This post can be considered as part 2 of The Power of One-on-One Meetings and Personal Connections. Although just a week ago, I wrote The Power of One-on-One Meetings and Personal Connections, I was still hesitant about the one-on-one meetings I had scheduled today. Those amazing feelings from previous one-on-one meetings had left me. I was, once again, skeptical and wondered if these meetings would be any good at all. The good news is all one-on-one meetings I had today went great! Same as last time, I enjoyed them thoroughly and was glad that I had them. I want to… Continue reading →

As engineers, we generally prefer less talking and more coding. There’s a widespread belief that no one likes meetings. I used to hold that belief. As a result, when I started leading projects, I procrastinated on scheduling regular one-on-one meetings1 with engineers on my team. Although I knew it would be beneficial and both my manager and my mentor advised me to do it, for varies reasons, I was hesitant and kept putting it off. Finally, I had a few one-on-one meetings last week. They turned out so productive and useful that I only wished I started doing them earlier,… Continue reading →

Your communication skills largely determine your impact within the company. We mostly spend the early phase of our careers on learning “what to say” — we grow in our technical expertise and domain knowledge(todo: link) so we can make the right trade-offs and come up with the best solution. After that phase, “how to say” becomes important, because once you arrive at a conclusion, the next step is to share your reasoning and potentially influence the outcome of a discussion. “How to say” deeply depends on “who you are talking to”. Knowing the person you are talking to is key… Continue reading →

This is part 2 of last week’s post: Communication: Getting on the Same Page. I thought about it more this week and summarized a few more points I missed in the first post. 1. Make sure people share the same understanding about the end goal. At the beginning of the project, we were using the same words to describe the end goal without realizing we meant different things. Because we had different understandings about the what and why of what we needed to accomplish, we had a hard time getting on the same page and sharing the same priorities. For… Continue reading →

I started to lead a cross-team, multi-quarter project a few weeks ago. I expected that, before the team could completely switch to execution mode and be 100% productive, we needed to spend a decent amount of time in the initial planning phase. Although I knew that it would be a challenge, I still underestimated how hard it was to get everyone on the same page and have an actionable plan that everyone feels good about. Just to be clear, everyone on the team was passionate and eager to get started. The challenge inhered from the fact that: 1. the project… Continue reading →

I notice a common trait among senior engineers: in most cases, they all have opinions and are not afraid of sharing them. As I gradually take on bigger and bigger responsibilities, when the stakes are high, I start to struggle with voicing my opinions and taking a stand. It’s a common topic mid-level engineers often encounter. This post covers: why we should voice our opinions; what is stopping us from voicing our opinions; when and how to voice our opinions. Why we should voice our opinions 1. It makes you more engaged in a discussion. Voicing our opinions is a… Continue reading →

When we first start our careers as software engineers, we tend to focus on improving our coding skills, a.k.a. technical skills, including but not limited to: mastering a specific tech stack, adopting best practices, and studying architecture designs. But there is another side that is just as important: gaining the domain knowledge and forming a long-term vision for your team, product, and company. I’m leading a multi-quarter project that requires collaboration among several engineering teams. My team has been the ultimate initiator and driver of the project. As more and more senior engineers from other teams joined, I started to… Continue reading →