Table of Contents 1 Management is lonely Finding your rhythm Get comfortable with being uncomfortable Do I regret it? Before you leave On March 1st, 2022 I started as an engineering manager. In this blog post, I’m going to retrospect my first year as an engineering manager. What did I learn, what mistakes did I make, and do I regret it? 11 months ago I wrote, 3 Lessons in my first month as an engineering manager. And if I look back on that period, I feel that post was written way too soon. In the first month, I had no idea what was coming. At the time my wife was pregnant with our twin boy ..read more

Table of Contents 1 1) Expectation management 2) Definitions 3) What are their priorities? Before you go Performance reviews are an art. How do you make sure people are aligned on their performance, are not terribly afraid, and leave the meeting feeling motivated? This is my first year as an engineering manager. With no prior experience in management, doing performance reviews where a jump into the deep end. With trial and error, I finished my first round of official performance reviews. In this blog post, I will share with you the mistakes I made, and the lessons I learned so you won’t ha ..read more

In May of 2022, I became the dad of two beautiful twin boys. Now nine months later, several things have changed for me. How I approached productivity, chores, hobbies, etc. is incomparable to the non-parent life. But how do I make time to do the things I love, when time and energy are one of my most scarce resources? In this blog post, we will take a look at the lessons I learned on time and energy as a new twin dad. Energy is optional I used to think that motivation and to an extent energy was required to do things. I enjoy writing, but I usually waited before I got that “itch” where I had an ..read more

Table of Contents 1 Avoid Us vs Them Understanding the differences What is their feedback style? Making timezones work Before you leave Thanks to Covid-19 working remotely has never been more popular. Companies now have the chance to hire talent that was previously unreachable. Engineers all over the world now have chances to work for companies that where previously required relocation. But what about managing cultural differences? Hiring new talent remotely does not only have upsides. A major downside to hiring someone from a different country is the cultural difference. Getting someone f ..read more

Table of Contents 1 Developer experience Making it easy to do the right thing Making it hard to do the wrong thing Real example Before you go When developing a larger codebase with several teams it can be challenging to hold everyone to the same standards. Sure coding standards can be forced, but some other things are much more difficult to force. In this blog post, we will take a look at how we can use the science of habit building to make sure developers do the right thing, or maybe even more important: do not do the wrong thing. Developer experience I’m a big fan of James Clear. The guy ..read more

Table of Contents 1 Expectation management Requirements Well-defined role Unclear role Self-reflection Final step Before you go In my career, I’ve been on both sides of the fence regarding promotions. I started as a part-time student developer, and after 4 promotions in 7 years, I ended up as an engineering manager. Along the way, I helped several other people. And as a manager, I am in a position to get people that promotion. But how do you get that promotion? In this post, I will share my perspective on how I got my promotions, and how I see them as a manager. Expectation management E ..read more

As a manager, you have influence on a lot of people. Not just in your own team, but people in other teams or separate departments. If you look back on all the managers you had in the past. You will probably remember the managers that were genuinely good and the managers that were rather bad. My former managers In my professional career, I had several managers working at a fruit garden, a road worker, and even a pizza delivery boy. That is before I worked full-time as an engineer. I don’t recall all of them. But I do recall the good managers that made me take the extra step. And the bad ones, t ..read more

Table of Contents 1 Fitness & Health 1) Don’t die 2) Exercise at least once per week Writing 3) Publish one blog post per week 4) Send out one newsletter per month 5) Read 24 books Personal Development 6) Earn $1 online Before you go In previous posts, I shared my opinion on new years resolutions. Any day of the year should be fine to start working on your goals and habits. The day you start does not have to be January first (or even a Monday). Every now and then you read a post that sparks something in you. For me, that was Matthew Dicks his post on his 2022 goals. I’m still ..read more

Table of Contents 1 The unidentified Beep The mysterious DHCP server The department’s printer is stuck The clever thief Before you leave A long time ago, before I finished my degree in computer science. And even longer before I became an engineering manager. I studied to be a sysadmin/web developer at a vocational college (MBO for Dutch-speaking persons). How the vocational college was set up meant you spend about 75% of your time at internships. In this blog post, I’d like to share some of my favorite stories that happened during two of my internships at the helpdesk doing tech support. T ..read more

Table of Contents 1 Pageviews Traffic sources Learnings 2023 Before you go 2022 has come to an end. This is the perfect time to reflect on 2022 for the blog. In this blog post, I will share the numbers. What pages were the most popular? What drove the most traffic, and some unexpected learnings along the way. Pageviews The most exciting metric for me is page views. What content did my readers like? In 2022 the blog managed to get a whopping 3470 pageviews. A 118.51% increase over last year’s 1588 views. The top 5 pages of 2022 where: Page 2021 2022 Difference Movie Retrospective 253 6 ..read more