Books
It Depends: Writing on Technology Leadership 2012-2022
Published by Unit Circle Press, 2024
Newsletter
Blog posts
- August 09, 2024
At least once a month, someone in a 1:1 or a mentoring session will ask me why I write these articles or give talks at conferences and want to know how they could get started themselves.
It can be daunting if you’ve never published something with your name attached or spoken in front of a group of your peers. The most common fear I hear is that people are afraid that they “have nothing to say” or relatively nothing to say that is new.
- Career
- Leadership
- August 11, 2023An examination of Logical vs Emotional empathy, and a guide on developing logical empathy when emotional empathy feels unnatural.
- Diversity
- Leadership
- September 17, 2022In my "Management and Systems Thinking" post, I advocate for systems thinking, which focuses on creating environments where teams can excel. This approach promotes creativity, autonomy, and resilience but requires clear communication and realistic timelines to gain organizational support. I also discuss the challenges when adopting this approach within a larger organization.
- Engineering Culture
- Leadership
- Management
- January 20, 2022This article is the final in my series on valuable performance reviews. This article discusses how to deliver the review and salary news to your report.
- Management
- December 18, 2021With your review ready, how do you decide on what salary changes to recommend?
- Management
- December 11, 2021Once you have collected your data, it is time to actually write the review. Part 2 in my series on writing performance reviews.
- Management
- December 04, 2021Writing reviews can be daunting for many, especially those with large groups or little experience. There are some things you can do that will make the process less onerous, no matter what format or schedule your company has.
- Management
- November 01, 2021What is the role of the CTO? What are the responsibilities of the job in a small or mid-sized technology company?
- Career
- Management
- September 09, 2021"Politics" and the techniques ascribed to it, when used in a work context, are inherently neither good nor bad. You can use politics for ill intent or good.
- Leadership
- Strategy
- July 26, 2021We may make dozens of small decisions each week without considering their implications. These decisions, however, unintentionally create policies for our team or our organization that we will have to contend with later.
- Engineering Culture
- Management
- July 20, 2021Plan your time, make your schedule match the plan, then review regularly to make sure you aren't getting off track. It has made a big difference to my own time management.
- Career
- Management
- May 17, 2021The tech industry has consistently demonstrated creativity and innovation in how work is structured. Companies like Automattic, GitLab, and others have long shared lessons on how fully distributed teams can be effective; decades of business books have addressed the challenges of leadership in co-located teams, but there isn’t as much published wisdom on leading partially distributed teams beyond the suggestion of treating them as fully distributed.
- Engineering Culture
- Leadership
- Management
- March 12, 2021By letting go of writing code, you open yourself up to excelling as a manager.
- Career
- Management
- Software Development
- January 08, 2021
Whether written or spoken, words are essential – both the general terms we use and those specific to our work.
The terms and phrases that are specific to our jobs or our companies create a vernacular.
- Engineering Culture
- Leadership
- December 30, 2020This article is about failure and everything I’ve learned from 28 years of failing (and succeeding) in the technology industry. Its basis is my talk of the same name that I first gave in 2015.
- Agile
- Engineering Culture
- Leadership
- Organizational Design
- Spotify
- November 29, 2020Build a culture that recognizes succession planning is critical not just for people leaving for other companies, but to help scale the company. Succession planning for scale requires looking outside the company as opposed to growing from within.
- Career
- Hiring
- Leadership
- November 03, 2020
Does starting a job search fill you with fear? Have you taken roles in the past that you’ve regretted?
When a recruiter or interviewer asks you the question – ‘What are you looking for?’ – do you draw a blank?
Using a deliberate process will allow you to answer these questions without fear.
- Career
- August 27, 2020
People leave jobs. If you are a manager, people will leave your team, just as someday you will leave your team.
When this happens it’s an opportunity, a chance to re-evaluate. While you might want to immediately pull out the job description that you used when hiring for the role last time, instead, take some time to think.
- Hiring
- Management
- Organizational Design
- June 22, 2020Understanding the value of the Agile Coach role in an organization and considerations when introducing that as a new role to an existing team.
- Agile
- Engineering Culture
- Hiring
- Organizational Design
- June 12, 2020Given current events, I hear from friends at tech companies that they are re-evaluating their lack of diversity. They want to improve. While companies have tried different tactics for years, we haven’t made much progress as an industry. If you are trying to address diversity for the first time, it is a daunting task. It is easy to try some things, make no progress, and then give up.
- Avvo
- Diversity
- Engineering Culture
- Hiring
- Leadership
- Management
- May 03, 2020If your company is starting to plan for getting back into your office, now is a good time for you to schedule a personal strategy day.
- Agile
- Leadership
- Management
- Strategy
- March 31, 2020The great thing about being in technology is that it is a growing field. There are tons of jobs, and companies are always complaining about how hard it is to find talent.That is until it isn’t.
- Career
- Hiring
- May 11, 2019If you have a good job, a job that pays you well, a team you like working with, and a mission you believe in, deciding to move on from that role is challenging.
- AstrumU
- Onfido
- February 04, 2019This article describes how we organize our work at AstrumU using a Scrumban process.
- Agile
- AstrumU
- December 09, 2018Many companies are interested in experimenting with self-selection as a way of organizing their teams. I see questions about the process often in online forums. While there are some excellent books and blog posts on the topic, I thought that I would share a self-selection exercise that we did at my last company, Avvo. It worked reasonably well and with relatively little drama. If you are considering a similar exercise, you might consider this approach.
- Avvo
- Engineering Culture
- Leadership
- Organizational Design
- May 31, 2018Over the years, I’ve tried many different ways to improve my focused time. Here are the things that work best for me.
- Leadership
- Management
- May 29, 2018A culture of continuous improvement is a culture where you are always open to improving how you build and deliver. You don't accept the status quo; you choose how to work and feel empowered to change it if it no longer makes sense. It is a people-first culture.
- Agile
- Avvo
- Engineering Culture
- Leadership
- Organizational Design
- Strategy
- March 19, 2018It's been awesome, but it's time for the next thing. I'm leaving Avvo.
- Avvo
- January 01, 2018What does it mean to live (and work) deliberately?
- Leadership
- Management
- Strategy
- October 05, 2017An approach to collectively determining the priorities for a team training program.
- Avvo
- Engineering Culture
- Leadership
- Management
- May 16, 2017Large technology companies should still work consistently to improve their diversity, but startups are much better suited to solve the diversity problem for the industry as a whole.
- Diversity
- Hiring
- Leadership
- Management
- May 20, 2016Today is my third anniversary at Spotify. It has been an amazing adventure and a time that I will treasure, but it is time for me to move…
- Spotify
- February 22, 2016The things we learned building a non-tradtional career pathing structure at a company which thrives on autonomy, servant leadership and strong teams
- Management
- Spotify
- February 15, 2016Spotify's first technology career pathing structure
- Management
- Spotify
- February 08, 2016Spotify launched a career path framework for individuals last year. Since then, I’ve spoken to leaders at several other companies about it. This seems to be a bit of a hot topic, so I’ve decided to write about our model and how we arrived at it. Hopefully, this may be useful to your company.
- Management
- Spotify
- March 23, 2015One of the most challenging parts of managing a traditional, hierarchical, organization is being responsive to new opportunities; especially those that require leveraging skillsets outside your own team. At Spotify, our organizational model allows us to create, dissolve, and remix teams with a minimal disruption to individuals or managers. This gives us tremendous abilities to address both temporary and long term opportunities.
- Agile
- Engineering Culture
- Leadership
- Management
- Organizational Design
- Spotify
- October 03, 2014Tips from eight years of managing in a layoff-prone company.
- Management
- August 10, 2014Can you really 'act like a startup' in the middle of a large, established, company?
- Management
- Organizational Design
- Strategy
- March 14, 2014I was in San Francisco in December for a conference. While I was there, I ended up connecting with a couple different companies who have been inspired by Henrik Kniberg’s whitepaper on Scaling Agile at Spotify, and who have been trying to do implement some of those ideas in their own companies.
- Engineering Culture
- Leadership
- Management
- Organizational Design
- Spotify
- January 11, 2010A collection of articles for developers to help them understand and learn the Pixel Bender language created by my team at Adobe.
- Adobe
- Software Development