Notes from Calibrate Conference 2016 [https://www.calibratesf.com]
Sonya Green [Calibrate, Program Director]
General welcome, what the conference is, what it isn't. Of interest about Sonya, in 2 years she went from IC to VP of Engineering. She took on Program Director duties for this conference, this is the second year of Calibrate SF.
Takeaways:
Note: no slides.
Michael Lopp [Slack, VP of Engineering]
Michael Lopp of rands in repose fame gave this keynote originally entitled "Hacking Leadership", now called "This Job is Impossible".
Subject of this talk was leadership hacks, hacks to help you deal with the impossibility of this job.
Hack here is defined as small bits of wisdom that pay unexpectedly high returns.
Leadership Hacks:
- Be two minutes early for everything.
- Hold office hours, an entirely open day that anyone can schedule a block of time.
- In a meeting, 1:1, move the clock towards you. (Less rude, and respects your time, and their time).
- Most important meetings, 1:1's.
- 30 minutes every week no matter what with direct reports.
- What do you want? Let's work on it.
- Biggest disaster facing us right now? Let's fix it.
- Learn everyone's first name.
- Prepare 3 questions before every meeting.
- Helpful during those lulls where no one has anything to say.
- Compliment frequently, and sincerely.
- Specifically must be sincere, Michael referred to these as "free leadership points".
- Fix small things.
- He told an anecdote about clearing his and his team's workspace once a week.
- Know the most important numbers.
- What are the KPI's for your project? Your department? Your company?
- Ask yourself, what do you wish you knew?
- Share profusely.
- People will fill in the gaps of their knowledge, with their worst fears.
- Politics are created here.
- Think before you speak.
- Here Michael mentioned a speech skills class he took. Note: related takeaway below.
- Admit and explain your failures.
- Key bit of insight, in Michael's estimation, this is the difference between a junior and senior leader.
- Weaponize rumor crushing.
- At the end of his team meetings he has 15 minutes on the agenda entitled, "Gossip, Rumors, & Lies". It's a moment for the entire team to share what they've been filling the gaps with.
- Pick on thing.
- Michael talked about picking just one thing to care about, that you want to work on, and focus on it. For Michael this was "being unfailingly kind", and he gave an anecdote about someone he plays Destiny with (that he's never met in person), that never gets upset about failures of their raiding party. Someone has to leave? "No worries". Never played before and forgot to mention that? "I love teaching people how to do this part of the raid. This is how I learned."
Takeaways:
- This Job is Impossible Why Slide
- Capture and synthesize your meeting notes, share with any and everyone.
- Add an agenda item for squashing rumors to bi-weekly all-hands.
- Speech Skills Class
- Rand's Rubric for Leadership
Jocelyn Goldfein [Angel Investor]
In order to develop your team, you need to first ask, what is "Career Development"?
What is career development?
- More ability / skills
- More responsibility
- More impact
What isn't career development?
- More status
- More access
- More authority
She showed a great slide on growth, and described it as the staircase going between productive and fully knowing something, and unproductive but learning a lot. She tries to ensure people are increasingly climbing this staircase. I found this slide very relevant, because I think at Netflix it applies very well to the "Keeper Test", we talk about "which way is the trend" often. I think this graph is an even better representation of the phases of productivity an engineer goes through, and can help inform the Keeper Test exercise even further.
She breaks down the different phases of an engineer's career, and how best to grow at those phases:
- Early, optimize your first job for ship frequency.
- Mobile app, with 2 week acceptance for updates, not shipping quickly.
- Startup with Continuous Delivery, shipping quickly.
- She posits that a new engineer will grow more at the latter, because they are having more opportunities to fail and learn.
Identify what growth stage each member of your team is in:
- Content - not growing, not looking to push themselves.
- Stuck - not growing, wants to push themselves, lacks guidance.
- Passive Growth - skills improving, not actively interested in pushing themselves
- Active Growth - skills improving, and interested in pushing themselves further.
When am I going to promote?
- 0-12 months - They are on the right track, just keep providing feedback.
- 1-3 years - They have potential, they need a project that will push them.
- 3+ years - You're never going to promote them, make a decision, is this role good for them?
Takeways:
- A great heuristic for what career development is.
- The growth chart was informative.
- Homework Slide
Ryan Atkins [Dropbox, Engineering Operations]
A talk on the importance of onboarding new team members.
Note: A really important talk for me as I feel one, I've never been onboarded well, and two, I don't onboard new members well.
When is the best time to shape the engineering culture?
- Taking on a new role at your current company.
- Starting at a new company.
Why onboard?
- Planning for scale.
- Avoid bad pattern matching.
- Another way to close engineering candidates.
- Ryan talked about how he has used the first 6 weeks checklist that Dropbox has to close candidates.
Note: key thing he focused on here, getting buy-in.
Measure and iterate on your onboarding process:
- Measure something
- Time to first PR.
- Time to first commit.
- Time to first bugfix/feature in production.
- Have a time bound onboarding process, let people know when they are done.
- Collect feedback on your onborading process.
- Thank the new team members for joining your team.
- Something we often forget is that new team members chose us, it's important that we recognize that.
Note: I missed a large portion on mentorship, if you took better notes here, please open a PR.
Takeways:
- It's easier to loosen structure, than to add it on later.
- A framework on frameworks
Cynthia Maxwell [Slack, Director of iOS Engineering]
Note: Probably the most important talk that I wanted to see, this is something I have been struggling with.
This talk was essentially Cynthia being asked, "how can I give new leaders my superpower, and what is that superpower". She collected feedback from all of her reports, and from her own boss, and it essentially boiled down to "focus".
Some interesting background about Cynthia, her parents were migrant workers, and at first she didn't feel she should be giving a talk. Once she realized she was a Mexican-American woman, daughter of migrant workers, mother of 2, and Director of iOS Engineering at Slack, she changed her mind. Go figure.
This talk is about what to focus on and her framework for knowing what those things are.
Cynthia's goal: work hard and go home.
3 areas of focus:
- Team Building
- Delivering Results
- Establish Vision
Those areas broken down:
- Team Building
- Coaching [EM]
- Building relationships [EM]
- Recruiting [EM]
- Delivering Results
- Coordinating [DVP]
- Controlling Risk [EM]
- Using expertise [IC]
- Establish Vision
- Road mapping [DVP]
- Learning [IC]
- Exploring [IC]
She also mentioned the different areas of focus for an IC vs EM vs Director/VP. They are noted to the right of each focus area. A key thing to remember is that anything an IC focuses on, so does a EM, DVP. Anything an EM focuses on, so does a DVP, etc. These are not mutually exclusive, but rather additive. As you take on more responsibility, you still have your old responsibilities, just some new ones as well.
Her goal is to get her team in a state of flow.
She uses the following graph as a guide.
▲ ┌─────────┐ ┌───────────────┐
│ │ Anxiety │ │ │
│ └─────────┘ │ Flow │
│ │ │
│ └───────────────┘
┌──────────┤
│Challenge │
└──────────┤
│
│
│ ┌──────┐ ┌─────────┐
│ │Apathy│ │ Boredom │
│ └──────┘ └─────────┘
└───────────────────┬───────┬────────────────────▶
│ Skill │
└───────┘
- Apathy - No skill to take on new challenges, no challenge presented.
- Boredom - Plenty of skill but no challenge presented.
- Anxiety - A big challenge, but not enough skill to succeed.
- Flow - A big enough challenge, and enough skill to handle it.
A note on 1:1's, 3 types of listening:
- Listening and waiting to speak
- Active listening - not waiting for your turn to speak
- Empathic Listening - trying to focus on how the person is feeling
In her 1:1's she tries to employ Empathic Listening, one of the techniques she uses is to report back what she heard in her own words. This helps her validate assumptions.
When should I be exploring?
If there is nothing on the roadmap that you can't wait to see built, it is time to explore.
Q&A:
When do you plan?
- Typically every Monday.
What does your roadmapping process look like?
- What does the team want to do?
- What do the PMs want to do?
- Coordinate with PM to see where those cross over.
Takeaways:
Michael Ruggiero [Sharethrough, Director of Exchange Engineering]
Tasneem Minadakis [Uber, Head of Rider Growth]
The Leadership Machine: All The Research About Female Career Advancement Summed Up In One Usable Diagram
Janice Fraser [Pivotal, Director Innovation Practice]
Kallol Das [Invoice2Go, VP of Engineering]
Marcy Swenson [Startup Happiness, Executive Coach]
🍻