A common question I am asked, “How big should the team be?” My immediate response: Seven plus or minus three. There is a not a lot of hard theory behind this guideline, just common sense. To understand my reasoning, let’s do a little math. Let’s first assume you have seven folks on your team and… more
Zach looked tired, he looked weary. “I used to code. I’d get to work a little after 10am high on caffeine, I’d sit down at my desk, glance at my email, and then start coding. Sure, there would be a meeting here and there, but we’d be talking about code or things that lead to… more
Dunbar’s Number is a favorite blunt diagnosis for the pains that affect rapidly growing teams. The number, which is somewhere between 100 and 250 describes a point at which a group of people can no longer effectively maintain social connections in their respective heads. What was simple from a communication perspective becomes costly. What was… more
You’ve heard of the 10x engineer, but I am here to tell you about the Wolf. They are an engineer, and they consistently exhibit the following characteristics: They appear to exist outside the well-defined process we’ve defined to get things done, but they appear to suffer no consequences for not following these rules. Everyone knows… more
You arrive at work. You sit down at your desk and you scan your inbox for potential disasters. Two mails pique your interest. You write brief responses to nudge the engineers in the right direction. Nothing else is urgent so you walk to the kitchen to get breakfast. You sit down with three fellow engineers… more
Angela quit. She walked in on a Monday morning, went straight into Alex’s office, resignation letter in hand, and said, “I have a great offer from another company that I’ve accepted. My last day is a week from Friday.” Alex reacted. After listening to Angela’s resignation, he told her simply and clearly, “I know you… more
People bitch. Like, all the time. It’s 8:35am on a Friday and I’ve already bitched twice: once about the weather and another time about the power flickering on and off. At work, Frank bitches as a last resort, when all else has failed, so I know to pay careful attention. Matt bitches all the time… more
I’ve been hating on status reports for a long time and it comes from my first knee-jerk reaction when my manager asked for one. My unspoken thought was, “Why, wait, what?” I didn’t understand big companies, I didn’t understand politics and bureaucracy, all I understood was that it felt like a waste of time to… more
At some point in the last year there was too much email. I’ve considered myself a competent manager of email and to-dos for much of my career, but the quantity of email that needed my attention exceeded a heretofore unknown ceiling and I began to understand how the smallest parts of my inbox policy could… more
When I do speaking gigs, I open with a few questions to get to know the audience. I’m looking for a couple of key demographic numbers to gauge how much to focus on and tune different themes in any given talk. I ask: How many self-identified Apple people? (Typography jokes = ok.) How many engineers?… more