Managing Managers

The final episode of the podcast (or at least the first season)

Laura is not only a coach to engineering leaders but also the CTO at DX, a company focused on improving developer productivity. But Laura has been talking about development metrics for a lot longer, and in this episode, we dive deep into the latest research, concrete measures for development teams and their managers, and more! Guest Biography Laura Tacho is CTO at DX, a developer experience compan...

Meri has a tonne of experience managing managers as a serial CTO, and we chat about everything from being a non-executive director, common traps of first-time directors/VPs of Engineering, what they look for when interviewing managers of managers, and so much more. Guest biography: Meri is an experienced CTO and leader of technology organisations, currently leading the technology team at Pleo . Th...

The Financial Times (FT) uniquely combines individual contributor and management responsibilities in senior engineering roles. In this episode, I talk to Tech Director Alice Bartlett about what that’s like for her, how tech skills (at that level) are not necessarily key skills, and how it’s more important to have strong leadership skills, which includes managing your energy (and your calendar!) Li...

I’m so pleased I got to chat with Lena, who happens to also be based in my hometown, Berlin. In this episode, we chat about the challenges of being a middle manager, becoming an accidental leader, what she does when she talks about organisational development, the differences of supporting Directors+ as an external independent person (versus being a manager), the challenges she sees as people trans...

Although we’ve never worked together, it seems like CTO Crystal Hirschorn and I were positively influenced by many movements in tech such as XP, lean and systems thinking and in this episode we chat about how that has influenced her management style. A key element of a lot of that is the idea of building a blameless culture and listening in to hear about some ideas of leading and lagging indicator...

In this conversation with VP of Engineering, Sarah Pimentel Abrantes, we cover the importance of being a leader before being a manager, the challenge of letting go at different stages, how to counteract authority differences in skip levels and also managing areas where you don’t necessarily have that background and much more. Guest Biography: Sarah Abrantes has experienced a lot of different tech...

Although currently Director of Platform Engineering, Jess Mink is an unusual manager of manager in tech, who’s also played a full-time product role. Listen to this episode as they explain what they took away from that experience, their perspective on how engineering managers differ from other managers, and share their managing manager roles change across different organisations and contexts. Guest...

Maggie Litton has held many senior management roles across many different companies and in this episode gives us an insight into some of the ways the manager of manager role changes. To me, she is a great role model of a successful manager from a non-traditional career path and offers insights into so many dimensions of being a manager of managers. Listen carefully towards the end to some of the f...

In this conversation with VP Engineering at the NY Times, David Yee, we cover a huge amount of ground from how delegation differs for managers of managers, the focus on principles over tasks, adapting your management style, bad reasons why people want to be a director and what does ethical engineering management mean to him. Listen to this episode for more. Guest Biography: David Yee is VP of Engi...

I had the pleasure of chatting to experienced tech leader and CTO, Anna Shipman about the challenges of IC and management responsibilities combined at higher levels, how to think about splitting time as a director, and some really great points on strategy, tactics and more in this episode. Guest Biography: Anna Shipman is Chief Technology Officer at Kooth, pioneering great digital mental healthcar...

Nivia has a fascinating and long history in technology and we talked about how directors can help people through organisational change, the trauma of dealing with forced change from COVID and how a lot of being an effective manager of managers is building and sharing context and influence. Guest biography: Nivia is a technologist with over 20 years of engineering and leadership experience. Her car...

I really enjoyed a lot of the insights Claire shared with me in this episode - everything from getting comfortable with how other managers approach problems differently from you, the benefits of an external coach and having a physical outlet to balance out the intellectual stress and finally some insight into some of the ways that Claire runs her organisation. Guest Biography Dr Claire Knight is a...

Thiago Ghisi covers his background of moving from a consulting career to a management role, his experience of onboarding in different contexts and why he thinks joining as a director is easier than joining as an engineering manager of a team. We also spent some time understanding his current role at Nubank, which has more than 2000 engineers and how he allocates his time effectively. Guest Biograp...

I have worked with so many people who have followed a non-traditional route into tech and so really enjoyed hearing Sally’s journey into tech and how she found herself managing other managers. Given her experience, it’s also great to understand how she leads and manages areas of tech that are beyond her own individual contributor experience and love the concept of swirl and to be wary of this as a...

I’ve been a big fan of Dan’s writing for a while. You might have read some of his articles on management in my Level Up newsletter. In this episode, he shines a light on how he found himself in his first managing managers role, how he sees management as his true calling, how management might not be everyone’s cup of tea and how to deal with the ambiguity of the role. Guest Biography Dan Na is the...

I’ve been really lucky to meet Maria several times at conferences in real-life and in this episode, we were able to shine a light into parts of her 20 year journey in tech. I love how she thinks about management, structure and she has so many great insights on what it means to be a manager of managers. Her past few roles have also been focused on Product and Engineering Operations, so listen in if...

If you’re interested in what it means to be manager of managers in a fully remote environment, this episode is for you. As author of the book, “Remote Engineering Management”, Alexandra shares some tips of what to focus on in a manager of managers role. We explore how she naturally grew into her first managing managers role and she shares where she spends her time and what she focuses on in her ro...

Anjuan taught me a few new concepts in this chat such as the saying of digging your well and what that means, what the unusual title of Staff Engineering Manager is and also some practical tips on managing burnout, especially important for manager of managers. Listen to this episode to find out more. Guest Biography: Anjuan Simmons has led software development teams for over two decades, and he ex...

When managers leave and you inherit their team, you can suddenly find yourself managing multiple teams and shortly after, a manager of manager. Find out how Vitor Reis navigated this quick transition and learned to be an effective manager of managers on the job. Guest biography: Vitor Reis is a hands-on engineering lead with 14 years of experience in multiple industries. For the past 7 years he ha...

Senior Director of Engineering, Katie Wilde and I chat about her unusual path into tech, "falling" into her first managing managers role and the signals that you can look out for to determine the performance of managers and their teams. She also offers a few reasons why managing managers is not for everyone. Listen to this episode to find out more. Guest Biography: Katie Wilde is current...

Nickolas Means is a very thoughtful and calm engineering leader who I was lucky enough to meet through a number of conferences. He's a wonderful story teller and in our chat, we talk about his growth story, the power of peer mentoring, building your own mentoring support group, long feedback loops, metrics for engineering teams, managing up and much more. Guest Biography: Nickolas Means is an...

Theresa Neate and I have a common passion for systems thinking, so join us in this conversation where we talk about the serendipity of leadership roles, how managers of managers look for future talent and understand what the "do no harm" principle looks like for engineering leaders. Guest Biography: Theresa Neate is an award winning senior leader with a background in service desk, softwa...

Tramale Turner has a lot of leadership and management experience to share, across a broad range of fascinating companies. In this episode we cover topics like the importance of introspective, the skill in spotting strengths in others and what it means to build not just good teams, but great ones. Guest Biography: Tramale is a highly experienced and motivated technical professional and is currently...

Danielle Leong , a tremendous VP of Engineering and impressive portrait photographer, chats with me about what the importance of role modelling, the impact of restructuring and how managers of managers need to live further into the future. Guest Biography: Danielle is a seasoned engineering leader who is passionate about creating healthy, inclusive, productive engineering teams and helping them do...