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lead_dev_london_19_notes.md

#LeadDeveloperLondon notes

Here are a couple of notes from talks I enjoyed and I believe are relevant to us during the Lead Developer conference in London in June 11-12.

Playlist with all the talks : https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLBzScQzZ83I9uW36NnjX6Pe5P63EpEk_q

Level Up: Developing Developers - Melinda Seckington

  1. Growing junior engineers is easier than hiring senior ones plus helps with retaining them

  2. Don’t overload new starters

    1. Onboarding checklist ( what to read, TODOs, cheatsheets). Take a look at their onboarding trello checklist, which is cloned for each new hire: https://speakerdeck.com/mseckington/level-up-developing-developers?slide=24

  3. Support and guide new starters - provide them a mentor

  4. Make it clear what to focus on.

    1. Personal development goals (in OKR format. 6+ month objectives, key results change quarterly)
    2. Structured reflection
    3. Regular check ins

  5. Help people understand whether what they’re doing is right or wrong. Give people immediate feedback, make yourself available(e.g. for roleplay )

    1. books mentioned: difficult conversations, thanks for the feedback

  6. Provide space to reflect on the past - 360 review. They use https://www.15five.com/ which looks interesting and potentially useful. It increased the 360 submissions.

  7. Provide opportunities to acquire new skills

    1. Provide training budget and encourage people to think about it
    2. Learning events
      1. Talks we love (sounds great - sync to watch and discus a talk together)
      2. learning hours
      3. architecture club
      4. front end catch up
      5. conference club
      6. leadership study group
      7. book club
      8. course club

  8. Acknowledge people’s growth - you should always be reviewing growth / salaries. Be consistent and fair.

  9. Expose basic competencies and how they’re used.

    1. curiosity
    2. communication
    3. technical skills
    4. teamwork skills
    5. initiative
    6. shared competencies + specific roles’ competencies : https://speakerdeck.com/mseckington/level-up-developing-developers?slide=74

  10. Allow people to choose their own path ( generalize | specialize ) 1. They maintain an internal spreadsheet with everyone’s skill levels https://speakerdeck.com/mseckington/level-up-developing-developers?slide=81 so that people know who to ask etc

  11. Visualize what progression looks like 1. they’ve worked in their won career progression framework (wip)

    1. https://speakerdeck.com/mseckington/level-up-developing-developers?slide=85 (and following slides )

Bottom up with OKRs - Whitney O’Banner (@WooBanner)

Video : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Us6jaZoXgdU&list=PLBzScQzZ83I9uW36NnjX6Pe5P63EpEk_q&index=5&t=0s

Thoughts / realizations on OKRs

  1. Skip individual OKRs altogether
    1. Ditch them, and if you need something on that level go with ‘tasks’ instead
  2. Ignore metrics - focus on outcomes
    1. When first introducing OKRs don’t overthink the measurement detail. It’s a guess at best. (e.g. why go for 20% instead of 30% ?)
  3. Avoid cascading goals
    1. Laszlo Bock (Googles former VP of people operations) said: “Having goals improves performance. Spending hours cascading goals up and down the company, however, does not. It takes way too much time and it’s too hard to make sure all the goals line up.”
    2. Managers tend to over value their ideas by 42%. Frontline employees tend to under value theirs by 11%.
    3. Let the frontline employees decide on ‘how’ they’ll align and add value - take a bottoms up approach

Navigating team friction - Lara Hogan

Opening talk, great overall.

Video : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lqqBktWqPLo&list=PLBzScQzZ83I9uW36NnjX6Pe5P63EpEk_q&index=2&t=0s

Notes:

  1. Tuckman stages of team development: forming, storming, norming, performing and adjourning.
    1. Transitions between the stages are sources of team tension
  2. Biceps core needs ( https://www.palomamedina.com/biceps/ )
    1. Belonging ( community, connection )
    2. Improvement / progress
    3. Choice (autonomy, flexibility )
    4. Equality / Fairness ( access to resources/info, equal reciprocity)
    5. Predictability ( resources, time, direction, challenges)
    6. Significance ( status, visibility, recognition)
  3. What’s most important to my teammates? Knowing this is a superpwer. People feel valued + appreciated
  4. The feedback equation ( https://docs.google.com/document/d/1KTH4owMH8BA3NWX7i7fTmdt7cBdiLv0PBrnO7vLl4ik/edit#heading=h.d0txsbb62foh )
    1. Observation of behavior + Impact of the behavior + Question or Request = actionable, specific feedback that has a chance of landing
    2. Ask about preferred feedback medium (talk or written for example)
      ….

12/10, Excellent doggo: the power of positive transformation | Heidi Waterhouse

Video : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8PdNgQhhrDg&list=PLBzScQzZ83I9uW36NnjX6Pe5P63EpEk_q&index=8&t=0s

Hard to summarize but was an overall great and entertaining talk.

Eiffel’s Tower | Nickolas Means

Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RNGZTkM2xOU&list=PLBzScQzZ83I9uW36NnjX6Pe5P63EpEk_q&index=15&t=0s

In which Nickolas Means talks about what it took to get the Eiffel Tower built. Awesome talk. Talks about pitching the project, politics, getting people excited etc. Concludes with talking about politics inside organizations and that programmers/ICs shouldn’t shy away from them, but engage. That managers shouldn’t self identify as “shit umbrellas” for their teams, because they then become a choking point, but rather like “heat shields”, when a space rocket enters the earth. Overall entertaining, well delivered talk. Worth watching if only to see what a good talk looks like.

Notes:

  • rephrase politics as : making friends and telling stories
  • talk with people, get to know them
  • let your work known
  • rephrase negotiation as cooperation
    • from zero sum thinking to win win / what people want + why

Business as usual: how to stop drowning and learn to swim | Jonathan Stott

Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DrduEU-lwbU&list=PLBzScQzZ83I9uW36NnjX6Pe5P63EpEk_q&index=18&t=0s

In which Jonathan Stott talks about tips/tricks/techniques that they tried in their workplace to make working with a long running software product bearable. That business/software product involves many manual processes that noone wants to deal with and drive employees away because they burn out / hate their lives.

Does an anonymous recruitment process lead to more diverse teams? | Bethan Vincent

Video : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mE1zJ90nd0g&list=PLBzScQzZ83I9uW36NnjX6Pe5P63EpEk_q&index=12&t=0s

Notes:

  • Managers tend to like people like them. We != applicants.
  • People want to “showcase” soft skills alongside technical ones
  • Candidates want human connection and see how it is to work there
  • tests + exercices are not inclusive, because they exclude people that are not able to take them ( for example parents of young kids, people who have to take care of a sick parent, etc)
  • Job listings are just as important as the application process
  • If you care you need to listen

Behind the scenes of an effective & inclusive hiring process | Ola Sitarska

Video : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fM3xQMIWjbw&list=PLBzScQzZ83I9uW36NnjX6Pe5P63EpEk_q&index=19&t=0s

If the topic is of interest to you, watch this, it’s full of gold nuggets.

The key to solving the conundrum of software estimation - Jonathan Rigby

Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OUA7vsKk-CA&list=PLBzScQzZ83I9uW36NnjX6Pe5P63EpEk_q&index=24&t=0s

Funny, short, entertaining talk.

Silence isn’t golden, it’s deadly! | Paula Kennedy

Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JPvEF4Sc2Qo&list=PLBzScQzZ83I9uW36NnjX6Pe5P63EpEk_q&index=25&t=1137s

Awesome talk on remote teams.

  1. Communication
    1. weekly 1-1s
    2. weekly standup (whiteboard): new faces, helps, events, interestings
      1. rotating facilitators so that shy people talk
    3. Weekly “teach me something” (remote brownbag)
    4. Monthly retrospectives
    5. Quarterly “virtual offsite”: whole day zoom call
      1. has an agenda like a regular offsite
        1. speakers, breaks, happy hour etc
  2. Trust
    1. Psychological Safety
      1. google’s project Aristotle
      2. Active listening (listening wheel) workshop
      3. mindful communication (alignment)
        1. what’s going on with me / you
      4. Resilience: build + amplify
        1. separate work from person
  3. Culture
    1. Actual offsite
    2. Team mascot
    3. Virtual coffee break / happy hour
    4. Shout outs ( congrats ) - also weekly email. Celebrate achievements.

What didn’t work:

  1. Accidentally excluded rest of world members and siloed people(new teams, etc in separate slack channels)
  2. Book club: didn’t really work due to timezones/people getting sucked in projects
  3. OKRs - they dont’ necessarily match what we’re trying to achieve.

Learnings:

  1. DON’T BE COMPLACENT. Particularly pay attention to the quiet voices - constantly pay attention.

Leading the team through a rapid growth | Joanna Chwastowska

Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BzD3FMXnt0c&list=PLBzScQzZ83I9uW36NnjX6Pe5P63EpEk_q&index=26&t=0s

Summarizing past experiences - from bootstrapping a remote team from zero to 20 people, as well as growing DeepMind Health engineering team from 20 to 80 in a bit over a year - there are patterns emerging that can help other teams avoid pitfalls that come naturally with a rapid growth.

Facilitation techniques 202 | Neha Batra

Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dm413o3ML0o&list=PLBzScQzZ83I9uW36NnjX6Pe5P63EpEk_q&index=27&t=0s

How to run a good meeting. Agenda, tools, etc. Nice!

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