Alex Ponomarev
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Pinecone vs. Conventional Databases for GenAI: Old vs New Decision AI
10 Nov 2023 · 4 min read

Pinecone vs. Conventional Databases for GenAI: Old vs New Decision

I see an interesting challenge for engineering managers — making the old vs new decisions. There’s always a flexible and well-known way of solving virtually any problem that senior engineers

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From Engineer to Manager: Learning to Organize Yourself Transition to Management
9 Nov 2023 · 5 min read

From Engineer to Manager: Learning to Organize Yourself

Transitioning to an engineering management role is tough for many reasons. One of the biggest reasons is different expectations — no one will tell you what to do now. You may

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Coding as a Manager: Walking a Thin Line Engineering Management
8 Nov 2023 · 5 min read

Coding as a Manager: Walking a Thin Line

When you’re an engineering manager in a small team, you often find yourself in a frustrating situation — you still write code while performing your engineering duties. At first, it

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Why OpenAI’s New Features Aren’t that Exciting for Developers 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

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The Bittersweet Reality of Wearing the Leadership Hat as an Ex-Coder 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

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The Key to Your Purpose as an Engineering Manager: Andy Grove’s Formula 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

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When Your Boss Doesn’t Trust You Enough to Let Go of the Reins 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

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Why Imposing Standards and Best Practices Backfires at a New Job 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

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Unleash Your Team’s Superpowers with the Ovsiankina Effect 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

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Have Your Cake and Eat It Too with Scrumban 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

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The Automation Trap: When Tests Fail You 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

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Dear Scrum, It’s Not Me, It’s You 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

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Lou Holtz’s “Do Right” Playbook for Engineering Leaders 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

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From Coder to Engineering Manager: Making the Leap 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

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

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The Problem with Individual Performance Metrics 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

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Deploy Gone Wrong: The Knight Capital Story 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

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

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