#11 - Intentional Technical Leadership

Halló my friend!

Happy Saturday! 🎉

Welcome to another issue of the Intentional Technical Leadership newsletter.

I'm just finishing up my 4th week at Netlify and I'm slowly starting to understand things. It's always tough to get up to speed quickly in a new role but I enjoy the challenge.

This week I've been working with my team to understand our current working processes and to see if they're fit for where we want to be. I'm definitely not a micromanager who comes in and tells everyone how I think they should work. You need to help and guide a team not dictate how they work.

On to this week's articles. Enjoy!

🔖 Interesting Reading

What Makes A Good Engineering Culture

One of the key ways to keep your engineering teams happy is by fostering a great engineering culture.

This post shares some solid insights into building and scaling a culture which enables your development teams to thrive.

Many of the tips in this align with my thinking. High quality code reviews, automation of systems and tests, building shared ownership. The list is fantastic!

Five essential tips for great internal communication

Communication is key to great teams and a great company. When information isn't shared in a timely manner, rumours start, misinformation is shared, people become anxious and ultimately might leave.

Jason Lengstorf, is our VP of Developer Experience at Netlify and in this post he shares his insights into better internal communication.

There are plenty of useful tips to take into your own company in this blog post.

Career development for engineering managers

Another wonderful knowledge share from Charity Majors on how to grow in your role as an engineering manager.

Becoming a software engineer is often a simpler career path because the journey is a little clearer between the different levels of seniority. If you move into an engineering manager, it's often difficult to know if you're doing the right thing as the impact and outcomes tend to be less clear and take longer to see.

In this article, Charity shares some great tips to understand the journey of an Engineering Manager and how you can ensure you're heading in the right direction.

Empathy Is The Most Important Leadership Skill According To Research

Creating the best environment for your teams takes serious thinking. How can you ensure positive outcomes for team members?

By being being more empathetic.

Forbes writes an interesting article on how empathy in the workplace contributes to positive outcomes. It increases innovation, engagement, and retention. It'll also help you to think of others, something we should all be doing more of.

Tools for better thinking

Someone at work shared this fantastic little site with me this week and I had to share it with you all.

It's a set of tools and frameworks which you can apply to your day-to-day work. It'll help you to solve problems, make decisions, and understand the complexities of your work.

There are some of the frameworks that I have used previously but plenty that I've never heard of before.

I hope you can use it to great effect.

🌶️ Hot Take

Sticky human behaviour

This is a great Twitter thread in which James Plunkett reflects on the "sticky nature" of human behaviour as we transition beyond the remote working of the pandemic.

While he doesn't provide an answer to how remote, hybrid, or office working will look like, he asks some interesting questions which made me think about what the future looks like.

Have a read and tell me what you think the future of work is.

I hope you enjoyed this week's selection of intentional technical leadership articles.

Hit reply and let me know what you think.

Feel free to send me any interesting articles or podcasts you've found too.

Have an amazing week and be excellent to each other!

Speak to you soon,
Marc

Senior Engineering Manager @ Netlify