Alex Ponomarev Passionate about software development and building great products http://www.alexponomarev.me 359 posts
Project Management 30 Oct 2023 · 4 min read Dear Scrum, It’s Not Me, It’s You I sighed as I stared blankly at my laptop screen. Another sprint planning meeting was about to start, which meant another two weeks of frustration lay ahead. I had such Read more
Leadership 29 Oct 2023 · 4 min read Lou Holtz’s “Do Right” Playbook for Engineering Leaders Legendary football coach Lou Holtz, who, among other achievements, led the Notre Dame team to a national championship, is known for his simple yet wise “Do Right” leadership philosophy with Read more
Transition to Management 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 unofficial Read more
Team management 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 Read more
Metrics 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 Read more
DevOps 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 Read more
People 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 old Read more
CTO 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 Read more
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. We’ Read more
Management 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 Read more
Management 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 Read more
Project Management 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 agile Read more
Technical debt 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 Read more
Scaling 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 Read more
Career 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 Read more
Project Management 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 Read more
Startups 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 Read more
Scaling 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 for new Read more
