tl;dr:Will discusses: (1) The conflicting goals between those designing, operating, and participating in performance and compensation processes. (2) How to run performance processes, including calibrations, and their challenges. (3) How to participate in a compensation process effectively. (4) How often you should run performance and compensation cycles. (5) Why your goal should be an effective process rather than a perfect one.
tl;dr:Will discusses your role as an executive in your organization’s hiring, the components you need to build for an effective hiring process and provides concrete recommendations for navigating the many challenges that you’re likely to run into while operating the hiring process. He gives you enough to get started, build a system that supports your goals, and start evolving it into something exceptionally useful.”
tl;dr:Will reflect on his shift from a 'company, team, self' framework to an eventual ‘quid pro quo' approach during his management tenure at Uber. His ‘quid pro quo' approach is: (1) Generally, prioritize company and team priorities over your own. (2) If you are getting de-energized, artificially prioritize some energizing work. Increase the quantity until equilibrium is restored. (3) If the long-term balance between energy and proper priorities can’t be balanced for more than a year, stop everything else and work on solving this issue e.g. change your role or quit. Will emphasizes the importance of remaining flexible and curious.
tl;dr:Will discusses: (1) Debugging the engineering leadership team after stepping into a new role. (2) Gelling your leadership into an effective team. (3) What to expect from your direct reports in that leadership team. (4) Diagnosing conflict within your team.
tl;dr:“I’ve started to notice recurring communication challenges between executives and the folks they work with. The most frequent issue I see is when a literal communicator insists on engaging in the details with a less literal executive. I call the remedy, “extracting the kernel.” Focus on the insight or perspective within the question.
tl;dr:The topics that Will explores are: (1) Avoiding the unicorn search. (2) How interviewing executives goes wrong. (3) Structuring your evaluation process. (4) Focusing on four areas to evaluate engineering executives.
tl;dr:Will discusses: (1) Approaching planning as an infinite process rather than a finite one. (2) Discussing the default planning process at most companies. (3) Decomposing planning into three discrete components: financial plan, functional portfolio allocation, and roadmap. (4) Setting the company’s annual financial plan. (5) Defining Engineering’s functional portfolio allocation. And more.
tl;dr:Will focusses on reading and acting upon survey data from the perspective of an engineering leader. In this post he works through: (1) Reading survey results. (2) Taking action on survey data. (3) Whether to modify survey questions. (4) When to start and how frequently to run.
tl;dr:Will discusses: (1) Fundamental components of onboarding, including examples. (2) Role of executive sponsor, orchestrator, manager and buddy in a typical process. (3) Curriculum to consider including in your onboarding. (4) Why onboarding programs fail. (5) Whether to integrate with wider company onboarding. (6) When to prioritize onboarding.
tl;dr:Will outlines several tactic for engineers to do this. “Your network is a collection of relationships, and relationships always work best when they’re built before you need them. Set a small goal, like meeting one new person each month, and slowly build your network up over time. Don’t make it your top priority, but don’t forget it either.”