On the team as a system

#108 – September 26, 2022

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Building a product is a team project, and the product itself is a system. And a group of developers working on a single goal also becomes a system that works either together or at cross-purposes with itself.

Companies love to talk about their culture and how it's unique or why it's special. People love to talk about why they think it was this way or that way, or why things changed.

One of the most significant themes in my practice is the leader whose team of direct reports are experiencing difficulties working together. Most of my clients are CEOs, and they face this challenge with their company's senior leadership team, but it's a dilemma that can occur at every level of an organization. And while the leader isn't solely responsible for their team's culture, they typically have the greatest ability to influence it--for better and for worse.

Bringing your entire engineering team together for an all-hands meeting may be the most expensive meeting your organization has. This is the meeting that matters. As the engineering team scales, when not everyone knows what everyone else is working on, and as teams become more and more distributed, all-hands are an important part of the team and culture.

Growth is tricky. Whether in terms of raw headcount or people’s evolving career stages. As a team you want to provide ways in which members can experiment with new ideas, and provide tools to help them offer new perspectives. One of our greatest tools for instituting change at Artsy is our RFC process.

jobs

The economy's health is growing unstable, so a confusing US job market is still looming. As a result, tech companies' concerns about hiring new talent continue to increase. Read about concrete steps to help your company achieve its goals despite the complicated hiring situation. This article also contains a list of relevant, cost-effective, and flexible hiring solutions worth considering.

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Are you an engineering leader or planning to become one? Save your seat for Interact on October 25th! Interact is a free, virtual conference that brings together thousands of dev leads. The line-up includes speakers from Shopify, Slack & Stripe. Explore engineering challenges. Build your network. Become an elite engineering leader. It’s virtual. It's free. It's the best ROI for your time. Register now (it takes less than 30 seconds)!

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