Perspective and insights into different aspects of leadership and management, especially as it pertains to building teams around software engineering.
Your New Job Title Congrats! You did it! You finally have that new job title you've been working so hard towards! Let's be honest with each other here--you were working hard for the title, not because you just wanted to see your company flourish with all the hard work you were putting in. Of course that wasn't bad or anything, it was just a nice side effect of you getting your new job title. Some great things happened once you received your new job title too! Your responsibilities shifted so now nobody can come after you when your pesky clients are complaining about your sales process, when your code won't compile into your finished product, or when employees are having conflicts in the workplace. You're literally only responsible for the two new tasks that you have attached to your job…
PROFIT HOT 50 It's with great honour that I can say the company I'm part of, Magnet Forensics, has achieved the 7th place in the Profit Hot 50 rankings for 2013. Last year Magnet Forensics was also on the list ranked at number 16th, but we've shown ourselves up by moving a full 9 positions! Our ranking in the Profit Hot 50 is even more impressive considering we're the only company from Kitchener-Waterloo region in Ontario--Known for it's incredible startup community and success stories--that made the list. We're excited and tremendously proud of our accomplishments, but it's certainly going to be quite the challenge for us to move up in rank next year. It's a challenge we're all ready to take on though. You can check out the ranking over here or at the official Profit Guide posting. Articles I'll put…
Burnout The trend in the articles this week is all about burnout. Burnout is a serious issue that can affect a wide variety of people. When an individual becomes so dedicated to something and starts devoting all of their time to accomplish a goal, burnout can set in. This is especially noticeable in startup companies where it's typical to work longer-than normal hours. Of course, there's nothing wrong with loving the work you do and wanting to put in more time! The problem ends up being when all of your waking time is geared toward one thing and everything else (including sleep!) starts to take the back seat. This is where burnout can set in. Articles The Six Deadly Sins of Leadership: Leadership isn't always easy, but there's definitely a few things you should avoid doing as a leader. Jack…
Failure: Should You Fear It? Thanks for checking out this weekly article dump, and sorry it didn't make it out on Friday. I was out visiting family in Alberta and I didn't have enough time to get this post all set up. Better late than never! The theme for this past week seemed to be articles about failure. Not all of them, of course, but a lot of authors are writing about what it means to fail and why that's not always such a bad thing. Do we need to avoid all failures in order to be successful? Articles Stepping Away, So Others Can Step Up: In this article, Jonathan Bush discusses something that's often hard for leaders to do... Step away. It's difficult for many people to disconnect and have trust in their team to get things done. Trust should…
Great Leadership Reads Here's a collection of articles I've shared over the past week on social media outlets. There's a lot of great leadership reads this time around! If You Don't Treat Your Interns Right, You are Mean...and Stupid: This is a great post by Nancy Lublin that talks about something many full-time people share a common (and usually lousy) perspective on: interns. In my opinion, if you aren't going to treat your interns well, you shouldn't be hiring them. One key take away point from the article is ensuring that you treat your internship programs as something real and meaningful. Now, as a computer engineering graduate from the University of Waterloo and from being part of the leadership staff at Magnet Forensics, I've seen both sides of the story. Companies should treat their interns well, but interns should also realize companies…
A weekly summary of articles focusing on career development, leadership, startups and development. This is one BIG list!
Background When you're starting work on a new project or organizing a team to accomplish a goal, there's often a foundation that needs to be established: How is your team structured? What software should we use to help us? How do we set goals? How do we measure our progress ... the list goes on. It's a common challenge that's met by anyone organizing a team or setting off to work on something. So do you copy what worked for someone else by using a cookie cutter approach, or do you wing it and see what happens? My approach when faced with two extremes is usually to aim somewhere in the middle. Cookie Cutters Being a copy-cat and using cookie cutters has some benefits. If something worked for some all-star teams at big successful companies, then why re-invent the…
Background In the company I work at, Magnet Forensics, I've gotten myself into a leadership role. I wasn't hired for this position (I'm a programmer at heart) but I've managed to stumble my way into it! As a young leader, I think one thing is really obvious for me in my daily leadership tasks: I don't have all of the answers. Hell, I don't even have a lot of the answers! So what keeps me from being entirely useless as a leader then? I know who has the answers. My team. The most important leadership lesson that I've learned (and I'm glad I learned it early) is to listen. The benefits to listening, and I mean actually listening, can be beneficial to the person asking as well as yourself as the leader. How Can Listening Help Me? Let's be honest…
A weekly summary of articles focusing on career development, leadership, startups and development. This week is all about leadership!
A posting to summarize the articles I've shared on social media over the past week. There's a focus on motivation, leadership, and workplace culture.
