calm-engineering.md

Calm engineering

How to hire

• finding candidates
• selling candidates on the position
• assessing candidates

Onboarding

• before the first day
• first day and introducing the team
• defining culture (and then watching it evolve)
• The Wiki
• manager README (and why they are criticised)
• making yourself available
• finding a good first task

Being agile without the bullshit

• everyone else says they have found "true" agile
• do more than read
• if you're always sprinting, you're never sprinting
• people over process
• Retrospectives

Code reviews

• suggest, don't demand
• the reviewer is the assistant
• code reviews as a learning experience
• code reviews to reduce bus factor

Leadership and Earning respect

• earned over years, lost in seconds
• staying 'hands on'
• democracy with a final decision maker
• protective authority

one on ones

• why they are important
• what they are not
• the employee's time
• mentorship

Operations vs Engineering

• can't build when you're always putting out fire
• urgent vs important
• when to delegate
• prioritisation

Tradeoffs

• technical debt
• building tests
• using advanced tooling
• buy vs build
• code vs no code

Ladders and career advancement

• people over process
• perceived fairness
• get compensation out of the way
• humans, not trained mice
• titles

Technical roles and interactions

• Backend, frontend, fullstack
• DevOps
• UI, UX, Designer
• Product Manager
• Functional and cross functional