Posts about leadership

A pull request on the first day

A new developer's first week on a large codebase in a strange domain decides whether they ask questions in month three or stay quiet. So on my team the week is planned, and ideally it ends with a merge.

Three ways to say yes to a feature request

When I said no to the people who need the software, what they heard was that I hadn't understood them. Now I ask one question first, and then answer with one of three kinds of yes.

Reviews before new work

A pull request costs the most while it waits. My team has one rule to keep the queue short, and two habits that make it cheap to follow.

Leading from inside the codebase

I became a team lead this spring, and the advice came from everywhere: now you stop coding. I didn't, and six months in I know which tickets are still mine.