It took me a long time to understand the joys of pair programming. When I took my first computer programming class in the 1990s, computers were a limited resource. The newer, better computers were used by two people together. I took a significa...
Earlier this month, Betsy and I tried to live stream a pairing session and failed miserably. But! We had fun, so we spent about 30m performing a retrospective on our Debugging a Race Condition in Cypress event. To expose our ignorance (and therefo...
A few months back, I shared a quick lightning talk at Fog City Ruby on managing up. This article is a quick primer on one way to approach your manager about your goals, and assumes a sympathetic manager who doesn’t require advanced managing up. ...
In 2017, Jennifer, Betsy, and I were burnt out. Over the past two years, we had grown an engineering team from 4 to 40 and extended a product that served hundreds of smaller lending institutions to be the first production, cloud-hosted software as...
Porcini Hunting - Finding Your Programming Guide is a three-page micro-zine that draws a parallel between hunting for mushrooms and finding technical mentors and teachers. While this started as a test-draft for printing full-col...
Software engineers have the highest turnover rate of any industry with an average tenure of 2~3 years. Why? Because people leave managers, not companies, and as Nicole Sanchez and Danilo Campos point out, tech is full of poor managers. I’ve been o...
Earlier this year, Betsy and I sat down and wrote down a few dozen types of dysfunctional behaviors we’ve experienced while pair programming, then sorted them into categories: Taking up too little space (ex: lost but not speaking up) Taking ...
Ever get flustered talking about security? Wish you had a slightly clearer mental model when talking about whose who and what they can do? We've lovingly illustrated a zine that details the difference between authentication ...
I used to think I hated pairing. One of my first experiences pairing was with my least favorite co-worker. In my previous programming jobs, I’d always been the only Rails developer, or one of two, and we’d had a lot to do. Too much for us to be a...
Pair programming! As polarizing a topic as the Editor Wars. People love or hate pairing, and for good reason! It’s a tough skill with benefits that aren’t always immediately clear. It can be frustrating, feel slow, and even be a source of uncomfor...
Last night, I was talking with a tech lead of a local company. He was struggling with supporting two of his teammates who are newer to their roles (let’s call them Alyssa and Ben). Alyssa, like nearly all her teammates, works in the local office, ...
The last episode of Season 4 is a hero’s journey story! Ashish Dixit (@tundal45 on Twitter) shares how he found himself managing a team of volunteers (and realized this was happening through failure), how he approached this experience, and what h...
Ever heard these sentiments in your workplace? “That was so unprofessional!” “Why are they being so rude? They’re always so pushy.” “Don’t they care about..?” “Why won’t they just tell me if they can’t meet that deadline?” “I’m so over...
How do you give technical feedback and direction without inflicting unwanted help? or change direction without introducing bad feelings? In Episode 27, Edwin Mak (@edwinthinks on Twitter) shares how to be an effective tech lead. We talk about...
In Episode 26, Ale Paredes (@ale7714 on Twitter / ale7714 on LinkedIn / Latinas In Tech NYC) shares her team’s experience as they find themselves not just unexpectedly remote during a pandemic, but also unexpectedly onboarding while unexpectedly r...
How do you communicate high-level or complex ideas to your team? How do you know if your ideas are getting across? When is repeating yourself too repetitive? In Episode 25, Sergio Rabiela (@spacechurro on Twitter) shares advice on communicating...
What is burnout? What does it look like in an individual, versus a team? What can you do to counter burnout? What do you do if your new team is already suffering from burnout, before you’ve had a chance to build relationships with anyone? In E...
How do you win candidates when bigger companies can offer more money? What changes can you make to your interviews to get your candidates excited about your company? In Episode 23, Jennifer Kim (@jenistyping on Twitter) shares her expertise around...
In Episode 22, Damien Burke (https://www.talariasoftware.com/) shares his experience taking a team from fully in-office to fully remote. Transcript JENNIFER: Welcome to Storytime with Managers, a podcast by Cohere. Hi, I’m Jennifer Tu and I’m...
What does it mean to be an ally? what does it have to do with managing up? and how do you recover when you make a mistake as an ally? Episode 21 is the first of Season 4, and Cris Concepcion (crisconcepcion on LinkedIn) shares how managers can be...
This is a quick 3 minute update of what happens next to Storytime With Managers.
In Episode 20, Cecy Correa (@cecycorrea on Twitter) draws on her training in marketing to share how to influence teams. Episode References: The Psychology of Fake News (And What Tech Can Do About It): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2cVfYMxqZ...
In Episode 19, Tara Ellis (@maverick_mind on Twitter) shares how to support new mentors. How do you help a new mentor be set up for success? what should you expect from a new mentor, anyway? All this, and more, in this episode! Transcript JE...
Kelsey Hightower (@kelseyhightower on Twitter) is a technical leader in the open source community who contributes to projects like Kubernetes, Terraform, and more. In Episode 18, Kelsey shares secrets to driving technical changes in teams, and how...
Nicole Sanchez (@nmsanchez on Twitter) is CEO of Vaya Consulting and co-creator of the new 1-1 organizer app Digamo. In Episode 17, Nicole shares detailed advice on 1-1s: what they are, how they help us, what we can learn from them. References:...
In Episode 16, Danielle Leong (@tsunamino on Twitter) shares how to speak up to set culture as a manager, how to create safe teams, how to recognize teammates for the work they do, and more. Transcript JENNIFER: Welcome to Storytime with Manag...
In Episode 15, Danilo Campos (@_danilo on Twitter, co-creator of the new 1-1 organizer app Digamo) shares detailed advice for how to be an ethical people manager. We dig into a handful of edge cases and examples for how to do this. Transcript ...
Storytime With Managers is a collection of twenty minute conversations where Jennifer Tu finds answers to questions of interest to both established and budding leaders in technology fields. In Episode 14, Anthony Holloway (@techdirtywithme on Twi...
Welcome to Episode 13, the first episode in Season 3! Storytime With Managers is a collection of twenty minute conversations where Jennifer Tu finds answers to questions of interest to both established and budding leaders in technology fields. Be...
Storytime With Managers is a collection of twenty minute conversations where Jennifer Tu finds answers to questions of interest to both established and budding leaders in technology fields. Miranda Wang (@ch0xi on Twitter or mirandawang94 at gmai...
In Episode 11, Denise Yu (@deniseyu21 on Twitter or check out her website http://www.deniseyu.io/) shares specific actions engineers can take to grow their effectiveness. A small sample of the ideas Denise shared: Schedule time to learn from peo...
Episode 10 covers how to give feedback, what to think about as you're giving feedback, and how to help others get better at giving feedback. All this expertise comes to you from Ambreen Hasan (@ambreenhasan on Twitter or ambreenh on Instagram)....
Episode 9 is a whopping twenty-six minutes because there was so much I wanted to keep asking my guest, Juan Pablo Buriticá (@buritica on Twitter). Juan Pablo Buriticá has been leading engineering organizations for the past decade. Prior to his ...
Storytime With Managers is a collection of twenty minute conversations where Jennifer Tu finds answers to questions of interest for both established and budding leaders in technology fields. If you haven't experienced this already, someday you wi...
Storytime With Managers is a collection of twenty minute conversations where Jennifer Tu finds answers to questions of interest for both established and budding leaders in technology fields. I thought today’s episode would be about leading when y...
Episode 6 covers building trust across differences with Annyce Davis (@brwngrldev on Twitter or annycedavis on LinkedIn). Annyce is a software developer and leader focused on Android and mobile development. She shares her mobile expertise throug...
In Episode 5, Eddie Kay (@ichthyos) shares his recent experience jobhunting as a manager. If you’ve never jobhunted as a manager, this episode is for you! Eddie shares answers to questions like “how do you schedule interviews on a manager’s sche...
In Episode 4, Bavani Kehoe (@jenbavani) shares how she coaches her reports towards autonomy and guides them in following their dreams – all while working part-time. We talk about situational leadership model, how to make office hours effective, a...
Episode 3 follows Raquel Vélez (@rockbot on Twitter) in her management journey as she moved from lone-manager-at-tiny-startup to discovering her “first team” of engineering manager peers. Prior to management, Raquel was a JavaScript developer who...
Episode 2 covers the topic of accepting feedback with Emily Nakashima (@eanakashima on Twitter). Emily manages the engineering and design teams at a small developer tools startup called Honeycomb.io. Before Honeycomb, Emily worked at a string of...
Episode 1 covers the topic of “managing up” with Marco Rogers (@polotek on Twitter). Marco was previously an engineering manager and director at companies like Yammer, Clover Health, and Lever, and is now happily writing code for Mode Analytics. ...
