Jean, Jen, and Dan discuss:

• Some of the more effective hybrid return-to-office rollouts we’ve heard about, and others that…could be better.
• Why in-office work may not actually create more serendipitous interactions for most employees.
• What companies should pay attention to when implementing or iterating on a hybrid office policy.
• Companies that are technically “remote-friendly” but have a reputation of not being great for remote employee career development.

Nadia and Jean discuss:

• What holds people back from managing up
• Not limiting yourself to managing up - think about managing up, down, and all around
• How to get around the fear or taking up space and advocating for yourself
• Managing up with an absent or even toxic manager
• Asking powerful open-ended questions to build a deeper relationship with your manager and teammates
• How remote work can make managing up easier…or more difficult

Douglas and Jean discuss:

• When a large meeting shouldn’t be a large meeting at all — and how to address meeting FOMO
• Ways to break down larger meetings into smaller group breakouts to include everyone in discussions
• Avoiding the one-to-many broadcast of information in live meetings, instead opting for async recorded Looms that people can watch on their own.
• How to make change at your organization when you don’t feel like you’re in a position to do so.

Joaquín and Jean discuss:

• Why it’s important to give feedback that’s frequent, timely, continuous, and focused on impact.
• The general rule of thumb to give 5 pieces of positive feedback for each piece of constructive feedback
• Cadences and structures to support regular feedback
• Continuous feedback ensures that nothing in a performance review is a surprise
• How to give feedback on work performance when teammates are dealing with personal struggles

Brooks and Jean discuss:

• How companies commonly start and end their DEI efforts with hiring more women
• Why it’s important to prioritize diversity and inclusion beyond the gender binary
• The inclusion challenge as companies return to office and under-represented people face in-person micro-aggressions
• How to build a foundation of trust in a relationship so that you can have the hard conversations when needed
• Different ways companies and leaders can respond to terrible news events

Fred and Jean discuss:

• The many advantages of hiring a globally distributed team, including round-the-clock support all during office hours
• The importance of spending limited synchronous time very intentionally
• Limiting individual teams to 2 timezones (i.e. Europe and America) to maximize team overlap
• How a globally distributed team empowers Platform.sh build a product that’s used globally

Steph and Jean discuss:

• The risk of not taking the time to codify values as your company grows
• Choosing values that are authentic and not overly aspirational
• How to reinforce values (beyond beautiful posters and stickers) with rituals, regular check-ins, and external acknowledgment
• The shadow side of values and how values can be misconstrued

Andy and Jean discuss:

• Bringing an experience design mindset to meeting design
• How to build an inclusive culture on a hybrid team
• How to mitigate the risk of remote employees feeling like second-class citizens
• Taking into different cognitive approaches when planning for meetings
• How inclusive teams and meetings lead the way to inclusive design and products

Suzan and Jean discuss:

• How conflict shows up differently on remote teams (more conflict avoidance than outbursts)
• Being curious about areas of disagreement, rather than being terrified of conflict
• Designing upfront how you want to be in disagreement in your work relationships
• How simply naming the tension or disagreement can help create a path forward
• Why you should avoid resolving conflict through a third party - and how to coach people to speak directly to each other first

Jori and Jean discuss:

• How to divide projects and work across timezones to reduce overhead
• Unexpected ways to connect socially while working on a distributed team
• Benefits of spanning vastly different timezones (no overnight on-call!)
• Figuring out how to spend async/sync time effectively 

Hong and Jean discuss:

• the main challenges in hiring for and building remote teams
• how companies and hiring managers think differently about hiring for remote teams
• how to fill in the gaps so that remote hiring doesn't feel isolating or impersonal
• what candidates are looking for and what’s important to them as the work environment has changed over the last few years

Najeeb and Jean discuss:

• why it's important for people to have a sense of belonging on their team
• the challenges most teams are facing these days in terms of team connectedness and belonging
• the biggest differences in fostering belonging on a remote team vs a co-located one
• what leaders or managers can do to build belonging into their culture

Anna and Jean discuss:

• The many parallels between long-distance running and software development
• How important prioritizing recovery and recharge time is
• Understanding the why in the short-term (why you’re running a race, or why you’re building something in a two-week sprint)
• Understanding the why in the long-term (an active lifestyle, or what you want out of your tech career)
• Using retros as a way to debrief in life, not just in software development

Pat and Jean discuss:

• Different archetypes of tech leadership, including engineering managers, staff engineers, tech leads, and senior ICs.
• The importance of influence without authority 
• The implicit values that your company incentivizes, that may or may not be aligned with stated values 
• Applying systems thinking from technical systems to people and teams

Dan and Jean chat about:

• The inevitable friction that arises in fast-growing teams and companies
• Mindsets for thinking about pushing through friction as part of the job
• The normalization of deviance and how it shows up on engineering teams
• Focusing on what you can control vs. being a victim of your circumstances
• When and how burnout shows up, and frameworks for alleviating or avoiding it.

Additional Resources:

• Pushing Through Friction (the talk) by Dan Na
• Normalization of Deviance by Dan Luu

They discuss:

• What the Chief of Staff role looks like and the different kinds of work it entails
• How the role is similar and different to past roles like engineering manager and tech lead
• The importance of influencing without authority and learning how to effectively navigate relationships throughout different functions
• Learning to let go of optimal solutions in favor of getting something done

Kate and Jean discuss:

• What is burnout, and what does it look like in its early stages
• How to talk to teammates about activities that energizes or drains them, to mitigate or relieve burnout
• Giving team members permission to work flexibly and create effective conditions for creative work
• Leveraging other factors to engineering speed (not just hours worked)

Jen and Jean discuss:

• The current hiring environment that has shifted in favor of candidates
• What candidates are looking for when they read your job description
• How hiring highlights false positives in hiring, but overlooks false negatives
• The importance of screening for motivation fit early on when hiring
• What to watch out for when using backchannel and reference checks

Additional Resources

• Startup Recruiting Bootcamp

Ellen and Jean discuss: 

• The questions you should be asking when interviewing for a remote or hybrid team. 
• Having the team (and not just the manager) feel ownership of having healthy hybrid and remote processes that are inclusive and effective. 
• How to set up working across timezones so that it can bring regular moments of delight and momentum, not just create friction. 
• Times when they both failed to create inclusive hybrid environments 
• Techniques to create visibility (and celebrate!) of the impact of your work and your team's work 

 Sarah and Jean discuss: 

• The biggest challenges hybrid and remote teams face 
• Tactical tips for making hybrid meeting inclusive 
• The importance of exercising your team's experimentation muscle, as there's no one-size-fits-all answer for teamwork or meetings 
• The role of equity in forming team and company policies about who can work remotely

Jack and Jean discuss:

• How to think about technical debt as you might think about financial debt - when do you take it on, and when do you pay it down?
• Why you don't actually want your startup's codebase to have no technical debt
• How to strategically take on technical debt so that you can make higher-ROI investments
• What 0% interest technical debt looks like versus high interest rate technical debt
• How to align product, engineering, and design behind common goals and metrics

Indrajit was a lead engineer at Bump when it was acquired by Google, where he led the engineering team that built Google Photos and scaled it from 0 to 1 billion users.

Indrajit and Jean discuss:

• Only having a day or two to prep for a standard Google engineering interview
• The multiple factors, including clear purpose and mission, that led to a successful acquisition and integration of the Bump team into Google
• Startup mindset of doing things that don’t scale, and what that looks like at a big company
• Inner workings of Google’s acquisition of Bump, integration of the team, internal dog-fooding of Google Photos v1, and public launch.
• The vast difference of launching a product as a startup vs at Google

Beau has been at Automattic for over 12 years, a company which has been fully distributed and pre-pandemic, had regular in-person team meetups for team bonding and alignment.

Beau and Jean discuss:

• The purpose and structure of a standard Automattic in-person team meetup
• Different ways Automattic teams have connected socially this past year, including a zoom cocktail class, escape rooms
• BBC Dad and now normalized it is now to see a more personal glimpse into people’s family lives
• How distributed teams can find a mix of NIRL (not in real life) events and physical meetups to build culture and belonging

Additional Resources

• Inside the Grand Meetup - Hear from Automattic's CEO Matt Mullenweg and other Automatticians about the annual all-company meetup
• How We Work - More from Automattic's blog about how the company works
• Beau's Blog - More insights from Beau about his work at Automattic

Lynne is the founder of Key Values, a company that helps engineers find new roles on teams that are aligned with their own values.

Lynne and Jean discuss: 

• The different phases of engineering hiring over the past year, from sheer survival to the Great Resignation
• How the pandemic has helped people clarify what’s truly important to them, both in work and their personal lives
• The current confusion around remote work - where are teams actually hiring, and will what hiring managers are saying now still be true in a few months?
• Just how hot the hiring market is right now for engineers!

Chris and Jean discuss:

• The difficulty in delegating and letting go of control - and why it's so important
• Dialing in your judgement in making decisions that keep the business needs front and center
• Common mistakes, such as over-doing it with structure and processes when you become a manager
• Coaching and career development conversations as ways to amplify your impact

Rachael and Jean chat about:

• When to focus on supporting your team as a manager, versus investing in longer-term, more strategic initiatives
• Finding initiatives that you’re personally excited about and that give you energy
• Benefits of organizing a task force around initiatives versus doing it alone
• The importance of sharing updates on initiatives, same as you would for other projects.
• Taking on projects to create a role for yourself that is energizing and enjoyable

Sumeet joined Cisco almost straight out of school and spent over two decades there, growing his career and the company. More recently, he made the decision and leap to leave for a different professional adventure.

Sumeet and Jean discuss:

• The fear and difficulty of leaving the comfortable bubble of a large tech company
• The importance of learning and adapting, and finding comfort and growth in being slightly uncomfortable
• How his relationships with former coworkers has evolved after his departure from Cisco
• Anchoring on the knowledge that as a leader, your skills are transferable across domains
• Surrounding yourself with people who have growth mindsets
• How to leverage your experience, and look at your new role and company with fresh eyes - and not just copy everything that was in place at the larger company

Kim and Jean discuss:

• The three revelations that led Kim down the path of working on Just Work
• The importance of intentionally building for systemic justice
• Recognition of the role of privilege in how Radical Candor is practiced and received.
• Using “You” statements such as “You can’t talk to me like that” in response to bullying (and also how to respond to prejudice and bias)
• Using Hollaback’s 5 D’s of Bystander Intervention: Distract, Delegate, Document, Delay, and Direct

Additional Resources:

• Just Work: Get Sh*t Done, Fast & Fair
• Just Work

Tess became an engineering manager at 24 and noted that she's been solicited for advice for even younger engineering managers - some as young as 21.

Tess and Jean discuss:

• The recent trend of earlier career engineers moving into management (sometimes as young as 21 or 22 years old)
• Working with mentors and coaches as ways to surround yourself with context, experience, and wisdom
• How to manage and support engineers far more senior than yourself
• The manager-engineer pendulum, and the challenge of leveling up both skill sets simultaneously

Camille and Jean discuss: 

• Limited innovation tokens and how to decide where to spend them (hint: it’s not on cool tech)! 
• What boring plans actually look like, especially when you do need to upgrade to more interesting tech so your team doesn’t fall behind. 
• Rolling out company-wide platform updates as rigorously as you would plan for an external launch 
• How to manage up and build credibility that you’re delivery value when undertaking long-running technical projects

Additional Resources: 

• The Manager's Path: A Guide for Tech Leaders Navigating Growth and Change  
• Make Boring Plans by Camille Fournier
• Choose Boring Technology by Dan McKinley

Marc has been an engineering leader at companies such as Mailchimp, Skyliner, and Stripe. He also is a Director for Code2040, a non-profit that works to bring under-represented minorities into engineering and entrepreneurial roles in tech.

Jean and Marc discuss: 

• Ways to actually learn from and support under-indexed folks in tech that isn’t just performative.
• Not falling in the trap of basking in the attention of getting credit for diversity-related work, as a white man.
• As a member of a majority group, how and why to give away opportunities that come your way.
• Measuring your success by your outcomes, whether the actions are small (making an intro, writing a testimonial) or large (revamping a hiring process).

Host note: Harper and I originally met at FooCamp in 2013, when he attended a FooCamp unconference session I led called How to Run Efficient Meetings. When we re-connected a few months ago, I discovered that after that one hour session 8 years ago, he revamped meetings at his company, and at every company he’s worked at since. We re-united to record a Lead Time Chat nerding out on meetings and to encourage more teams to implement these high-density, high-efficiency team meetings.

Jean and Harper discuss:

• How a 3 hour rambling meeting turned into a 30 minute high density meeting, with a bit of structure and facilitation
• The impact that highly efficient meetings have had on Harper's teams over the last 8 years
• How to create a meeting culture that's not dominated by the loudest people in the room
• Tips on how to get started with this type of structured check-in meeting

For more on the evolution of check-in meetings, check out this post:
Nine years of meeting efficiency: Lessons learned from Range's VP of Engineering

You can also find some highlights in this blog post:
Harper Reed on giving everyone a voice in team meetings 

Akhil started his career at Google, and was a Principal Engineer by the time he left for Dropbox. At Dropbox, he grew the infra org from just 10 engineers, and stepped into the Head of Infrastructure role, then VP of Engineering, and then GM and VP of Enterprise.

Jean and Akhil discuss:

• Akhil’s transition to management at Google — going from 0 to 40 direct reports!
• How to surround yourself with people who are rooting for your success, as you transition to greater impact roles
• The biggest challenges of transitioning from a functional leader to a cross-functional leader (i.e. VP of Engineering to GM of Enterprise at Dropbox)
• What relationship-building looks like when your org has thousands of people, and 1:1s won't scale!

Jean and Katie discuss: 

• The difficulty of sitting with a sense of hope, and how this last stretch can actually seem more intolerable than the last year in a pandemic
• Debugging when you’re feeling out of whack at work with the BICEPS framework
• Zoom fatigue and why Kate suggests you might consider lying down on a couch for your next 1:1!
• Work-appropriate ways to start conversations about mental health, including stoplight (red/yellow/green) check-ins
• How managers can ensure they have emotional support through external or internal peer or professional support.
• Unconventional ways to find social connection in a pandemic — i.e. internet friends!

Jean and Uma discuss: 

• Directly reporting to the CEO as a VP of Engineering and how the role compares to other engineering leadership roles.
• Figuring out what we needed to know to ramp up and what to let go of
• The wide range of activities a VP of Engineering role can encompass, and doing many things we've never done before.
• The challenges of figuring out childcare logistics as we step into exec roles

Jean and Kaya chat about:

• Overcoming some of the stigmas of being an early career engineer
• How to negotiate your first full-time job offer, especially if you have more experience than average
• Ways that engineering managers can support early-and-mid stage engineers on their team
• Knowing when to leave your first engineering job!

Jean and Lara chat about:

• Leaning into one-way asynchronous communication as much as possible — especially for announcements and status updates that don’t require a back-and-forth
• Using Red-Yellow-Green check-ins in 1:1s and other situations to make it as lightweight as humanly possible to check in on your coworkers
• Making sure your oxygen mask is on first so that you can help others
• Defragging your calendar!

You can access Lara's Defrag Your Calendar worksheet here: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1qOXEOOYvxiA4LDgmEqK0hCYuJ44nf0Z8UM-j48kK4gw/edit

You can also try out Range for asynchronous check-ins that include red-yellow-green mood indicators. https://www.range.co​

Jean and Gergely chat about:

• Why Gergely thought management was LAME - and resisted becoming a manager
• The huge contrast between becoming an “accidental manager” at a startup and becoming a manager at Uber
• Defining his leadership by having a list he had created of all the managers he wanted to avoid being
• How to support new managers and set them up for success
• How a checklist of management activities can create a tighter feedback loop for new managers
• The unexpected loneliness of being a manager

You can find the manager checklist Gergely used for new managers here: https://blog.pragmaticengineer.com/checklist-for-first-time-managers

Jean and Juan Pablo discuss:

• The difference between being a manager at a high-growth startup vs. a larger, more established company
• The importance of understanding business needs in communicating about technical work
• Why you shouldn't just copy processes from other companies wholesale (like Spotify's matrix management)
• What it means to take a product approach to team processes

Jean and Cate discuss:

• The role of a external coach compared to a manager
• The benefits of working with an external coach, especially over multiple jobs
• What a good fit feels like when looking for a coach
• How important an engineering background is (or isn't) when finding a coach
• When external coaching can actually harm a situation

Jean and Duretti discuss:

• What junior and mid-level engineers most need.
• Why women and people of color can't always take the advice they're given
• What it means to be over-mentored and under-sponsored
• The difference in level-setting when you're coming into a new company vs. going up for promotion
• How internal promotions can be highly political
• What engineering managers can do to best support people earlier in their career

Jean and Will discuss: 

• Negotiating their first tech jobs (or not negotiating their first tech jobs)
• The false expectation that the staff engineering route will be more predictable than the management route
• How getting external support is key
• Increasing difficulty of switching between the paths as you become more senior
• How to approach non-work work (books, talks, blog posts, etc).