so that people are not circumscribed. All are permitted to do as they think best and to go to anyone and anywhere for help. Each person then is limited only by his own ability. 8 | 9 | Complex jobs cannot be accomplished effectively with transients. Therefore, a manager must make the work challenging and rewarding so that his people will remain with the organization for many years. This allows it to benefit fully from their knowledge, experience, and corporate memory. 10 | 11 | The Defense Department does not recognize the need for continuity in important jobs. It rotates officer every few years both at headquarters and in the field. The same applies to their civilian superiors. 12 | 13 | This system virtually ensures inexperience and nonaccountability. By the time an officer has begun to learn a job, it is time for him to rotate. Under this system, incumbents can blame their problems on predecessors. They are assigned to another job before the results of their work become evident. Subordinates cannot be expected to remain committed to a job and perform effectively when they are continuously adapting to a new job or to a new boss. 14 | 15 | When doing a job—any job—one must feel that he owns it, and act as though he will remain in the job forever. He must look after his work just as conscientiously, as though it were his own business and his own money. If he feels he is only a temporary custodian, or that the job is just a stepping stone to a higher position, his actions will not take into account the long-term interests of the organization. His lack of commitment to the present job will be perceived by those who work for him, and they, likewise, will tend not to care. Too many spend their entire working lives looking for their next job. When one feels he owns his present job and acts that way, he need have no concern about his next job. 16 | 17 | In accepting responsibility for a job, a person must get directly involved. Every manager has a personal responsibility not only to find problems but to correct them. This responsibility comes before all other obligations, before personal ambition or comfort. 18 | 19 | A major flaw in our system of government, and even in industry, is the latitude allowed to do less than is necessary. Too often officials are willing to accept and adapt to situations they know to be wrong. The tendency is to downplay problems instead of actively trying to correct them. Recognizing this, many subordinates give up, contain their views within themselves, and wait for others to take action. When this happens, the manager is deprived of the experience and ideas of subordinates who generally are more knowledgeable than he in their particular areas. 20 | 21 | A manager must instill in his people an attitude of personal responsibility for seeing a job properly accomplished. Unfortunately, this seems to be declining, particularly in large organizations where responsibility is broadly distributed. To complaints of a job poorly done, one often hears the excuse, “I am not responsible.” I believe that is literally correct. The man who takes such a stand in fact is not responsible; he is irresponsible. While he may not be legally liable, or the work may not have been specifically assigned to him, no one involved in a job can divest himself of responsibility for its successful completion. 22 | 23 | Unless the individual truly responsible can be identified when something goes wrong, no one has really been responsible. With the advent of modern management theories it is becoming common for organizations to deal with problems in a collective manner, by dividing programs into subprograms, with no one left responsible for the entire effort. There is also the tendency to establish more and more levels of management, on the theory that this gives better control. These are but different forms of shared responsibility, which easily lead to no one being responsible—a problems that often inheres in large corporations as well as in the Defense Department. 24 | 25 | When I came to Washington before World War II to head the electrical section of the Bureau of Ships, I found that one man was in charge of design, another of production, a third handled maintenance, while a fourth dealt with fiscal matters. The entire bureau operated that way. It didn’t make sense to me. Design problems showed up in production, production errors showed up in maintenance, and financial matters reached into all areas. I changed the system. I made one man responsible for his entire area of equipment—for design, production, maintenance, and contracting. If anything went wrong, I knew exactly at whom to point. I run my present organization on the same principle. 26 | 27 | A good manager must have unshakeable determination and tenacity. Deciding what needs to be done is easy, getting it done is more difficult. Good ideas are not adopted automatically. They must be driven into practice with courageous impatience. Once implemented they can be easily overturned or subverted through apathy or lack of follow-up, so a continuous effort is required. Too often, important problems are recognized but no one is willing to sustain the effort needed to solve them. 28 | 29 | Nothing worthwhile can be accomplished without determination. In the early days of nuclear power, for example, getting approval to build the first nuclear submarine—the Nautilus—was almost as difficult as designing and building it. Many in the Navy opposed building a nuclear submarine. 30 | 31 | In the same way, the Navy once viewed nuclear-powered aircraft carriers and cruisers as too expensive, despite their obvious advantages of unlimited cruising range and ability to remain at sea without vulnerable support ships. Yet today our nuclear submarine fleet is widely recognized as our nation’s most effective deterrent to nuclear war. Our nuclear-powered aircraft carriers and cruisers have proven their worth by defending our interests all over the world—even in remote trouble spots such as the Indian Ocean, where the capability of oil-fired ships would be severely limited by their dependence on fuel supplies. 32 | 33 | The man in charge must concern himself with details. If he does not consider them important, neither will his subordinates. Yet “the devil is in the details.” It is hard and monotonous to pay attention to seemingly minor matters. In my work, I probably spend about ninety-nine percent of my time on what others may call petty details. Most managers would rather focus on lofty policy matters. But when the details are ignored, the project fails. No infusion of policy or lofty ideals can then correct the situation. 34 | 35 | To maintain proper control one must have simple and direct means to find out what is going on. There are many ways of doing this; all involve constant drudgery. For this reason those in charge often create “management information systems” designed to extract from the operation the details a busy executive needs to know. Often the process is carried too far. The top official then loses touch with his people and with the work that is actually going on. 36 | 37 | Attention to detail does not require a manager to do everything himself. No one can work more than twenty-four hours each day. Therefore to multiply his efforts, he must create an environment where his subordinates can work to their maximum ability. Some management experts advocate strict limits to the number of people reporting to a common superior—generally five to seven. But if one has capable people who require but a few moments of his time during the day, there is no reason to set such arbitrary constraints. Some forty key people report frequently and directly to me. This enables me to keep up with what is going on and makes it possible for them to get fast action. The latter aspect is particularly important. Capable people will not work for long where they cannot get prompt decisions and actions from their superior. 38 | 39 | I require frequent reports, both oral and written, from many key people in the nuclear program. These include the commanding officers of our nuclear ships, those in charge of our schools and laboratories, and representatives at manufacturers’ plants and commercial shipyards. I insist they report the problems they have found directly to me—and in plain English. This provides them unlimited flexibility in subject matter—something that often is not accommodated in highly structured management systems—and a way to communicate their problems and recommendations to me without having them filtered through others. The Defense Department, with its excessive layers of management, suffers because those at the top who make decisions are generally isolated from their subordinates, who have the first-hand knowledge. 40 | 41 | To do a job effectively, one must set priorities. Too many people let their “in” basket set the priorities. On any given day, unimportant but interesting trivia pass through an office; one must not permit these to monopolize his time. The human tendency is to while away time with unimportant matters that do not require mental effort or energy. Since they can be easily resolved, they give a false sense of accomplishment. The manager must exert self-discipline to ensure that his energy is focused where it is truly needed. 42 | 43 | All work should be checked through an independent and impartial review. In engineering and manufacturing, industry spends large sums on quality control. But the concept of impartial reviews and oversight is important in other areas also. Even the most dedicated individual makes mistakes—and many workers are less than dedicated. I have seen much poor work and sheer nonsense generated in government and in industry because it was not checked properly. 44 | 45 | One must create the ability in his staff to generate clear, forceful arguments for opposing viewpoints as well as for their own. Open discussions and disagreements must be encouraged, so that all sides of an issue will be fully explored. Further, important issues should be presented in writing. Nothing so sharpens the thought process as writing down one’s arguments. Weaknesses overlooked in oral discussion become painfully obvious on the written page. 46 | 47 | When important decisions are not documented, one becomes dependent on individual memory, which is quickly lost as people leave or move to other jobs. In my work, it is important to be able to go back a number of years to determine the facts that were considered in arriving at a decision. This makes it easier to resolve new problems by putting them into proper perspective. It also minimizes the risk of repeating past mistakes. Moreover if important communications and actions are not documented clearly, one can never be sure they were understood or even executed. 48 | 49 | It is a human inclination to hope things will work out, despite evidence or doubt to the contrary. A successful manager must resist this temptation. This is particularly hard if one has invested much time and energy on a project and thus has come to feel possessive about it. Although it is not easy to admit what a person once thought correct now appears to be wrong, one must discipline himself to face the facts objectively and make the necessary changes—regardless of the consequences to himself. The man in charge must personally set the example in this respect. He must be able, in effect, to “kill his own child” if necessary and must require his subordinates to do likewise. I have had to go to Congress and, because of technical problems, recommended terminating a project that had been funded largely on my say-so. It is not a pleasant task, but one must be brutally objective in his work. 50 | 51 | No management system can substitute for hard work. A manager who does not work hard or devote extra effort cannot expect his people to do so. He must set the example. The manager may not be the smartest or the most knowledgeable person, but if he dedicates himself to the job and devotes the required effort, his people will follow his lead. 52 | 53 | The ideas I have mentioned are not new—previous generations recognized the value of hard work, attention to detail, personal responsibility, and determination. And these, rather than the highly-touted modern management techniques, are still the most important in doing a job. Together they embody a common-sense approach to management, one that cannot be taught by professors of management in a classroom. 54 | 55 | I am not against business education. A knowledge of accounting, finance, business law, and the like can be of value in a business environment. What I do believe is harmful is the impression often created by those who teach management that one will be able to manage any job by applying certain management techniques together with some simple academic rules of how to manage people and situations. 56 | -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- /engineering-manager-problems/README.md: -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 1 | index.md -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- /engineering-manager-problems/index.md: -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 1 | # Engineering managers, what are the problems you face? 2 | 3 | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27264560 4 | 5 | The questions asked: 6 | 7 | * How do you ensure you are working on the most important items for the team? 8 | 9 | * What's the thing that drains you the most? 10 | 11 | * Where do you reach out to get advice outside of your company? 12 | 13 | * What is missing from the tools you currently have? 14 | 15 | 16 | 17 | ### UncleMeat 18 | 19 | What are the problems you face? Hard: I have a handful of possible customers for 20 | my team, which projects and outcomes will be the most impactful? Harder: I have 21 | long term relationships with other teams. How do I maintain those relationships 22 | even if every single person on the other team turns over? Hardest: How do I 23 | provide opportunities for my individual reports to achieve their personal career 24 | goals while also ensuring that all of the work adds up to a meaningful whole? 25 | 26 | Where do you reach out to get advice outside of your company? I get advice from 27 | mentors within my company. I don't rely on external mentorship. 28 | 29 | What is missing from the tools you currently have? I don't believe that tooling 30 | can solve any of the hard problems I have. Management problems are people 31 | problems, not technical problems. 32 | 33 | 34 | ### Jemaclus 35 | 36 | what are the problems you face? Hiring. Finding solid, dependable people with 37 | the right skills and attitude is really hard. I probably spend 30-40% of my time 38 | on the hiring side of things. We have so much work to do and not enough people 39 | to do it, and combining that with the slow rate of inbound high quality 40 | candidates means that I have to spend a ton of my time screening and talking to 41 | candidates. Diversity. It's nigh impossible to find women and other marginalized 42 | groups. They're in such high demand and the supply is so low that it's just so 43 | hard to hire people and have your team not look like a team of white dudes. 44 | 45 | Where do you reach out to get advice outside of your company? I talk to my old 46 | bosses and coworkers the most. I have a fantastic relationship with my last two 47 | bosses. Nowadays we're peers (same title, different companies) and we compare 48 | notes and mentor each other. If you don't have someone like this already, I 49 | suggest going to meetups (post-COVID) and meet other engineering managers. A 50 | shortcut to this is to find a new job, and then your old job colleagues can be 51 | your external mentors ;) That said, there's nothing wrong with having mentors 52 | within your company. Just be up-front with them about what you're looking for, 53 | especially if they're upper management. 54 | 55 | What is missing from the tools you currently have? I've never really found 56 | that tools have an impact in either direction. I've yet to find a tool outside 57 | of Excel/Google Sheets and email that is indispensable. 58 | 59 | 60 | ### stackdestroyer 61 | 62 | How do you ensure you are working on the most important items for the team? 63 | Being informed about what the top level company goals are as well as department 64 | context and goals. If you can't draw a straight-ish line between what you're 65 | working on and those goals, it's probably not aligned. Make sure you have a 66 | defined and prioritized backlog of projects so that when you have the 67 | time/resources, you can easily pluck the next one off of the stack. 68 | 69 | What's the thing that drains you the most? Repeating myself over and over and 70 | over (typically ~7 times) to get a message out to the team/org. Even smart 71 | people act dumb sometimes, and don't listen/read when they should. It feels like 72 | babysitting, sometimes. 73 | 74 | Where do you reach out to get advice outside of your company? Books, blogs, 75 | industry friends, and some mentors. I have found it difficult to make external 76 | mentor friends, but still working on it. 77 | 78 | What is missing from the tools you currently have? It's never about the tools. 79 | Jira sucks, slack sucks, and so do most tools. Make sure you keep your workflow 80 | simple and make it transparent, however you do it, so that not only can YOU see 81 | what's going on, you can confidently share it with others (see? THIS is why your 82 | feature isnt being worked on right now, etc.) 83 | 84 | ### spollo 85 | 86 | How do you ensure you are working on the most important items for the team? Push 87 | PMs to make decisions on metrics not gut. My contribution is to add engineering 88 | and operations toil metrics to our dashboard. E.g. If the onboarding funnel is 89 | converting at 90% but our average time to resolve tickets is a week, it's easy 90 | to prioritize fixing some bugs over endless A/B tests in the funnel. Have really 91 | open and regular dialogue with the team about what they want to work on and 92 | where their gaps are, try to put them on projects that help them grow. I also 93 | try to have my team interact with other teams as much as possible- customer 94 | support, operations, pm, design, other teams. I find it helps give engineers a 95 | more holistic picture of the business, the people and pain behind functions and 96 | get in the mindset that delivering business value or reducing toil for people 97 | can be more exciting than bringing in a shiny new library to our codebase. 98 | 99 | Whats the thing that drains you the most? I have too many direct reports (12). I 100 | spend so much time in 1-1s and meetings unblocking people, and despite all my 101 | effort the team is not getting as much coaching as I want. I'm an introvert as 102 | wells so it's exhausting. I'm working on hiring other managers and organizing us 103 | into smaller teams, my goal is to have a 4:1 engineer to manager ratio this 104 | year. 105 | 106 | Where do you reach out to get advise outside of your company? Mostly I read a 107 | lot, blog posts and books. 108 | 109 | What is missing from the tools you currently have? I think my main problem is 110 | there are too many tools. JIRA hurts almost as much as it helps, slack is a 111 | disaster for focus. I'm trying to cut down on tools lately (eg. move out of 112 | JIRA, just have a lightweight planning doc with some tables). It works for 113 | shorter cycle projects when you have a strong team. One tool I would appreciate 114 | is something that keeps me accountable for evaluating performance and giving 115 | good performance feedback more regularly. I'm good at reflexive feedback but 116 | really deep meaningful feedback takes time to craft, and it's easy to let it 117 | slip with the barrage of information in the modern workplace. 118 | 119 | 120 | ### throwarayes 121 | 122 | How do you ensure you are working on the most important items for the team? 123 | Getting away from work is the best tool in my experience. Managers are 124 | self-selected from a group of hard workers committed to the organization. They 125 | can want to jump on urgent tasks to shield their teams. This is a great 126 | instinct. BUT it can cross a line where the manager becomes ineffective and 127 | begins feeling like they need to do everything, and loses trust in delegating to 128 | others to handle these tasks. You can get into a negative "I alone" mindset, 129 | where you feel like you have to carry the world on your shoulders. This can be 130 | pretty damaging to the manager and the team. So getting away is a way to (a) 131 | force others to take on more responsibility thus building your trust in their 132 | ability and (b) get away from the urgent, crystalizing what's remaining as the 133 | true 'important' ways you can help the team. 134 | 135 | Whats the thing that drains you the most? Respond to slack, go to meetings, 136 | slack, meetings, repeat... day ends and it feels like nothing got done 137 | 138 | Where do you reach out to get advise outside of your company? Peers at other 139 | companies. We have some strong relationships with companies we don't compete 140 | with, and we share a lot of learnings about technology we use. 141 | 142 | What is missing from the tools you currently have? IMO recruiting tools suck for 143 | hiring managers. In my experience, the best devs react more positively to 144 | hearing from a hiring manager than a recruiter, yet recruiting tools are built 145 | for what feels like impersonal bulk-emailing. As the hiring manager, if I see 146 | someone with relevant experience, I just end up sending a real email or LinkedIn 147 | message with warm details about why the recruit looks interesting (with real 148 | tech details, not recruiter BS). Yet on LinkedIn/Email the contact isn't in our 149 | recruiting system... So when they do want to be interviewed, you have to get 150 | them in the system somewhat manually. 151 | 152 | 153 | ### tyleo 154 | 155 | How do you ensure you are working on the most important items for the team? 156 | Constant communication with users to figure out what issues are impacting them 157 | and what they would like to do with the product in the future. 158 | 159 | Whats the thing that drains you the most? Trying to convince management to focus 160 | on the right things. In practice this is really just me repeating the same thing 161 | in meetings and 1:1s until they happen as I gather more and more data from users 162 | directly, through analytics and share perspectives from people I manage. 163 | 164 | Where do you reach out to get advise outside of your company? Other engineers 165 | I’ve met over the course of my career. I also try to read for 30 min in the 166 | morning. I read everything from self help sorta books to deeply technical books 167 | about my area of expertise. 168 | 169 | What is missing from the tools you currently have? Having used Jira and Azure 170 | DevOps, scheduling tools still don’t seem great. The PM I work with prepares a 171 | schedule in excel with me every quarter and we revisit it every few weeks. 172 | People look at that like 5x as much as they look at our planning tool and it 173 | takes like 1/10th the time to edit or less. 174 | 175 | 176 | ### cactus2093 177 | 178 | I've managed engineers at small (series A and B) startups as well as big companies, and I've found the challenges are very different at both. 179 | 180 | At small companies, my biggest challenge has usually been employee 181 | growth/satisfaction and hiring. The saying "a rising tide lifts all boats" is 182 | very true at startups. Either everyone succeeds together, in which case even the 183 | below average performers will have great opportunities for growth and 184 | advancement, or everyone languishes and eventually fails together, in which case 185 | even the very top performers may have to go years without any real opportunities 186 | for advancement or raises. Some churn is inevitable in most startups when the 187 | trajectory of the company is not a perfectly smooth exponential (which it almost 188 | never is even in successful companies). Hiring is also difficult, because as the 189 | manager you often need to handle more of the process themselves without the 190 | support of a recruiting org, and you'll always be at a disadvantage not being 191 | able to pay nearly as much as big companies or have the name recognition so 192 | closing candidates can be much harder (at least for me, I'm not a natural 193 | salesperson so this is something I've really needed to work on). 194 | 195 | At big companies, my biggest challenge has been navigating the organizational 196 | complexity or what some might call "office politics". There is often no shortage 197 | of opportunities at big companies, the cool thing is that even modest 198 | improvements can lead to huge amounts of incremental revenue for the company. 199 | But there are also a lot of things that are less exciting but need to be done to 200 | keep the lights on. As a manager, if you have the chance to seek out the former 201 | kinds of opportunities for your team and get new exciting initiatives greenlit 202 | with upper management, that's often one of the best things you can do for them. 203 | Or if the purpose of the team is more the latter category, then it's your job as 204 | manager to still make sure everyone in the org understands that this is an 205 | important and high impact area, and that you can show clear success metrics of 206 | what your team doing a great job looks like. Individual growth and hiring are 207 | still important of course at big companies, but there are existing resources in 208 | HR and Recruiting that you can lean on to help with it (and there are often 209 | strict rules that mean you couldn't deviate from the official processes here 210 | even if you wanted to). 211 | 212 | 213 | ### peter_l_downs 214 | 215 | How do you ensure you are working on the most important items for the team? 216 | Here's the rough priority list: Do all the engineers know what they should be 217 | working on? Do they know who from the product side they should go to for 218 | questions if the specs are unclear? Do business, product, eng, all agree on what 219 | we're doing? Does what we're doing match that agreement? Are our current 220 | communication norms meeting our needs? Is the build / test / dev loop fast 221 | enough? Are there tools that I need to upgrade / add / improve because we're now 222 | bottlenecked? Can we still get away without building XYZ? Are people happy with 223 | the work they're doing and with the people they're working with? Are people 224 | getting to work on things that push their skills and limits in a way that helps 225 | them keep growing, and if not, is that OK for now? Are people taking enough time 226 | off when they want to so that they're not burning out? Is our hiring pipelined 227 | correctly so that we're bringing new people on roughly when we'll need them? Are 228 | we meeting all of our legal / security needs? Are we meeting the right amount of 229 | the eng needs from the rest of the company, that may not be explicitly product 230 | related? 231 | 232 | Whats the thing that drains you the most? The thing that drains me most is 233 | trying to do both management/comms work and hard technical work on the same day. 234 | I do my best to manage my schedule so I have long blocks of either one or the 235 | other but inevitably I'm interrupted. So it goes. 236 | 237 | Where do you reach out to get advise outside of your company? I reach out to 238 | former coworkers and mentors for advice. Everything I'm doing is based on what 239 | I've seen my former managers and team leads do in the past, and I'm so grateful 240 | to them for having demonstrated good leadership. 241 | 242 | What is missing from the tools you currently have? I'm not missing any tools. 243 | Team is largely happy. We're going to switch to BuildKite to improve build times 244 | (currently on Google Cloud Build) for our frontend container, but after that we 245 | should be set for a while. 246 | -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- /ge-mckinsey-9-box-matrix/README.md: -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 1 | index.md -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- /ge-mckinsey-9-box-matrix/index.md: -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 1 | # GE-McKinsey Nine-Box Matrix 2 | 3 | http://www.mckinseyquarterly.com/Strategy/Enduring_ideas_The_GE-McKinsey_nine-box_matrix_2198 4 | 5 | This matrix provides a systematic approach for the multibusiness corporation to prioritize investments among its business units. 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 | 16 | 17 | 18 | 19 | 20 | 21 | 22 | 23 | 24 | 25 | 26 | 27 | 28 | 29 | 30 | 31 | 32 | 33 | 34 | 35 | 36 | 37 | 38 | 39 | 40 | 41 | 42 |
Industry
Attractiveness		High  Invest
Grow
Medium Selectivity
Earnings		 
LowDivest
Harvest		  
 LowMediumHigh
Competitive Strength
of Business Project
43 | 44 | -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- /how-to-give-a-senior-leader-feedback/README.md: -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 1 | index.md -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- /how-to-give-a-senior-leader-feedback/index.md: -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 1 | # How to give a senior leader feedback (without getting fired) 2 | 3 | Excerpts from [source](https://newsletter.weskao.com/p/how-to-give-a-senior-leader-feedback-without-getting-fired) 4 | 5 | ## “Even more” technique 6 | 7 | The framing of “even more” works well because you’re speaking from a place of generosity and giving the benefit of the doubt. 8 | 9 | You’re assuming they’re doing X—and that they should do it even more. You are assuming they are great--and you want to make them even stronger. 10 | 11 | 🚫 “We need to give guidance to new hires.” 12 | 13 | ✅ “We need to give even more guidance to new hires.” 14 | 15 | Why this works: 16 | 17 | * The “before” scenario is binary—the senior leader either did or didn’t give guidance. And if they didn’t, well, they messed up. They feel threatened that you noticed. 18 | 19 | * The “after” is a spectrum: You are generous in assuming that they did give guidance. You’re suggesting they may want to amp this up even more. This is much easier for them to accept. 20 | 21 | 22 | ## Use yourself as an example 23 | 24 | Talk about yourself so it doesn’t seem like you’re pointing fingers. I do this whenever I want to say something the person might find insulting. 25 | 26 | * 🚫 “You should try X.” 27 | 28 | * ✅ “I used to struggle with this, and when I tried X, it really helped.” 29 | 30 | Saying “you should try X” is fine--there’s nothing inherently wrong about it. The reason I would avoid it is because of the power dynamic and CONTENT of what I’m saying. 31 | 32 | If there’s a power dynamic and/or the content of what I’m saying might be sensitive for the person, that’s when I share about my own experience. 33 | 34 | 35 | ## Adopt diplomatic, curiosity-forward language 36 | 37 | These phrases help you ease into the suggestion in a way that feels non-threatening: 38 | 39 | * "We might want to try…” 40 | 41 | * “I wonder if...” 42 | 43 | * “Perhaps we could...” 44 | 45 | * “What are your thoughts on...” 46 | 47 | * “One approach might be...” 48 | 49 | You adopt the vibe of a helpful team member who has your leader’s best interest in mind and wants to serve your organization. 50 | 51 | 52 | ## Bring data and examples to support your point 53 | 54 | Supporting your claims makes you more persuasive and objective--and increases the chances your senior leader will take your recommendation. 55 | 56 | Example 1: Guidance during projects 57 | 58 | * 🚫 “We need to give more feedback during projects.” 59 | 60 | * ✅ “I noticed when we reviewed the design mockups weekly with the client, they loved the final result. For this project, early check-ins could help us make sure we’re aligned before going too far down a certain direction and could prevent rework.” 61 | 62 | Example 2: Setting priorities 63 | 64 | * 🚫 “The team needs clearer priorities.” 65 | 66 | * ✅ “The team made amazing progress when we all focused on the website update last month. It might help to have one or two clear priorities for the team this month that everyone can rally behind.” 67 | 68 | Example 3: Training new hires 69 | 70 | * 🚫 “We should spend more time training new people.” 71 | 72 | * ✅ “When we were able to dedicate that first week to training Steve, he got up to speed pretty quickly. The bit of upfront time seemed to have paid off, and taking a similar training approach for our next hire could help them ramp up just as fast. What do you think?” 73 | 74 | Why this works: 75 | 76 | * Ends with a clear, actionable suggestion 77 | 78 | * Shows the upside of updating their approach 79 | 80 | * Keeps it simple, logical, and positive 81 | 82 | Personally, I think phrasing a recommendation as a statement reduces cognitive load. You can follow up with an open-ended question, like “what do you think?” 83 | 84 | Notice how the examples above are concrete AND concise. Avoid long diatribes and over-explaining—use your judgment to share just enough context. 85 | 86 | Do not have a “well actually…” vibe when you share logic and data. This is obnoxious and will probably backfire. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- /how-to-win-friends-and-influence-people/README.md: -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 1 | index.md -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- /how-to-win-friends-and-influence-people/index.md: -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 1 | # How to Win Friends and Influence People 2 | 3 | Book summary of "How to Win Friends and Influence People" by Dale Carnegie. 4 | 5 | Credit: https://www.reddit.com/r/Entrepreneur/comments/llxg8y/the_book_summary_every_entrepreneur_should_read/ 6 | 7 | 8 | ## Handling People 9 | 10 | **Arouse in the other person an eager want.** Give people what they want, not what you want. Sell value, not features. Try to understand the real problems of your customers and make them want your solution. 11 | 12 | **Give honest and sincere appreciation.** What do most people want? Apart from food, sleep, health and money people have a deep desire to feel important. When selling something to a person, align with the person’s goals. 13 | 14 | **Don't criticize, condemn or complain.** Criticism most of the time doesn't work and merely puts people on the defensive. Instead, try to understand why people do what they do. 15 | 16 | 17 | ## Make People Like You 18 | 19 | **Smile.** Humans can differentiate vocal intonation between a smile and a non-smile. 20 | 21 | **Become genuinely interested in other people.** Listen to other people and care about their problems and interests. When someone is interested in your product but is not a good fit, point them to the right solution even if it’s not your company. People will appreciate the effort and will remember you in case they see the need for your product in the future. 22 | 23 | **Be a good listener and encourage others to talk about themselves.** Listening is the ultimate act of caring. Good entrepreneurs listen to customers and uncover their pains so they can provide a fitting solution. 24 | 25 | **Make the other person feel important - and do it sincerely.** When a customer calls you and complains about your product pay attention and make him feel important. Even if he has already agreed for a 2 year contract and he is the smallest of your 10.000 customers. 26 | 27 | 28 | ## How to Win People to Your Way of Thinking 29 | 30 | **Avoid arguments.** It’s impossible to win an argument. If you lose the argument, you lose; if you win the argument, you have made the other person feel inferior and resentful. 31 | 32 | **When you are wrong, admit it quickly and emphatically.** Any fool can try to defend his mistakes, but it raises one above the herd to admit one's mistakes. 33 | 34 | **Get the other person saying "Yes" at the start.** If possible, keep the other person from saying "No." Use the "Socratic method" to garner trust and agreement. 35 | 36 | **Be sympathetic with the other person's ideas and desires.** Disagreement doesn't necessarily mean there is a wrong and right side. You should be open to other people's points of view and learn from them. 37 | 38 | 39 | ## How to Change People 40 | 41 | **Ask questions instead of giving orders.** Humans hate taking orders. Give people the opportunity to think and do things by themselves. 42 | 43 | **Give the other person a fine reputation to live up to.** If you want to improve a person in a certain respect, act as though that particular trait were already one of his or her outstanding characteristics. 44 | 45 | **Make the other person happy about doing the thing you suggest.** Always align what you want with what makes the other person happy while being sincere and thoughtful. 46 | -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- /leadership-principles-by-united-states-marine-corps/README.md: -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 1 | index.md -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- /leadership-principles-by-united-states-marine-corps/index.md: -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 1 | # Leadership Principles by United States Marine Corps 2 | 3 | http://www.au.af.mil/au/awc/awcgate/usmc/leadership.htm 4 | 5 | 6 | ## Know yourself and seek improvement 7 | 8 | This principle of leadership should be developed by the use of leadership traits. Evaluate yourself by using the leadership traits and determine your strengths and weaknesses. Work to improve your weaknesses and utilize your strengths. 9 | 10 | With a knowledge of yourself, and your experience and knowledge of group behavior, you can determine the best way to deal with any given situation. With some Marines, and in certain situations, the firm, hard stand may be most effective; however, in other situations, the "big brother" approach may work better. 11 | 12 | You can improve yourself in many ways. Self-improvement can be achieved by reading and observing. Ask your friends and seniors for an honest evaluation of your leadership ability. This will help you to identify your weaknesses and strengths. 13 | 14 | 1. Make an honest evaluation of yourself to determine your strong and weak personal qualities. Strive to overcome the weak ones and further strengthen those in which you are strong. 15 | 16 | 2. Seek the honest opinions of your friends or superiors to show you how to improve your leadership ability. 17 | 18 | 3. Learn by studying the causes for the success or the failure of other leaders. 19 | 20 | 4. Develop a genuine interest in people; acquire an understanding of human nature. 21 | 22 | 5. Master the art of effective writing and speech. 23 | 24 | 6. Have a definite goal and a definite plan to attain your goal. 25 | 26 | 27 | ## Be technically and tactically proficient 28 | 29 | Before you can lead, you must be able to do the job. The first principle is to know your job. As a Marine, you must demonstrate your ability to accomplish the mission, and to do this you must be capable of answering questions and demonstrating competence in your MOS. 30 | 31 | Respect is the reward of the Marine who shows competence. Tactical and technical competence can be learned from books and from on the job training. 32 | 33 | 1. Seek a well rounded military education by attending service schools; doing daily independent reading and research; taking correspondence courses from MCI, colleges, or correspondence schools; and seeking off-duty education. 34 | 35 | 2. Seek out and associate with capable leaders. Observe and study their actions. 36 | 37 | 3. Broaden your knowledge through association with members of other branches of the U. S. armed services. 38 | 39 | 4. Seek opportunities to apply knowledge through the exercise of command. Good leadership is acquired only through practice. 40 | 41 | 5. Prepare yourself for the job of leader at the next higher rank. 42 | 43 | 44 | ## Know your Marines and look out for their welfare 45 | 46 | Know your Marines and how they react to different situations. This knowledge can save lives. 47 | 48 | A Marine who is nervous and lacks self confidence should never be put in a situation where an important, instant decision must be made. 49 | 50 | Knowledge of your Marines' personalities will enable you, as the leader, to decide how to best handle each Marine and determine when close supervision is needed. 51 | 52 | 1. Put your Marines' welfare before your own-- correct grievances and remove discontent. 53 | 54 | 2. See the members of your unit and let them see you so that every Marine may know you and feel that you know them. Be approachable. 55 | 56 | 3. Get to know and understand the Marines under your command. 57 | 58 | 4. Let them see that you are determined that they be fully prepared for battle. 59 | 60 | 5. Concern yourself with the living conditions of the members of your unit. 61 | 62 | 6. Help your Marines get needed support from available personal services. 63 | 64 | 7. Protect the health of your unit by active supervision of hygiene and sanitation. 65 | 66 | 8. Determine what your unit's mental attitude is; keep in touch with their thoughts. 67 | 68 | 9. Ensure fair and equal distribution of rewards. 69 | 70 | 10. Encourage individual development. 71 | 72 | 11. Provide sufficient recreational time and insist on participation. 73 | 74 | 12. Share the hardships of your Marines so you can better understand their reactions 75 | 76 | 77 | ## Keep your Marines informed 78 | 79 | Marines by nature are inquisitive. To promote efficiency and morale, a leader should inform the Marines in his unit of all happenings and give reasons why things are to be done. This, of course, is done when time and security permit. Informing your Marines of the situation makes them feel that they are a part of the team and not just a cog in a wheel. Informed Marines perform better and, if knowledgeable of the situation, can carry on without your personal supervision. 80 | 81 | The key to giving out information is to be sure that the Marines have enough information to do their job intelligently and to inspire their initiative, enthusiasm, loyalty, and convictions. 82 | 83 | 1. Whenever possible, explain why tasks must be done and how you intend to do them. 84 | 85 | 2. Assure yourself, by frequent inspections, that immediate subordinates are passing on necessary information. 86 | 87 | 3. Be alert to detect the spread of rumors. Stop rumors by replacing them with the truth. 88 | 89 | 4. Build morale and esprit de corps by publicizing information concerning successes of your unit. 90 | 91 | 5. Keep your unit informed about current legislation and regulations affecting their pay, promotion, privileges, and other benefits. 92 | 93 | 94 | ## Set the example 95 | 96 | As a Marine progresses through the ranks by promotion, all too often he/she takes on the attitude of "do as I say, not as I do." Nothing turns Marines off faster! 97 | 98 | As a Marine leader your duty is to set the standards for your Marines by personal example. Your appearance, attitude, physical fitness, and personal example are all watched by the Marines in your unit. If your personal standards are high, then you can rightfully demand the same of your Marines. If your personal standards are not high you are setting a double standard for your Marines, and you will rapidly lose their respect and confidence. Remember your Marines reflect your image! Leadership is taught by example. 99 | 100 | 1. Show your Marines that you are willing to do the same things you ask them to do. 101 | 102 | 2. Be physically fit, well groomed, and correctly dressed. 103 | 104 | 3. Maintain an optimistic outlook. Develop the will to win by capitalizing on your unit's abilities. The more difficult the situation is, the better your chance is to display an attitude of calmness and confidence. 105 | 106 | 4. Conduct yourself so that your personal habits are not open to criticism. 107 | 108 | 5. Exercise initiative and promote the spirit of initiative in your Marines. 109 | 110 | 6. Avoid showing favoritism to any subordinate. 111 | 112 | 7. Share danger and hardship with your Marines to demonstrate your willingness to assume your share of the difficulties. 113 | 114 | 8. By your performance, develop the thought within your Marines that you are the best Marine for the position you hold. 115 | 116 | 9. Delegate authority and avoid over-supervision in order to develop leadership among subordinates. 117 | 118 | 119 | ## Ensure the task is understood, supervised, and accomplished 120 | 121 | This principle is necessary in the exercise of command. Before you can expect your Marines to perform, they must know first what is expected of them. You must communicate your instructions in a clear, concise manner. Talk at a level that your Marines are sure to understand, but not at a level so low that would insult their intelligence. 122 | 123 | Before your Marines start a task, allow them a chance to ask questions or seek advice. Supervision is essential. Without supervision you cannot know if the assigned task is being properly accomplished. Over supervision is viewed by subordinates as harassment and effectively stops their initiative. Allow subordinates to use their own techniques, and then periodically check their progress. 124 | 125 | 1. Ensure that the need for an order exists before issuing the order. 126 | 127 | 2. Use the established chain of command. 128 | 129 | 3. Through study and practice, issue clear, concise, and positive orders. 130 | 131 | 4. Encourage subordinates to ask questions concerning any point in your orders or directives they do not understand. 132 | 133 | 5. Question your Marines to determine if there is any doubt or misunderstanding in regard to the task to be accomplished. 134 | 135 | 6. Supervise the execution of your orders. 136 | 137 | 7. Make sure your Marines have the resources needed to accomplish the mission. 138 | 139 | 8. Vary your supervisory routine and the points which you emphasize during inspections. 140 | 141 | 9. Exercise care and thought in supervision. Over supervision hurts initiative and creates resentment; under supervision will not get the job done. 142 | 143 | 144 | ## Train your Marines as a team 145 | 146 | Every waking hour Marines should be trained and schooled, challenged and tested, corrected and encouraged with perfection and teamwork as a goal. When not at war, Marines are judged in peacetime roles: perfection in drill, dress, bearing and demeanor; shooting; self-improvement; and most importantly, performance. No excuse can be made for the failure of leaders to train their Marines to the highest state of physical condition and to instruct them to be the very best in the profession of arms. Train with a purpose and emphasize the essential element of teamwork. 147 | 148 | The sharing of hardships, dangers, and hard work strengthens a unit and reduces problems, it develops teamwork, improves morale and esprit and molds a feeling of unbounded loyalty and this is the basis for what makes men fight in combat; it is the foundation for bravery, for advancing under fire. Troops don't complain of tough training; they seek it and brag about it. 149 | 150 | Teamwork is the key to successful operations. Teamwork is essential from the smallest unit to the entire Marine Corps. As a Marine officer, you must insist on teamwork from your Marines. Train, play, and operate as a team. Be sure that each Marine knows his/her position and responsibilities within the team framework. 151 | 152 | When team spirit is in evidence, the most difficult tasks become much easier to accomplish. Teamwork is a two-way street. Individual Marines give their best, and in return the team provides the Marine with security, recognition, and a sense of accomplishment. 153 | 154 | 1. Train, study and train, prepare, and train thoroughly, endlessly. 155 | 156 | 2. Strive to maintain individual stability and unit integrity; keep the same squad leader and fire team leaders as long as possible if they're getting the job done. Needless transfers disrupt teamwork. 157 | 158 | 3. Emphasize use of the "buddy" system. 159 | 160 | 4. Encourage unit participation in recreational and military events. 161 | 162 | 5. Never publicly blame an individual for the team's failure nor praise one individual for the team's success. 163 | 164 | 6. Provide the best available facilities for unit training and make maximum use of teamwork. 165 | 166 | 7. Ensure that all training is meaningful, and that its purpose is clear to all members of the command. 167 | 168 | 8. Acquaint each Marine of your unit with the capabilities and limitations of all other units, thereby developing mutual trust and understanding. 169 | 170 | 9. Ensure that each junior leader understands the mechanics of tactical control for the unit. 171 | 172 | 10. Base team training on realistic, current, and probable conditions. 173 | 174 | 11. Insist that every Marine understands the functions of the other members of the team and how the team functions as a part of the unit. 175 | 176 | 12. Seek opportunities to train with other units. 177 | 178 | 13. Whenever possible, train competitively. 179 | 180 | 181 | ## Make sound and timely decisions 182 | 183 | The leader must be able to rapidly estimate a situation and make a sound decision based on that estimation. Hesitation or a reluctance to make a decision leads subordinates to lose confidence in your abilities as a leader. Loss of confidence in turn creates confusion and hesitation within the unit. 184 | 185 | Once you make a decision and discover it is the wrong one, don't hesitate to revise your decision. Marines respect the leader who corrects mistakes immediately instead of trying to bluff through a poor decision. 186 | 187 | 1. Develop a logical and orderly thought process by practicing objective estimates of the situation. 188 | 189 | 2. When time and situation permit, plan for every possible event that can reasonably be foreseen. 190 | 191 | 3. Consider the advice and suggestions of your subordinates whenever possible before making decisions. 192 | 193 | 4. Announce decisions in time to allow subordinates to make necessary plans. 194 | 195 | 5. Encourage subordinates to estimate and make plans at the same time you do. 196 | 197 | 6. Make sure your Marines are familiar with your policies and plans. 198 | 199 | 7. Consider the effects of your decisions on all members of your unit. 200 | 201 | 202 | ## Develop a sense of responsibility among your subordinates 203 | 204 | Another way to show your Marines that you are interested in their welfare is to give them the opportunity for professional development. Assigning tasks and delegating the authority to accomplish tasks promotes mutual confidence and respect between the leader and subordinates. It also encourages the subordinates to exercise initiative and to give wholehearted cooperation in the accomplishment of unit tasks. 205 | 206 | When you properly delegate authority, you demonstrate faith in your Marines and increase their desire for greater responsibilities. If you fail to delegate authority, you indicate a lack of leadership, and your subordinates may take it to be a lack of trust in their abilities 207 | 208 | 1. Operate through the chain of command. 209 | 210 | 2. Provide clear, well thought directions. Tell your subordinates what to do, not how to do it. Hold them responsible for results, although overall responsibility remains yours. Delegate enough authority to them to enable them to accomplish the task. 211 | 212 | 3. Give your Marines frequent opportunities to perform duties usually performed by the next higher ranks. 213 | 214 | 4. Be quick to recognize your subordinates' accomplishments when they demonstrate initiative and resourcefulness. 215 | 216 | 5. Correct errors in judgment and initiative in a way which will encourage the Marine to try harder. Avoid public criticism or condemnation. 217 | 218 | 6. Give advice and assistance freely when it is requested by your subordinates. 219 | 220 | 7. Let your Marines know that you will accept honest errors without punishment in return; teach from these mistakes by critique and constructive guidance. 221 | 222 | 8. Resist the urge to micro-manage; don't give restrictive guidance which destroys initiative, drive, innovation, enthusiasm; creates boredom; and increases workload of seniors. 223 | 224 | 9. Assign your Marines to positions in accordance with demonstrated or potential ability. 225 | 226 | 10. Be prompt and fair in backing subordinates. Until convinced otherwise, have faith in each subordinate. 227 | 228 | 11. Accept responsibility willingly and insist that your subordinates live by the same standard. 229 | 230 | 231 | ## Employ your command in accordance with its capabilities 232 | 233 | Successful completion of a task depends upon how well you know your unit's capabilities. If the task assigned is one that your unit has not been trained to do, failure is very likely to result. Failures lower your unit's morale and self esteem. You wouldn't send a cook section to "PM" a vehicle nor would you send three Marines to do the job of ten. 234 | 235 | Seek out challenging tasks for your unit, but be sure that your unit is prepared for and has the ability to successfully complete the mission. 236 | 237 | 1. Do not volunteer your unit for tasks it is not capable of completing. Not only will the unit fail, but your Marines will think you are seeking personal glory. 238 | 239 | 2. Keep yourself informed as to the operational effectiveness of your command. 240 | 241 | 3. Be sure that tasks assigned to subordinates are reasonable. Do not hesitate to demand their utmost in an emergency. 242 | 243 | 4. Analyze all assigned tasks. If the means at your disposal are inadequate, inform your immediate supervisor and request the necessary support. 244 | 245 | 5. Assign tasks equally among your Marines. 246 | 247 | 6. Use the full capabilities of your unit before requesting assistance. 248 | 249 | 250 | ## Seek responsibility and take responsibility for your actions 251 | 252 | For professional development, you must actively seek out challenging assignments. You must use initiative and sound judgment when trying to accomplish jobs that are not required by your grade. Seeking responsibilities also means that you take responsibility for your actions. 253 | 254 | You are responsible for all your unit does or fails to do. Regardless of the actions of your subordinates, the responsibility for decisions and their application falls on you. 255 | 256 | You must issue all orders in your name. Stick by your convictions and do what you think is right, but accept justified and constructive criticism. Never remove or demote a subordinate for a failure that is the result of your own mistake. 257 | 258 | 1. Learn the duties of your immediate senior, and be prepared to accept the responsibilities of these duties. 259 | 260 | 2. Seek different leadership positions that will give you experience in accepting responsibility in different fields. 261 | 262 | 3. Take every opportunity that offers increased responsibility. 263 | 264 | 4. Perform every act, large or small, to the best of your ability. Your reward will be increased opportunity to perform bigger and more important tasks. 265 | 266 | 5. Stand up for what you think is right; have the courage of your convictions. 267 | 268 | 6. Carefully evaluate a subordinate's failure before taking action. Make sure the apparent shortcomings are not due to an error on your part. Consider the Marines that are available, salvage a Marine if possible, and replace a Marine when necessary. 269 | 270 | 7. In the absence of orders, take the initiative to perform the actions you believe your senior would direct you to perform if he/she were present. 271 | 272 | -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- /leadership-styles-by-harvard-business-review/README.md: -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 1 | index.md -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- /leadership-styles-by-harvard-business-review/index.md: -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 1 | # Leadership styles by Harvard Business Review 2 | 3 | Harvard Business Review describes the top 10 common leadership styles: 4 | 5 | * Coercive: Leaders demand immediate compliance. 6 | 7 | * Authoritative: Leaders mobilize people toward a vision. 8 | 9 | * Affiliative: Leaders create emotional bonds and harmony. 10 | 11 | * Democratic: Leaders build consensus through participation. 12 | 13 | * Pacesetting: Leaders expect excellence and self-direction. 14 | 15 | * Coaching: Leaders develop people for the future. 16 | 17 | * Bureaucratic leadership, whose leaders focus on following every rule. 18 | 19 | * Charismatic leadership, in which leaders inspire enthusiasm in their teams and are energetic in motivating others to move forward. 20 | 21 | * Servant leadership, whose leaders focus on meeting the needs of the team. 22 | 23 | * Transactional leadership, in which leaders inspire by expecting the best from everyone and themselves. 24 | -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- /lessons-learned-by-emmett-shear/README.md: -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 1 | index.md -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- /lessons-learned-by-emmett-shear/index.md: -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 1 | # Lessons learned by Emmett Shear 2 | 3 | https://twitter.com/eshear/status/1402449647122018304 4 | 5 | In honor of the 10th anniversary of launching Twitch, I thought I’d share some of the lessons I learned along the way. 6 | 7 | Most of these insights are things I heard someone else say. They’re the things that I find myself telling people when they ask me for advice. 8 | 9 | Make something 10 people completely love, not something most people think is pretty good. 10 | 11 | If your product is for consumers, either it’s a daily habit, or it’s used consistently in response to an external trigger, or it’s not going to grow. 12 | 13 | There are only five growth strategies that exist: high-touch sales, paid advertising, intrinsic virality, intrinsic influencer incentives, and platform hacks. 14 | 15 | Press isn’t a growth strategy, and neither is word of mouth. 16 | 17 | Your product probably only fits one growth strategy. 18 | 19 | For internet companies, growth is more important than profit. It’s very rare for a company to achieve massive scale of use, and then die because they can’t figure out the economics. The reverse is common. 20 | 21 | Ignore your competitors, but don’t ignore their customers. 22 | 23 | If you’re a first time manager, you suck. That’s ok, everyone sucks. Apologize to your employees, get a coach or join a support group, read books, and generally treat management like a new important skill you can master. 24 | 25 | Every time you add a layer of hierarchy underneath you, your job as a leader changes against and gets harder. You have to keep learning and growing. Note: good reason not to hire too fast! 26 | 27 | You know when you need to hire: when you just can’t keep up with all the work, and desperately need someone else to take over some part of the job. 28 | 29 | Plans are useless, but planning is essential. 30 | 31 | Your time horizon for strategic planning should approximately be equal to the length of time your organization has existed so far. 32 | 33 | Over time, develop a huge vision that’s bigger than any specific thing you’re working on. Put it as far in the future, and make it as huge, as you have the guts to. 34 | 35 | You think you have a morale problem; a management problem; a recruiting problem; you don’t. You have a growth problem. Nothing succeeds like success. 36 | 37 | Three ways to have a startup idea: something you want, something you’ve directly experienced others needing, something you’ve invented through analytic thought. They are listed in order of increasing risk. 38 | 39 | Your culture is determined by what people perceive to be the behaviors you reward and punish. Note: Not what you actually reward and punish, and also not what you say you reward and punish. 40 | 41 | Company cultures are reflection of their founders. To change your company's culture, seek to change how you behave. To change your company's values, seek to change what you value. 42 | 43 | Letting an underperforming employee go is difficult and painful. You invested a lot in hiring them, and you want them to succeed. As a result you will almost always fire too late. 44 | 45 | Presume deals won’t close and manage accordingly. Not only do deals fall through as a default, if you need the deal to close it impacts negotiations and actually makes it less likely to close. 46 | 47 | Do the job before you hire for it. You know nothing about X, so you think you need to hire an expert in X. But you can’t tell which experts are any good until you’ve learned enough to be dangerous yourself. (Exception: cofounders) 48 | 49 | Don’t start a company. You aren’t cut out for it. And if I can persuade you not to start a company by saying it in this tweet, definitely don’t start a company. You’re buying the economy-sized amount of effort and pain. 50 | 51 | Today is the best time ever to start a company. You might fail, you might succeed, it’s a crazy ride either way, and you’ll learn and grow more than at any job. 52 | -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- /manager-metrics-quotations/index.md: -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 1 | # Manager metrics quotations 2 | 3 |
4 | 5 | Managers need to evaluate the people assigned to them, objectively, and they need to give an unbiased and objectively verifiable score. This means something they can measure, such as metrics or verifiable goals. Not being able to objectively justify a score is a problem that no manager wants to have, as this is a major liability. 6 | 7 | A manager might be fully aware that you unblocked half your team members throughout the year with critical help, and that you are the go-to guy to solve critical issues. But if your team members close twice the tickets you did, they will have trouble justifying you are contributing as much as them. 8 | 9 |
10 | 11 |
12 | 13 | Automated reporting dashboards start to cause damage where they are allowed to become visible by higher-ups in the org. A dashboard is immensely powerful for the immediate manager to know how their team is doing, identify problems and work with the members to resolve those problems. As with many things, the numbers on a dashboard must be read with context. The closer you are to that team, the better. 14 | 15 | The moment the dashboard is accessed by higher ups, several things happen: The devs become scrutinized by higher-ups that do not have all the context to make sense of the numbers, the manager is rendered ineffective because the knowledge and power they had while reporting to their superiors is taken away, and upper management will inevitably start caring about the numbers on the dashboard, and nothing else. 16 | 17 |
18 | 19 |
20 | 21 | The metrics I find useful are things like trends before and after a change. For example, if lots of PRs are taking a long time to get through review because the descriptions don't get filled in well, I want to look at the time code spends in review before and after updating the PR template. Or before that, I want to see which teams have code in review for less time so I can look at their PR process and suggest changes to slower teams that the faster teams have already implemented. If a team is doing the same stuff as other teams but their typical PR size is much bigger I want to know if they have fewer stories that they should be breaking down further. And so on. 22 | 23 | None of this is data I don't have a gut feel for, but having real numbers is useful for making a case for change. People don't always believe instinct. It's harder to argue with a well-designed graph. 24 | 25 |
26 | 27 |
28 | 29 | Some metrics are either misleading or gameable to the point of being useless. But you'd imagine some tools might be actually useful for a manager? Then the performance reviews. Obviously everyone hates them. I hate them. But how do you keep large orgs of thousands of people with varying motives, moods and ability from descending into chaos? 30 | 31 |
32 | 33 |
34 | 35 | Managers don't spike on technical problems of unpredictable depth and don't do code reviews. I've seen wishful thinking that they did, but in practice, they don't. How can they tell if someone is genuinely stuck on a harder-than-expected problem or is simply full of shit? Verbally ask around for opinions from ICs closer to the subject matter? But that's the same or worse as an informal 360, or a perf review. 36 | 37 |
38 | 39 |
40 | 41 | The metrics tell you one thing, but how to interpret it requires you to know what people are actually doing. And if you do know that then you don't need the metrics. Add to that, I don't think I know anyone that could be trusted to not misinterpret the metrics. It is a great way to reinforce what you believe, you can take your gut feeling and finding a way to see it in the data. But that isn't helpful either. 42 | 43 |
44 | 45 |
46 | 47 | We don’t expose data more granular than at team level. Ever. Quite a few line managers would come to me asking for “personal metrics”, and even engineers in the team were super interested in the data. My argument was personal metrics are toxic and invite misuse. Misuse generates mistrust. 48 | 49 | You want to see where are bottlenecks, you want to have measurable targets for how technical work is done and how it correlates to business goals and KPIs. You want to offer teams metrics of their delivery my process so they can take the info and implement improvements whenever they see fit, and have a data driven conversation with the business. 50 | 51 | But teams are the minimum unit of ownership, we stop the instrumentation there. Sure, a team’s performance ultimately links to individuals, but that is the manager’s job to figure out. 52 | 53 |
54 | 55 |
56 | 57 | I’ve helped build out or steer these sorts of systems a number of times and usually management behaves themselves during the adoption and honeymoon phases but then erode the trust later on by trying to use the system to determine PIP or promotion. 58 | 59 | Devs who have seen this behavior before tend to push back hard on adoption, and then invest the absolute minimum effort in using these tools. The tools tend to be built wrong often enough to encourage that slide into toxicity. 60 | 61 |
62 | 63 |
64 | 65 | Good managers are humans and are subject to emotions and biases that they don't even realise they carry around. The only things which bring objectivity are data and good processes. 66 | 67 | You should measure events, but you should have the intent that you want to "understand" what is going on, instead of policing people. Data can reveal a lot, like conflicting work patterns, burn-out indicators, problems in communications etc. Not all metrics are bad. 68 | 69 | You should combine objective data with subjective feedback, as well as more context such as life events (marriage, becoming a parent etc) to understand how people work. 70 | 71 | Processes should enhance focus on outcomes, rather than activity. Frameworks such as OKRs are hard to implement correctly, but they do let you focus on business outcomes. The problem with knowledge work is that you cannot measure it with activities alone. Trying to bridge OKRs with activity metrics as well as subjective feedback can be helpful. 72 | 73 |
74 | 75 |
76 | 77 | Hybrid or remote work is a larger trend that began much before covid, and while back to office mandates might make it seem that the trend is loosing steam, it is not. There will be more remote work in coming years, and that makes understanding your peers' work even more difficult. 78 | 79 |
80 | 81 |
82 | 83 | Managers should understand if employees are effective or not. Employees should understand the goals and objectives of the organization. There should be an alignment on what the expectations are and how people are graded and these tools should be applied before the evaluation and information should be provided to employess on how they are doing on a regular basis. 84 | 85 | I’ve definitely worked at organizations that are totally unorganized and it’s totally unclear what the objectives are and they will just call you up and give you different objectives every day and then the performance review addresses totally different objectives from what we’ve been actually doing the entire period. 86 | 87 |
88 | 89 |
90 | 91 | The job of a manager is: 1. Ensure members of the group know what each other are doing. 2. Ensure members of the team know where the team is going. 3. Act as direct report in another team that has another manager that does the same. 92 | 93 |
94 | 95 |
96 | 97 | Collaboration requires communication. In a hierarchy, a manager is a fan-in/out point. It is essential that a manager knows what their team members are doing to effectively perform their role. 98 | 99 |
100 | 101 |
102 | 103 | I don't think you should make the metrics the end all be all (Goodhart's law), but metrics is certainly helpful if you can figure out who might be doing literally NOTHING for hours on end vs. someone who is productive at some level. 104 | 105 |
106 | 107 |
108 | 109 | 110 | Metrics can certainly point out "smoke" where there might be someone struggling and then you can be an actual manager and figure it out case by case. 111 | 112 |
113 | 114 |
115 | 116 | Metrics are indicators, one of many. if you are producing zero code vs your peers and your job is to program it doesn't mean you are unproductive, but at least someone can talk to you about it and clarify vs. just guessing with zero data. 117 | 118 |
119 | 120 |
121 | 122 | Managers are people too, despite of what Dilbert will have you believe. They need help, support, and tools. It's true that many tools and frameworks are sold as magic pills that solve all the problems. Metrics are one of those tools that are often misrepresented. I think that many of the tools are helpful, if used skillfully. 123 | 124 |
125 | 126 |
127 | 128 | You can't manage what you can't see. You see your team through your direct interactions with them. You see what they do through the artifacts that they produce. You learn about them from others - hear-say, praise, complaints, and gossip. You also get another perspective through various metrics. You need to combine multiple ways of seeing a team to have a more-complete picture. Take any of them away, and you're a little more blind. 129 | 130 |
131 | 132 |
133 | 134 | There was a time I was running a 10+ team and was executing scrum by the book, not really understanding much of it at start. Meetings felt weird and generally it was very intense time. But after some time a few things clicked in my head: I could plan with some certainty without bothering people, and execution was falling between min/max planned capacity, everyone was aware of pretty much everything, even in 'other places' where they were not actively contributing, everyone learned to estimate their work based on complexity. And above all, after leaving the place and working in a few different shops, when I look at the code quality produced in that place I'm still impressed 135 | 136 |
137 | 138 |
139 | 140 | If you're at the point that you need 360 reviews (mind you that many companies do them but don't need them), because you don't trust middle management to not play politics for themselves, then your company culture is already rotten and will not get fixed by doing 360 reviews. 141 | 142 | -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- /periodic-table-by-mike-mears/periodic-table-by-mike-mears.jpg: -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- https://raw.githubusercontent.com/joelparkerhenderson/leadership/00ed5735af321eb56480f6005b814ba4244ab555/periodic-table-by-mike-mears/periodic-table-by-mike-mears.jpg -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- /qualities-of-leadership-by-peter-economy/README.md: -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 1 | index.md -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- /qualities-of-leadership-by-peter-economy/index.md: -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 1 | # Qualities of leadership by Peter Economy 2 | 3 | Peter Economy, also known as "The Leadership Guy," says the qualities of today's best leadership are: 4 | 5 | * Decisiveness 6 | 7 | * Awareness 8 | 9 | * Focus 10 | 11 | * Accountability 12 | 13 | * Empathy 14 | 15 | * Confidence 16 | 17 | * Optimism 18 | 19 | * Honesty 20 | 21 | * Inspiration 22 | -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- /solution-focused-questions/README.md: -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 1 | index.md -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- /solution-focused-questions/index.md: -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 1 | # Solution-Focused Questions 2 | 3 | Source: [The Solution Focused Universe](https://www.thesfu.com) 4 | 5 | ## Desired outcome questions 6 | 7 | 1. What are your best hopes from...? 8 | 9 | 2. What difference would you like this session to 10 | make for you? 11 | 12 | 3. What would the person who suggested you 13 | come here hope be different for you as a result of us 14 | meeting? 15 | 16 | 4. What would your closest friend hope be different 17 | for you as a result of us meeting? 18 | 19 | 5. What differences would you hope happen in your 20 | life as a result of us talking? 21 | 22 | 6. What do you wish would be different as a result of 23 | you being here? 24 | 25 | 7. What do you think? 26 | 27 | 8. If you did know? 28 | 29 | 9. If I asked the person in your life who knows you 30 | best, what do you think they’d say? 31 | 32 | 10. What do you imagine? 33 | 34 | 11. If I had asked you this question when you did 35 | know, what would you have said? 36 | 37 | 12. What would you have said if I asked you this 38 | question on the day you first called me to schedule 39 | this appointment? 40 | 41 | 13. If I had asked you that question when you were at 42 | your most hopeful and motivated, what would you 43 | have said? 44 | 45 | 14. What would you like instead? 46 | 47 | # Resource talk questions 48 | 49 | 15. What do you do for fun? 50 | 51 | 16. What do you do for a living? 52 | 53 | 17. How did you become good at that? 54 | 55 | 18. What did it take to be good at that? 56 | 57 | 19. What has it taken to stay good at that? 58 | 59 | 20. What would the closest person to you say is their 60 | favorite thing about you? 61 | 62 | 21. How do you show the people in your life that you 63 | care about them? 64 | 65 | 22. What are you most proud of about yourself? 66 | 67 | 23. What would the people who raised you say 68 | they are most proud of about the adult you have 69 | become? 70 | 71 | 24. What has improved since you scheduled this 72 | appointment? 73 | 74 | 25. How did you do that? 75 | 76 | 26. What did you draw upon to help that thing 77 | improve? 78 | 79 | 27. When did you first notice that things were 80 | improving? 81 | 82 | 28. Were you surprised to see these things 83 | improving? 84 | 85 | 29. Who in your life was not surprised to see this 86 | improving? 87 | 88 | 30. What do you know about yourself that lets you 89 | know you can achieve what you want? 90 | 91 | 31. What do you know about the problem that lets 92 | you know it can be solved? And that you can solve 93 | it? 94 | 95 | ## Resource talk (for couples) 96 | 97 | 32. How did you meet? 98 | 99 | 33. Once you met, how did you first notice the 100 | potential for a long-term relationship? 101 | 102 | 34. How did you know that your partener was also 103 | interested? 104 | 105 | 35. What did you first do to let your partner know 106 | you were interested? 107 | 108 | 36. What did you notice your partner doing that 109 | let you know they enjoyed the early days of this 110 | relationship? 111 | 112 | 37. How did you let them know you were pleased 113 | about their enjoyment? 114 | 115 | 38. When did you each first notice that this 116 | relationship had a future? 117 | 118 | 39. What is your favorite thing about your partner? 119 | 120 | 40. What are you most proud of about the 121 | relationship you have created? 122 | 123 | 41. What are you most pleased that your children get 124 | to see about your relationship? 125 | 126 | 42. What did each of you do to grow the relationship 127 | from when you first met to the happiest times? 128 | 129 | 43. How did you maintain those happy times before 130 | the problem started? 131 | 132 | 44. Once the problem started, what did each of you 133 | do to help solve it? 134 | 135 | 45. What made you try to solve the problem instead 136 | of giving up on the relationship? 137 | 138 | 46. What makes you think trying, and not giving up, 139 | is a good thing? 140 | 141 | ## Coping with the problem 142 | 143 | 47. What would you like to experience instead of the 144 | problem? 145 | 146 | 48. How have you dealt with the problem while it 147 | has been present? 148 | 149 | 49. When has the problem diminished or become 150 | less intense? 151 | 152 | 50. What role did you play in it diminishing or going 153 | away? 154 | 155 | 51. What was different about you while the problem 156 | was gone or less intense? 157 | 158 | 52. Who else noticed that the problem was going 159 | away or becoming less intense? 160 | 161 | 53. When did you first notice the problem was going 162 | away or diminishing? 163 | 164 | 54. How did they notice the problem had gone away 165 | or become less intense? 166 | 167 | 55. What difference did the problem going away or 168 | becoming less intense make in that person’s life? 169 | 170 | 56. What difference did that person noticing the 171 | problem going away make for you? 172 | 173 | ## Preferred future description questions 174 | 175 | 57. Suppose you went to sleep one night and a 176 | miracle happened that solved all of the problems 177 | that led you into my office. What is the first thing 178 | you would notice? 179 | 180 | 58. If you woke up tomorrow and your best hopes 181 | had become a reality, what would you first notice? 182 | 183 | 59. If the changes that you noticed, even before the 184 | session, continued, what would you notice? 185 | 186 | 60. If the problem kept diminishing and even went 187 | away, and your best hopes replaced it, what would 188 | you notice? 189 | 190 | 61. If those differences you, and those close to you, 191 | noticed once the problem went away were to 192 | continue, what would you notice? 193 | 194 | 62. What time would it be? 195 | 196 | 63. What else? 197 | 198 | 64. What would you do next? 199 | 200 | 65. What would you notice next? 201 | 202 | 66. Would you consider this a good thing? 203 | 204 | 67. What difference would that make? 205 | 206 | 68. Would that please you? 207 | 208 | 69. How would you show that you were pleased to 209 | those close to you? 210 | 211 | 70. How would those close to you notice you were 212 | pleased? 213 | 214 | 71. How would those close to you let you know their 215 | life had improved as well? 216 | 217 | 72. If your lost loved one were looking down, what 218 | would they notice that would make them pleased? 219 | 220 | ## Scaling questions 221 | 222 | 73. On a scale of zero to 10, with 10 representing your 223 | desired outcome bas been realized and zero is the 224 | opposite, where are you today? 225 | 226 | 74. On a scale of 1 to 10, where 10 represents your 227 | desired outcome being completely realized and 1 is 228 | the problem at its worst, where are you today? 229 | 230 | 75. What puts you at that number? 231 | 232 | 76. How do you know you’re not at zero? 233 | 234 | 77. What have you done to prevent the situation 235 | from going down on the scale? 236 | 237 | 78. If you moved one point on the scale towards the 238 | realization of your desired outcome, what is the first 239 | thing you would notice? 240 | 241 | 79. If you moved up on the scale slightly, what would 242 | you notice? 243 | 244 | 80. What have you done to get yourself to the 245 | number you are currently at? 246 | 247 | 81. What else have you done to get yourself to that 248 | number? 249 | 250 | 82. Who has noticed you progressing up that scale? 251 | 252 | 83. What difference has it made to those close to you 253 | to see you progress? 254 | 255 | 84. What difference would it make to those close to 256 | you for you to continue this progress? 257 | 258 | 85. What other differences would it make to them 259 | for you to continue up the scale? 260 | 261 | 86. What would you notice as clues that you were 262 | progressing? 263 | 264 | 87. How would you show you were progressing? 265 | 266 | 88. How would you demonstrate that you were 267 | pleased to be progressing? 268 | 269 | 89. How would those close to you notice you were 270 | pleased to be progressing? 271 | 272 | 90. How would they notice you had noticed your 273 | positive impact on them? 274 | 275 | ## Questions in follow up sessions 276 | 277 | 91. What’s been better since our last session? 278 | 279 | 92. How’d you do that? 280 | 281 | 93. How did you hold on to enough hope for change 282 | and come back to therapy, even though things got 283 | worse? 284 | 285 | 94. What skills did you draw upon to make those 286 | changes since our last session? 287 | 288 | 95. What areas of your life got better other than the 289 | one we discussed in our last session? 290 | 291 | 96. What’s been better since we last met? 292 | 293 | 97. What role did you play in things getting better 294 | since we last met? 295 | 296 | 98. What role did others play? 297 | 298 | 99. What are your best hopes for this session? 299 | 300 | 100. What does that progress do to your thoughts 301 | about the future? 302 | 303 | 101. Was this change a big surprise or a little 304 | surprise? -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- /the-25-micro-habits-of-high-impact-managers-by-first-round-review/README.md: -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 1 | index.md -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- /the-25-micro-habits-of-high-impact-managers-by-first-round-review/index.md: -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 1 | # The 25 Micro-Habits of High-Impact Managers by First Round Review 2 | 3 | https://review.firstround.com/the-25-micro-habits-of-high-impact-managers 4 | 5 | 6 | ## Empower your team to act like an owner 7 | 8 | * Don't swerve around a debate. 9 | 10 | * Be generous with your ideas. 11 | 12 | * Think of yourself as the team captain, not the head coach. 13 | 14 | * Set the tone with cross-functional partners. 15 | 16 | 17 | ## Be vulnerable and self-aware 18 | 19 | * Write down what makes you tick. 20 | 21 | * Shine a light on failure. 22 | 23 | * Pull back the curtain. 24 | 25 | 26 | ## Turn into a trusted thought partner 27 | 28 | * Make space for reflection. 29 | 30 | * Reserve time for thinking outside the box. 31 | 32 | * Find the connective tissue. 33 | 34 | * Resist the urge to multitask. 35 | 36 | * Follow up and follow through. 37 | 38 | 39 | ## Lead with empathy - always 40 | 41 | * Don't forget the humans behind the company's goals. 42 | 43 | * Encourage folks to put themselves first. 44 | 45 | 46 | ## Challenge folks with kindness 47 | 48 | * Cushion the blows. 49 | 50 | * Create a monthly performance review action plan. 51 | 52 | * Reinforce good habits. 53 | 54 | * Take a beat before delivering feedback. 55 | 56 | 57 | ## Celebrate and up-level the small moments 58 | 59 | * Look for opportunities to praise in the moment. 60 | 61 | * Spot chances to send kudos up the chain. 62 | 63 | * Celebrate moments outside of the office, too. 64 | 65 | * Invest in their career. 66 | 67 | * Bring in mentors and skip-levels. 68 | 69 | * Make space for growth. 70 | 71 | * Sharpen your arrows. 72 | -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- /the-9-traits-that-define-great-leadership/README.md: -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 1 | index.md -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- /the-9-traits-that-define-great-leadership/index.md: -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 1 | # The 9 Traits That Define Great Leadership 2 | 3 | [Link](https://www.inc.com/peter-economy/the-9-traits-that-define-great-leadership.html) 4 | 5 | To motivate your team to achieve the highest levels of performance (and create an extraordinary organization in the process), here are the qualities you should model every day. 6 | 7 | 8 | ## 1. Awareness 9 | 10 | There is a difference between management and employees, bosses and workers. Leaders understand the nature of this difference and accept it; it informs their image, their actions, and their communication. They conduct themselves in a way that sets them apart from their employees--not in a manner that suggests they are better than others, but in a way that permits them to retain an objective perspective on everything that's going on in their organization. 11 | 12 | 13 | ## 2. Decisiveness 14 | 15 | All leaders must make tough decisions. It goes with the job. They understand that in certain situations, difficult and timely decisions must be made in the best interests of the entire organization, decisions that require a firmness, authority, and finality that will not please everyone. Extraordinary leaders don't hesitate in such situations. They also know when not to act unilaterally but instead foster collaborative decision making. 16 | 17 | 18 | ## 3. Empathy 19 | 20 | Extraordinary leaders praise in public and address problems in private, with a genuine concern. The best leaders guide employees through challenges, always on the lookout for solutions to foster the long-term success of the organization. Rather than making things personal when they encounter problems, or assigning blame to individuals, leaders look for constructive solutions and focus on moving forward. 21 | 22 | 23 | ## 4. Accountability 24 | 25 | Extraordinary leaders take responsibility for everyone's performance, including their own. They follow up on all outstanding issues, check in on employees, and monitor the effectiveness of company policies and procedures. When things are going well, they praise. When problems arise, they identify them quickly, seek solutions, and get things back on track. 26 | 27 | 28 | ## 5. Confidence 29 | 30 | Not only are the best leaders confident, but their confidence is contagious. Employees are naturally drawn to them, seek their advice, and feel more confident as a result. When challenged, they don't give in too easily, because they know their ideas, opinions, and strategies are well-informed and the result of much hard work. But when proven wrong, they take responsibility and quickly act to improve the situations within their authority. 31 | 32 | 33 | ## 6. Optimism 34 | 35 | The very best leaders are a source of positive energy. They communicate easily. They are intrinsically helpful and genuinely concerned for other people's welfare. They always seem to have a solution, and always know what to say to inspire and reassure. They avoid personal criticism and pessimistic thinking, and look for ways to gain consensus and get people to work together efficiently and effectively as a team. 36 | 37 | 38 | ## 7. Honesty 39 | 40 | Strong leaders treat people the way they want to be treated. They are extremely ethical and believe that honesty, effort, and reliability form the foundation of success. They embody these values so overtly that no employee doubts their integrity for a minute. They share information openly, and avoid spin control. 41 | 42 | 43 | ## 8. Focus 44 | 45 | Extraordinary leaders plan ahead, and they are supremely organized. They think through multiple scenarios and the possible impacts of their decisions, while considering viable alternatives and making plans and strategies--all targeted toward success. Once prepared, they establish strategies, processes, and routines so that high performance is tangible, easily defined, and monitored. They communicate their plans to key players and have contingency plans in the event that last-minute changes require a new direction (which they often do). 46 | 47 | 48 | ## 9. Inspiration 49 | 50 | Put it all together, and what emerges is a picture of the truly inspiring leader: someone who communicates clearly, concisely, and often, and by doing so motivates everyone to give his or her best all the time. They challenge their people by setting high but attainable standards and expectations, and then giving them the support, tools, training, and latitude to pursue those goals and become the best employees they can possibly be. 51 | -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- /the-evolution-of-management-by-kate-matsudaira/README.md: -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 1 | index.md -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- /the-evolution-of-management-by-kate-matsudaira/index.md: -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 1 | # The Evolution of Management by Kate Matsudaira 2 | 3 | https://queue.acm.org/detail.cfm?id=3350548 (excerpts) 4 | 5 | These are the biggest transitions that occur when moving from individual contributor (IC) to entry-level manager: 6 | 7 | * Let go of the immediate/quick sense of gratification that comes from doing/building/creating. 8 | 9 | * Accolades and recognition become less frequent as you move up. 10 | 11 | * You derive your sense of accomplishment from mentoring, growing, and furthering the work of your team and those around you. 12 | 13 | * Add value by removing roadblocks, streamlining processes, and helping others be productive. 14 | 15 | * Think one to two years out for your project and roadmap. 16 | 17 | * Help people connect their work to the parent organization or company, and help them see their individual impact and value. 18 | 19 | Look two years into the future: 20 | 21 | * How do all of your teams fit together? 22 | 23 | * How should resources be distributed? 24 | 25 | * What is critical to the organization's most important goals? 26 | 27 | * What lessons do you need your people to learn? 28 | 29 | * Where can you allow them to take control and make mistakes? 30 | 31 | * What areas cannot fail and therefore need your oversight? 32 | 33 | * What metrics do you need to measure and pay attention to? Why? 34 | 35 | * How do you set up structures for visibility into progress? 36 | 37 | Prepare for succession: 38 | 39 | * What will you do if your best [fill-in-the-blank] leaves? 40 | 41 | * What can you do to help make your best people want to stay with your team? 42 | 43 | * Which resources do you need today, and what will you need a year from now? 44 | 45 | * Who is on your team right now who could move up in the future? 46 | 47 | * Which jobs don't exist today that you will need filled in the future? 48 | 49 | * Have any team members outgrown their roles, or have any of the roles changed enough that they are no longer filled by the right people? 50 | 51 | To establish a culture and values, ask yourself: 52 | 53 | * What does it mean to be in your team? 54 | 55 | * What do you stand for? 56 | 57 | * How should decisions be made? 58 | 59 | * How should issues be escalated? 60 | 61 | * What are the principles you use to make tough calls? 62 | -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- /the-most-important-leadership-compentencies/README.md: -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 1 | index.md -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- /the-most-important-leadership-compentencies/index.md: -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 1 | # The Most Important Leadership Competencies 2 | 3 | [Link](https://hbr.org/2016/03/the-most-important-leadership-competencies-according-to-leaders-around-the-world) 4 | 5 | What makes an effective leader? This question is a focus of my research as an organizational scientist, executive coach, and leadership development consultant. Looking for answers, I recently completed the first round of a study of 195 leaders in 15 countries over 30 global organizations. Participants were asked to choose the 15 most important leadership competencies from a list of 74. I’ve grouped the top ones into five major themes that suggest a set of priorities for leaders and leadership development programs. While some may not surprise you, they’re all difficult to master, in part because improving them requires acting against our nature. 6 | 7 | Priority order: 8 | 9 | * Has high ethical and moral standards 10 | * Provides goals and objectives with loose guidelines/directions 11 | * Clearly communicates expectations (56%) 12 | * Has the flexibility to change opinions 13 | * Is committed to my ongoing training 14 | * Communicatinos often and openly 15 | * Is open to new ideas and approaches 16 | * Creates a feeling of succeeding and failing together 17 | * Helps me grow into a next-generation leader 18 | * Provides safety for trial and error 19 | 20 | 21 | ## Demonstrates strong ethics and provides a sense of safety 22 | 23 | This theme combines two of the three most highly rated attributes: “high ethical and moral standards” (67% selected it as one of the most important) and “communicating clear expectations” (56%). 24 | 25 | Taken together, these attributes are all about creating a safe and trusting environment. A leader with high ethical standards conveys a commitment to fairness, instilling confidence that both they and their employees will honor the rules of the game. Similarly, when leaders clearly communicate their expectations, they avoid blindsiding people and ensure that everyone is on the same page. In a safe environment employees can relax, invoking the brain’s higher capacity for social engagement, innovation, creativity, and ambition. 26 | 27 | Neuroscience corroborates this point. When the amygdala registers a threat to our safety, arteries harden and thicken to handle an increased blood flow to our limbs in preparation for a fight-or-flight response. In this state, we lose access to the social engagement system of the limbic brain and the executive function of the prefrontal cortex, inhibiting creativity and the drive for excellence. From a neuroscience perspective, making sure that people feel safe on a deep level should be job #1 for leaders. 28 | 29 | But how? This competency is all about behaving in a way that is consistent with your values. If you find yourself making decisions that feel at odds with your principles or justifying actions in spite of a nagging sense of discomfort, you probably need to reconnect with your core values. I facilitate a simple exercise with my clients called “Deep Fast Forwarding” to help with this. Envision your funeral and what people say about you in a eulogy. Is it what you want to hear? This exercise will give you a clearer sense of what’s important to you, which will then help guide daily decision making. 30 | 31 | To increase feelings of safety, work on communicating with the specific intent of making people feel safe. One way to accomplish this is to acknowledge and neutralize feared results or consequences from the outset. I call this “clearing the air.” For example, you might approach a conversation about a project gone wrong by saying, “I’m not trying to blame you. I just want to understand what happened.” 32 | 33 | 34 | ## Empowers others to self-organize 35 | 36 | Providing clear direction while allowing employees to organize their own time and work was identified as the next most important leadership competency. 37 | 38 | No leader can do everything themselves. Therefore, it’s critical to distribute power throughout the organization and to rely on decision making from those who are closest to the action. 39 | 40 | Research has repeatedly shown that empowered teams are more productive and proactive, provide better customer service, and show higher levels of job satisfaction and commitment to their team and organization. And yet many leaders struggle to let people self-organize. They resist because they believe that power is a zero-sum game, they are reluctant to allow others to make mistakes, and they fear facing negative consequences from subordinates’ decisions. 41 | 42 | To overcome the fear of relinquishing power, start by increasing awareness of physical tension that arises when you feel your position is being challenged. As discussed above, perceived threats activate a fight, flight, or freeze response in the amygdala. The good news is that we can train our bodies to experience relaxation instead of defensiveness when stress runs high. Try to separate the current situation from the past, share the outcome you fear most with others instead of trying to hold on to control, and remember that giving power up is a great way to increase influence — which builds power over time. 43 | 44 | 45 | ## Fosters a sense of connection and belonging 46 | 47 | Leaders who “communicate often and openly” (competency #6) and “create a feeling of succeeding and failing together as a pack” (#8) build a strong foundation for connection. 48 | 49 | We are a social species — we want to connect and feel a sense of belonging. From an evolutionary perspective, attachment is important because it improves our chances of survival in a world full of predators. Research suggests that a sense of connection could also impact productivity and emotional well-being. For example, scientists have found that emotions are contagious in the workplace: Employees feel emotionally depleted just by watching unpleasant interactions between coworkers. 50 | 51 | From a neuroscience perspective, creating connection is a leader’s second most important job. Once we feel safe (a sensation that is registered in the reptilian brain), we also have to feel cared for (which activates the limbic brain) in order to unleash the full potential of our higher functioning prefrontal cortex. 52 | 53 | There are some simple ways to promote belonging among employees: Smile at people, call them by name, and remember their interests and family members’ names. Pay focused attention when speaking to them, and clearly set the tone of the members of your team having each other’s backs. Using a song, motto, symbol, chant, or ritual that uniquely identifies your team can also strengthen this sense of connection. 54 | 55 | 56 | ## Shows openness to new ideas and fosters organizational learning 57 | 58 | What do “flexibility to change opinions” (competency #4), “being open to new ideas and approaches” (#7), and “provides safety for trial and error” (#10) have in common? If a leader has these strengths, they encourage learning; if they don’t, they risk stifling it. 59 | 60 | Admitting we’re wrong isn’t easy. Once again, the negative effects of stress on brain function are partly to blame — in this case they impede learning. Researchers have found that reduced blood flow to our brains under threat reduces peripheral vision, ostensibly so we can deal with the immediate danger. For instance, they have observed a significant reduction in athletes’ peripheral vision before competition. While tunnel vision helps athletes focus, it closes the rest of us off to new ideas and approaches. Our opinions are more inflexible even when we’re presented with contradicting evidence, which makes learning almost impossible. 61 | 62 | To encourage learning among employees, leaders must first ensure that they are open to learning (and changing course) themselves. Try to approach problem-solving discussions without a specific agenda or outcome. Withhold judgment until everyone has spoken, and let people know that all ideas will be considered. A greater diversity of ideas will emerge. 63 | 64 | Failure is required for learning, but our relentless pursuit of results can also discourage employees from taking chances. To resolve this conflict, leaders must create a culture that supports risk-taking. One way of doing this is to use controlled experiments — think A/B testing — that allow for small failures and require rapid feedback and correction. This provides a platform for building collective intelligence so that employees learn from each other’s mistakes, too. 65 | 66 | 67 | ## Nurtures growth 68 | 69 | “Being committed to my ongoing training” (competency #5) and “helping me grow into a next-generation leader” (#9) make up the final category. 70 | 71 | All living organisms have an innate need to leave copies of their genes. They maximize their offspring’s chances of success by nurturing and teaching them. In turn, those on the receiving end feel a sense of gratitude and loyalty. Think of the people to whom you’re most grateful — parents, teachers, friends, mentors. Chances are, they’ve cared for you or taught you something important. 72 | 73 | When leaders show a commitment to our growth, the same primal emotions are tapped. Employees are motivated to reciprocate, expressing their gratitude or loyalty by going the extra mile. While managing through fear generates stress, which impairs higher brain function, the quality of work is vastly different when we are compelled by appreciation. If you want to inspire the best from your team, advocate for them, support their training and promotion, and go to bat to sponsor their important projects. 74 | -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- /the-webflow-tech-lead-guide/README.md: -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 1 | index.md -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- /the-webflow-tech-lead-guide/index.md: -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 1 | # The Webflow Tech Lead Guide 2 | 3 | [Link](https://github.com/webflow/leadership) 4 | g 5 | 6 | 7 | **Table of Contents** 8 | 9 | - [Welcome](#welcome) 10 | - [What's a Tech Lead, anyway?](#whats-a-tech-lead-anyway) 11 | - [Why management is different at Webflow.](#why-management-is-different-at-webflow) 12 | - [Why might I want to be a Tech Lead?](#why-might-i-want-to-be-a-tech-lead) 13 | - [How can I become a tech lead?](#how-can-i-become-a-tech-lead) 14 | - [What's expected of me when managing a team?](#whats-expected-of-me-when-managing-a-team) 15 | - [Working with Other Departments](#working-with-other-departments) 16 | - [Tracking Tasks](#tracking-tasks) 17 | - [Master Tracking Issue (MTI)](#master-tracking-issue-mti) 18 | - [Tasks](#tasks) 19 | - [This is tough](#this-is-tough) 20 | - [Displaying Progress in the MTI](#displaying-progress-in-the-mti) 21 | - [Milestones (a.k.a. Deliverables)](#milestones-aka-deliverables) 22 | - [Types of Milestones](#types-of-milestones) 23 | - [Task toward unknowns](#task-toward-unknowns) 24 | - [Meetings](#meetings) 25 | - [Weekly Status](#weekly-status) 26 | - [Agile? Project Managers?](#agile-project-managers) 27 | - [What are the different types of teams a Tech Lead can manage?](#what-are-the-different-types-of-teams-a-tech-lead-can-manage) 28 | - [What size team should I expect?](#what-size-team-should-i-expect) 29 | - [Team Efficiency and Organization](#team-efficiency-and-organization) 30 | - [Help! We are behind schedule!](#help-we-are-behind-schedule) 31 | - [A Word on Project Management](#a-word-on-project-management) 32 | - [Rework / Defer / Abandon (Mitigation Strategies for Deferred Progress)](#rework--defer--abandon-mitigation-strategies-for-deferred-progress) 33 | - [Rework](#rework) 34 | - [Defer](#defer) 35 | - [Abandon](#abandon) 36 | - [_An optional fourth strategy:_ Watch it closely](#_an-optional-fourth-strategy_-watch-it-closely) 37 | - [How can I make better estimates?](#how-can-i-make-better-estimates) 38 | - [Pad estimates for the unexpected](#pad-estimates-for-the-unexpected) 39 | - [Add up tasks toward unknowns](#add-up-tasks-toward-unknowns) 40 | - [The 80/20 Rule](#the-8020-rule) 41 | - [Never forget QA](#never-forget-qa) 42 | - [Cooldown: Bug fixes after delivery](#cooldown-bug-fixes-after-delivery) 43 | - [How long should projects take?](#how-long-should-projects-take) 44 | - [Should I branch off of feature branches or not?](#should-i-branch-off-of-feature-branches-or-not) 45 | - [Feature flags](#feature-flags) 46 | - [How can I stay "centered"?](#how-can-i-stay-centered) 47 | - [How do I stay organized?](#how-do-i-stay-organized) 48 | - [How much should I expect to code?](#how-much-should-i-expect-to-code) 49 | - [Code Reviews](#code-reviews) 50 | - [How do I provide status reports to All Hands and Lattice?](#how-do-i-provide-status-reports-to-all-hands-and-lattice) 51 | - [Lattice](#lattice) 52 | - [How do I keep my team motivated?](#how-do-i-keep-my-team-motivated) 53 | - [Autonomy, Mastery, and Purpose](#autonomy-mastery-and-purpose) 54 | - [Provide Feedback](#provide-feedback) 55 | - [Flow](#flow) 56 | - [I have an under-performing member on my team. What do I do?](#i-have-an-under-performing-member-on-my-team-what-do-i-do) 57 | - [How can I avoid burning my team out?](#how-can-i-avoid-burning-my-team-out) 58 | - [Crunch Time](#crunch-time) 59 | - [Recommended Books](#recommended-books) 60 | 61 | 62 | 63 | ## Welcome 64 | 65 | Hello! :wave: Welcome to this document. Happy to have you. 66 | 67 | If you've accepted a Tech Lead role, congratulations, you've demonstrated 68 | exceptional technical skills and a knack for leadership — rare qualities, 69 | indeed! Or, if you're curious about what the Tech Lead role offers and want to 70 | decide if it's right for you, you've come to the right place. 71 | 72 | Assuming the responsibilities of a Tech Lead is a staggering leap from the 73 | average engineer's daily routine. This guide is here to quickly help you 74 | understand the 75 | 76 | 1. Definition of a successful Tech Lead 77 | 2. Expectations when moving from a purely technical role to one that is a blend 78 | of management and technical expertise, and how to manage those expectations 79 | 3. Strategies to mitigate common challenges 80 | 4. Stance Webflow takes on "management" _(hint: it's about service, not 81 | dictatorship)_ 82 | 83 | ## What's a Tech Lead, anyway? 84 | 85 | By its most basic definition, a Tech Lead is "solely accountable for a project's 86 | success, spending 30% of their time writing code, and the other 70% managing a 87 | project". The _Lead_ is no misnomer — your purpose is to navigate a team of 88 | talented engineers through choppy waters, direct them, steer them away from 89 | hazards, clear obstacles, and to keep them well fed with meaningful work. 90 | 91 | This is easier said than done. 92 | 93 | There are myriad skills a Tech Lead must possess and cultivate, but the most 94 | important are _sincere empathy_, _crystal clear communication_, and _technical 95 | excellence_. These skills are equally weighted. The Tech Lead is a "hybrid" role 96 | with one foot in management and the other in engineering, and acts as a liaison 97 | between project expectations and development tasks. A project's success is on 98 | the Tech Lead's shoulders, and it is on Webflow's shoulders to ensure they are 99 | excessively supplied with the support required to succeed. 100 | 101 | #### Why management is different at Webflow. 102 | 103 | Management has gotten a bad rap at most companies. It is often associated with 104 | treating employees as "cogs" and it conjures images of dictators with 105 | sun-eclipsing egos. This is not how Webflow operates. We view each team member 106 | as a _human being_ first, and a talented contributor second. Humans need 107 | relationships built on compassion and cooperation. It is the Tech Lead's job to 108 | foster such an environment, and such environments are engendered through an 109 | attitude of _service_. 110 | 111 | The Tech Lead's job is _not_ to micromanage, but to be a service leader, which 112 | is to say they are there to _support_ their team, to _serve_ them as though they 113 | worked _for_ them (not the other way around). They might be accountable for a 114 | project's success, but it is the collaborative effort _with_ their team that 115 | brings a project to fruition. 116 | 117 | Here are some hints to help approaching how best to serve a team: 118 | 119 | 1. Be direct with project needs. Do not fear to challenge your team as long as 120 | you care deeply about their welfare. 121 | 2. When successes occur, lavish your team with praise and give them credit for 122 | everything — without them success is impossible. 123 | 124 | ## Why might I want to be a Tech Lead? 125 | 126 | You may _not_ want to be a Tech Lead, and that's just fine. Webflow seeks to 127 | provide many different opportunities for engineers to advance their career, 128 | including Individual Contributor tracks that offer similar significance to 129 | advanced management roles. The Tech Lead is under more pressure than the average 130 | engineer, and it is challenging to balance the demands of managing a team and 131 | contributing code, especially when first entering the Lead role (this is 132 | completely normal, by the way). 133 | 134 | That said, management life can be extraordinarily rewarding. You will have input 135 | into decisions much higher up on the food chain. Your impact on Webflow's 136 | user base multiplies. You will develop clout that will reflect in your 137 | performance reviews, and subsequently, provide more opportunities for career 138 | growth. The role is often seen as a stepping stone to the title of "Senior" Engineer, as well as a prerequisite for an Engineering Manager position. You will 139 | mentor and help other engineers grow. Some find these added challenges exciting 140 | and help push _them_ to new limits. 141 | 142 | ## How can I become a tech lead? 143 | 144 | Just ask! Yes, it's that easy. In your one-on-ones, express to your manager that 145 | you are interested in becoming a Tech Lead. It's your manager's duty to design a 146 | path to new roles, and, depending on your current experience, might include 147 | assigning you as a Tech Lead on your next project — and if not, then to provide 148 | you opportunities to develop the skills needed to become a Tech Lead. 149 | 150 | ## What's expected of me when managing a team? 151 | 152 | The Tech Lead's job consists of these responsibilities (in no particular order): 153 | 154 | 1. To work closely with a Product Manager to set reasonable expectations around 155 | deadlines, and to be _clear_ when projects are going _off-track_ (See: [Help! We are behind schedule!](#help-we-are-behind-schedule)) 156 | 2. To break up projects into digestible tasks, to tie those tasks to iterative 157 | deliverables, and to keep track of those deliverables 158 | 3. To provide ample uninterrupted work time for their team so they may 159 | frequently enter the flow state, and to act as their team's guardian against 160 | any potential blockers and distractions 161 | 4. To ensure your team is sufficiently supplied with work at all times so that 162 | no one "spins their wheels" 163 | 5. To perform diligent code reviews, first-pass QA, and to contribute code where possible 164 | 6. To be _available_ to team members as they execute their tasks. (Windows of 165 | blocked time for heads down work is expected, but windows of team 166 | availability are expected, too) 167 | 7. To occasionally work with other departments 168 | 169 | #### Working with Other Departments 170 | 171 | Product Management aligns user expectations with product features. Marketing 172 | makes those features known to the world. Support ensures Webflow makes good on those promised features. Each is critical to Webflow's continued success and growth. Engineering is at the crux of these departments and the Tech Lead acts as the liaison between them. 173 | 174 | The Tech Lead is responsible for communicating their project's status to other departments in two forms: 175 | 176 | 1. A weekly status meeting with their team in which a dedicated Product Manager or Support Liaison* may also participate. (See: [Meetings](#meetings)) This meeting is mandatory regardless of Product Manager or Support Liaison participation. 177 | 2. A weekly "All Hands" report for the entire company to see. (See: [How do I provide status reports to All Hands and Lattice?](#how-do-i-provide-status-reports-to-all-hands-and-lattice)) 178 | 179 | Some projects might not warrant a Product Manager or Support Liaison, and in these cases, the Tech Lead will express their team's status and needs to their Engineering Manager. On occasion, Marketing may also ask the Tech Lead when they should begin campaigning for a feature. 180 | 181 | _* The Stabilization Team (See: [What are the different types of teams a Tech Lead can manage?](#what-are-the-different-types-of-teams-a-tech-lead-can-manage)) will work closely with a Support Liaison to focus on fixing bugs with the greatest user impact._ 182 | 183 | #### Tracking Tasks 184 | 185 | A great Tech Lead knows how to break a project into meaningful and easily 186 | digestible tasks (digestible means about three days scope). This gives their team members a holistic view of a project as 187 | well as a finish line, and allows the Tech Lead to assign tasks to team members 188 | each week. Breaking a project down into small tasks is a time-consuming process, 189 | and is often an ongoing effort, but is critical in providing team 190 | members with a sense of progress. It also allows the Tech Lead to create 191 | waypoints toward unknowns, and to keep those unknowns contained to small time 192 | windows (See: [Task toward unknowns](#task-toward-unknowns)) 193 | 194 | ##### Master Tracking Issue (MTI) 195 | 196 | At the onset of a project, or at the onset of a project's continuing milestones, 197 | the Tech Lead must take time to thoroughly review the project's specifications 198 | and do their best to break down the specification into trackable tasks with a scope of **1-5 days** of work (outside Code Review / QA), and an optimal timeline of **3 days**. These tasks should then be grouped into Milestones. Each Milestone is a _deliverable_ with a deadline date. (See: [Milestones](#milestones-aka-deliverables)) 199 | 200 | > **Pro Tip**: Consider enlisting your team to help you break down Milestones into tasks. This is sometimes the _only_ option if you've got a team member with domain knowledge you don't possess. Delegate where it makes sense, but be sure to _review_ all tasks and to _validate_ their scope and/or assumptions. 201 | 202 | Webflow's current practice is to create GitHub issues for every task that are then tracked in a "Master Tracking Issue". The MTI should receive a `[Master Tracking Issue]` label in the issue's title as well as in GitHub's label section. 203 | 204 | The MTI is a centralized and clearly outlined view of GitHub issues that lists Milestones, their projected delivery date (See: [Milestones](#milestones-aka-deliverables)), and their related tasks in a list that 205 | 206 | 1. Can be easily assigned to your team members who will then be responsible for opening a PR to close the issue 207 | 2. Displays the task's GitHub issue number _and_ the PR that will close the 208 | issue, as well as a title for the issue. This is usually best accomplished in a tabular format. 209 | 3. Provides the estimated finish date for each milestone, and the status of each 210 | issue toward those milestones (See: [Displaying Progress in the MTI](#displaying-progress-in-the-mti)) 211 | 212 | ###### Tasks 213 | 214 | Each issue (or **1-5 day** task) must clearly point to the portion of the specification the 215 | issue addresses _and_ to the concerned areas of Webflow's codebase (if they 216 | exist). We've found it is best for each task to 217 | 218 | 1. Clearly point to the original specification the issue addresses, with any 219 | _visual_ content that will help an engineer complete the task, including 220 | screenshots/screencasts from the specification or from Webflow itself 221 | 2. List a best guess of TODOs to help the engineer build a mental model around 222 | the problems they must solve 223 | 224 | Below is a task template. This should be located in a GitHub issue and should receive the same title that is tracked in the MTI. 225 | 226 | > Master Tracking Issue: #00000 (Place the Github link here) 227 | > 228 | > ### Objective 229 | > 230 | > List the goal of the tasks here. It does not need to be long, and can take the form of a user story, e.g. "As a user, I would like to X, so that I can X", or "As a user, I would like to be able to right-click and delete an item, so that I don't have to move my mouse all the way up to the top of the screen." 231 | > 232 | > ### Tech Spec 233 | > 234 | > 235 | > 236 | > _Clearly_ outline the expectations for the tasks here. Place them in the form of TODOs. For example: 237 | > 238 | > - [ ] Include a "Delete" option in the right-click menu for item 239 | > - [ ] Wire the "Delete" option to the DELETE_TEM system event 240 | > - [ ] Write unit test for delete operation 241 | > - [ ] User may _not_ delete item if multiple items are selected 242 | > 243 | > Also add condition material, if needed: 244 | > 245 | > - [ ] When the user is logged into a free account, disallow deletion 246 | > 247 | > ### Design Artifacts 248 | > 249 | > Provide a list of design artifacts on which the above tech spec is based. This could be an external link to an artifact the Design or UX team provided. Include authors names so that the task owner can reach out. 250 | > 251 | > ### Notes 252 | > 253 | > Any clarifying content unrelated to the above items (Or, just a word of encouragement, like "You're doing great!") 254 | 255 | ###### This is tough 256 | 257 | Creating the Master Tracking Issue will feel like it's taking too much time and 258 | will make you question whether or not you are performing the most effective 259 | work. Trust us: it _is_ critical, and the clearer the MTI, the higher likelihood 260 | of a project's success. Depending on the size of the project, it could take 261 | upwards of a week or more :scream:. It's fine. Plan for it. Make it happen. Your 262 | team will thank you. It is crucial to helping your team feel a sense of 263 | meaningful progress (See: [How do I keep my team motivated?](#how-do-i-keep-my-team-motivated)). 264 | 265 | > **Pro Tip:** It can be helpful to keep a document open beside the spec and to 266 | > write down a list of tasks before beginning the MTI. When you've got a solid 267 | > brain dump of tasks, open an issue, write a basic description and highlight 268 | > the specification area, and _then_ go into the codebase to find where to point 269 | > the issue to. 270 | 271 | ##### Displaying Progress in the MTI 272 | 273 | You can think of the MTI as a dashboard that displays the progress of every issue associated with a milestone. This, in turn, shows the status of _entire_ milestones, and subsequently, the _entire_ deliverable. For instance, here's an example of how an MTI might progress: 274 | 275 | > ### Legend 276 | > 277 | > ⬜️ - Hasn't started
278 | > 📝 - In Progress
279 | > 🔄 - Code Review / QA
280 | > 🚫 - Blocked
281 | > ✅ - Complete (merged into `dev`)
282 | > 283 | > ### Milestones 284 | > 285 | > 🏁 - BETA :: September 15, 2017
286 | > 🚀 - LAUNCH :: November 1, 2017
287 | > 288 | > | Milestone | Issue | PR | Description | Progress | 289 | > | :-------: | :----: | :----: | :--------------------------------------- | :------: | 290 | > | 🏁 | #12650 | #12666 | Empty Interactions Panel UI Refactor | ✅ | 291 | > | 🏁 | #12675 | #12685 | AnimationList Component | 🔄 | 292 | > | 🏁 | #12655 | #12746 | Convert ActionListConfig to InteractionStep | 📝 | 293 | > | 🚀 | #12653 | #12784 | Create InteractionConfiguration Component | 🚫 | 294 | > | 🚀 | #12686 | ??? | Create all Timed InteractionConfiguration items: Mouse Tap, Mouse Hover, Scroll Into View, Page Load, Page Scrolled | ⬜️ | 295 | 296 | The above gives a PM (or, anyone concerned) a quick way to gauge the progress of a project. For instance, one can see the BETA milestone is about 75% complete, and since tasks are broken into roughly **1-5 day** increments, it is easy to tell if a milestone is going `off-track` (See: [Help! We are behind schedule!](#help-we-are-behind-schedule)). 297 | 298 | It is up to the Tech Lead to maintain the status of the above MTI, though they may wish to delegate updating the status of each line item to the team member responsible for completing that issue. The important elements to display for each task are 299 | 300 | - Its Milestone and date 301 | - Its Issue 302 | - Its Pull Request 303 | - A short description 304 | - Its Progress 305 | 1. Hasn't Started 306 | 2. In Progress 307 | 3. Code Review 308 | 4. Blocked 309 | 5. Complete (merged in `dev`) 310 | 311 | > **Pro Tip:** If a single MTI grows too long and too unwieldy, it's fine to split them into separate MTIs. 312 | 313 | ##### Milestones (a.k.a. Deliverables) 314 | 315 | The Tech Lead must keep their Product Manager (or Engineering Manager if no Product Manager is assigned) updated on how well they are tracking against Milestones, as well as provide weekly All Hands updates (See: [How do I provide status reports to All Hands and Lattice?](#how-do-i-provide-status-reports-to-all-hands-and-lattice)). These Milestones and their respective tasks are determined by the Tech Lead and confirmed by a Product Manager, Engineering Manager, or otherwise. 316 | 317 | A "Milestone" is 318 | 319 | * A _major_ deliverable, usually with a six-week timeline (See: [How long should projects take?](#how-long-should-projects-take)) 320 | * Responsible for driving a series of tasks/issues, and is complete when _all_ tasks/issues have been pushed to production 321 | * Named according to the type of deliverable, e.g. Phase, Launch, Version (See: [Types of Milestones](#types-of-milestones)) 322 | * Assigned a deadline date 323 | 324 | The planning structure for a large project should only ever consist of two levels: Milestone -> Tasks. The Milestones themselves will be under the purview of a Feature, such as Rich Content Editor or Interactions 2.0, which may take months (or years) to complete. Milestones are "chunks" of continuously delivered work, and are usually accomplished sequentially. It is rare to have a team work on Milestones in parallel unless they are highly interrelated, though some overlap is expected when moving from one Milestone to another. 325 | 326 | > **Pro Tip:** Be incredibly wary of scope increases. Scope creep is real. 327 | > _Always_ use a Milestone's date as the affected factor when scope changes, and 328 | > clearly communicate the new scope's impact. 329 | 330 | For more info on Milestone timing, See: [How long should projects take?](#how-long-should-projects-take) 331 | 332 | ##### Types of Milestones 333 | 334 | Milestones are _major_ deliverables and are _functionally_ the same to each other, though they can be _semantically_ separated into Phases, Launches, and Versions. It's important not to dwell too much on these differences, but it can be helpful to name them accordingly for Product Managers and Marketing. 335 | 336 | | Term | Definition | 337 | | ------- | ---------------------------------------- | 338 | | Phase | Anything Marketing doesn't need to let users know about. These are nuts and bolts type milestones that don't introduce any major experiential changes to users. Phases take on the name of their goal, e.g. "IX2 Flux Integration", or "Storybook Components for Interactions 2.0". | 339 | | Launch | Anything Marketing *needs* to know about so they can drum up the eyeballs. This includes alphas, betas, and official launches, and will require many weeks of lead time to prep marketing materials. | 340 | | Version | This is another version of a launch for a feature *that has already launched*. So, for IX2, after the initial launch, we labeled the subsequent launches IX2.0.1, and so on. | 341 | 342 | ##### Task toward unknowns 343 | 344 | Milestones deadlines are hard to estimate, but Webflow asks that the Tech 345 | Lead do their best to place a _realistic_ date on them. This constraint might 346 | seem limiting at first, but we treat deadlines more as focal points (with 347 | mitigation strategies) than immovable _dead_-lines (See: [Help! We are behind schedule!](#help-we-are-behind-schedule)). 348 | 349 | Rather than rely on a Milestone's hazy, fog-covered finish line, it's much better to "task toward unknowns". Our features tend to forge new industry 350 | territory, the likes of which the JavaScript world has never seen, so it's often 351 | impossible to have a crystal ball view of upcoming work. Some of it will be 352 | clear, sure, but there will invariably be a portion of a specification that 353 | causes the best Tech Lead to scratch her head and say "Um, I have no idea how 354 | long this will take." Clear the haze. Shorten the forecast by breaking down the unknown into small tasks designed to uncover the unknown as soon as possible. 355 | 356 | Be adamant when prioritizing your tasks. Pivot when more information arises. Let your PM know on which of these tasks your team is currently working. Stacking these unknowns is how _actual_ Milestone deadlines are discovered. 357 | 358 | > **Pro Tip:** Sometimes new tasks arise from uncovering unknowns that weren't outlined in the original MTI. It's fine to include new tasks if they are absolutely necessary to complete the Milestone. Be sure to inform your Manager if they alter the Milestone's deadline. 359 | 360 | #### Meetings 361 | 362 | The Tech Lead should organize one ~30-minute project meeting per week, 363 | preferably at the week's start and early in the day, whose agenda looks like the 364 | following: 365 | 366 | 1. Perform a Mini-retrospective that asks: 367 | 1. What went well last week? 368 | 2. What didn't go so well last week? 369 | 3. How can we improve what didn't go well? 370 | 2. Ask each team member: 371 | 1. What's the current status of your task? 372 | 2. Are you blocked? 373 | 3. How can I help unblock you? [**Tech Lead**] 374 | 3. Assign new tasks to each team member 375 | 4. Communicate the project's status to the Product Manager 376 | 5. Answer any questions and engage in light and witty banter 377 | 378 | Limit team-wide meetings to this one weekly event. Hopping on a Slack call or a 379 | code pairing session should not be considered a "meeting" and should be employed 380 | liberally where needed. 381 | 382 | #### Weekly Status 383 | 384 | Every engineer is asked to report their `on-track` / `off-track` status each day 385 | to #status-frontend or #status-backend accordingly, and it is on the Tech Lead to confirm those daily (a Slack "reaction" :thumbsup: is always nice). This holds each engineer accountable to their weekly tasks and it allows the Tech Lead to step in if a task goes wildly `off-track` or beyond 5 days. 386 | 387 | > **Pro Tip:** Help your team members to focus on _one to three_ concurrent tasks at a time. Any more than that is difficult to track, so offer to help reduce or combine their tasks and figure out what's causing the fragmentation. 388 | 389 | #### Agile? Project Managers? 390 | 391 | You may be wondering, "Where's the methodology behind this way of managing 392 | projects?". It might resemble Agile, with its two-week forecasts and weekly 393 | "Scrum"-like meetings, but it lacks burn-down charts and Scrum Masters. While we 394 | love the agile philosophy, aim to move quickly, and pivot where possible, 395 | Webflow does not subscribe to a specific methodology. This is what works for us 396 | right now, and we are always open to reevaluating it as we go. :thumbsup: 397 | 398 | ## What are the different types of teams a Tech Lead can manage? 399 | 400 | Webflow arranges its talented engineers into _Action_ and _Permanent_ teams for 401 | which a single Tech Lead will be responsible. 402 | 403 | | Team | Description | 404 | | :-------- | ---------------------------------------- | 405 | | Action | Assemble around a feature (or prototype) and disband on its completion. | 406 | | Permanent | Assemble around a domain problem and continually work on it without ever disbanding, e.g. the Performance and Stabilization teams. Tech Leads and Team Members can rotate through these teams. | 407 | 408 | #### What size team should I expect? 409 | 410 | Team sizes vary (they can even be a league of one), but the general rule is a 411 | team will include _three_ members, including the Tech Lead. It is relatively 412 | easy to manage relationships with two individuals engaged in solving the same 413 | problems, but once someone is asked to manage a third, or fourth, or fifth 414 | relationship, the permutations of communication potentials grow drastically. 415 | This isn't isolated to the Tech Lead's relationship, but also to how the members 416 | of the team communicate with each other. Larger teams _can_ work, but the rule 417 | of three seems to be a good starting point. 418 | 419 | This isn't to say a _team_ must have only _three_ members. An Action Team might 420 | contain seven members, including a Tech Lead who can divide the team into two 421 | groups (of three) and focus each group on parallel tasks _within_ the feature's 422 | overall scope. It is then up to the Tech Lead to create a single Team Lead for 423 | each group and hold them accountable for their group's work. Bear in mind that 424 | each group should be focused on _feature_ efficiency and collaborate on solving 425 | problems _with_ each other so as to reduce the blocking latency commonly 426 | encountered when parallelizing individual resources. 427 | 428 | The aforementioned team structures can be comprised of Back-End _and_ Front-End 429 | engineers. Webflow wants to blur the lines between these engineering 430 | disciplines, as well as non-engineering disciplines, e.g. designers. Forming 431 | cross-discipline teams is the end-game for feature efficiency; whether or not 432 | you pursue it is up to you and the demands of your project. 433 | 434 | #### Team Efficiency and Organization 435 | 436 | There are two ways of designing a team. One of "Feature" efficiency, which 437 | favors groups that collaborate on solving closely related problems _together_, 438 | and another of "Resource" efficiency, which favors individuals working on wholly 439 | unrelated tasks that run in parallel. Both have their strengths, but we ask that 440 | the Tech Lead optimize for _feature_ efficiency where possible. See 441 | [Flow vs. Resource Efficiency](https://www.jrothman.com/mpd/agile/2015/09/resource-efficiency-vs-flow-efficiency-part-1-seeing-your-system/) 442 | for more information. [We've replaced "Flow" with "Feature" in this article as 443 | it's easy to conflate Flow with the "Flow State"] 444 | 445 | > **Pro Tip:** Parallelization requires well-defined scope. If you are leading a 446 | > project that is iterating on design specs _while_ iterative development 447 | > occurs, it is best to only optimize for _feature_ efficiency. 448 | 449 | ## Help! We are behind schedule! 450 | 451 | It's cool. Really. Go grab some coffee, or get some sun, and return to your desk 452 | when your inner self reflects the same glossy sheen as a calm pond (See: [How can I stay "centered"?](#how-can-i-stay-centered)). 453 | 454 | Pretty much every project encounters some unknown that threatens its delivery 455 | date. Instead of desperately trying to avoid this, try to _expect_ this. You 456 | need to build it into your estimates (See: [How can I make better estimates?](#how-can-i-make-better-estimates)). 457 | Recognize this as absolutely normal, and take comfort in the solidarity that all 458 | Tech Leads experience it. This is what separates the _good_ from the _great_. 459 | 460 | We equate missing deadlines with heart wrenching guilt. This is a morale 461 | killer. Morale is your team's most precious resource. Instead, it's best to 462 | think of "delays" as "deferred progress", and to pitch it as such. Webflow 463 | understands Software Development is tough, so we've got some tricks up our 464 | sleeves to help you frame missing a deadline as _progress_. 465 | 466 | #### A Word on Project Management 467 | 468 | Before we dive into our _Rework / Defer / Abandon_ deadline model, there are two 469 | key project management concepts that will help you understand _why_ we follow 470 | it. 471 | 472 | First, it is important to emphasize the need to _tie deliverables to fixed 473 | dates_. Progress is hard to measure without a visible target. We must measure 474 | progress toward something, even if that something is just a guess. Progress is 475 | the lifeblood of motivation. 476 | 477 | Second, there are four levers you can pull to help get a project back 478 | `on-track`. They are as follows 479 | 480 | | Lever | Description | 481 | | --------- | ---------------------------------------- | 482 | | Time | When the deliverable is launched | 483 | | Quality | The craftsmanship put into the deliverable | 484 | | Resources | The number of participants contributing to the deliverable | 485 | | Scope | The breadth of what the deliverable is and does | 486 | 487 | These four levers can change as a project evolves. They are the tools 488 | effective Project Managers reason with. That said, Webflow produces the highest 489 | possible quality product and will not sacrifice Quality for Time, Resources, or 490 | Scope, so we only have those three levers available to us, which we will 491 | expand on in the next section. 492 | 493 | > **Pro Tip:** The Tech Lead role is often an engineer's first foray into trying 494 | > to meet the bottom-line needs of a business. Their decisions must be framed in 495 | > the question: "How does this keep the company healthy?" If you've little or no 496 | > business acumen, have a look at 497 | > [Josh Kaufman's The Personal MBA](https://www.amazon.com/Personal-MBA-Master-Art-Business/dp/1591845572/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1513878441&sr=1-1&keywords=The+Personal+MBA). 498 | > It's a fantastic crash-course in modern business practices and will help you 499 | > make better decisions when considering Webflow's needs and the needs of your 500 | > team. 501 | 502 | #### Rework / Defer / Abandon (Mitigation Strategies for Deferred Progress) 503 | 504 | You have three options when confronted with a threatened deadline that should be 505 | discussed with your Product Manager. Here they are in sorted by order of 506 | consideration: 507 | 508 | * **Rework** the deliverable 509 | * **Defer** the deadline 510 | * **Abandon** the project 511 | 512 | ##### Rework 513 | 514 | Rework consists of asking two questions: 515 | 516 | 1. Can we add resources to the project to meet the deadline? 517 | 2. Can we change the scope of the deliverable to meet the deadline? 518 | 519 | Questioning your resources and scope should be the first tool when evaluating 520 | how to mitigate a missed deadline. Ask first if more resources can help the 521 | situation, though this is usually **_not the case_** unless the project was 522 | initially understaffed to begin with. Adding late-stage resources can 523 | [even push the deadline out farther](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Mythical_Man-Month)! 524 | So, your next tool is to reduce scope. 525 | 526 | > **Pro Tip:** Reducing scope is often the #1 choice when trying to hit a deadline 527 | > while still providing business value. The likelihood a project requires more 528 | > resources to hit a deadline is probably in the 10% range. Reduce scope 90% of 529 | > the time. 530 | 531 | Reducing scope is usually feasible. As passionate software developers, we tend 532 | to bite off more than we can chew. This is your opportunity to use a fork and 533 | knife to slice up the deliverable into bite-sized pieces with more realistic 534 | expectations, and for you to communicate those expectations to other key 535 | stakeholders. 536 | 537 | ##### Defer 538 | 539 | If scope cannot be reduced, and adding resources isn't an option, the next 540 | _best_ option is to _push the deadline out_. Yes, you heard it right. It's to 541 | _move_ the deadline. "What's the point in deadlines, then, if they can just be 542 | moved all willy-nilly?" Well, we do our best to avoid moving deadlines, but 543 | sometimes it happens, and that's totally okay. Too much is at stake when we 544 | attempt to hit an unrealistic deadline, and among them are team burnout, poor 545 | product quality, reduced morale, and more. 546 | 547 | The important idea here is _not to lose sight of a delivery date_. That's all 548 | that matters. Projects will fall into limbo when a missed deadline stays (ahem) 549 | dead and the project careens toward the unknown. This is _worse_ than moving 550 | the deadline, so move it! 551 | 552 | ##### Abandon 553 | 554 | The final and rarest option is to abandon the project altogether. 555 | Consider this if you (or another stakeholder) discover the deliverable will 556 | negatively impact the company. Scrap it! Focus on _efficient_ work, not 557 | _productive_ work. 558 | 559 | ##### _An optional fourth strategy:_ Watch it closely 560 | 561 | There is a fourth option, too, when the threat of a missed deadline is no more 562 | than a subtle twang in your gut, and that is to **_watch it closely_**. Pay 563 | special attention when your intuition whispers something's off. It's important 564 | to get ahead of the problem, and this should be the moment where you 565 | preemptively strike. Make your manager aware of it. 566 | 567 | > **Pro Tip:** The key to making your and everyone else's life easier is to 568 | > master the art of _managing expectations_. It is wise to under-promise and 569 | > over-deliver as long as you remain candid and honest. Always state what is 570 | > true. Announce worries about missing deadlines or losing a key resource. 571 | > Announce wins about finishing work earlier than expected. Be as truthful as 572 | > you are skeptical about unknowns. 573 | 574 | ## How can I make better estimates? 575 | 576 | At the time of this writing, no person has discovered a magic eight-ball 577 | estimation method for predicting software development timelines. Some might try 578 | to sell you snake-oil and tell you otherwise, and some might say it's downright 579 | impossible. It's best to accept that software estimation is rarely accurate and 580 | work from there. This is at the core of the Agile Philosophy: iterate and 581 | discover, then deliver and improve. It's an art of discovery, not an art of 582 | delivery. Webflow follows an iterative process (See: [What's expected of me when managing a team?](#whats-expected-of-me-when-managing-a-team)) as outlined in other sections, so estimation is important, but 583 | not as important as uncovering unknowns. That said, here are some tactics to 584 | help estimate tasks: 585 | 586 | #### Pad estimates for the unexpected 587 | 588 | Development rarely unfolds as planned. Instead of _precise_ estimates, give your 589 | best guesstimate for a given task and multiply it times **_four_**, _especially_ 590 | if that task involves uncovering an unknown. That might sound crazy — and 591 | sometimes it is; experience helps Tech Leads refine that equation — but it's a 592 | good starting point that leaves room for dastardly unknowns. 593 | 594 | #### Add up tasks toward unknowns 595 | 596 | Once you've created your Master Tracking Issue (See: [What's expected of me when managing a team?](#whats-expected-of-me-when-managing-a-team)), you can get a sense of how long the project might take. Be 597 | sure to identify which tasks are associated with _discovery_ (finding unknowns), 598 | and which have more concrete definitions. Once you've completed all the 599 | discovery tasks, you will have a _much_ better sense of the deadline's 600 | accuracy. 601 | 602 | #### The 80/20 Rule 603 | 604 | It is easy to overlook time-consuming nuances that slow the final 20% of a 605 | project. When you view your project holistically, break it up using the 80/20 606 | rule, and consider that the final 20% of a project might account for _another_ 607 | 80% of the overall timeline. There are a number of reasons for this, but the 608 | final 20% is often filled with polishing the deliverable, and complex features 609 | require polish for _every_ feature and edge case, which compounds near the 610 | project's end. 611 | 612 | What does this mean for you? Just treat the 80% point in your project as the 613 | halfway marker. That will align expectations against the added effort nuance 614 | prescribes. 615 | 616 | #### Never forget QA 617 | 618 | When you estimate deadlines, set a date for _code completion_ so that QA can 619 | have time to discover any bugs or UX issues. Your estimates must consider this 620 | extra phase, and to consider QA's current workload. 621 | 622 | #### Cooldown: Bug fixes after delivery 623 | 624 | On delivery, plan to leave some time to fix any immediate bugs before starting new milestones. The amount of time can vary based on the deliverable's complexity, and a week is usually a good window. This is an opportunity to give your team some downtime before leaping into the next set of tasks, and it gives you a chance to tighten up the next milestone's MTI. 625 | 626 | ## How long should projects take? 627 | 628 | While the scope of a feature might require months and months of work, its 629 | versioned _milestones_ should aim for six-week timelines, including QA, so each 630 | milestone is _code complete_ around four weeks. This allows Marketing to 631 | evaluate a _proven_ set of features and put them in their pocket, so to speak, 632 | and queue them for announcement based on market trends. Breaking a large feature 633 | into six-week timelines can appear challenging at first, but we ask this for a 634 | few important reasons: 635 | 636 | 1. It is much easier to reason about smaller scope and timelines 637 | 2. It allows projects to pivot if its business value somehow proves meager 638 | 3. It allows groups of three to move faster 639 | 640 | A six-month project's _major_ Milestones may then look like this: 641 | 642 | 1. Alpha Launch (6 weeks) 643 | 2. Beta Launch (6 weeks) 644 | 3. Feature Launch v1.0 (6 weeks) 645 | 4. Feature Launch v1.0.1 (6 weeks) :checkered_flag: 646 | 647 | ## Should I branch off of feature branches or not? 648 | 649 | Not.* 650 | 651 | Do not branch off of `feature-branches`. Tech Leads should aim to have their team commit their `feature-branches` directly to `dev` rather than to another `feature-branch` that is kept up-to-date with `dev`. Long-lived `feature-branches` often introduce code dependencies and other programming 652 | patterns that require cherry-picking and other _hard-to-keep-in-sync-with-other-branches_ issues. Instead, the Tech Lead should place their project behind a *Feature Flag* and continually merge it with `dev`. 653 | 654 | To summarize, Webflow has two _main_ branches: 655 | 656 | 1. `dev` 657 | 2. `master` 658 | 659 | And a `feature-branch` 660 | 661 | 1. May branch from: `dev` 662 | 2. Must merge back into: `dev` 663 | 664 | ##### Feature flags 665 | 666 | We encourage all of our engineers to push code every day (if possible), and to 667 | prevent a new feature from stepping on the toes of our users, we suggest Tech 668 | Leads place those new features behind a "Feature Flag" that can be toggled with 669 | the 670 | ShortcutHelper. 671 | 672 | > *Okay, there _might_ be a case for a long-lived branch to which other branches commit. And by "might", we mean maybe 1% of the time where we must refactor a critical, widely-used portion of our infrastructure. So, basically never. :smile: Should the need for such a branch arise, please inform the _entire_ team, your product manager, and your engineering manager of your intent. You may be surprised about how the work could be organized into smaller, continually merged branches. 673 | 674 | ## How can I stay "centered"? 675 | 676 | Staying "centered" means you take care of yourself first and foremost and find a 677 | "happy" place from which to approach solving problems. Life is about performing 678 | as much meaningful work as it is about performing meaningful _human activities_. 679 | This means you will need to take a break from your daily tasks and engage in 680 | activities that keep you fresh and focused. Does reading a book help you? Does 681 | binge-watching some Netflix? Does exercise? Fresh air? Find a routine that keeps 682 | you on point in work _and_ in life, and don't be afraid to express those needs 683 | to your manager, and never fear to make time for them, even if it feels like it's 684 | cutting into your productivity. 685 | 686 | If you aren't centered, your team won't be centered. Lead by example. 687 | 688 | ## How do I stay organized? 689 | 690 | New Tech Leads feel overwhelmed, and if they don't, then they probably aren't 691 | performing some part of their job. :sweat_smile: (Okay, fine, some of us may be 692 | able to take the role in stride, but it's uncomfortable for most). The key 693 | to mitigating the dreaded stress of _too much_, is to learn the art of time 694 | management. This can take shape in many ways, and it boils down to your own 695 | preferences. If you've never picked up a book on time management, we recommend 696 | starting with 697 | [David Allen's Getting Things Done](ttps://www.amazon.com/Getting-Things-Done-Stress-Free-Productivity/dp/0143126563/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1513878379&sr=1-1&keywords=Getting+Things+Done). 698 | It's a great first step to learning how to transfer the cacophony of noise in 699 | your head elsewhere. If his method doesn't work for you, seek to find another 700 | and share it when you do. 701 | 702 | ## How much should I expect to code? 703 | 704 | This depends on the project, but a good estimate is that you will code 30% of 705 | the time (if not fewer), _review_ code 30% of the time (if not more), and serve 706 | your team with your remaining time. 707 | 708 | #### Code Reviews 709 | 710 | Since you are ultimately responsible for the quality of the deliverable, you 711 | will want to review and sign off on every PR. This can be incredibly time 712 | consuming on larger teams, so it's good to encourage your team to review _each 713 | other's_ code. That said, expect to perform _a lot_ of code reviews, and look at 714 | them as an opportunity to mentor junior team members, and with senior team 715 | members, to keep you on top of your skills. 716 | 717 | ## How do I provide status reports to All Hands and Lattice? 718 | 719 | Every Thursday at 11am PST (as of this writing), Webflow holds an "All Hands" meeting where 720 | the management team relays the status of all of Webflow's ongoing projects as well as large company goals and initiatives. It is the Tech Lead's responsibility to provide a progress update for their 721 | project to the Webflow Project Tracker Google document _prior_ to this 722 | meeting. This document is shared in the #all-hands channel in Slack. A template for the updates is located at the end of the Google document. Please follow it accordingly. The items in the template are 723 | 724 | 1. TDLR, or a brief blurb on the project's state of affairs. 725 | 1. MILESTONE ON-TRACK/OFF-TRACK, where you provide the track updates for each active milestone, their percent progress, and the percent change from the previous week (these are guesstimates). Also list out the next two weeks of tasks the team will work on and their expected delivery dates. 726 | 1. KEY DECISIONS, where you mention any big key decisions that lead to timeline changes, scope changes, and anything that relates to support/marketing, or change in resources. 727 | 1. RISKS, UNKNOWNS, AND BLOCKERS, where you mention any risks, unknowns, or blockers that appeared since the last week. 728 | 729 | #### Lattice 730 | 731 | Webflow uses Lattice to help track higher level company goals. In addition to your weekly All Hands updates, we will ask that you also update any Lattice goals that are assigned to you. If you do not have an account, reach out to your Engineering Manager for help. 732 | 733 | ## How do I keep my team motivated? 734 | 735 | Engendering a sense of progress, and giving sufficient room for creative problem 736 | solving without dictating _how_, motivates humans more than money, or any carrot 737 | and stick. We are intrinsically motivated creatures with simple heuristics: If 738 | you place realistic goals in front of us, the tools to do it, and a sense of 739 | purpose for why we should, we will move mountains. 740 | 741 | Science has given us some key insights into what motivates humans. Many of the 742 | concepts in this document are built on top of those insights, so you've already 743 | been employing tactics to keep your team motivated! That said, here are some of 744 | the underlying mechanics of our process. 745 | 746 | #### Autonomy, Mastery, and Purpose 747 | 748 | Daniel Pink, in his book 749 | [Drive](https://www.amazon.com/Drive-Surprising-Truth-About-Motivates/dp/1594484805/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1513878328&sr=1-1&keywords=drive+daniel+pink), 750 | dispelled the myth that humans are extrinsically motivated, or that is to say 751 | motivated by _external_ factors such as money or nicer offices, job titles, etc. 752 | Instead, he found that we are motivated by _internal_ (or intrinsic) 753 | factors, such as a being given a sense of belonging, opportunities to grow 754 | skills, and to do so on our own terms. These three intrinsic factors can be 755 | boiled down to Autonomy, Mastery, and Purpose, and are excellent starting points 756 | for dissecting the basics of motivation. 757 | 758 | Part of providing these key motivators falls on Webflow's shoulders, but a 759 | clever Tech Lead can use them to great effect, too. So, every week ask yourself 760 | these questions: 761 | 762 | 1. Am I giving my team enough room to solve problems on their own terms? Am I 763 | dishing out commands when I should be providing direction and intent? 764 | [**Autonomy**] 765 | 2. Am I placing my team members on the right tasks that can help them grow? 766 | [**Mastery**] 767 | 3. Am I aligning _why_ we are building this feature with _how_ Webflow wants to 768 | help the world? [**Purpose**] 769 | 770 | #### Provide Feedback 771 | 772 | Kim Scott, a Harvard grad that served as an executive at Google and Apple, sums 773 | up how to best manage the relationships and expectations with each individual on 774 | your team in her book 775 | [Radical Candor](https://www.amazon.com/Radical-Candor-Kick-Ass-Without-Humanity/dp/1250103509/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1513952244&sr=8-1&keywords=radical+candor). 776 | It turns out we _shouldn't_ water down how we feel and what we say to each 777 | other, but instead we should frame tough discussions in a personal and caring 778 | way. The basic premise of this axiom is to "Care personally, Challenge 779 | Directly", which means you must _empathize_ with your team and demonstrate to 780 | them that you care about their welfare, but still provide them critical feedback 781 | (that might hurt). 782 | 783 | By providing critical feedback early and often, _and_ by demonstrating how much 784 | you care for people, you will sidestep catastrophic challenges later down the 785 | road. Also, this doesn't just apply to _negative_ feedback, but also _positive_ 786 | feedback, too. Both are crucial. Consider picking up her book for more 787 | information. 788 | 789 | > **Pro Tip:** The way in which we _frame_ feedback can make all the difference to how well it is received. Instead of attacking personal flaws, highlight the _behavior_ that lead to the feedback. Consider using the Situation, Behavior, Impact model for such framing. It works like this: Bring up the situation where the behavior occurred, highlight the behavior, then mention the impact, e.g. "During today's meeting, you interrupted Brian multiple times, and made Brian feel like he couldn't speak up until the meeting's end where he presented the winning idea. This made the meeting longer than it needed to be.". Here's a [great guide](https://www.mindtools.com/pages/article/situation-behavior-impact-feedback.htm) if you'd like to learn more. 790 | 791 | #### Flow 792 | 793 | It's important to stress the need for each of your team members to have ample 794 | opportunity to enter Flow. This, in and of itself, is enough to keep most people 795 | happy at work _and_ in life. It's such a critical factor in motivation and in 796 | work _efficiency_ that we've listed it here as a reminder. 797 | 798 | ## I have an under-performing member on my team. What do I do? 799 | 800 | Have you heard the old adage, "There are no bad employees, only bad managers?" 801 | Well, it's mostly true. Webflow hires talented engineers, so before you 802 | jump to any conclusions about what's wrong with an under performer, make sure 803 | you are servicing your team 100% (See: [How do I keep my team motivated?](#how-do-i-keep-my-team-motivated)). 804 | 805 | Each team member must be sufficiently motivated through ample opportunity for 806 | producing meaningful progress, autonomously, with room for mastery, and with a 807 | sense of purpose. Providing continual feedback is also an essential ingredient. 808 | 809 | You also must consider a team member's _inner work life._ It's okay to ask, "How 810 | are things? Everything all right outside of work?" You _should_ ask these 811 | questions often, but remember not to pry. Give your team members room to discuss 812 | personal issues while remembering they are _personal_. 813 | 814 | If you've done your best to foster the right environment for your team member 815 | to do their best work, and they _still_ aren't meeting your expectations, have a 816 | chat with your manager about what to do next. 817 | 818 | ## How can I avoid burning my team out? 819 | 820 | If a team can't meet a deadline, it's a _management_ problem, and not the team's 821 | problem. This means that, somewhere along the way, the project didn't go as 822 | planned and a course wasn't corrected. So, **_Rule Number 1_** to avoid burnout 823 | is "Manage the project and expectations well" (See: [Help! We are behind schedule!](#help-we-are-behind-schedule)). 824 | 825 | **_Rule number 2_**: Never ask more of your team than you would ask of yourself 826 | (and you mustn't ask yourself to work nights and weekends). Other organizations 827 | might ask their teams to pull longer hours when the going gets rough. This is a 828 | laser-focused bullet train to attrition and long-term inefficiencies. Webflow 829 | cares deeply about its team, not only professionally, but personally, so we must 830 | do our best to _manage our time well_. 831 | 832 | #### Crunch Time 833 | 834 | Oh, crunch time, you've haunted the best teams, and you are oh so hard to avoid. 835 | 836 | As a Tech Lead, you will invariably run up against a deadline that's _just_ 837 | within reach and may require slightly more effort to push it out in the last 838 | stretch. By _slightly_, we mean your team might need to put in a few more hours 839 | over their 40-hour work week. Yes, that's right. Our version of "crunch" isn't 840 | crazy hours that bleed into the evening or weekend. It's just a _few_. When 841 | people operate at their peak performance, where they engage in the flow state 842 | 2-4 hours a day, _they are incapable_ of more work without drastic consequences. 843 | They should already be operating at peak efficiency, and asking more of them has 844 | severe diminishing returns and a detrimental impact to them personally, _and_ to 845 | Webflow as a company. 846 | 847 | Crunch time is real. Crunch time can be a symptom of poor management. We must do 848 | our best to limit these hyperactive periods to one or two times a year. 849 | 850 | ## Recommended Books 851 | 852 | [Flow](https://www.amazon.com/Flow-Psychology-Experience-Perennial-Classics/dp/0061339202/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1513878317&sr=8-1&keywords=flow) 853 | 854 | [Deep Work](https://www.amazon.com/Deep-Work-Focused-Success-Distracted/dp/1455586692/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1515804941&sr=8-1&keywords=deep+work) 855 | 856 | [Drive](https://www.amazon.com/Drive-Surprising-Truth-About-Motivates/dp/1594484805/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1513878328&sr=1-1&keywords=drive+daniel+pink) 857 | 858 | [Leaders Eat Last](https://www.amazon.com/Leaders-Eat-Last-Together-Others/dp/1591848016/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1513878339&sr=1-1&keywords=Leaders+Eat+Last) 859 | 860 | [The Manager's Path](https://www.amazon.com/Managers-Path-Leaders-Navigating-Growth/dp/1491973897/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1513878350&sr=1-1&keywords=The+Manager%27s+Path) 861 | 862 | [The Progress Principle](https://www.amazon.com/Progress-Principle-Ignite-Engagement-Creativity/dp/142219857X/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1513878365&sr=1-1&keywords=The+Progress+Principle) 863 | 864 | [Getting Things Done](https://www.amazon.com/Getting-Things-Done-Stress-Free-Productivity/dp/0143126563/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1513878379&sr=1-1&keywords=Getting+Things+Done) 865 | 866 | [Getting To Yes](https://www.amazon.com/Getting-Yes-Negotiating-Agreement-Without/dp/0143118757/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1513878391&sr=1-1&keywords=Getting+To+Yes) 867 | 868 | [Radical Candor](https://www.amazon.com/Radical-Candor-Kick-Ass-Without-Humanity/dp/1250103509/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1513952244&sr=8-1&keywords=radical+candor) 869 | 870 | [Search Inside Yourself](https://www.amazon.com/Search-Inside-Yourself-Unexpected-Achieving-ebook/dp/B0070XF474/ref=sr_1_1?s=digital-text&ie=UTF8&qid=1513878403&sr=1-1&keywords=Search+Inside+Yourself) 871 | 872 | [Now Discover Your Strengths](https://www.amazon.com/Discover-Your-Strengths-Marcus-Buckingham/dp/0743201140/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1513878430&sr=8-1&keywords=Now+Discover+Your+Strengths) 873 | 874 | [The Personal MBA](https://www.amazon.com/Personal-MBA-Master-Art-Business/dp/1591845572/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1513878441&sr=1-1&keywords=The+Personal+MBA) 875 | --------------------------------------------------------------------------------