Become a Great Engineering Leader, James Stanier, 2024
Personal Brand ¶
For whom do I write? For everyone with (C)PT(O) in the title.
Organizational Structure ¶
6: Organizational Levels ¶
9: Military - 3 Levels: ¶
- VP (Strategic Level): High-level goals
- Director (Operational Level): Planning and executing to achieve strategic goals
- EM (Tactical Level): Implementations
11: EM - Success: ¶
- Committed work done on time?
- High quality / well-maintained?
- Respond to incidents/outages in a timely manner
- Coach, mentor, develop team members
11: Director - Operational (1-year horizon) ¶
- “Why” is defined, focus on “how”
- Operational area
12: VP - Strategic (2-3 year horizon) ¶
- “Why” & “with what”
- Strategic area
- Metrics > Planning
- Investments?
- Market + Competition
Your Place in the Org Chart ¶
32: Tactical: EM ¶
- Tech Lead defining technical direction
- ICS
- Manager in Training
Tactical: Senior EM ¶
- Senior ICS
- EM
34: Operational: Director Engineering ¶
- Senior EM
- Other Directors
- Area Technical Lead
- Right-Hand Engineer
34: Strategic: VP Engineering + CTO ¶
- Directors
- Craft Leads (Frontend, etc.)
- Technical Lead
37: Best Team Size: 8 ¶
42: Dunbar’s Number: 5, 15, 50, 150, 500, 1500 ¶
45: Team Topologies are fractal and can represent entire departments. ¶
48: Example: Stream-aligned teams retain a problem domain (reviews, news, social) but are complemented by: ¶
- Enabling Teams (Collections): Ensuring coherent data formats → Collaboration
- Enabling Teams (Dashboard UX): Facilitating
- Platform Team + Crawling Team: Clear “X as a Service” boundaries
Time: Observed, Spent & Allocated ¶
60: Shopify = 100-year company ¶
61: Long-termism ¶
- Vision & Strategy
- Hiring & Developing the right people
- Developing a Bench of Successors (for oneself)
- Scalability, Resilience & Reliability
- Slowing down projects that move faster than interconnected teams can handle
62: CTO Tasks: ¶
- Is the organization on track with goals?
- Connecting/steering direct reports?
- Meetings that benefit from my presence
- Connect & collaborate with peers and other groups
- Own strategic work
Organizing Work ¶
66: Capacity Management > Time Management. It fluctuates with context. ¶
78: Calendar: ¶
- Group similar-context meetings together
- Block time for deep work in the morning/evening
- Office hours
81: Focus Blocks: ¶
- With a goal! E.g., daily/weekly objectives
- Reading / Reviewing
- Async content to broadcast
- Other long-term activities
Not for:
- Normal messengers/emails
Unplanned:
- Using own product
- Reviewing other teams’ work
- Reading design docs
- Field research
Async Work ¶
84: When to hold a meeting: ¶
- High-bandwidth communication
- Building trust & support
- Everyone must be present simultaneously
85: Meeting Agenda: ¶
- Lead by example, don’t force others
87: Regularly delete all recurring meetings to reset the org ¶
88: Alternatives to Meetings: ¶
- Standups → Async updates
- Group Sync → Async updates
- 1:1s → Not status updates but coaching
- Staff Meeting → Focus topics
- Brainstorming → Pre-prepared async contributions
The Games We Play and How to Win Them ¶
Coaching vs. Directing: ¶
- Goal (of the session)
- Reality - Current situation
- Options - How to tackle it
- Wrap-Up - Next steps/decisions
96: Delegation ¶
- 1:1s, weekly, 30 min
- Shared agenda
- No status updates
- Link topics to Employee Development
109: Finite vs. Infinite Games ¶
- Finite Games: Platforms over a swamp of infinite games/chaos
- Infinite Games: Goal: Keep playing!
- Finite Games: Goal: Winning (e.g., task completion, sprint, etc.)
- Concept for Workshops: Explain how limiting Work in Progress (WIP) enhances strategy execution
Communication at Scale ¶
195: Treat the org as an evolving organism ¶
198: Best async communication practice for leaders covering large org areas: techemails.com ¶
201: Optimizing for decision speed: One-way vs. two-way doors ¶
205: Leadership = Writing ¶
- Writing to think
- Interrogate thoughts
- Edit to read
Performance Management ¶
229: Performance Management of Senior Staff = Measuring the output of their leadership ¶
231: Assessment Criteria: ¶
- Self-Assessment (Subjective, Qualitative, Quantitative)
- KPI (Defined, Progressed, Achieved/Exceeded)
- 360° Feedback (Quantitative)
- Leader Assessment (Qualitative)
245: “Your lowest performer is the performance bar you accept.” ¶
Strategy 101 ¶
259: Engineering Strategy: ¶
- Trade-offs: Quality vs. Speed
- Key KPIs to hit
- Tackling Tech Debt
- Build vs. Buy decisions
- Conflicting Priorities
Company Cycles ¶
279: Shift focus from dates to reducing uncertainty ¶
280: Uncertainty: Y-Axis, Time: X-Axis ¶
301: Finance: Profit Center vs. Cost Center ¶
Boom & Bust Cycles ¶
330: Peacetime focus: ¶
- Hiring, Onboarding & Ramp-Up
- Incubating new products
- M&A
Wartime focus: ¶
- Reforecasting, Restructuring & Reorganizing
- Layoffs - Do them all at once, no early warnings