Alex Ponomarev

1 Dec 2023 · 4 min read

The Boy Scout Rule for Better Code

You know that feeling when you’re out camping, and you take extra care to leave your little site nicer than how you found it? Picking up that candy wrapper

30 Nov 2023 · 6 min read

Debugging Dysfunction: Tuning Your Teams For Top Performance

Organizing development teams effectively is crucial for building complex systems, but there are several common pitfalls. I recently read Team Topologies by Matthew Skelton and Manuel Pais, which discusses patterns

29 Nov 2023 · 5 min read

Supercharging Your A-Team: Building Dream Teams Around Top Talent

You take a deep breath as you join the monthly board meeting, laptop and notes in hand. You’ve been dreading this day for weeks. Ever since you stumbled through

28 Nov 2023 · 4 min read

Use Iterative Prototyping To Fight Scope Creep

The new project has you bursting with eager excitement. Finally, a chance to flex your creative muscles and design iteratively. No more rigid processes limiting the engineering skills you pursue.

27 Nov 2023 · 4 min read

Coding Puzzles Alienate Senior Engineers

Finding strong senior engineers is hard. When you finally get an experienced developer in for an interview, you want to evaluate them effectively. It’s tempting to default to leaning

27 Nov 2023 · 5 min read

Dodging the Technical Debt Trap

Technical debt. The phrase makes most engineers groan. It brings up memories of messy legacy code, shortcuts that came back to bite you, and that giant rewrite that never seems

25 Nov 2023 · 4 min read

Surfing the Technical Debt Wave Without Wiping Out

Your team just rolled out a release of an application you’re building. It’s time to sit back, relax, and enjoy the feedback flowing in. One thing preventing you

24 Nov 2023 · 5 min read

Dear Developers: Managers Aren’t Actually Your Enemies

As a software developer, you may often feel like engineering managers are blocking you with bureaucracy and pointless work rather than helping you do your job. I get it — I’

23 Nov 2023 · 4 min read

The Delicate Balance: Promoting Accountability Without Suffocating Talent

In the early days, managing this team was easy. You dreamed about ways to take the product to the next level. Your team’s passion and talent made your job

22 Nov 2023 · 5 min read

Dealing With Power Dynamics and Work Politics as an Engineering Manager

There’s this rush of excitement when you land that engineering manager promotion. After dedicating night after night towards this goal, your hard work finally pays dividends. But as the

21 Nov 2023 · 5 min read

Progress Reporting that Doesn’t Feel Tedious

Imagine a situation. You’re an engineering manager leading a capable development team. You feel you have well-planned the project with clear milestones. However, some things are not going smoothly.

20 Nov 2023 · 4 min read

Time Tracking: Friend or Foe of Engineering Productivity?

Imagine you’re an engineering manager at a tech startup overseeing a fully remote team of developers. Features are being delivered behind schedule, littered with bugs. Your developers are taking

18 Nov 2023 · 5 min read

Managing Engineers: How to Avoid Losing Your Tech Edge

You sit at the desk of your home office with a fresh cup of coffee, ready to start your first day as an engineering manager. You worked hard to earn

17 Nov 2023 · 5 min read

Managing Engineers: How to Avoid Losing Your Tech Edge

You sit at the desk of your home office with a fresh cup of coffee, ready to start your first day as an engineering manager. You worked hard to earn

16 Nov 2023 · 4 min read

Engineering Manager Skills 101: Communication, Delegation, Strategy

Making the leap from engineer to manager is overwhelming. Believe me, I’ve been there! One day, you’re an expert capable of solving the most complex problems, and the

15 Nov 2023 · 4 min read

Moving Up as an Engineer: Should You Become a Manager?

Business Insider reports that OpenAI is actively recruiting top talent from Google and Meta, offering compensation packages worth millions of dollars to entice some of the best researchers. The company

14 Nov 2023 · 4 min read

Shortening Lead Times: A Data-Driven Approach

As an engineering manager, I’m constantly trying to wrap my head around how hard it is to estimate software timelines. No matter how we try, things end up taking

13 Nov 2023 · 4 min read

Autonomy vs. Alignment: The Engineering Balancing Act

When an engineering manager is too hands-off, giving excessive autonomy to the team, it creates misalignment and frustration for everyone involved. The Pitfalls of Excessive Autonomy Imagine an engineering team