Interview with Radoslav Stankov, Head of Engineering at Product Hunt. He tells stories about him going from IC to Head of Engineering, the different stages he led through Product Hunt, the challenges he faces in product development, his leadership journal and much more.Sign up to the Level-up Engineering newsletter!In this interview we're covering:The evolution of Product Hunt's structureGoing from IC to leaderEvaluating yourself as a leaderThe effects of the pandemic on remote workLeadership challenges in product developmentLearnings about product developmentAnd more!Excerpt from the interview:"I have a technique that I call my manager journal. I write a log of everything that happens every week.This includes the general things, like what I was doing or what core events happened to our system. I also use it to keep track of what I’m worried about that week. For example, there might have been an outage, or an argument in my team, or some of my points didn’t go through.For example, my concern right now is the design system we’re building. My main concern was balancing its flexibility with performance. I write these in my journal every week and check back every month to track how my concerns have changed and to see whether they’d been resolved."Click here to read the full interview!

Interview with Tom Sommer, Director of Engineering at Redbubble about creating an internship program for software engineers. Tom tells stories about setting up the internship program at Redbubble and the iterations they've gone through over the years to give you a headstart at building your own program.Sign up to the Level-up Engineering newsletter!In this interview we're covering:Mistakes while creating an internship program for software engineersRecruiting to an internship programEvaluating candidates going into the programEvaluating candidates at the end of the programChoosing teams and mentors for internsStages and expectations in an internship programExcerpt from the interview:"Early on, we put the new interns into their own team, gave them a task to rewrite a system or a project for us, and checked in on them periodically. The point wasn’t to test whether they could do it, but we thought it was a good way to gain experience.It didn’t work out well.This is why we transitioned to embedding interns into teams to give them the full experience of working on a product engineering team."Click here to read the full interview!

Interview with Lara Hogan, legendary leadership coach and former engineering leader about building a performance review process. Lara goes into detail about building a process from the bottom up and takes a deep dive into synthesizing and delivering feedback to your direct reports for maximum effectiveness.Sign up to the Level-up Engineering newsletter!In this interview we're covering:Definition of performance reviewsSteps of a performance review processPreparation tips for giving and receiving feedbackRules to giving feedback based on a performance reviewSharpening your skills in giving feedbackSupporting your team to give feedbackExcerpt from the interview:"You want to make a performance review discussion a two-way conversation.I’ve seen people say that you should end your feedback with a request like, “Could you pick up more tickets, please?” I consider this a terrible way to deliver feedback that shuts down any chance of a conversation.Leading questions may serve you well in a toxic situation, or when working out a performance improvement plan. When it comes to delivering constructive criticism in a regular performance review, make it a two-way conversation. This is the best you can do for everybody."Click here to read the full interview!

Interview with Greg Dick, Senior Engineering Manager at Hudl about building engagement with remote employees in distributed teams. They miss out on a lot of professional and personal interactions, and don't integrate well into the team. Check out Greg's tips to learn how you can kickstart that process as a manager!Sign up to the Level-up Engineering newsletter!In this interview we're covering:Definition of remote employees and distributed teamsIntegrating remote employees to distributed teams vs remote teamsChallenges of managing remote employees in a distributed teamEngaging remote employees in the office chit chatEngaging remote emplyoees in team building activitiesTips to set up the office to better engage remote employeesManaging the return to the office in distributed teamsIncreasing retention by getting remote employees engagedExcerpt from the interview:"A few years ago, I had a remote member on my team who left the company after about a year. I asked him what happened and he said, “I saw all the cool stuff you all were doing in the office and I wanted that too.” It turns out, he considered moving to Lincoln to work with us in the office, but he had family ties, so he ended up joining a local company that had a similar culture to ours.This left me wondering how much of this is our fault for bombarding him with reminders and videos of the office events. These might feed his feeling of being left out. Holding events every few weeks was an integral part of our engineering culture, but you had to be in Lincoln to partake.Currently, we make our events visible in a way that if somebody is interested, it’s easy to find them. This is valuable to remote employees when they’re looking for times to visit headquarters. Looking at the calendar and picking the events they like makes this choice easier."Click here to read the full interview!

Interview with Michael Lopp, Rands about his time as VP of Product Engineering at Slack. He tells stories about the darkest day of Slack, the mistakes he made along the way and how he grew into his executive role.Sign up to the Level-up Engineering newsletter!In this interview we're covering:Leadership takeaways from SlackThe darkest day of SlackTactical vs strategic focus as VP of Product EngineeringRetaining your direct reportsCreating processes before they're necessaryThe experience of Slack going publicStory about telling the truthAnd much more!Excerpt from the interview:"I suggest executives in growing companies tell the truth as quickly as possible.It’s great advice, but this story is about how it backfires. Really, this was a failure on my part as a senior leader, and it flowed from this approach. If I get a question, I answer it. If you ask, “How are we doing on hiring women in engineering?” I’ll say, “Here’s the answer and here’s the data.”At Slack, we had a lot of data come in about hiring in a big spreadsheet. It’s data like the number of people hired, diversity in hiring, and so on..."Click here to read the full interview!

Interview with Mark Kinsella, VP of Engineering at Opendoor about what makes entrepreneurial engineers great and how to lead them. We go in-depth from the definition through the key qualities of entrepreneurial engineers, hiring and retaining them, and much more.Sign up to the Level-up Engineering newsletter!In this interview we're covering:Definition and qualities of entrepreneurial engineersHiring entrepreneurial engineersOnboarding and retaining entrepreneurial engineersNurturing the business mindset in software engineersCulturally supporting the business mindsetGiving feedback to engineersPreventing burnout for entrepreneurial engineersExcerpt from the interview:"At Opendoor, we need to ingest a large amount of data. Real estate data is public, so we need to process all that data to make informed decisions. We had a hard time importing MLS and home data because it was so messy.At the end of the day, a few of our engineers went to shadow agents at a different company who were importing this data. They tried to understand the customer’s perspective and what they were doing. They took the insights they’d collected, and managed to build a better data ingestion pipeline.Understanding their customer made it possible to build a faster and scalable tech solution. This initiative and creative thinking got us to the point where we could ingest more data with higher reliability. This is an example of why we want to work with entrepreneurial engineers."Click here to read the full interview!

Interview with Jean Hsu, VP of Engineering at Range about structuring, scheduling and making your remote meetings productive. Learn from her stories about handling an avalanche of remote meetings, and what she's learned along the way about transforming these meetings and supporting her team.Sign up for the Level-up Engineering newsletter!In this interview we're covering:The optimal number of remote meetings dailyMaking remote meetings productiveStructuring remote meetingsNecessary extra meetings in a remote environmentTools to support remote meetingsMeetings that don't work remotelyProviding a flexibility of schedule in your companyExcerpt from the interview:"This is my rule of thumb: remove status updates and announcements from meetings, and communicate them as asynchronous updates. You can use a tool like Loom for this. Leaders can record a short video message, and the employees can watch it at any time and leave comments.Use async channels with anything that doesn’t require discussion, or where you can start out without a discussion.Don’t rely too much on meetings; move everything you can to asynchronous updates. For example, it’s easier for me to reply to an email than it would be to find 15-30 minutes to discuss the same thing in a video call."Click here to read the full interview!

Interview with Mike Seavers, former CTO at Riot Games about building self-managed teams for high performance. Learn from a seasoned leader about making sure you have the right people, and coach them the right way to empower them so you can stop holding their hands. Unlock your team's potential and unleash them to do great work!Sign up for the Level-up Engineering newsletter!In this interview we're covering:Relationship between performance and autonomyRole of the leader in self-managed teamsDescription of self-managed teamsMaking time to coach your employeesMeasuring the manager's performance in self-managing teamsLeadership strategies to build self-managed teamsCommunicating your expectationsBuilding self-managed teams in a new companyBuilding self-managed teams in an established organizationExcerpt from the interview:"In a self-managed team, even the most junior employee is empowered to make a meaningful decision that affects the team’s performance. They’re not dependent on management to make all the decisions. No winning team requires the coach to explain how to kick the ball; the coaching happens before and after the game.Leadership’s job is to make the vision and the goals clear. In my one-on-one meetings, I always ask these questions from my reports:Is the company vision clear?Are the company goals clear?Do you understand what we’re trying to accomplish and the near-term objectives?"Click here to read the full interview!

State of Software Development 2021 reportInterview with John Ford, VP of Engineering and Country Leader at LogMeIn discussing emerging industry trends based on data from the State of Software Development 2021 report. We touch on the effects of COVID-19 on the industry, old and new challenges, hiring, retention and more.Sign up for the Level-up Engineering newsletter!In this interview we're covering:The effects of COVID-19 on the software industryTop challenges in software developmentComparing the perception of managers and engineersHiring and retentionPerformance managementOutsourcing development

Interview with Ellen Wong, Director of Engineering at Calm about leading partially remote and partially on-site hybrid teams. She shares her experience in hiring the right people for hybrid teams, creating processes, and handling all the day-to-day difficulties of the hybrid environment.In this interview we're covering:Advantages and disadvantages of a hybrid teamLeadership challenges in a hybrid teamPreparing your team for hybrid processesExtra support requirements in hybrid teamsFuture plans with the hybrid environmentKey skills to lead hybrid teamsKeeping the community alive in a hybrid environmentExcerpt from the interview:"I joined Calm remotely, and I’ve hired the majority of my team for remote work. My previous company was focused on working from the office, so we chose carefully who we allowed to work remotely. We came up with certain criteria, which I use when hiring for my hybrid team.Look for these qualities in your interview:Inclusivity and kindnessGood communication skillsProactivityOpenness to feedbackFor example, if they have issues conveying their points, and you have to keep asking follow-up questions, they may not be a good fit for remote work."Click here to read the full interview!