Practical guides on performance management, team dynamics, and building high-performing development teams.
18 articles
Feb 13, 2026 · 3 min read
Writing performance reviews for a team you hardly know feels like a trap laden with recency bias and potential unfairness. To navigate this, you must stop acting as a judge of the past and start treat…
Feb 13, 2026 · 3 min read
Engineering Managers often let their coding skills atrophy because their calendars are consumed by 35+ hours of meetings per week. To stay technical, you must realize that maker time must be defended …
Feb 13, 2026 · 3 min read
In sprint reviews, leaders often flip between deploy frequency and bug counts, creating a fuzzy picture that leads to arguments rather than answers. To fix this, you must stop treating data as trivia …
Feb 13, 2026 · 3 min read
When a junior engineer falls short, managers often face a painful choice: drift along in frustration or initiate a process that feels like a firing. To handle this ethically, you must treat the Perfor…
Jan 29, 2026 · 3 min read
Intro Managing engineers based on "gut feel" creates invisible risks like bias, misallocated talent, and strategic drift. To lead effectively, you must stop relying solely on instinct and recognize th…
Jan 29, 2026 · 3 min read
Intro Managers without development experience often struggle to evaluate engineers, falling back on weak proxies like activity counts or confidence "vibes." To do this correctly, you must stop guessin…
Jan 29, 2026 · 3 min read
Intro Most engineers resist metrics not because they fear accountability, but because they fear judgment without context. To build trust, you must prove that surveillance controls people, while measur…
Jan 24, 2026 · 4 min read
Intro Most attempts to measure developer productivity degenerate into surveillance because they track "activity" clicks and time online rather than actual work outcomes. To get valid performance data …
Jan 24, 2026 · 3 min read
Intro Most teams suffer from "watermelon reporting" projects that look green on the outside until the moment they crack open to reveal they are red on the inside. To fix this, you must stop treating …
Jan 21, 2026 · 4 min read
Most employees view Performance Improvement Plans PIPs as bureaucratic theater designed to justify a predecided firing. To run an ethical process, you must treat the PIP as a passable contract one wi…
Jan 13, 2026 · 3 min read
Intro You’ve got a strong engineer who ships, but working with them hurts. Treat collaboration like performance, not personality. This post gives you a script, the evidence to bring, and the escalatio…
Jan 13, 2026 · 4 min read
Intro When a retrospective goes quiet, your team isn't disengaged; they are performing a calculation where speaking up costs more than staying silent. To get the truth, you must accept that silence i…
Nov 14, 2025 · 19 min read
TL;DR Assessing engineers without a development background isn’t about guessing who’s “smart” or counting tickets; it’s about combining results, activity signals, and peer insight into a coherent pict…
Nov 9, 2025 · 12 min read
TL;DR: The 1on1 that Actually Works Wellrun 1on1s aren’t status updates; they’re the most reliable place for truth, coaching, and momentum. Treat them as a steady system clear purpose, shared ownersh…
Nov 9, 2025 · 9 min read
TL;DR Make 1:1s Count A 1:1 isn’t a status check it’s your most valuable space for clarity, trust, and better decisions. Purpose: Use 1:1s to exchange context, surface risks early, and align your…
Oct 29, 2025 · 8 min read
They didn’t need task updates. They didn’t want motivational fluff. And they certainly weren’t looking for micromanagement. The first time I sat down for a 1:1 with a Staff Engineer, I realized I was …
Oct 5, 2025 · 6 min read
You know that awful moment when someone asks how your product is doing and you’re hunting for numbers that actually matter? We’ve all felt it lost in dashboards stuffed with vanity stats while the re…
Sep 22, 2025 · 3 min read
The goal isn’t more feedback — it’s better feedback that changes behavior. In software teams, that means feedback that is timely, specific to real work, and safe enough to act on — without turning r…
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