#2 - Intentional Technical Leadership

Hello my friend!

Welcome to another edition of the Intentional Technical Leadership Newsletter! 👋🏻

It's been another week of learning how to be a better technical leader for all of us. I hope you've learnt something new this week too.

In my downtime, I've curated some more fascinating articles, podcasts, and videos for you to enjoy! 🎉

🔖 Interesting Reading

The true cost of a bad manager

I'm sure you're not a bad manager are you? After having bad managers myself in the past, I strive to think more about how I interact with my team. Reading this has made me think more about how a manager's behaviour impacts their team.

Being the DRI of Your Career

I love this article about being a DRI (Directly Responsible Individual) of your career. In my 1:1s with my team members, I always try and get them to take ownership of how they want to grow in their role. Some great tips in this article which you can share with your team.

Fed-up managers declare WFH is over

The managers in this article definitely don't represent me! If you're still uncomfortable with remote working then this is an interesting article. There is a lot of rhetoric around managing your team by being in the same office but I personally believe you can build team rapport remotely. Let me know what you think.

🎧 Great Listening

S01 E01 - The Perfect 1:1 - Engineering Advice You Didn't Ask For

This podcast is a good conversation around creating better 1:1s with your team. Some helpful tips and tricks to help you to build trust between you and your engineers.

📺 Worth Watching

Tactics for developing junior engineers

The LeadDev team regularly write fantastic articles and record panel-based videos and this one is no exception. I love helping to build teams with a mix of senior and less experienced engineers. This video shares some ideas to ensure junior engineers are well supported in your team. There are lots of actionable tips here for you to use.

Conducting tech interviews - HTTP 203 - YouTube

We all know that interviewing software engineers is difficult. I'm sure you've given and taken interviews and some have been better than others. There's no perfect way to interview someone but this video from two Google software engineers shares some great ideas for ensuring you're helping your candidates to have a better interview experience.

👋🏻 One From Me

Asking for feedback as a leader

I wrote this article last year after an ex-colleague, and now good friend, gave me some unsolicited feedback which I wasn't expecting. I realised that I should get better at regularly asking my peers, team, and manager for more feedback.

🌶️ Hot Take

🌍 Remote Work Academy 🚀 on Twitter

"Middle managers will struggle to add value in a remote world, they'll need to re-skill."

Ooh! That hits hard!

Where does the value come from for Engineering Managers like me in the remote world?

I've been building remote-first teams since 2015 and I think that software engineering managers still create value. I feel that while managers have to adjust to remote ways of working, we can still ensure collaboration, communication, and delivery of great software whilst not being in the room. You just have to be intentional about remote management.

What do you think? 🤔

I hope you enjoyed this week's selection and thanks again for subscribing.

Do you agree that WFH is over? Are managers like us not remote-friendly? Hit reply and let me know what you think.

If you've got any interesting articles to share, please send them my way too. 🙏🏻

Enjoy your week,
Marc