A common issue I hear being raised by clients and peers, is the constant need to reinvent yourself as a tech executive in a growing company. There are different kinds of CTOs or tech VPs (more on that in a different time), but no matter which one you are, you cannot keep doing the same […]
It’s 2pm, you’re sitting in a conference room with 5 other people. The discussion is going along, jumping from one topic to the next. This has been going on for a few minutes now, yet you don’t feel like things are getting anywhere. When sitting in a meeting, if you’re unsure of what exactly is […]
In our industry it is common to come across companies or teams where working long hours and burning the midnight oil is standard. While it may show results in the short term and sometimes be the only option, you should be extremely wary of defaulting to using this option regularly. Working with clients I’ve seen […]
When you come to choose a tech stack for a main portion of your business, I always advise taking into account 3 different metrics. Note: this discussion is about long-term solutions, and doesn’t hold for quick, POC-like needs. Look for those in a different post. Core: Whether or not this is addressing something in your […]
As teams grow and become larger, it is common to see a few hero coders take position. They emerge from the darkness (usually, since most critical issues seem to happen after business hours), and sweep in with their magic to make everything go back to the way it was. When you’re being bombarded by monitoring […]
“There are so many things to do, I just can’t get to it all!” “Sorry, I know that needed attention but I’m just too busy!!” These are very common remarks from managers, especially junior team leads. If you hear these uttered rarely, at times of crunch, it’s ok. But, if those are being chanted over […]
I was on a United Polaris Business flight for the first time in a year. Everything was pretty great, but when I decided to use that flatbed to get some sleep I couldn’t find how to turn the passenger light off. I tried all the knobs, turning off two other lights but not that one. […]
It is normal for a company to have periods of accruing technical debt, and usually necessary. Attempting to operate in a way that never adds any debt means making decisions too slowly, wasting effort in analysis steps, often producing solutions that are more complicated than eventually needed, and even those don’t solve the problem completely. […]
Providing your employees with feedback is a crucial part of being a manager. Without it, people are working in a vacuum, never knowing whether they’re doing good or not. This either leads to people that are overconfident when they shouldn’t be, or people performing well who think they are doing poorly. I know many managers […]
Perhaps the most common struggle for managers in general, and tech executives specifically, is trying to remain professionally “up to date”. Managers-of-managers rarely come across code in their day-to-day jobs, and that can quickly result in a feeling of disconnect, especially if you used to pride yourself on your technical skills. There are of course […]