Does managing engineering feel like flying blind?

Up to 60% of all work teams do is not on your roadmap. Swarmia gives you instant visibility into your engineering organization. Identify and remove blockers, and start shipping 10x faster within weeks. Trusted by 600+ teams worldwide.

Demos over deadlines

As an engineer, I served on many teams: some very efficient and functional, some less so. One predictive factor in the health of the development teams was time pressure. Too much time pressure inevitably led to burnout, poor morale, poor employee retention, and poor team performance.

Product teams own capabilities, not (only) code

Meanwhile, the value to the business depends on value to the customers, or to people or software who in turn provide value to customers. And when value comes as software, its magic is what it lets people do that they couldn’t otherwise.

Feedback equation

Many of us are paralyzed by the fear of having these awkward conversations. We actively avoid asking for feedback because it’s just so painful sometimes, and often we receive nonspecific, general feedback from others. I wrote a whole chapter in that book about feedback, because I so deeply want folks to learn how to deliver (and request!) better feedback at work.

What’s the best thing a manager has ever done for you?

When Julie Zhuo asked over 120,000 twitter followers about the best thing their manager had ever done for them, she got over 500 responses. We’ve categorised and analysed the replies, and the findings are great reminders of what our teams are really looking for from their managers.

Tales of regret from onboarding

A collection of codebase onboarding stories from real developers.