“We’ve decided to move forward with another candidate.” I’ve read some version of that sentence twice in two years. Last year I made it to the final round of an engineering manager search, one of two people left, and they chose the other person. This year I was one step from the final round when…

I’ve been thinking a lot lately about where my management style came from. Not the practices. Not one-on-ones, retrospectives, career conversations, or any of the mechanics of managing a team. The values underneath them. Why do I care so much about trust? Why do I want work to be fun? Why do I believe you…

For a long time, I didn’t think I had much to contribute to the conversation about engineering management. I wasn’t the engineer who had been programming since childhood. I didn’t study computer science. I started university in engineering, eventually moved into business, and found my way into software through a path that was much less…