What else?

• Studies in Chemistry (MRI, Quantum Mechanics)
• IT Freelancer
• Collector of programming languages
• Multipotentialite
• "Fashion Nerd"

Klingons!

Cats!

The key to being a good manager is keeping the people who hate me away from those who are still undecided.

You don't lead by hitting people over the head - that's assault, not leadership.

Managementese

• Head Count
  How many people work on a project?
• Management Span
  How many direct reports does a manager have?
• Transaction Costs
  Every connection in a team has hidden costs

"I'll be a reproach once I'm grown up", said the expectation.

Explanation

• Everyone has expectations
• There are (at least) two variants:
  • Explicit expectations
    Contracts, Company Handbook
  • Implicit expectations
    What is 'standard practice'
• Consequences when not fulfilling

Manager ↔ Company

• Manager → Company
  • Compensation
  • Information
  • Work environment
  • Freedom of decision
• Manager ← Company
  • Task fulfillment
  • Reporting
  • Enterpreneurial mindset

Team ↔ Manager

• Team → Manager
  • Information
  • Guidance
  • Mentoring
• Team ← Manager
  • Task fulfillment
  • Information

Consequences when not fulfilling

• Friction
• Open aggressivity
• High employee turnover
• Cancellations

How to avoid

• Implicit to explicit:
  • Codification
    Handbook, wiki, videos
  • With new hires: Onboarding!
• Communication
  • Regular communication
    One-on-One's, team meetings
  • Fast Feedback
  • Workshops about expectations

Software is the invisible writing that whispers the stories of possibility to our hardware.

Soft? Hard?

• The separation between soft and hard skills is pretty arbitrary
• Communication is the foundation of nearly every skill
• In Remote Teams communication is a more valuable skill than domain knowledge
• Special forms of communications to watch for: sarcasm e.g. is used when someone doesn't know how to apply negative feedback in a productive way

Work environment

• Move fast intelligently, fail fast intelligently
• Emotional security
  
  • Errors are possible
  • Reduce stress
    Stress leads to errors
  • Competition in a team is harmful
  • Don't work in 'survival mode'

Stress and pressure

• "Work hard, play hard"
  Bullshit!
• Respect the flow:
  • Mihály Csíkszentmihályi
  • Try to avoid interruptions in the middle of longer working periods
  • Try to do meetings on the boundaries of work times or around lunch break!

Organisation

• Processes simplify work, unless they impede thinking
• In software teams 'process' is the sum of all the work and progress related communication
• When the official processes don't work for you, don't try to hide or scaffold your working processes

Picard management tip

When a policy is doing more harm than good, you must examine and revise that policy. It may require simplification, or it may require greater sophistication. Either way, you must change it.

Team culture

• All successful teams in larger organizations have their own culture that differs from that of the organization
• The organization can not adopt this culture since it actually doesn't want that
• All you can copy are the less important things like processes

Picard management tip

Encourage extracurricular activities with your crew, especially if it involves wearing costumes.

Empathy

• Task: find and remove pain points
• Important: values! You don't make money despite your values but because of them
• Glorification or reframeing of psychological or social tensions as 'war wounds' is dangerous
  → Software developers are no Klingons!
• In 'survival mode' you are blind for other people's pain points

Hard skills as empathy

• Good or readable code is empathy with your future self and your team
• Teams only optimized for velocity will not respect this
• Empathy with old code: even code you feel now being badly written has been written like this for some reason

Radical acceptance!

All that happens does so for a reason, even if we don't see it (yet).
Accepting this leaves room for curiosity!
Curiosity leads to understanding.

Change management

• If you're part of the system you can't change processes without changign yourself.
• Self organized / agile teams only can be successful, if they cause changes in their environment
• If you can't create change:
  You have two choices: change the team or change the team

Work doesn't happen at work

• Instead many people work on weekends or do overtime
• Offices, particularly open spaces, are factories for interruptions
• Important tasks need a longer uninterrupted period of working time

No commuting!

• Commuting is a loss of life time
• Commuting is bad for your health
• Commuting is bad for business

Why now?

• The technology is mature
• Let go of nostalgic ideas like good results only emerge between 9 and 5

Cities aren't talent hubs anymore

• Every resource is available everywhere anytime (compare V. Bush, "As we may think")
• Most perks (Arcade Games, free meals, massage) will be offered to keep you in the office for longer time
• 'Talent Hub Nationalists'
• Good talents can be found anywhere
• Too much competition in walking distance in the city

Save money

• You need less office space
• Save fuel
• Environment protection

Organisation

• Have overlapping work times
  Team members should have around 4h of overlap
• Synchronize your flow
  "What have I done this week?" thread
• Document all meetings and communication
  What's not documented didn't happen!
• Equal pay for equal work!

Technical resources

• Conferencing tools
  Use Skype, Zoom, WebEx, Slack etc. Use screen sharing.
• Have everything available
  Have every resource available to anyone every time
• Use an email server that archives every mail and makes them available in a database
  This is what Stripe does
• Details in the Gitlab Handbook (section CEO)

People Ops 1

• Manage work, not chairs
  Work has to have a meaning
• Have an understanding of what your team is working on!
• Organize regular meetings
• Don't let remote team members feel second class
  "John and I already decided that this morning in the office"
• Experience working remote to see what it feels like

People Ops 2

• Do regular One-on-One's
  At least every two weeks (but also be available in between)
• Remove impediments, empower people do make their own decisions
  37Signals hands out creditcards to every coworkerand there are no applications for leave
• Look out for people doing overtime, not those who slack off
• Make facetime meetings rare and valuable

Trust

• "How do I know they are working if I don't see them?"
  Be a manager, not a baby sitter!
• "People's homes are full of distractions!"
• "Our data is only secure within the office space!"
• "Who will answer the phone?"

Myths

• "True magic only happens at the office between 9 and 5!"
• "None of the big ones does it."
• "Your colleagues will be jealous, when you are working remote!"
• "But we invested so much money in this new office!"

Bad habits

• Standard questions → Mail
• Somehow important or more urgent → Chat
• The roof is on fire → Anruf

• Jason Fried, David Heinemeier Hansson, "Remote: Office Not required"
• Vanevar Bush, "As we may think", The Atlantic, July 1945
• GitLab Handbook
• Remotive.io
• Michael Lopp, Rands in Repose:
  http://randsinrepose.com

• Michael Lopp:
  "Managing Humans"
• J. Hank Rainwater:
  "Herding Cats: A Primer for Programmers Who Lead Programmers"
• Camille Fournier:
  "The Manager's Path"

• Julia Evans:
  "Help! I have a manager!"
• Patrick Kua:
  "Talking with Tech Leads"
• Tom deMarco:
  "Slack - Getting past burnout, Busyworks and the myth of total efficiency"

• Tom deMarco:
  "Peopleware - Productive projects and teams"
• Johanna Rothman, Ester Derby:
  "Behind Closed Doors - Secrets of Great Management"
• Brian W. Fitzpatrick, Ben Collins-Sussman:
  "Team Geek - A Software Developers Guide to Working with Others"

• Chad Fowler:
  "The Passionate Programmer"
• John Z. Sonmez:
  "Soft Skills - The Software Developer's Life Manual"
• Sandy Mamoli, David Mole:
  "Creating Great Teams - How Self-Selection Lets People Excel"

Podcasts

• > Code
  https://www.greaterthancode.com
• Führung auf den Punkt gebracht
  https://www.mehr-fuehren.de
• Mein Scrum ist kaputt
  https://meinscrumistkaputt.de

Videos 1

• Camille Fournier - Rebooting Culture
  https://vimeo.com/173328699
• Camille Fournier - Cloning yourself is not an option
  https://vimeo.com/139907569
• Coraline Ada Ehmke - Diversity in OSS
  https://vimeo.com/176695449

Videos 2

• Patrick Kua - What I wish I knew as a first time Tech Lead
  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CjgWwmBW-bc
• Patrick Kua - The Constant Life of a Tech Lead
  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9jd_vpcLK50
• Patrick Kua - Geek's Guide to Leading Teams
  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a_IYL_aU7HQ

Videos 3

• Laura Paterson & Patrick Kua - Technical Leadership
  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k_nti-mk5IY
• Camille Fournier - Building and Motivating Engineering Teams
  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7R-Y2DwWOr0
• Dave Thomas - Agile is Dead
  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a-BOSpxYJ9M

Videos 4

• Patrick Kua - Why Technical Leadership Matters
  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_6BKK1SPAVI