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Ever thought about creating a "Why I Want to Leave" list the moment you start a new job? It might sound counter-intuitive, but this powerful tool can transform your professional life. By documenting every concern, inefficiency, and misalignment you encounter, you not only track potential issues but also set actionable objectives to improve your work environment. This living document helps you prioritize your efforts, measure organizational health, and even provides concrete talking points for exit interviews if needed. Ready to take control of your career and drive positive change? Discover how this simple list can be your blueprint for success!

Hey engineering leaders! Want to supercharge your team's success and your own growth? Regular feedback from your team is the secret sauce! Google's Project Oxygen and Project Aristotle have cracked the code on what makes great managers and effective teams. Here’s the scoop:

*Project Oxygen* found that top managers excel at coaching, empowering without micromanaging, and fostering inclusive environments. *Project Aristotle* revealed that psychological safety is the #1 factor for team success, along with dependability, clarity, meaning, and impact.

*Why Manager Performance Surveys Rock:* - *Direct Feedback:* Get real insights from your team. - *Early Warnings:* Spot issues before they blow up. - *Growth Tool:* Pinpoint areas to improve. - *Trust Builder:* Show you care about feedback. - *Accountability:* Stay focused on your team's needs.

*How to Nail It:* - *Frequency:* Go monthly for fresh, actionable feedback. - *Design:* Keep it short, sweet, and anonymous. - *Action:* Review, share, act, and track progress.

*Sample Questions:* 1. *Tech Leadership:* "My manager helps me solve technical problems." 2. *Career Growth:* "My manager cares about my career." 3. *Communication:* "My manager sets clear goals." 4. *Team Vibe:* "I feel included in my team." 5. *Decision Making:* "My manager involves us in decisions." 6. *Open-ended:* "What should I start/stop/continue doing?"

*Bottom Line:* Manager Performance Surveys are your ticket to becoming a better leader and building a stronger team. Ready to level up? Start with our awesome template and watch the magic happen! #Leadership #EngineeringManagement #FeedbackRocks #TeamSuccess

As engineering managers, our performance is often reflected through our team's success, making it challenging to measure our impact directly. Regular feedback from our direct reports is essential for our growth and effectiveness. Google's Project Oxygen and Project Aristotle have provided valuable insights into management effectiveness and team dynamics, establishing measurable criteria for evaluating engineering management performance.

Project Oxygen, initiated in 2008, identified key management behaviors such as coaching ability, empowering without micromanaging, and supporting inclusive team environments. Project Aristotle, launched in 2012, concluded that psychological safety is the primary driver of team effectiveness, followed by dependability, structure and clarity, meaning, and impact.

Manager Performance Surveys, incorporating insights from these projects, offer a systematic approach to measuring and developing management capabilities. These surveys provide direct feedback, act as an early warning system, serve as a growth tool, build trust, and ensure accountability.

To implement these surveys effectively, consider the following guidelines:

- Frequency: Conduct surveys monthly to allow for faster course correction, address issues promptly, and create a regular rhythm of feedback and improvement.

- Survey Design: Keep surveys short and focused, use a consistent set of core questions, include both quantitative and qualitative questions, and ensure anonymity to encourage honest feedback.

- Follow-up Actions: Review results promptly, share aggregated insights with your team, create action items based on feedback, follow up in subsequent 1:1s, and track improvements over time.

Sample survey questions can assess technical leadership, career development, communication, team environment, and decision-making. Open-ended questions like "What should I start doing?" and "What should I stop doing?" provide additional insights.

Manager Performance Surveys are crucial for engineering managers aiming to improve their leadership skills, build trust, create a culture of open feedback, and make data-driven decisions. The key is not just collecting feedback but acting on it consistently and visibly, fostering a culture of continuous improvement. Implementing these surveys creates a feedback loop that benefits both managers and their teams.

I wanted to share an interesting approach to managing career development and organizational health that might seem counter-intuitive at first: creating a "Why I Want to Leave" list at the start of every new role.

Despite its title, this list isn't about planning an exit strategy. Instead, it's a powerful tool for tracking organizational challenges, driving positive change, and maintaining professional self-awareness. The concept is simple: document concerns, inefficiencies, and areas for improvement as you encounter them in your role.

The list can include technical challenges, cultural issues, process problems, and organizational concerns. What makes this approach effective is how these items can be transformed into actionable objectives. If you can resolve issues faster than new ones arise, you're making meaningful progress. If not, it helps prioritize where to focus your efforts or indicates when broader organizational change might be needed.

Key benefits of maintaining this list: - Creates clarity around vague concerns - Distinguishes between issues you can and cannot influence - Provides concrete talking points for discussions with leadership - Serves as a measure of organizational health over time - Helps track personal impact and achievements

The true value lies in using this list as a living document - regularly reviewing, refining, and transforming concerns into opportunities for improvement. When used effectively, it becomes a blueprint for positive change rather than an exit strategy.

Sometimes you'll find yourself being the change agent your organization needs. Other times, the list might help you recognize when it's time to seek an environment more aligned with your professional values. Either way, it's a valuable tool for professional growth and organizational improvement.

What tools do you use to track your professional growth and organizational challenges?

Ever sat in a performance review struggling to remember your achievements from the past months? I've been there, and that's why I'm excited to share a game-changing tool that's transformed my professional life: the Bragdoc.

What's a Bragdoc? It's your personal achievement tracking system - think of it as a strategic professional diary where you document your wins, learning moments, and impact.

Here's why every professional needs one:

Performance Reviews: No more last-minute scrambling to recall accomplishments. Your Bragdoc keeps everything organized and readily available.

Promotion Ready: Build a compelling case for advancement with concrete examples of your contributions and impact.

Self-Motivation: During tough times, your Bragdoc serves as a powerful reminder of how far you've come.

Strategic Focus: Regularly documenting achievements helps align your efforts with organizational goals and personal career objectives.

Here's a simple template to get started: - Project name - Goals and objectives - Team members involved - Key deliverables - Measurable impact - Stakeholder feedback

Pro tip: Set aside 15 minutes weekly to update your Bragdoc. Consistency is key!

Remember: Your achievements deserve to be documented and celebrated. Don't wait for your next review to start tracking your success story.

As engineering managers, we often fall into comfortable patterns that seem to work well enough. Our one-on-ones follow the same template, our team meetings become predictable, and we handle challenges using tried-and-true methods.

But this comfort can be deceptive. Just like a mountain climber mistaking a lower peak for the summit, we might be operating well below our potential. I call this getting stuck in a "local maxima" - a comfort zone where we stop challenging our assumptions and become complacent.

Key signs you're stuck: • Your one-on-ones follow the exact same template every time • You always reach for the same solutions to team challenges • Your calendar looks identical month after month • You find yourself saying "This is just how we do things here"

Breaking free requires intentional effort. Here are proven strategies:

Reading: Don't just stick to management books. Explore psychology, philosophy, and history for fresh perspectives.

Shadowing: Observe how other leaders handle similar challenges. Be the "fly on the wall" in their meetings.

Teaching: Mentor aspiring managers. You'll discover gaps in your knowledge and gain fresh perspectives.

Replaying: Share specific situations with colleagues to understand how they would handle them differently.

The tech industry's emphasis on constant growth and innovation doesn't just apply to products – it applies to leadership too. When managers stop growing, teams stagnate, and organizations suffer.

We often tend to forget that humans are visual animals. Our brains have evolved to become good in visual pattern recognition. Hence the importance of leveraging visual tools in your storytelling.

It is so much easier to tell a story with visuals than to have a wall of text. As the saying goes: A picture is worth a thousand words

Documentation is the unsung hero of productivity—it's critical for smooth onboarding, effective cross-team communication, and sustaining ownership, yet it's often neglected or mismanaged. Good documentation should be intuitive and engaging, especially in asynchronous, remote setups where colleagues may not overlap in time zones. Companies struggle to assign responsibility for documentation—should it be engineers, managers, or dedicated technical writers? Ultimately, it’s a collaborative effort, with engineers documenting technical details, managers filling in gaps, and product managers providing broader context. Various approaches, like Documentation-Driven Development, community contributions, and tools like Notion or Git, ease this burden. Metrics on ease-of-use, accuracy, and upkeep frequency can offer a pulse on documentation health, highlighting gaps and ensuring information is accessible, relevant, and up-to-date.

I remember the day where I knew that I wanted to become an engineering manager, but I had no idea where to start. There were very little resources out there that I was able to find. And the ones that I did manage to find were so theoretical and abstract that I didn’t know what to do with it.

In his book, Oren Ellenbogen aims to help those folks who are going through the same experiences as I have by providing them with practical ideas, which upon reading, you immediately can put into practice.

I especially enjoyed the “Captain’s Log” where Oren recommends that we take note of the dilemmas we encounter on a day to day basis. Not always might we know immediately how to react in such situations, but in order to do better next time, we could take a note of what happened, so that we can replay it against another manager with more experience then ourselves. This is a brilliant idea!

This article dives into the powerful concept of reputation and how it influences your career growth and opportunities. It explores how the way others perceive you can shape their decisions in critical moments. Understanding and actively managing this perception is essential for anyone looking to build trust, gain influence, and excel in their professional journey.

Engineering managers play a crucial role in amplifying their team's impact. The key to becoming a multiplier lies in helping your team work more efficiently, boosting productivity. To aid managers in this, a simple yet effective method has been devised: "See, Observe, Prioritize, Act."

See: Understand your sphere of influence within the organization and identify where you can make the most impact. Observe: Gather data by talking to your team and understanding their pain points. Prioritize: Use an impact vs. effort matrix to decide which issues to tackle first. Act: Implement solutions that maximize impact across the team. This method helps engineering managers drive greater team efficiency and achieve more with their resources.

When we dig into delays, unplanned work, and scattered focus, we often find a lack of visibility at the core. Dominica's practical ideas help track and visualize team dynamics, revealing inefficiencies that may be hiding in plain sight.

You'll be amazed at the amount of hidden work you uncover—work that consumes your team's time while waiting in queues. Many organizations miss this because they focus on resource efficiency, not systems thinking.

Skeptical? Take two hours to review your last few sprints. Label the unplanned work and see how much goes unnoticed. You might just realize how crucial it is to make work visible.

That's a feature from asciidoc

https://docs.asciidoctor.org/asciidoc/latest/toc/

I get cramps on my fingers since I'm not used to holding a pen :)

Never heard of Vellum. Thnx for sharing

No hatred really.

It just felt like going to a knife fight with a Bazooka.

It's just personal preference. There is nothing wrong with Microsoft Word not with paying for a good tool.

Thnx for the tip. Will definitely check it out

I did not know this. Very nice

Any major editor has support for it.

https://docs.asciidoctor.org/asciidoctor/latest/tooling/

Asciidoc is awesome.

I only wish that it had better integration tools with other wiki tools (confluence, notion, etc.)

That way I could use asciidoc for all my documentation and sync it to whatever wiki tool the company I work for wants to have

It's definitely not about speed (I actually type slightly slower) but it is indeed about comfort

Very interesting

this is beautiful

You're spot on about the "writing" section.

I actually only wanted to focus on the tooling, but that lacked a little body, so I added a little bit on writing.

It actually deserves its own article