The Engineering Leadership & Wellbeing Newsletter 🌱 #12
“HAY” there friends and colleagues 👋🏼
If you haven’t heard, we’ve finally launched our DX platform. You can check out a video product demo here if you’re curious.
🎶 It was all a dream 🎶 Indeed, it started as a dream with an internal survey plugin we built called Unicorn Index 🦄 on Slack. It then grew into a solution that helps engineering managers check on their developers' mood and happiness. But now, we've launched a simple, uncomplicated DX platform integrated into GitHub. This platform enables engineering managers to analyze code quality and productivity, monitor job satisfaction, and enhance team collaboration to create a supportive, efficient, and engaging work environment. If you want to give it a try for free, get in touch here. We would love to hear your thoughts or even how you envision such a product.
Topics for the day: Developer Experience (DX), Non-verbal behaviors, Growth, Career development, Building a people strategy, Measuring growth.
Work Output, Wellbeing, and Teamwork - Our Three Pillars to Great DX
There’s been a lot of ink spilled on the subject of Developer Experience. Since we've built our entire product around improving developers' ecosystems, which in turn helps them be happy and productive while writing great code, we decided to draft our manifesto about what we believe to be the basis of a great DX.
Read more: Enhancing Developer Experience (DX) Through Work Output, Wellbeing, and Teamwork
How Non-Verbals Slow Down Your Dev Team
We’ve all heard the expression that actions speak louder than words. Raviraj explores some of these actions, discussing how non-verbal cues can significantly affect teams. He describes five common non-verbal behavioral patterns: irritation, interruption, confusion, lack of appreciation, and ignoring others. I really enjoyed how he included his personal strategies for avoiding these behaviors and how to address them in others.
Mentorship, Coaching, Sponsorship
It’s essential for engineering leaders to know which tools to use and in which contexts they should be used to help develop their engineers' skill sets. JKM provides an outline:
🧠 Mentorship involves experienced individuals passing on their knowledge through hands-on guidance and long-term support.
🏋️♂️ Coaching focuses on helping individuals achieve their goals through a questioning approach and external accountability.
👑 Sponsorship is about using your organizational influence to advocate for someone's career advancement.
Career Progress Is Swinging From Vine to Vine 🐒
I appreciate the metaphor James Stanier employs. But when I initially thought, "Well, that's not really practical advice," he deepened the concept by incorporating the SCOPE and IMPACT of responsibility to gauge the trajectory needed to reach the next vine. It all intertwines nicely in the end.
Read more: The Tarzan Method
How Asana Built a People Strategy
Anna Binder, currently Head of People at Asana, shares her journey from joining a startup with a non-existent people org to developing a robust HR framework supporting nearly 2,000 employees. She outlines her approach to building a people strategy by focusing on understanding employee needs and using data from engagement surveys. This quote really resonated with me:
“If you're not uncomfortable giving feedback every single week, you're not doing your job.”
Read more: Build Your Culture Like a Product — Lessons from Asana’s Head of People
“Life is to be lived, not to be measured.”
Do you agree? Chip Huyen also mentions, however, that measuring growth can help you live a better life. Briefly, she follows three guiding principles for personal development:
🦋 Reinvent yourself every 3 to 6 years.
⚡ Solve big problems fast
🔮 Make decisions that expand future possibilities.
Read more: Measuring personal growth
Asking Questions as a Powerful Tool
We don’t ask enough questions. Instead, we make statements, and that’s because we want to manage how people see us. Engineering leaders who effectively ask questions get to the core of any problem quickly. Doing it right also drives business growth, productivity, and helps in identifying problematic patterns down the line.
Here’s a Last-Minute Laugh 😂
What were they thinking?! From thenintendoworld.
Did you like this edition of ENGINEERING LEADERSHIP & WELLBEING 🌱?
If you're looking for a specific subject to read about or maybe would like to collaborate on a project, reach out to me at tomek@howareyou.work.