Topic hub
Engineering Leadership
Tech lead, team lead and engineering (development) manager: technical direction, 1:1s and feedback, delivery and flow, hiring, performance, team design — with interview questions for each role.
Lessons
- Measuring Delivery Without Gaming It · The Engineering Manager Handbook (Development Manager)
Use DORA's delivery metrics and the SPACE framework to understand team performance — computed from real data — without turning them into targets. - Structured Interviews and Reducing Bias · The Engineering Manager Handbook (Development Manager)
Ask every candidate the same planned questions and score them against a rubric — it predicts job performance better and reduces bias. - Performance Reviews and Calibration · The Engineering Manager Handbook (Development Manager)
Write fair, evidence-based reviews with no surprises, and calibrate across managers so ratings mean the same thing everywhere. - Team Design and Cognitive Load · The Engineering Manager Handbook (Development Manager)
Design teams around the flow of work and a manageable cognitive load, using Team Topologies' team types and interaction modes. - Effective 1:1s · The Team Lead Handbook
Make 1:1s the most useful half-hour of the week for each person: their agenda, regular, and focused on growth and problems, not status. - Feedback That Lands · The Team Lead Handbook
Give specific, timely feedback — positive and corrective — using the Situation-Behavior-Impact model, and make it normal to receive feedback too. - Limiting Work in Progress · The Team Lead Handbook
Why starting less makes the team finish more, explained with Little's law and a small simulation — and how to set WIP limits that stick. - Psychological Safety · The Team Lead Handbook
Build a team where people admit mistakes, ask questions and challenge ideas — the dynamic Google's research found mattered most for team effectiveness. - What a Tech Lead Owns · The Tech Lead Handbook
The tech lead is accountable for how the team builds, not for doing all the building. Here is what that covers, and how it differs from team lead, engineering manager and staff engineer. - Design Docs and RFCs That Get Read · The Tech Lead Handbook
How to write a design document that surfaces trade-offs early, gets useful feedback, and doesn't become a 30-page formality. - Decision Speed: One-Way and Two-Way Doors · The Tech Lead Handbook
Match the decision process to the cost of being wrong: move fast on reversible choices, slow down on irreversible ones, and use 'disagree and commit' to end stalemates. - Forecasting Delivery Honestly · The Tech Lead Handbook
Replace single-date guesses with probabilistic forecasts from the team's own throughput, using a Monte Carlo simulation you can run.
Decision guides
- Build vs Buy vs Open Source
- Rewrite vs Incremental Refactor vs Strangler Fig
- Staff Engineer vs Tech Lead vs Team Lead vs Engineering Manager
- Story Points vs Throughput Forecasting vs No Estimates
- Team Structures: Stream-Aligned vs Component vs Platform Teams