Remember that not all debt is bad, and sometimes, in fact, strategic tech debt can even be used as a valuable tool to achieve certain business goals?just as financial debt can be taken on to obtain capital that can be invested in other profitable ...

While some people are driven by infinite backlogs and iteration, others prefer launches and deadlines. Over the years, I have found certain milestones to be instrumental in creating a cohesive team with strong morale. When people have to work together to ...

The secret to being a great engineering leader? Setting up the right checks and balances.

Software engineering managers (or any senior technical leaders) have many responsibilities: the care and feeding of the team, delivering on business outcomes, and keeping the product/system/application up and running and in good order. Each of these ...

After three years of working remotely, many companies are asking their people to return to the office. Not everyone is coming back, however. With some people in the office and some still working from home, leaders must get this transition to hybrid work ...

Transitioning up the ladder.

Know when to let go of emotional attachment to your work.

With each step up, the job changes - but not all of the changes are obvious. You have to shift your mindset, and focus on building new skills that are often very different from the skills that made you successful in your previous role.

Build safety, share vulnerability, and establish purpose.

A smart, senior engineer couldn’t make logical decisions if it meant deprecating the system he and his team had worked on for a number of years. Even though the best thing would have been to help another team create the replacement system, they didn’t ...

Four challenging work situations and how to handle them.

As leader of the team, you have significant influence over your team’s culture. You can institute policies and procedures that help make your team happy and productive, monitor team successes, and continually improve the team. Another important part of ...

You have to finish strong, every time.

Challenges come up all the time at work. Spend time now thinking about how you want to be seen at work, and then think about how that version of you would respond to the challenges that you could encounter. When you have a plan in place, you are much ...

Five strategies for pushing through.

How can you make sure that you are recognized as a valuable member of your team, whose work is seen as critical to the team’s success? You have to finish strong, every time. Here is how to keep your momentum up and make the right moves to be a visible ...

The best careers are not defined by titles or résumé bullet points.

If you want to be successful, then it serves you better to rise to the occasion no matter what. That means learning how to push through challenges and deliver valuable results.

Think like an entrepreneur.

Focus on factors that will increase your career capital and make you a more valuable hire in your next role, and the one after that, and the one after that. When you are looking at the options for your next role, there are smarter choices that you can ...