I have an idea that keeps haunting me now and then. To take a break from my current role (a leader of 60+ engineering unit) & go for a temporal (1 month?) contract assignment as an individual contributor - front-line software engineer. What has inspired such an idea? No, it's not about any kind of burn-out. Or because I'm fed up with my current work environment/role - quite the opposite. Have you heard about the idea of management by walking around (MBWA)? It has originated in Toyota's Kaizen culture - when Taiichi Ono has found out that to bring…
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This blog post is all about: why engineering leadership is both - engineering and leadership, why both strategic & tactical perspectives HAVE to be mixed (and what happens when they are not).This is one of THESE posts. No solutions, no conclusions, pure rant ... WAIT, wrong attitude. Not "rant", but "an unfavorable observation". Yeah ... That's better ;) I work in a mode I've nicknamed "continuous recruiting" - basically, if there's an person with relevant skills/experience and a correct attitude who could truly benefit a team, it's my duty (& pleasure) to build up a position/role for such a person…
Tym razem nietypowo, bo po polsku. Ale również w nietypowej sprawie i poza "standardowym" cyklem publikacji - otóż dzisiejszy blog post to ... ogłoszenie - z kategorii "praca szuka człowieka". Nie będzie to pierwszy raz - zdarzało już mi się publikować info o rekrutacji w tej formie i ... szczerze mówiąc wyniki były zastanawiająco pozytywne. Spróbujmy więc jeszcze raz ... W związku z rozwojem firmy, ale również zwiększeniem zakresu moich obowiązków ;D, poszukuję osoby na stanowisko ... (Software) Engineering ManagerParę suchych faktów na początek: firma/produkt: http://www.shedul.com/ i https://www.fresha.com/ (to dwa brandy tej samej platformy: SaaS + Marketplace)lokalizacja:…
There's bunch of questions that will probably never get answered ... who was behind killing JFK?is Elvis alive?why did your local football team suck that much in the yesterday game?... and ... what's the optimal work model for running software teams? ;PObviously the last one is much more thrilling than the previous ones (hehe), so lets stick to it today :) In fact it's not just a single question, but a ton of smaller ones that fit well together: cross-competence or competence-based teams?individual or team responsibility?what are the roles & their particular responsibilities?who's decisive in terms of priorities,…
TL;DR Even today, many treat leading teams as a modern form of livestock herding. Limit the information (to avoid distraction), assign tasks, make a checkpoint each week, force controlled crunch before deadline, rinse & repeat. Fortunately, we can do so much better than that, if we manage to break some basic mental barriers - first: leading can (& should) out-scale; second: leading doesn't have to take ownership from team members; third: leadership is about communication (hence: understanding), credibility (hence: trust) & initiative (hence: driving actions). There are some topics that never stop popping up: even if in different contexts,…
TL;DR Surprisingly many engineers prefers to be explicitly told what to do, be given a clear end-to-end specification & the worst of all - have someone else representing them to the end of the world, translating "the current state of things" into the language everyone else understands. IMHO it's one of the effects massive outsourcing has on IT industry. In this way, many engineers, on their own wish, "pidgeonhole" themselves not as real knowledge workers (or as some would say - creative workers), but as pure "coders" -> conveyor belt operators who…
TL;DR - These are not just great times to be a Software Engineer - it's even better to be a Software Engineering Manager. Plenty of open development opportunities help in shaping your own, individual professional profile. Physical world borders are far less constraining in that industry. True engineering expertise (& individuals who can apply it within whole organization) gets noticed & appreciated. And in the end, you don't have to work for Amazon or Google to build top-notch products, quite the contrary - in many cases small, companies with the headcount of few dozen are capable of things that…
TL;DR - commoditization of agile methods have brought a shift in thinking about managers' role & leadership in general, industry seems enchanted with idea of servant leadership, self-organizing teams & Management 3.0. But ... in fact the most successful examples of leadership represent a category of "scoundrel leaders" - ruthless, narcissistic manipulators who subdue everything (& everyone) to their vision & style. Let's find out why. "Leadership BS" Few days ago I've finished reading "Leadership BS" by J. Pfeffer. Not the first & surely not the last one book on leadership I'll read,…