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Running an engineering organization

After managing teams at Mercury, Elevate Security, and now Heard, I've learned that running an engineering organization is less about technology and more about people, systems, and strategy.

The Three Pillars

1. People Hiring, developing, and retaining talent. This means creating growth opportunities, providing clear feedback, and building a culture where people want to stay.

2. Systems Processes that scale. From code review to incident response, systems should make good outcomes easy and bad outcomes hard.

3. Strategy Knowing what to build and why. This requires deep understanding of business goals and customer needs.

Common Mistakes

  • Optimizing for velocity over outcomes
  • Building systems before understanding problems
  • Neglecting developer experience
  • Focusing on technology over business value

What Works

  • Clear communication of priorities
  • Empowering teams to make decisions
  • Investing in developer productivity
  • Measuring what matters (outcomes, not outputs)

"Good engineering management is about creating conditions where great work can happen."

The Hard Truth

You can't optimize everything. Trade-offs are constant. The key is making explicit decisions about what you're optimizing for and communicating those decisions clearly.