Friends and family frequently reach out to me with requests to meet with someone who has aspirations toward a career in tech. "Our good friend's daughter just graduated from {college} and is looking for a job and hopes to find something in tech." "{Name} is interested in finding an entry level role in tech/programming and... Continue Reading →
Strategies for creating an environment of continuous learning
I was invited to participate in a LeadDev panel on continuous learning, which is one of my very favorite topics, especially in the context of engineering management. I had a great conversation with Kevin Goldsmith from Anaconda, Tara Ojo from the Financial Times, Kristen Spencer from TWG, and Krishnan Srinivasan from Target. https://twitter.com/TheLeadDev/status/1336996082115612673?s=20 These are... Continue Reading →
Cloud Certification for Managers
A couple of years ago I started working with teams at Twitter working on making public cloud offerings available to our developers, and as part of my ramp up, I started taking Google's Cloud Architect training classes for certification. I recently participated in a webinar about certification where I particularly focused on the value it... Continue Reading →
Why it’s not about your good intentions.
I have had three conversations this very week where I shared direct feedback on problematic behavior, and the theme of the responses has been the same: But that person has good intentions. He/she didn't mean it. He/she just has a rough/tough/{insert cultural reference here} personality. He/she is just misunderstood. He/she is just so passionate about... Continue Reading →
Self-reflection on inclusion and diversity
Given national advocacy for the #blacklivesmatter movement, I'm hearing a lot of folks looking for ways to increase their allyship. I took some time to reflecting on my own efforts and considered them against Twitter's published Inclusion & Diversity Report. Previous published targets have aimed to increase workforce representation for under-represented minorities, specifically... Continue Reading →
Wise Words
When you have more than you need, build a longer table, not a higher fence. - UNKNOWN
Presentation Karaoke, aka Battle Decks, and #distributedtreats for engineering teams
Remote, distributed engineering teams often rely on periodic in-person offsites or meetups to forge the kind of personal connections that contribute to a great, collaborative working environment. However, with the restrictions we are all experiencing due to COVID-19, it could be a while before we’re able to get our teams together IRL. So today we... Continue Reading →
Interview: Amazing Women in Tech
I had the pleasure of being interviewed by Ari Font (@quicola), Director of Engineering in Twitter's Cortex ML Platform (and our New York Site Lead) recently for her #AmazingWomeninTech series, which she kicked off as part of International Women's Day in March. Interview topics include: #yourstory #whatmakesyouyou #yourhurdles #gratitude #success #privilege #empathy #leadership #covid19 At... Continue Reading →
“I’m newly remote under coronavirus, AMA” panel at #LeadDevLive
As part of #LeadDevLive, a 2-day virtual conference for engineering leaders, I was honored to host a panel as moderator where we discussed how we are all shifting to working remotely due to shelter-in-place orders related to COVID-19. It was my first time moderating a panel. White October Events, the conference organizer, was excellent about... Continue Reading →
Remote Work Guide
Amazing timely content: The Holloway Guide to Remote Work. I contributed as a reviewer and can say this is the only guide you need for recruiting, managing, supporting, and just being a remote worker. You can tell Holloway has been developing this content for months. And because of the web format, you can search for... Continue Reading →
Wise Words
Life can only be understood backwards; but it must be lived forwards. - SØREN KIERKEGAARD
A Process for Year End Reflection and Goal Setting
It’s December 31, time to reflect and resolve. I’m incredibly goal-oriented and nearly always set a New Year’s resolution or two, but a year ago, I moved the process into much longer-term thinking. This year, I set both “life goals” and 2019 goals because a colleague (h/t Dobromir) shared his life goals with me. I... Continue Reading →
LinkedIn Top Voices 2019: Software Development
Just found out I made the LinkedIn Top Voices 2019: Software Development list! #9 Kathleen Vignos, Director of Software Engineering, Twitter What she talks about: As an engineering executive at one of the most famous tech companies in the world, Vignos posts about leadership as a way to "encourage and equip" engineers who are making "the hard transition"... Continue Reading →
Engineering management as a distributed system
"My utilization is too high! My latency is increasing, I've got too many cache misses, my search results aren't relevant, I'm way above the threshold and all my alarms are going off, especially in the middle of the night." Ever feel this way as an engineering manager - that your compute and storage resources aren't... Continue Reading →
Video: “Keeping up your technical skills as a manager”
Video of my talk, "Keeping up your technical skills as a manager," is now posted on YouTube, along with the whole playlist of all talks from #calibratesf. https://youtu.be/K9emor4-ewU It was an amazing speaker lineup - here are just a few of my fellow presenters. https://twitter.com/kathleencodes/status/1177703695921770496 And yes - it was just as much fun as... Continue Reading →
Should I become an engineering manager? Seven questions for reflection
One of the most common questions I hear when mentoring engineers is whether a person should pursue engineering management. I usually take this to mean that they are actually looking for a leadership role, and I want to help them discern whether that might be as a primarily technical leader or as a managerial leader.... Continue Reading →
Wise Words
Self-esteem is the ability to see yourself as a flawed individual and still hold yourself in regard. - ESTHER PEREL
Do you even code anymore? How to keep up your technical skills without annoying your team(s)
In a crowd of attendees at the O’Reilly Velocity conference this month, I asked a room of mostly managers how many of them had coded within the past week; within the past 6 months; or within the past year (including side projects, open source contributions, etc.). With all three of those categories, we had about... Continue Reading →
How To Get A Job At Twitter
[Photo: ViewApart/iStock] I was recently interviewed by Michael Grothaus of Fast Company for my perspective as a senior hiring manager in engineering on how we hire engineers at Twitter. I’m incredibly proud of the work we’ve invested both in a great candidate experience as well as in managing bias. More details in my interview here: Fast... Continue Reading →
5 Leadership Skills Every Engineer Needs
I had the privilege of giving this talk at the North Bay Python conference this weekend. What a great, supportive crowd! On YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zcO-U1leTho&sns=em Slide Deck: http://bit.ly/2iEqc6O Here's the interactive word cloud the audience contributed to during the talk: https://twitter.com/kathleencodes/status/937403090231107584
Wise Words
Don't confuse drama with happiness. - RON SWANSON, PARKS AND REC
Building a Twitter Bot with the Twitter API
Here's a talk I gave at the Grace Hopper Celebration of Women in Orlando, Florida this month. http://goo.gl/8zaEyn
Managing engineering teams through constant change
When we managers build teams, we tend to focus on processes for improving efficiency, retention, and performance. But when it comes to change, what you especially need are systems that will build in resilience. Some of the suggestions below are common management techniques, but I’ll point out how they contribute to building resilience.
Wise Words
Any fool can write code that a computer can understand. Good programmers write code that humans can understand. - MARTIN FOWLER
Wise Words
Nothing ever goes away until it has taught us what we need to know. - PEMA CHÖDRÖN
The surprising things I’ve learned about Twitter Engineering Culture
In August, I started my role as an engineering manager at Twitter. I came to Twitter looking to level up my technical skills and instincts, gain more management experience, and work on a collaborative team, and I’ve happily found all three.