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David
Yee
VP of Engineering
The New York Times
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Welcome to LeadDev New York 2024
A welcome to LeadDev New York 2024 from the host David Yee.
Your host David Yee welcomes you to the day, run through our code of conduct and let you know what we've got coming up.
David Yee is VP of Engineering at the New York Times. As an engineering leader, he’s built and scaled teams at both small and enormous companies in the worlds of journalism, music, and art—with an emphasis on product-oriented engineering and humane management. His career has included roles as Chief Architect and co-founder at 20x200, co-founder and CTO at Editorially, and Engineering Director of Chorus at Vox Media
View David's LeadDev articles and talksIn this talk, Sara Hicks will explore several communication habits that can improve communication and knowledge sharing within your team around dates and deadlines.
Setting and communicating dates and deadlines is one of the more challenging things to do in software development.
While setting dates is an important reality in business, they are often demotivating and counterproductive to bringing teams together and helping them to work more effectively. Even when dates are set and communicated, it’s usually not clear to different team members what the dates even mean. Then, when dates shift, it causes even more confusion and can contribute to a lack of trust.
Good communication within a team is incredibly challenging! It’s even more challenging for distributed teams. Dates and the communication patterns around them are a vital element to establishing credibility and building upon values and principles within teams.
This talk will explore several communication habits that can improve communication and knowledge sharing within your team around dates and deadlines. What communication habits are most important for a team to develop around dates? How can you communicate and ensure a common understanding around dates? What principles can you put in place to bring more confidence and understanding around the dates you set? How can dates become a positive contributing factor to your overall goals? Through specific examples and learnings, this talk will share habits and a common vocabulary around dates that, when used, can help teams to be more effective, motivated, cohesive, and even productive.
Building on a successful, decades-long record of creating products and businesses, Sara is now a founding partner and executive leadership coach at The Intentional Organization. Most recently, she successfully led Reaction Commerce from its founding in 2013 to its acquisition by Mailchimp in April 2020, eventually becoming the Chief Product Officer. Sara has helped to scale teams and build products for massive marketplaces and platforms that generate billions of dollars in transactions, touch millions of consumers, and impact hundreds of thousands of businesses. Sara resides in Los Angeles, CA where she is equal parts right-brain innovator and left-brain analyzer.
View Sara's LeadDev articles and talksA sneak peek into the 2024 LeadDev Engineering Management report: how the role is changing and what these changes mean for the industry at large.
Over the last two years, the tech industry has been going through big changes
After a decade of boom, a lot of companies have been running layoffs, and headlines were dominated by CEOs talking about a need for “fewer managers”, “more efficiency”, and “more AI.” Throughout this time, many engineering leaders have been really busy turning a lot of these decisions into reality, while trying to make sense of these large and rapid changes beyond just headlines and anecdotes. Many leaders have been wondering what the industry shifts mean for them, asking questions like:
I’m a VP Engineering and coach to engineering leaders, and, like you, I’ve been trying to get these answers—and now I’m sharing them with you: “The Engineering Leadership Report 2024”, produced in partnership with LeadDev and based on insight of over 1,100 engineering leaders. Join me for this talk to hear answers to these and more questions about the future of engineering leadership.
You’ll walk away with a clearer understanding of the shape of a changed industry, and the nuances in those changes, as well as concrete ideas for what you can do to navigate it successfully. During the office hours afterwards, co-producer Scott Carey, Editor in Chief at LeadDev, and I will be happy to answer your questions.
Lena Reinhard has dedicated her career to building successful, high-performing globally distributed engineering organisations, and helping teams thrive in times of high change like hypergrowth. She now offers transformational leadership coaching and consulting for leaders. Previously, Lena served as VP Engineering with CircleCI and Travis CI, as well as a startup co-founder & CEO, and through her cross-functional background and experience, she brings a unique perspective on systems of technology, business, and people.
View Lena's LeadDev articles and talksScott Carey is the Editor in Chief at LeadDev. An experienced technology journalist, he has covered software development for Computerworld, CIO, and InfoWorld before joining LeadDev.
View Scott's LeadDev articles and talksOffice hours is your opportunity to connect face-to-face, ask questions and find out more.
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This talk by Yaphi Berhanu will cover concrete strategies you can use today to improve your self-awareness as a manager.
Let me tell you about a mistake I made as a manager.
I thought it would be cool to be as generous as possible with decisions. If there was a decision to be made, I'd open it up to the team for discussions. "How kind and democratic," I thought to myself. "I'm one of the good ones!" I later found out I was annoying the team. By opening up every decision, I dragged out meetings and dumped extra mental labor onto my reports. How did I get so out-of-touch? Simple. I allowed myself to get feedback from my own imagination.
When you're a manager, several barriers stand in the way of self-awareness. For example, you evaluate people's performance, so no matter how nice or supportive you may be, there are built-in incentives to agree with you. Additionally, it can be awkward for your reports to bring up feedback in one-on-one meetings. As a manager, your title can mean you're treated as correct by default, and it can be easy to slip into that lens when evaluating your own decisions. These examples can lead to negative outcomes such as missing a harmful trade-off because a report didn't feel empowered to disagree with you.
This talk will cover concrete strategies you can use today to improve your self-awareness as a manager. Through a series of fun and not-so-fun cautionary tales, we'll talk about how to unlock real feedback from your team, when to use a direct versus indirect approach, and how to avoid the traps that lure us into thinking our worst decisions are our best. By the end, you'll walk away with the tools to become more in touch with your teams and yourself so that you can enable your engineers to do their best work.
Yaphi has alternated between engineering and management at Squarespace in New York where he recently led the creation of Squarespace’s new course-building platform. He also writes engineering articles for outlets including Smashing Magazine, CSS-Tricks, and SitePoint. In his spare time, he enjoys fitness and gaming.
View Yaphi's LeadDev articles and talksIn this talk, Emily Thomas will discuss approachable ways an engineering leader can influence product development without stepping on toes.
Delivering a best in class solution, for a problem no one has is a common pitfall for tech teams and companies.
As an engineering leader, there is a unique non-technical challenge to deliver impact in what we build. This is heightened when there are gaps on our parallel product team or in the companies vision. Have you ever lead a product engineering team that didn't have a (good) product manager? Have you ever been doubtful of the solution you've been tasked to implement? Let's talk about approachable ways an engineering leader can influence product development without stepping on toes.
Emily is not just an engineer or a manager, but a problem solver, focused on creating creative efficiency both in and out of code. She rapidly grew her career at hustling startups, experienced management at a massively scaling pre-IPO unicorn, and is now dedicated to solving the next big problem - the balance of humans and technology.
View Emily's LeadDev articles and talksIn this talk, Marty Haught will go over a framework on how to approach managing out humanely. We'll start with the foundation of setting expectations, providing direct feedback, and working with your report to bring out their best.
Building great teams requires many things of a manager.
One that is not often discussed but can be critical is how to approach managing team members out. We all hope that we don't have to move on from anyone but there will be times when it is the best thing you can do for your team.
In this talk, we'll go over a framework on how to approach managing out humanely. We'll start with the foundation of setting expectations, providing direct feedback, and working with your report to bring out their best. We hope that by taking these actions a direct will make adjustments to meet expectations. We'll explore ways to frame the situation that is honest and objective, that allows you to constructively move forward with kindness. Simply put, if they are not fit for the role, it's unfair to them, the team, and the organization to not take action. By the end of this process, separation will not come as a surprise to anyone.
You will leave this talk with knowledge on:
Marty Haught, a former Director of Engineering at HashiCorp and Fastly, is now advising the RubyGems team while pondering what is next. He's an avid community builder near Boulder, Colorado where he founded the Boulder Ruby group and has spent over a decade as a director of Ruby Central, a non-profit organization that provides the RubyGems infrastructure and runs the RailsConf and RubyConf conferences. Outside of tech, he spends a lot of creative energy baking and cooking yummy dishes that his family is all too happy to eat.
View Marty's LeadDev articles and talksJoin Jenna, founding member of Slack's frontend performance team, as she dives in and explores the performance bottlenecks they're encountering as the application and team continue to grow and evolve.
Slack’s desktop application is like a duck.
On the surface, everything has to appear effortless, but underneath, we're swimming furiously. We have to support hundreds of complex feature interactions and process a constant stream of input from user and server alike, all without breaking a sweat.
Join Jenna, founding member of Slack's frontend performance team, as we dive in and explore the performance bottlenecks we’re encountering as the application and team continue to grow and evolve. We'll dig into how foundational architectural decisions have rippled to create these issues and the wide range of technical and cultural approaches our team is taking to prevent and mitigate the inefficiencies that cause your laptop fans to spin wildly.
One morning, Jenna awoke to find that she had transformed into a programmer, and she’s been psyched about coding ever since. Now she’s a Senior Staff Engineer at Slack where she’s on the Client Performance Infrastructure team, making Slack faster every day and building a performance culture rooted in understanding the inner-workings of the systems the app is built on. Outside of this, Jenna has been an organizer of several JavaScript communities and gets immense joy out of explaining complex topics in unique ways.
View Jenna's LeadDev articles and talksOffice hours is your opportunity to connect face-to-face, ask questions and find out more.
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In this talk, Jason will share what they've learned from the experts in hinting and some examples of how they've applied these techniques one-on-one and in designing better processes.
Working on teams, we need to help other people every day.
But some of the most common feedback about help given is that it misses the mark: We can give so little support that we're no help at all, or so much support that it feels like we've just taken over the task. How do we calibrate the support we give to the situation?
I've found useful insights for this problem outside the technical field, particularly in the design of puzzles like escape rooms. I'll share what I've learned from the experts in hinting, and some examples of how I've applied these techniques, both one-on-one and in the design of better processes. You'll come away with a concrete model to give better, more effective guidance in any context, whether it's helping a team member stretch to tackle a new problem, or helping with your child learn from their homework.
Jason has spent almost twenty years in the tech industry. In that time, they've been a teacher, a test engineer, a development manager, a software engineer, and performed one ill-advised attempt at program management. Today they're working in engineering advocacy, helping people find new ways to think about our industry. They live with their husband in the drizzly paradise of Seattle. Ask them about board games, community-building, puzzle design, queer theory, or anything you're deeply excited by.
View Jason's LeadDev articles and talksIris, engineering manager at Riot Games, will talk about how a ritual of safety and belonging brought her team closer together after "the Kotaku article" broke and trust was at an all-time low. Iris will talk about how she convinced new teams and reluctant engineers to adopt the ritual as an IC, and how she instituted and spread it across Riot Games further as a manager. This talk will give you a template for how to rebuild trust in your teams and get them working towards the same goal.
Psychological safety has become a popular buzzword these days in articles and on social media, but what can a manager do to actively cultivate it in their teams?
Iris, engineering manager at Riot Games, will talk about how the ritual of "Safety and Belonging" brought her team closer together after "the Kotaku article" broke and trust was at an all-time low. Hear how she convinced new teams and reluctant engineers to adopt the ritual as an IC, and how she instituted and spread it across Riot Games further as a manager.
Take this practical guide and details on a 3-part workshop to immediately jumpstart psychological safety in teams, and learn from lessons and best practices cultivated over multiple organizational settings.
Iris is an engineering lead for the engine team that powers League of Legends and Teamfight Tactics, specializing in graphics. As a community builder, she founded and lead ERG & D&I initiatives at Riot Games. Most recently founded Support Buff, a social network for games professionals in the Los Angeles making the industry a better place.
View Iris 's LeadDev articles and talksDatadog decided in 2018 to migrate all of its infrastructure to Kubernetes. And while it was a daunting technical undertaking, dealing with people and process was equally hard. Seshendra will share lessons learned from this large-scale migration, including how 2000+ engineers, across 250+ different teams made tens of thousands of changes per week to 3,000+ different workloads. He’ll give tactical tips about how to set up a project for success - and how to land it effectively.
Datadog made a strategic business decision in 2018 to migrate all our infrastructure to Kubernetes. During this process, a large number of our infrastructure teams were trailblazing the platform to make it work for each shape and type of our workloads for multiple cloud providers and accounting for their idiosyncratic runtime differences.
Managing expectations of 2000+ engineers involved in migrating to a new Deployment Platform while the company was undergoing rapid growth, posed one of the biggest challenges of my management career since it introduced the greatest variable - the intersection of software and people.
During this process, a large number of our infrastructure teams were trailblazing the platform to make it work for each shape and type of our workloads for multiple cloud providers and accounting for their idiosyncratic runtime differences. The hard lessons learnt during this effort in the technical realm have been presented on multiple occasions. However, even accounting for the daunting magnitude of its technical side, transforming and guiding human behaviors on the new way of deploying and operating software turned out to be at least just as challenging as reforming our infrastructure.
What we came to realize during this endeavor more clearly was that we, as humans, form habits very easily and don’t like disruptions to what we have become familiar with. When communicating a change to people who are directly impacted by it, assumptions (and therefore disappointments) are often unavoidable, no matter how clear one believes themselves to be when outlining said change.
In this talk, I’d like to share the lessons we learned building a Deployment Platform that involved an eventual migration of 2000+ engineers, from 250+ different teams, making tens of thousands of changes per week to 3000+ different workloads. I will share the importance of understanding the complexity of human motivations and establishing two-way communication channels, listening reflectively by placing oneself mentally into their positions and thinking what words may be more impactful for their particular situation.
Sesh Nalla is the head of the High Performance Transaction Systems organization at Datadog. Sesh has 20 years of experience building and evolving mission-critical software systems.Sesh began his career working on replacing a radar-based air traffic control system with a satellite-based system for the Indian government and later led the transformation of core transactional systems for a $10b revenue wealth management business from mainframe (CICS) to distributed and cloud-native systems.For the past 4 years, Sesh has been building infrastructure platforms at Datadog.
View Seshendra's LeadDev articles and talksOffice hours is your opportunity to connect face-to-face, ask questions and find out more.
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Mica will share her experiences of working on an astonishingly small team on some of the highest-stake problems anyone could throw a computer at. She’ll talk about how it inspired a plan to create a new, flexible-model team at Slack to continuously, and creatively deliver top priorities. She will highlight the can’t-miss key points of culture-building in a tumultuous time, examine the challenges faced in adjusting to this new way of working, and go over what it means to make a flexible-model team sustainable in the long run.
Recently, many Engineering teams have had to make more do with fewer folks to tackle the responsibilities a larger team had inherited over time. This has caused organizations to scramble to find ways to fund feature development, handle maintenance burdens and acclimate to a new normal across smaller teams.
But what if the answer lies in rethinking team structures and mandates and adopting a wholly different team model than what the organization has had in the past? How can we best show up and support the needs of our teams, while also proposing ways to “scale” teams nimbly and keeping organizational changes in perspective?
In this talk, I will share my experience of working on an astonishingly small team on some of the highest-stake problems anyone could throw a computer at and how that inspired a plan to create a new, flexible-model team at Slack to continuously, and creatively deliver top priorities.
I’ll also highlight the can’t-miss key points of culture-building in a tumultuous time, examine the challenges faced in adjusting to this new way of working, and go over what it means to make a flexible-model team sustainable in the long run. Learn how flexibility begets resilience, how to mitigate risks to morale and business goals and how to recognize when the time might be right for your organization to undertake a similar pivot in the near future.
Mica Alaniz is a Chicagoan, first and foremost, born and raised. She is also a Technical Leader focused on a values-based team growth, advocacy and coalition-building. All of which she brings to her role as an Engineering Manager on the Enterprise team at Slack. Prior to that, she spent two US election cycles - the 2018 Midterm and 2020 Presidential elections - on the Tech team as an Engineer, Tech Lead and then Engineering Manager at the Democratic National Committee; where she built tools to support Democratic candidates and campaigns and to empower data-driven organizing and voter education. She is also proud to have been an organizing leader in the drive to form the DNC Staff Union. She continues to be engaged in her community, whether it be through local neighborhood organizations or through being a Code2040 Fellows Program Mentor Coach. She also gives talks, teaches workshops and offers career coaching centered around underindexed individuals in tech. In her spare time, she can be found enjoying and exploring her hometown, inhaling books, collecting board games, conquering roguelike video games and having this thing with coffee where she needs it to live.
View Mica's LeadDev articles and talksThe tech industry has been facing new challenges: an economic downturn after a huge surge in hiring, inflation, and higher interest rates. This means that many tech companies are shifting their focus from growth to profitability. This talk focuses on how to retain your people by leading with empathy, building trust, and working with your people to understand their core motivators.
A staff reduction, if handled poorly, can be a turning point in the minds of employees, from trust in a company to a feeling of betrayal.
The tech industry has been facing new challenges: an economic downturn after a huge surge in hiring, inflation, and higher interest rates. This means that many tech companies are shifting their focus from growth to profitability. This talk focuses on how to retain your people by leading with empathy, building trust, and working with your people to understand their core motivators.
A study shows that 85% of people believe that a good manager is important for their workplace happiness, and 38% have stayed longer at a job than intended because of a good manager. When employees are seeing things in the industry destabilize, it is impactful how we, as leaders, react. First, it's important that we take care of ourselves, and are prepared to hear the reactions of our reports. In these conversations we must be genuinely supportive, and most importantly, listen.
Moving from growth to profitability means that we need to reprioritize our work. But in doing this, we need to make sure we are properly investing in our people. We need to be smart about how to achieve company goals, not by doing more with less, but by staffing correctly. Retention becomes a higher priority, meaning we need to put people on projects that are both important for the business, and motivating.
Retention in this industry post-boom means we may need to rethink how we motivate our people. We may need to move from focusing on typical motivators like succession planning and job security, to things like building community and a sense of purpose within the company. As managers, it's our job to dive into each employee's personal motivators and understand what will keep them excited to come to work everyday.
Kat is currently an Engineering Manager at Spotify where she leads teams to develop new non-intrusive ad formats to support the free tier. Prior to Spotify, Kat worked at a startup called Teachable, and at Capital One. She is based in Brooklyn, NY - where she holds the belief that Brooklyn beats Manhattan in almost all categories (save museums, maybe). Outside of work, Kat loves to read, run (the marathon this year!), knit, and share her opinions with any and all that will listen to them.
View Kat's LeadDev articles and talksWith the rapid, widespread adoption of generative AI, discussions of ethics in technology are gaining steam - and not just within engineering, but beyond in the mainstream news. And where AI has enabled incredible breakthroughs - it’s also actively caused harm, sometimes to the people it aims to protect. Christina will take a look at the imperative questions we must have around AI as engineers, looking at some of the historic harms caused by technology and how we can work to ensure that we don’t replicate them in the age of AI.
With the rise of AI, discussions of ethics in technology are gaining steam and making mainstream news. AI has enabled incredible breakthroughs and has also actively caused harm, sometimes to the very populations it aims to protect.
What lessons can historical context teach us about modern technological harms?
In this talk, Christina Entcheva connects historical examples of technology to the modern practice of software engineering today, discusses AI harms, and provides guidelines for mitigation for modern product teams.
Christina is a Director of Software Engineering with 10+ years experience in software engineering, product management, design, people management and mentorship. She is currently a Director of Software Engineering at GitHub.
View Christina's LeadDev articles and talksClosing session
David Yee is VP of Engineering at the New York Times. As an engineering leader, he’s built and scaled teams at both small and enormous companies in the worlds of journalism, music, and art—with an emphasis on product-oriented engineering and humane management. His career has included roles as Chief Architect and co-founder at 20x200, co-founder and CTO at Editorially, and Engineering Director of Chorus at Vox Media
View David's LeadDev articles and talksOffice hours is your opportunity to connect face-to-face, ask questions and find out more.
Welcome to LeadDev New York 2024
A welcome to LeadDev New York 2024 from the host David Yee.
Your host David Yee welcomes you to the day, run through our code of conduct and let you know what we've got coming up.
David Yee is VP of Engineering at the New York Times. As an engineering leader, he’s built and scaled teams at both small and enormous companies in the worlds of journalism, music, and art—with an emphasis on product-oriented engineering and humane management. His career has included roles as Chief Architect and co-founder at 20x200, co-founder and CTO at Editorially, and Engineering Director of Chorus at Vox Media
View David's LeadDev articles and talksIn this talk, Rachelle will look at questions, curiosity, responding instead of reacting, gratitude, and 1:1s. She'll also discuss empowering people to decide, while making sure there's a safety net. Guardrails are crucial (as well as showing them how to ask for help).
We're diving into how engineering managers can cultivate ownership in their employees.
First off, let's acknowledge why ownership is key. Ownership shows that employees understand a companies mission, priority, and feel empowered to action against that mission in their day to day. Teams with high ownership go from underperforming to the dream team. How do we grow this ownership magic?
As an engineering manager, you probably have a pretty good sense of how a project should be done. But - it's not about you! It's about asking the SEs questions that spark critical thinking. Questions lead to that 'aha' moment. You can cultivate ownership by validating your employees critical thinking instead of dictating decisions.
Curiosity is key when asking questions. Even if you think you know the answer, show genuine curiosity in what others think. You'll be surprised how often there's a better solution than expected. People know when you are asking questions without curiosity - and that only creates a feeling of needing to be "right".
We'll look at questions, curiosity, responding instead of reacting, gratitude, and 1:1s. We'll discuss empowering people to decide, while making sure there's a safety net. Guardrails are crucial (as well as showing them how to ask for help).
Lastly, understanding values ties it all together. Knowing what matters helps everyone steer in the same direction.
Rachelle is an engineering leader deeply passionate about impactful problem-solving, leading teams with empathy, and a clear mission. Currently leveraging tech like JS, React, and Python, as the Engineering Manager at Klaviyo, orchestrating a customer-focused roadmap and steering a hybrid team toward success. Prior, as the Principal Software Engineer at Rapid7, crafting strategies for new product offerings, managed teams, and led the delivery of significant projects like Single Sign-On for InsightVM customers. These experiences shaped a belief that fostering curiosity and empathy is the key to unlocking a team's full potential.
View Rachelle's LeadDev articles and talksLearn how building with React-on-Chain facilitates rapid UI development across multiple chains and offers autonomous, composable, and secure applications that unlock unique capabilities like cross-chain digital asset management, DeFi, and Social while abstracting Web3 complexities away from users with Charles Garrett.
Sharing lessons learned and how to quickly go from idea to launch leveraging Near Protocol's infrastructure, data layers, and front-end services to streamline Web3 application development.
Learn how building with React-on-Chain facilitates rapid UI development across multiple chains, and offers autonomous, composable, and secure applications that unlock unique capabilities like cross-chain digital asset management, DeFi, and Social, while abstracting Web3 complexities away from users.
Charles is an engineering leader passionate about striving for simplicity and elegant product designs, while developing self-sustaining systems and autonomous teams. He believes in People > Technology and Experiences > Material Things.
View Charles's LeadDev articles and talksOffice hours is your opportunity to connect face-to-face, ask questions and find out more.
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In this talk, Leemay and Emily will give you their perspectives as a Senior Engineering Manager and Senior Staff Engineer.
Making decisions is the most important thing we do as engineering leaders.
Sometimes your job as an engineering leader is to motivate people and not get stuck in the details and other times, your job is to ensure the details are just right. Because time and energy are finite resources, where you spend these resources is key and becomes even more nuanced the more senior you get in the IC or management track.
In this talk we’ll give you our two perspectives as a Senior Engineering Manager and Senior Staff Engineer. We’ll share our experiences and challenges when making decisions that impact our engineering organizations. From metrics to reliability to staffing decisions to architectural changes – all of these are facets of working in an engineering organization that can be approached in different ways depending on which side of engineering leadership you are in. We’ll also share what it looks like to partner closely with each other and how we rely on each other to make better decisions together.
Leemay Nassery is an engineering leader at Spotify. Before Spotify, she led data engineering and personalization efforts at Etsy, Dropbox, and Comcast. Leemay is passionate about tying engineering to business and user impact while keeping her team's career growth at the forefront.
View Leemay's LeadDev articles and talksEmily Samuels is a Senior Staff Engineer at Spotify currently focusing on improving Spotify's data infrastructure. In the past, she has helped build and scale Spotify's music recommendations on Home and architected foundational datasets used for machine learning and data analytics across the company.
View Emily's LeadDev articles and talksChris will take a look at a decision-making framework you can employ as an engineering leader to help make better build-vs-buy decisions. He will apply this framework to some key real-world software decisions, taking a balanced look at the long-term impact of both directions. You'll leave with an actionable set of tips that can be used in your next process.
how do we know as engineering leaders how to approach when to build a solution versus buy one?
In today's devtools landscape, we've seen a huge proliferation of products to outsource much of the underlying services and infrastructure needed to build and operate a complex product at scale. Stripe for payments, LaunchDarkly for feature flagging, Algolia for managed search, and WorkOS for SSO are some examples of products we might find ourselves looking at. But how do we know as engineering leaders how to approach when to build a solution versus buy one? Common wisdom may dictate that it's as simple as "focussing on what's core to your business" but the reality is more nuanced.
In this talk we'll take a look at a decision-making framework we can employ as engineering leaders in order to help make better build-vs-buy decisions. We'll apply this framework to some key real-world software decisions, taking a balanced look at the long-term impact of both directions. Ultimately, giving an actionable set of tips you can go away and use in your next process.
Along the way we'll cover:
View Chris's LeadDev articles and talks
Office hours is your opportunity to connect face-to-face, ask questions and find out more.
Watch or participate in free 1:1 coaching
Dedicated sessions on how to take the next step in your career for:
Hear from the LeadDev content team on the secrets of crafting winning speaker submissions and effective article proposals.
Join facilitated conversations on measuring engineering success.
In this talk, Melissa will unpack the two working modes common to product engineering teams, explore what teams in each mode need from a technical leader, and learn how to adapt our own leadership style based on the context our team is in.
Most of us aspire to be great engineering leaders, but honestly, who has the time? I
If you’re anything like me, you’re probably so busy putting out fires and rushing between meetings and high-priority initiatives that your well-intentioned thoughts of “leading well” go out the window in favor of just getting things done. You’re not a bad leader; you just don’t have time or energy to give “great leadership” much thought.
This approach—moving initiatives across the line through our own directed effort and sheer force of will (and maybe working on weekends)—can only take us so far. After all, when you’re feeling tired or burned out, it’s hard to imagine another 3 months in your job, let alone another 30 years in your career.
It’s time for an easier way to show up as great leaders (no burnout required). This talk will introduce audiences to the Scrappy/Scale Mindset, a dead-simple framework for leaders that I developed while building high-performing engineering teams at The Washington Post and The Atlantic. “Scrappy/Scale” is a framework for interrogating assumptions about how you need to show up as a leader in any given situation, as well as a useful tool for evaluating your own needs and career trajectory.
Together, we’ll unpack the two working modes common to product engineering teams, explore what teams in each mode need from a technical leader, and learn how to adapt our own leadership style based on the context our team is in. If scrappy work is what gets us to where we want to be, scale initiatives are what keep us there. By cultivating these two modes of leadership thinking and the skills required for each, great engineering leaders can break free from fire fighting and develop a personal framework for both managing themselves and developing others.
Melissa DePuydt is a senior engineering manager at Medium, where she oversees content distribution and recommendations across platforms. Prior to Medium, Melissa held engineering leadership roles at Upstatement, The Atlantic, and The Washington Post. Melissa cares deeply about empowering engineers to do impactful work that advances both product goals and their individual careers.
View Melissa 's LeadDev articles and talksWill GenAI save us from this issue or cause it to proliferate? It turns out that there is a path to habitable code and, if used appropriately, AI coding assistants can help get us there.
The volume of code in production today, coupled with the pressure to deliver new features, is unprecedented.
Furthermore, the code we work with is often non-habitable, meaning that it is poorly understood, poorly tested, and difficult to change. Will GenAI save us from this issue or cause it to proliferate? It turns out that there is a path to habitable code and, if used appropriately, AI coding assistants can help get us there. This talk focuses on the techniques and strategies that can be used across various AI coding assistants to improve code habitability. Conversely, it also covers what to watch out for, so that the use of AI coding assistants do not cause us to proliferate poorly understood, brittle code that introduces defects and gets in the way of software agility.
Paul’s 20 years in software engineering leadership spans subsequently-acquired tech startups, digital natives, and enterprise organizations. Through various roles, Paul’s professional mission has stayed constant: empower software engineering teams to deliver their best work by elevating their technical practices, while maintaining a clear connection between those practices and the business outcomes they enable.
View Paul's LeadDev articles and talksInterested to hear about what Preetha did to break the logjam? Join them for a case study of one such emotionally turbulent digital transformation journey.
Change is a challenge!!!
Especially for a leader, driving an aspiring change, it can be extremely elusive if the target of the change is legacy software riddled with technical debt.
To spice it up further, throw in some emotional attachment to code, immunity to change and a large dose of scepticism, you have the perfect recipe for disaster, if you don’t have the right toolkit.
In a multi-disciplinary durable team, working on complex software transformation to build innovative solutions will create a lot of cognitive friction due to varied skillsets and experiences. Emotional dominance can severely inhibit organic innovation and growth for any business.
Have your ideas ever been considered a threat to other’s professional identities?
In this case, we become our own blockers and progress is impasse. Interested to hear about what we did to break the logjam? Join me for a case study of one such emotionally turbulent digital transformation journey and learn about:
Preetha is the Principal Engineer and a member of the Engineering Leadership at the Co-op, UK, leading the technical delivery of multiple teams around Co-op’s membership and community programmes. With over 20 years of experience as a Java Programmer, she has helped build microservices for a range of businesses, from retail to banking. She is a keen advocate of Digital Sustainability, aiming to build awareness amongst engineers to incorporate software sustainability in Co-op. Outside work, Preetha has her hands full with her kids, who are keen cricketers. Recent interests include reading books on psychology at work.
View Preetha's LeadDev articles and talksOffice hours is your opportunity to connect face-to-face, ask questions and find out more.
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Work together to find ways of solving a common problem posed by our moderator.
Join facilitated conversations on management skills for AI.
In this session, Julianna will explore various examples, from cases where light processes hindered velocity and culture, to cases of excessive, heavy-handed process and strategies for adjusting course.
Processes can help engineering teams operate more smoothly and give engineers a greater sense of ownership over their work.
But often, process is too heavy-handed and has the opposite effect, slowing teams down, creating the wrong incentives, and demotivating engineers. So how do you strike the right balance?
There's no universal solution, as it hinges on factors like team size, work type, and collaboration methods. Understanding team dynamics is key to implementing effective processes that drive success.
Process isn't static either; it must evolve with the team's changing needs. Flexibility and adaptability lead to better outcomes for individuals and the team as a whole.
In this session, Julianna will explore various examples, from cases where light processes hindered velocity and culture, to cases of excessive, heavy-handed process and strategies for adjusting course. Culture and process are intertwined; understanding your team’s culture is key to making sure that the process you’re implementing will match how the team operates and not be too at odds with that culture.
We’ll delve into planning processes, transitioning from high-level plans to weekly execution. That includes emphasizing the tech spec phase of any project to build solid execution plans that foster accountability over the timeline and outcomes. But you often still need to balance that with some checks and balances, so we’ll talk through how to get engineers to build their own sprints and measure velocity without it feeling overbearing. Ultimately, what’s most important is that engineers have clear goals and expectations and feel ownership over the work that they’re doing.
Julianna is the Co-Founder & CTO of Stytch. Stytch is the most powerful identity platform built for developers. With advanced features like device fingerprinting and account takeover-resistant authentication, Stytch provides the infrastructure to make your company’s identity and access management secure, reliable, and scalable. Prior to starting Stytch, Julianna was a product lead at Very Good Security and a software engineer at Plaid and Strava. Julianna studied computer science at Stanford.
View Julianna's LeadDev articles and talksIn this enlightening talk, Francis will delve deep into the dynamics of trust in management, based on the insights gleaned from real-world experiences.
In today's fast-paced work environment, trust between managers and their teams is paramount for success.
In spite of its criticality, understanding of how trust operates within the workplace remains elusive for many leaders. The common misconception that trust is a transactional commodity - something to be acquired and spent - is not only incorrect but also toxic to organizational culture.
In this enlightening talk, we delve deep into the dynamics of trust in management, based on the insights gleaned from real-world experiences. Trust, as we'll explore, is not earned through superficial gestures or rewards; rather, it is validated through genuine care, active listening, and honesty. Instead, it begins with genuinely caring about your team as individuals, not just as cogs in the organizational machine.
Demonstrating empathy and understanding their concerns lays the foundation for a trusting relationship. Entrusting your team with significant responsibilities and demonstrating faith in their abilities opens the door for a reciprocal trust relationship by acknowledging the inherent value individuals bring to the table. Sharing information openly, even when it's uncomfortable or uncertain, fosters a culture of trust and collaboration. Admitting mistakes and embracing vulnerability further solidifies the bond between managers and their teams, showing that trust is a dynamic, evolving aspect of the relationship.
Attendees will leave empowered with actionable strategies to cultivate trust within their teams, leading to enhanced collaboration, resilience in the face of challenges, and ultimately, greater organizational success. Trust, as we'll discover, is not merely a token but a tangible asset that drives positive change and fosters meaningful connections within the workplace.
Francis Sirizzotti started with a Computer Science Degree from the College of William & Mary in 2012 and has worked for startups and medium-sized companies in various engineering and leadership roles. Driven to create the best software he can, he is convinced that the fundamental unit of great software is not the engineer - it's the team. Building high-performing teams is a long-time passion and he's lucky to be able to do that now as an Engineering Manager at Squarespace.
View Francis's LeadDev articles and talksThe history of the computing technology industry is no different. We have had times of booms, and non-boom. As leaders we need to be prepared with tools to help us navigate the uncertainty in the current non-boom market.
Certain professions like farming are accustomed to navigating changing seasons.
Times of planting, times of bountiful harvests and times of famine. The history of the computing technology industry is no different. We have had times of booms, and non-boom. As leaders we need to be prepared with tools to help us navigate the uncertainty in the current non-boom market. These tools are also needed to help our engineering teams thrive at this time. Given that there's no time limit on the current non-boom market, we need to lean into this moment of adversity and not be quick to dismiss it, dreaming that the moment passes quickly. There are three questions that I frequently ask myself that help keep me and my teams grounded.
Tobi Ogunbiyi is an engineering leader based out of Toronto, Canada. He is a catalyst that seeks alignment of business goals with engineers’ personal goals to unlock their full potential. Over the last 13 years, he spent most of his time within the Fintech space, contributing to the modernization of the technology stack and processes of companies that process millions of transactions per week.
View Tobi's LeadDev articles and talksClosing session
David Yee is VP of Engineering at the New York Times. As an engineering leader, he’s built and scaled teams at both small and enormous companies in the worlds of journalism, music, and art—with an emphasis on product-oriented engineering and humane management. His career has included roles as Chief Architect and co-founder at 20x200, co-founder and CTO at Editorially, and Engineering Director of Chorus at Vox Media
View David's LeadDev articles and talksStay up-to-date with everything that's happening at LeadDev New York.