Diversity & Inclusion

Managing a Report With Communication Issues

This article discusses the experience of managing a stellar engineer who needed help with communication skills. The manager used a coaching model to help the engineer, focusing on asking questions and guiding them towards self-transformation. Over time, the engineer became more responsive and trusting, and eventually began to value the relationship. The article concludes with the lessons learned, including the importance of being open and vulnerable when mentoring someone.

Maintaining Company Culture with Your Remote Teams

Working with remote teams can be difficult, so it is important to maintain company culture. To do this, the author set up "face-to-face" video calls to ensure that comments weren't taken out of context, and introduced "Meet Two" where individuals were tasked with meeting two new people each week. Additionally, the author visited remote teams once every quarter to ensure that they felt listened to. After receiving feedback, the author reduced "Meet Two" to "Meet One" to focus more on the culture across remote teams.

Does Remote Work Really Work?

This article discusses the challenges faced by a company transitioning to a fully remote team. The head of engineering had to ensure a smooth transition and maintain the same level of collaboration and quality. To do this, they created artificial points of contact between teams, made it mandatory for people to join meetings from their own devices, and focused on building relationships. The article also highlights the lessons learned from this experience, such as the importance of creating space to build relationships, accepting delays in responses, and handling people sensitively.

What it takes to become a great product manager

Product teams have different levels of experience and tenure, and switching the way of working can be uncertain. At BT, product management was broken into four buckets - strategy, leadership, delivery, and performance - and people could move between assignments to gain more experience in areas they lacked. This helped people figure out what they enjoyed and were good at, and showed that managing a team isn't the only path to a successful career. It's important to be honest with ourselves and realize what we like doing and what we are good at.

Firing Someone When They Are No Longer A Good Fit

In this case, an employee in QA was not a good fit for the company's move to automation. After consulting with HR, the employee was let go in a respectful manner. This situation taught the importance of treating people fairly and with respect, and being willing to take the necessary steps to ensure the best outcome for the company.

The Optimization and Organization of Large Scale Demand

When presented with a large-scale project with 5,000 requirements, the challenge of organizing and deducing into a more holistic approach is daunting. To streamline efficiency, the requirements were organized into 350 different groupings and Jira was introduced as a platform for increased support. Respect for everyone's time and communication were key in achieving growth as a company and maintaining and supporting the project.