Mastodawn

Christian Uhl Feb 22, 2023

Introducing a new level in your existing leveling framework and organization is not trivial, but can be an effective way of scaling your engineering demands in a growing org. I outlined a cheat sheet of steps on how a new role can be introduced without creating havoc. The title of this article mentions the staff level but the underlying principle works for almost all kinds of individual contributor and manager levels, especially after the senior stage.

https://uhl-steine-scherben.org/blog/posts/introduce_staff_role/

Introducing the staff role

Introducing a new level in your existing leveling framework and organization is not trivial, but can be an effective way of scaling your engineering demands in a growing org. I outlined a cheat sheet of steps on how a new role can be introduced without creating havoc. The title of this article mentions the staff level since that is quite the hype nowadays to have, but the underlying principle works for almost all kinds of individual contributor and manager levels, especially after the senior stage.

Christian Uhl

Christian Uhl Feb 22, 2023

On today‘s episode of „There was no PM around to stop me“: I built the most useless feature since a long time: I added email subscription to my blog. And after a week of it going live, I have a whooping 0 subscribers.

And the fun part is, I kinda knew that would happen. But it was fun to build (or integrate things together, there is no custom code, just no-code-tools), and all the big blogs have it, so I went ahead and did it anyways. Classical Build Trap.

Christian Uhl Feb 14, 2023

New Article out: Handing over engineers between managers. And I also totally wanted to use that image :)

One of my "hypergrowth" learnings - Having your manager change is never easy - even in the best case, you will lose someone who was rooting for you and had your best interest in mind, only to start the whole journey anew with a stranger. I collected a few ideas from performing more than 20 handovers to make that process a bit smoother.

https://uhl-steine-scherben.org/blog/posts/engineer_handover/

Handing over engineers between managers

Having your manager change is never easy - even in the best case, you will lose someone who was rooting for you and had your best interest in mind, only to start the whole journey anew with a stranger. Re-building a shared context and a trust relationship after a handover is significant work. I collected a few ideas from performing more than 20 handovers to make that process a bit smoother.

Christian Uhl

Christian Uhl Feb 10, 2023

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joschi Feb 10, 2023

@christianuhl kitty + fish (thanks @Trundle) + starship

- https://sw.kovidgoyal.net/kitty/
- https://fishshell.com/
- https://starship.rs/

kitty

If you live in the terminal, kitty is made for YOU! The fast, feature-rich, GPU based terminal emulator. Fast Uses GPU and SIMD vector CPU instructions for best in class performance, Uses threaded ...

kitty

Christian Uhl Feb 10, 2023

What do the cool kids nowadays use as terminal and shell on OSX? I am still running Iterm2, zsh with oh-my-zsh and powerline9k theme - but maybe there‘s new cool stuff out there? (as @joschi says, it‘s cli-day)

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Christian Uhl Feb 10, 2023

Also contains a martial mood image to please the violent @spinscale and originates from @samir post https://monospacedmonologues.com/2022/10/maybe-just-maybe/

Maybe, just maybe, there are other ways

There’s this common trope in startups: “Hire fast, fire fast.” Every time I’ve heard this, I think, “I could never do that.” And I’ve always wondered if I’m weak, or shouldn’t be in that kind of leadership position. (And, dear reader, I have been in that kind of leadership position, but maybe I shouldn’t have been?) Recently, I read Rands’ latest article, The Coach and the Fixer. To spoil the article a little (go read it first), at the end, he talks about being unfailingly kind. And he asks himself, “Is it kind to fire someone?” Reading this article, it struck me that perhaps it’s alright not to believe in “hire fast, fire fast” as a mantra. Perhaps there are other ways. Maybe it’s perfectly valid to hire slowly, make a commitment to people just as much as they have to me, and only part ways after trying very hard not to. And maybe that’s not compatible with the model of raising a lot of money very quickly from venture capitalists, and trying to scale before you even start. If that’s the case, perhaps there are other ways to run a business, too. In my last venture, I was a little too quick to set aside my values and defer to “expertise” on how to run a successful business. (And yet, the business was not successful.) If there is a next time, I think I’ll cling on a little harder, even if it closes some doors. It’s possible that in doing so, different doors will open.

Christian Uhl Feb 9, 2023

The article I hope you never need:

Letting people go.

I wrote about why being able to fire people is an important tool in the toolbox of Engineering Managers for the health of the organization, and how to best deal with the emotional outfall when using it.

https://uhl-steine-scherben.org/blog/posts/letting_people_go/

Letting People go

I loathe letting people go. Many things bring pleasure in the work of an Engineering Manager, but some aspects are horrible, but they have to be done, and they have to be done by us. I was fortunate enough in my career that I had to do it very rarely, but enough to have an opinion on it by now. In a way, this is the guidance I wish I had myself for the first time.

Christian Uhl

Christian Uhl Feb 5, 2023

Me, every time when starting an article: "This one's gonna be fast and brief, small topic"

Also me, two thousand words later, halfway done: "..."

Christian Uhl Feb 2, 2023

How to split your engineering team because it has been growing too much? One of the things I learned most about during the last hypergrowth years was splitting teams, and I collected a playbook on how to make this as smooth as possible, and care for the humans involved:

https://uhl-steine-scherben.org/blog/posts/splitting_teams/

Splitting teams

When I need to grow my engineering organization, I often prefer growing and splitting teams over bootstrapping completely new teams. Even though growing teams is slower than just bootstrapping on the green field, I still go for it as you can spread and transfer the most domain and tribal knowledge into both new teams, and keep your existing culture largely constant. During the hypergrowth of Personio, I was fortunate enough to participate in multiple teamsplit events, and I collected my learnings and what went well in this article.

Christian Uhl

Christian Uhl Jan 31, 2023

Vicki Boykis Jan 30, 2023

As Gregor Samsa awoke one morning from uneasy dreams, he found himself rewritten in Rust for performance reasons.