Fifteen essays on engineering leadership, hiring, and inclusion, written between 2017 and 2021.
30 June 2021
I was promoted to director less than a year after becoming a manager. In the movie version of my life, getting promoted was a recognition of years of hard work and undeniable, innate leadership ability. The truth is probably closer to me…
20 April 2021
Believe it or not, collecting status in large organizations is a difficult problem; one that new leaders, in particular, struggle with and spend countless hours trying to figure out. It's easy to see why. Managers, and particularly those…
31 January 2021
There comes a point in every manager's life when we need to hand over a responsibility that is near and dear to our hearts. Maybe it's a piece of code that we've shepherded for many years, or maybe it's a program or project that has…
30 November 2020 · D&I · DEI
Promotion inequity – promotion processes that result in underrepresented groups (URGs) being left behind – comes up often in my line of work. This situation never happens on purpose. Many of my clients have put a lot of thought into their…
31 August 2020 · D&I · DEI
I recently wrapped up a round of hiring for a client of mine, and I thought I'd share some lessons learned and re-learned along the way.
16 April 2019 · Management
When I was promoted to Engineering Director, I had no idea what I was doing. It was a role that I had little to no prior experience with, and it took me the better part of 18 months to figure out how to be effective in it. I characterize…
17 January 2019 · Management
Accountability comes up a lot when talking about engineering organizations. Everyone wants to know how to hold engineers accountable. And, in my exploration of this topic with folks, I've found that the term accountability means something…
4 September 2018 · Management
Everyone likes to talk about leadership—we are culturally conditioned to view success as a progression through leadership positions—but there is far less attention paid to being a good follower. In fact, when most people think of…
28 August 2018 · D&I · DEI
I'm hearing a lot about hiring mandates in my social circle these days. My friends are being told that their next hire has to be a non-straight-white-male. Interestingly, none of these friends work in tech. Feelings are conflicted.…
24 July 2018 · Management
I've been [doing a lot of interviewing](https://twitter.com/attackgecko/status/1004059936651964416) lately. I have admittedly not spent much time on the interviewee side of the table over the past decade, so for the last couple of months…
2 July 2018 · D&I · Management
In setting out to create an inclusive environment, it helps to stop letting in folks who would work against that goal. I wanted to talk a bit about my experiences in implementing an inclusion section in our interview process. This is more…
25 June 2018 · Management
Imagine a world where you bring together the top leaders in your organization to solve the company's most pressing challenges, and, instead of coming together as a core group to solve that problem, they approach the exercise as a…
20 November 2017 · D&I
If [Awareness](https://jwongworks.com/blog/2017/10/30/strategy-in-action-awareness) is helping folks see new doors. Education and Effecting Behavioral Change is about opening those doors and getting folks to walk through them. In other…
29 October 2017 · D&I
If you're just joining in, check out [Part 1](https://jwongworks.com/blog/2017/10/22/bootstrapping-inclusion) first.
22 October 2017 · D&I
In a prior life, I worked for a popular e-commerce site for seven years. I joined when the company was about 100 employees and was fortunate to stay long enough to see it grow to over 1,000. During that time, I managed and led a subset of…