Alex Ponomarev (Page 18)

28 Oct 2023 · 5 min read

From Coder to Engineering Manager: Making the Leap

For many engineers, the path to management starts by becoming the “go-to” expert on your team. You handle the tough technical challenges and guide others, eventually taking on the

27 Oct 2023 · 4 min read

The Power of Two Pizzas: Why Jeff Bezos Limits Teams to 5–7

In his book “The Everything Store: Jeff Bezos and the Age of Amazon,“ Brad Stone writes about a counterintuitive view that Jeff Bezos, the founder of Amazon, has: communication is

26 Oct 2023 · 3 min read

The Problem with Individual Performance Metrics

I stumbled upon a blog post on Hacker News that I wanted to write about for a while. In it, Dan North, a consultant from the UK, talks about the

25 Oct 2023 · 4 min read

Deploy Gone Wrong: The Knight Capital Story

Today, I found another amazing story from the software world on Doug Seven’s blog. Doug is a Senior Director at Microsoft Healthcare, writing about many interesting things. Knight Capital

24 Oct 2023 · 5 min read

Young Guns vs. Old Guards: Navigating the Innovation vs. Stability Divide

A friend of mine told me about a situation at his work. You know how it goes, the young, go-getting developers want to move fast and break things. The

23 Oct 2023 · 6 min read

Software Minimalism: The YAGNI Principle

The software development principle known as “You Aren’t Gonna Need It” (YAGNI) is one that many teams struggle to apply effectively. YAGNI recommends building only essential features for the

22 Oct 2023 · 4 min read

Five Secrets to All-Hands Meetings that Don’t Waste Time

All-hands meetings can be a great way to align, update, and engage your entire team — but they can also quickly become giant wastes of time if not run effectively.

21 Oct 2023 · 4 min read

The Power of the Peer Squad: How to Beat Manager Loneliness

I stumbled on a rather old post by Ian Bicking, who just started working as an engineering manager at Mozilla at the time. He was feeling lonely and isolated in

20 Oct 2023 · 5 min read

Beyond Finger-Pointing: Lead with Systems Thinking

Will Larson, the author of “The Elegant Puzzle” I’m reading now, tells an interesting story in his book. He recalls how he found himself in a tough spot after

19 Oct 2023 · 4 min read

Velocity Obsession: The Flawed Metric of Agile

Raise your hand if you’ve ever had a manager obsessed with your team’s velocity. Yeah, that’s what I thought. Velocity is the go-to metric for tracking

18 Oct 2023 · 6 min read

Escaping Tech Debt Jail With Regular Migrations

I love reading books while paying attention to details, checking references to other books recommended by the author, and following the recommended reading links. The icing on the cake is

17 Oct 2023 · 4 min read

Expanding Without Exploding: Lessons on Team Growth

As the CTO of a growing software development team, I was starting to feel anxious. Our engineering team grew from a handful to almost 30 people in the last few

16 Oct 2023 · 4 min read

Tips for Transitioning to Tech from a Non-Tech Job

Career changes can be downright scary, I get it. Especially when you’re looking to jump into a new field like tech. In this post, I want to share some

15 Oct 2023 · 4 min read

Stop Scope Creep With Prioritization

Software projects are rife with uncertainty. Even seasoned developers struggle to provide accurate estimates. But one thing is sure — to ensure your project succeeds, you must prioritize the features your

14 Oct 2023 · 3 min read

The 3 Factors that Make or Break Your Startup’s Success

What is it that makes a startup succeed? This question has stumped me and likely many other entrepreneurs and investors over the years. Bill Gross — a legendary founder of Idealab

13 Oct 2023 · 3 min read

All Hands on Deck: Rapidly Scaling Engineering to Stay Afloat

Scaling an engineering team in as requirements pile up is a challenging feat. With a hockey-stick user growth, engineering managers feel like drowning trying to balance non-stop requests

12 Oct 2023 · 4 min read

The Dark Side of the Hero Engineer

I was reading the book “An Elegant Puzzle: Systems of Engineering Management” by Will Larson today and stumbled upon a definition of the “hero engineer” problem in software development. It’

11 Oct 2023 · 3 min read

Turning Around a Troubled Talent

We’ve all encountered the “Jeff” in our careers — the talented engineer who creates as many problems as he solves. I recently came across an interesting Reddit post describing a