Alex Ponomarev Passionate about software development and building great products http://www.alexponomarev.me 385 posts
AI 7 Nov 2023 · 4 min read Why OpenAI’s New Features Aren’t that Exciting for Developers I had mixed feelings watching the OpenAI DevDay opening keynote yesterday. Sam Altman had a contagious enthusiasm as he unveiled the new features. When the GPTs demo texted him live Read more
Transition to Management 6 Nov 2023 · 4 min read The Bittersweet Reality of Wearing the Leadership Hat as an Ex-Coder The story of an engineer promoted to a manager is the same for many people. When you join the team, you’re excited about the work you are doing. Other Read more
Leadership 5 Nov 2023 · 5 min read The Key to Your Purpose as an Engineering Manager: Andy Grove’s Formula When I just started in the role of an engineering manager, I was struggling to transition from coding myself to supporting my team. It felt impossible to know for sure Read more
Managing Up 4 Nov 2023 · 5 min read When Your Boss Doesn’t Trust You Enough to Let Go of the Reins Recently, I found a story in a Reddit post from the ITManagers subreddit that I can relate to. The post described a manager struggling to manage up effectively. He worked Read more
Soft Skills 3 Nov 2023 · 5 min read Why Imposing Standards and Best Practices Backfires at a New Job My friend John recently started a new job. He told me that the way people communicate internally was quite unusual — instead of using Slack, they use a combination of personal Read more
Teamwork 2 Nov 2023 · 5 min read Unleash Your Team’s Superpowers with the Ovsiankina Effect Imagine you’re an engineering manager working with a team of 15 brilliant developers. You have Alex, a talented tech lead who architected your entire middleware layer. Emily is your Read more
Project Management 1 Nov 2023 · 4 min read Have Your Cake and Eat It Too with Scrumban Finding the right balance between structure and flexibility is vital for agile software teams. Scrumban comes in to blend the best of both worlds — keeping Scrum’s focus and adding Read more
QA 31 Oct 2023 · 4 min read The Automation Trap: When Tests Fail You Software development teams often embrace test automation with open arms, expecting it to be a silver bullet that finds bugs for them. However, reality sometimes ends up different. When requirements Read more
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
