Managing people is perhaps the most important and the same time most difficult part of an engineering leader's job. Technology is deterministic, there are runbooks and good practices that can be applied to various situations. People are different. More chaotic, driven by emotions and unique in their diversity of backgrounds. And yet, your job is to manage them and help them improve and grow. Make them proud of the work they do and make them feel like a part of something bigger. Articles in this category will help you do that :)
12 July 2024 by Damian Sosnowski
1:1 meetings are among the most popular managerial processes and people hold strong opinions on how to run those. No wonder that after I published my article on How To Run Effective 1:1 Meetings, many people reached out to discuss it. There is no one-size-fits-all solution for anything and 1:1s are no exception. So I've decided to summarise the most frequent and interesting questions in this short follow-up article.
8 June 2024 by Damian Sosnowski
Skip-level meetings are one of the most powerful tools for breaking leadership isolation. If done well, they allow you to gather priceless information about your teams' daily work and create relationships with people on the frontlines. But if done wrong, can backfire badly. Your actions can be easily perceived as a witch hunt and shatter the delicate trust between you, your managers and their reports. It's a delicate situation that needs to be played carefully. Let's explore how!
11 May 2024 by Damian Sosnowski
As a senior leader, you have a serious problem. You are out of touch. You are sitting on top of an Ivory Tower, too far from the frontline, isolated by your authority and extended communication lines. You are missing important bits of information, and without those, you are making mistakes. There is a way to escape the Ivory Tower and break the bubble. But it won’t be easy and you will have to get your hands dirty.
27 April 2024 by Damian Sosnowski
Face-to-face meetings are one of the most important management tools. Yet they are rarely done well. Nearly half of employees rate their 1:1 experience as sub-optimal, and many managers struggle with low team member engagement and low value from these meetings. Yet, when done well, 1:1s can make a team's work more efficient, build trust and improve employee well-being and engagement. Based on my years of experience as an engineering manager, I've written this opinionated guide to preparing and running 1:1s as a manager. If you feel your 1:1s are not where they should be, give it a try!
8 April 2024 by Damian Sosnowski
Conventional office work is dead, but the remote work revolution did not deliver on its promises and is now facing a backslash. What if there was a better way? A solution that will remove the painful pitfalls of the monolithic office and cure the loneliness of remote work. A new, dynamic, local-first office model that fosters a sense of belonging, collaboration and helps local communities. Too good to be true?