Category: People
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Thinking beyond your team
Recently, couple of my teams decided to combine their codebases. It was essentially the same application, written twice over to do the UI for a wizard that went down 2 paths. Their backends do very different things. However, the customer sees a very similar interface. After having done the migration, there have been some gripes.…
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Do all software engineers care about customer impact?
I got into a fun chat with my friends about unengaged people at work. Do software engineers care about salary, solving a problem technically (discovery), shipping, or does that work has to have impact in someone else’s life? Of course, different people find joy in many points within this spectrum of outcomes. Interesting question surfaced:…
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Play the long game with people, the short game with outcomes
Recently, @henry sent over my 2020 performance evaluation I had shared with him. I was just about to go from Principal to Director role. I’m still trying to get good at this. Such wonderful advice from @AC. Thanks boss! Play the long game with people, the short game with outcomes. Knowing how much to push,…
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Car crashes and sticking to your lane
My team recently made the decision to not have QA role as part of experience engineering. There were a lot of complains on increased workload and not wanting to do testing, including some valid reasoning around testing not being an area of expertise. I’ve heard similar complaints when we spoke about creating dashboards and alerts…
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Building trust at work
Today I met a friend who has left his job only months after joining. His team lead had huge trust issues. Everything had to flow through him. He made all the decisions. There was a lot of frustration when people were proactive. I’m surprised he spent that long in this environment at all. However, it…
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Questions for Engineering Manager interviews
These are some questions I’ve had written down as we looked for a manager a while ago. Not an exhaustive list or the top 10. Just some questions worth thinking about. Hope this helps. Motivation Maker Mindset Feedback Conflict Resolution Mentorship Technology Morale Prioritisation
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Conflict Resolution
Recently, my friend shared this story over dinner. He is an iOS developer. He had been tasked to create a core component for his company’s design system: a container view that sweeps over other views. But there was an issue with how padding was applied. The designer in charge of the component insisted there should…
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Wise words from a tall man: playing the long game
Vithun with some words of wisdom: vithun.com/posts/playing-the-long-game …the longer the game one is in, the more they have got to be able to let something go. And not just let it go, but take it off their mind and start from blank for the next thing coming their way. Reacting to everything is something one…
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How do you communicate effectively in an asynchronously setting?
This post is part 2 of a series: Part 1: How to make remote work successful at your workplace? Write everything down. For an asynchronous setting, communication can’t happen live. Obvious — I know. However, we have such strong affinity towards live communication methods. Live chats tend to be “high resolution” in nature. We get…
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How to make remote work successful at your workplace?
You have to fully commit. The whole world is going “remote”. But, it is hard to tell if imany places are finding success in a more distributed working model. It is a tough transition. Much of it is because most workplaces continue to operate with the same way they’ve always had. Somethings need to change.…