Goals and baselines.
July 5, 2018 There is a moment in every company's growth when top-level planning shifts from discussing specific projects to talking about goals. This can be a very empowering moment because goals decouple the "what" from the "how", but it can also be a confusing transition for everyone involved: writing clear goals takes a bit of practice. This post takes a look at how to write effective goals and how to use them during planning.
Digg's v4 launch: an optimism born of necessity.
July 2, 2018 Digg was having a rough year. Our CEO left the day before I joined. Senior engineers ghosted out the door, dampening productivity and pulling their remaining friends. We had only one remaining shot at revival, launching our two-years in the making rewrite: Digg v4. It did not go as planned.
My rails for engineering leadership.
July 1, 2018 My experiences working with many new engineering leaders, combined with my own struggles starting out, have lead me to develop a somewhat unusual approach to leadership, centered on systems thinking and providing robust standard rails. This is a collection of my writings by theme, which hopes to introduce folks to how I think about engineering leadership.
Accelerate's definition of developer productivity.
June 27, 2018 Last week I read Accelerate by Nicole Forsgren et al, and I was particularly struck by their definition of developer productivity. I've written it up and a few related notes on attempting to apply it with the teams I support.
The briefest of media trainings.
June 24, 2018 When I was working at Digg, I was fortunate enough to get five minutes of media training, and I'm still learning from those five minute a decade later, so I've finally written them down.