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Pat
Kua
Seasoned Technology Leader
Two days of inspirational talks from top engineering leaders
As the tech industry navigates some big shifts and challenges, we are designing this year’s content to help.
Welcome to LeadDev Berlin 2023
A welcome to LeadDev Berlin 2023 from the host Pat Kua.
Your host Pat Kua welcomes you to the day, run through our code of conduct and let you know what we've got coming up.
Patrick Kua is a seasoned technology leader with 20+ years of experience. His current mission is accelerating the growth of technical leaders through coaching, mentoring and training. He has had many years of hands-on experience, leading, managing and improving complex organisations and software systems as the CTO and Chief Scientist of N26 (Berlin, Germany) and as a Technical Principal Consultant at ThoughtWorks. He is a frequent keynote and conference speaker, author of three books including The Retrospective Handbook, Talking with Tech Leads and Building Evolutionary Architectures and runs the free popular newsletter for leaders in tech, “Level Up” (http://levelup.patkua.com) and the Tech Lead Academy, offering online training for technical leaders. You can find him online on Twitter as @patkua or running his very popular “Shortcut to Tech Leadership” workshop. Join Pat on December 7, 2022 for his workshop 'Shortcut to tech leadership'.
View Pat's LeadDev articles and talksIt has been a rough year for tech, and especially our leaders. We are reeling from the after-effects of rapid growth and zero-interest-rates, and have been forced into survival mode. If hyper-growth is marked by spending more to make more, what does building for enduring growth look like? What are key pivots and strategies needed to effectively navigate such different times? As a manager or lead developer, this talk will give you a primer for building adaptability and resilience into your leadership toolkit and leading your teams through chaos and into sustained, enduring growth.
Why are we not growing our headcount by 30% year-over-year? Is the business strong – or do we expect another RIF? Are we still funding my generative AI-based innovative project or should we optimize our cloud costs?
If you’ve been involved in one or more such discussions, you aren’t alone. It has been a rough year for tech, and especially our leaders - our Staff+ ICs and our engineering managers. We are reeling from the after-effects of rapid growth and zero-interest-rates, and have been forced into survival mode. If hyper-growth is marked by spending more to make more, what does building for enduring growth look like? What are key pivots and strategies needed to effectively navigate such different times?
In this talk, we’ll cover:
As a manager or lead developer, this talk will give you a primer for building adaptability and resilience into your leadership toolkit and leading your teams through chaos and into sustained, enduring growth.
Smruti Patel is the VP of Engineering at Apollo Graph, the leading graphQL platform for building highly performant APIs, at scale, for rapid digital transformation. She has led and scaled high performing engineering teams at Stripe and VMware, building critical infrastructure for global businesses. Her interests include mentoring and coaching, hiking with her boys, and traveling the world.
View Smruti's LeadDev articles and talksThere is only really one question you need to ask: is this task small enough? If the answer is no, then you need to break it down. Apply the same process to the sub-tasks. This talk will take you through some examples, tips and tricks for making this work.
Goldilocks can teach us how to improve our agility, and I don't mean by her well-documented technique of "how to jump through windows and escape from bears".
The trick is to make your tasks so they are juuust right and then to learn to let go of any t-shirts and story points.
We all want our businesses to be agile. We want our teams to be able to deliver value continuously starting as soon as possible after the starting gun fires. We want to deliver better outcomes faster and build what was actually required. We want to create useful software and believe in people over process. Teams so often seem to end up spending ages debating whether some task is a 3 or a 5, and then later on why the last task we gave a 3 to turned out to be more of an 8 and the last few 5s were 1s and 2s. Choosing the best Fibonacci number takes time and if you take too long the bears won't need the porridge...
There is only really one question you need to ask: is this task small enough? If the answer is no, then you need to break it down. Apply the same process to the sub-tasks. Once you learn what this juuust right size is for you and your team you will find that you are completing tasks on average at a near-constant rate. Some turn out smaller and some bigger but if you can make the average steady you can predict how long things will take without any size-to-time scale.
This talk will take you through some examples, tips and tricks for making this work.
View Ben's LeadDev articles and talks
With the advent of coding assistance tools powered by Large Language Models, enthusiasts are already predicting the end of the programming profession, and some leaders want to know if they can now cut software teams in half. This talk gives an overview of what is actually possible today and walks through 4 capabilities of Large Language Models that can help us be more effective at software delivery.
With the advent of coding assistance tools powered by Large Language Models, enthusiasts are already predicting the end of the programming profession, and some leaders want to know if they can now cut software teams in half.
This talk gives an overview of what is actually possible today and walks through 4 capabilities of Large Language Models that can help us be more effective at software delivery. And it will go beyond coding: How can AI help boost productivity, creativity, and effectiveness in other parts of the delivery lifecycle as well? For which situations and tasks is it helpful to turn to a GenAI assistant, and when are you better off on your own? What are the risks and challenges, and how do you tackle them?
At the end of this talk, you will have a better understanding of the possibilities and risks of using this technology, you will be better able to judge when and how to use them, and better equipped to discuss the question if we will soon be able to build software with half the people.
Birgitta is a Principal consultant and developer with ThoughtWorks. She has been building software across all layers for more than 15 years, mainly in the space of large custom-developed websites. At ThoughtWorks, she spends most of her time as a Lead Developer, splitting her days between coding, coaching, consulting and keeping things fun.
View Birgitta's LeadDev articles and talksEnjoy some refreshments during the break
The talk will cover topics of providing clarity to yourself and finding energy and motivation to rebuild as a leader, providing clarity to your teammates and different ways of offering support, organization re-structure with the intent of bringing people together with a clear scope, and tips and tricks on rebuilding the culture and team cohesion.
The last couple of years, but especially in 2022 have been very challenging for tech companies of any size.
I am sure that any engineer leader struggle with topics like finding clarity, providing support to their teammates, and rebuilding a healthy team through troubling times.
The good news is that there are things that you can do to help your teammates in these difficult times. Throughout my career as an Engineering Leader, I have been unlucky enough to go through multiple reorganizations and even two rounds of layoffs.
The talk will cover topics of:
Wherever people are in their career journey, either as engineering leaders or senior individual contributors, this talk should give the audience insights and tools that they can use to navigate uncertain and changing times.
Chris is the Director of Platform Engineering at Zenjob, bringing over 15 years of experience leading Platform and Infrastructure teams across Latin America, the United States, and Europe With a genuine passion for mentoring engineering managers and fostering supportive communities, Chris is passionate about enabling engineers to successfully transition into leadership roles while promoting growth and support within organizations. Chris actively contributes to open-source projects, embracing collaboration and knowledge-sharing within the developer community. Outside of work, Chris leads non-profit initiatives dedicated to wildlife conservation in Latin America and Asia. Chris also finds joy in photography, running, and cycling, sometimes mixing them all at the same time. "
View Chris's LeadDev articles and talksIn this talk, we will explore a practical steps to influence stakeholders, be realistic about resourcing, and involve the entire team in making critical decisions on quality projects and technical debt.
Managing technical debt is crucial for maintaining a high-performing engineering team and building a high-quality product.
In this talk, we will explore a practical steps to influence stakeholders, be realistic about resourcing, and involve the entire team in making critical decisions on quality projects and technical debt.
We'll dive into 4 key strategies in the product development and planning process that engineering leaders can adopt.
We'll start by talking about incepting the value of quality work directly with stakeholders early and often. We'll explore techniques to realistically evaluate resource constraints and identify areas where investments can be made. You'll learn a framework (with a notion template) that can be used to measure the relative importance of different tech debt items based on factors like impact, risk, and complexity. We'll introduce a collaborative voting mechanism (with a FigJam template) that allows engineers to voice their opinions and prioritize tech debt items collectively. Lastly, we'll share impact-first communication language that will illustrate value and bring you full circle to land quality projects on the roadmap.
Join us to gain actionable insights into fostering a collaborative and efficient approach to managing tech debt.
Sahana is an Engineering Manager at Zip. As a fullstack product engineer, previous founder, and an amateur artist and designer, Sahana specializes in using technology to create beautiful and impactful experiences. She has 8+ years experience building fullstack web and mobile applications from scratch for companies like Pinterest and startups like Tome, Chorus Fitness and Even Finance. In her free time she enjoys cooking and playing with her pup, Luna.
View Sahana's LeadDev articles and talksThis talk focuses on skills for engineers to master in order to foster a business and product mind set.
The ability to create software that is not only functional but also meets the needs of the customers and aligns with the business objectives of the company can help companies stay ahead of the competition.
The adoption of Agile Methodologies and Continuous Delivery has provided solutions for managing project scope and time aspect. However, the cost now lies in maintaining effective communication, collaboration and alignment among cross-functional team members to deliver a cohesive customer experience.
This talk focuses on skills for engineers to master in order to foster a business and product mind set.
With over 12 years of hands-on experience in software engineering and product management, Lydia is a technology leader who has held a variety of positions including software engineer, tech lead, and engineering manager. She has experience working in several start-ups and scale-ups. Lydia has a particular interest in building and scaling teams and systems while promoting a product and data-driven mindset. She has extensive exposure to following industries: Logistics, Supply Chain, Travel, Retail, and E-Commerce.
View Lydia's LeadDev articles and talksWe are here to share our transformation journey: how we upskilled our native mobile engineers to Dart and Flutter, migrated our codebase to the new tech stack, and rolled out the new product to our users, ensuring the best possible transition. We will highlight the challenges we faced, the solutions we implemented, and the objectives we have achieved for our business and engineering team.
Tide is a financial services platform with a strong presence in the UK market and very ambitious global growth plans.
We’ve been developing our mobile applications using native technologies for several years, and in pursuit of a solution with better performance, maintainability, and scalability, we chose to rebuild our product with Flutter, which is an emerging open-source framework by Google for building beautiful, natively compiled, multi-platform applications from a single codebase.
We are here to share our transformation journey: how we upskilled our native mobile engineers to Dart and Flutter, migrated our codebase to the new tech stack, and rolled out the new product to our users, ensuring the best possible transition. We will highlight the challenges we faced, the solutions we implemented, and the objectives we have achieved for our business and engineering team. We will also provide insights into the best practices and lessons learned during the process.
Anna Leushchenko is a mobile development expert, passionate about quality software, from Ukraine. She is Women Techmakers Ambassador and Google Developer Expert in Dart and Flutter. Anna talks and blogs about cross-platform development, contributes to OSS, and mentors talented women in tech.
View Anna's LeadDev articles and talksGiorgos excels as a servant leader, skilled in developing top-performing teams and leveraging technology for complex problem-solving. He combines strategic thinking, effective leadership, and experience in crisis management with an agile approach. His focus is continuous learning and helping others reach their full potential.
View Giorgos 's LeadDev articles and talksWe'll take a break for lunch
In this talk, I will discuss our most significant challenges and the strategies we use to overcome them. I will also discuss the advantages and disadvantages of such a strategy.
Like most companies, before the COVID-19 pandemic, Jimdo was built by relocating talents from their original country to Germany.
There were a lot of onboarding challenges, professional and personal, but we successfully integrated 15+ nationalities into the engineering organization. With the advent of the remote world, we were required to change most of our processes to ensure our team kept its performance correctly. In this talk, I will discuss our most significant challenges and the strategies we use to overcome them. I will also discuss the advantages and disadvantages of such a strategy.
With extensive knowledge in technology, Felipe Furlan led the digital transformation process of different companies. Its mission is effectively constructing Strategies and Organization of Products and Technology. Felipe has been living in Germany since 2019 and serves as VP of Engineering at Jimdo. Felipe holds a Systems Analysis degree from PUC Campinas and an MBA in Strategic IT Management from FIAP.
View Felipe's LeadDev articles and talksIn this talk, I will share my experiences and provide resources that have worked for me, as well as discuss the failures and difficulties I encountered while attempting to foster team spirit in a remote environment.
When it comes to team building, working fully remotely poses unique challenges.
Has your team transitioned from being on-site or hybrid to being fully remote, and have you noticed a decrease in team spirit? Are you currently starting a new remote team and struggling to foster a sense of camaraderie? You are not alone.
Previously, when we were all in the office, team spirit often developed organically through simple activities such as having coffee together, chatting with coworkers, eating lunch together, or going out for drinks after work. However, with the transition to full remote work, these activities have become much more difficult or sometimes impossible.
In this talk, I will share my experiences and provide resources that have worked for me, as well as discuss the failures and difficulties I encountered while attempting to foster team spirit in a remote environment. By implementing the right strategies and tools, it is possible to create a similar level of camaraderie and bonding as in an on-site team. By the end of this talk, you will have new ideas for improving team spirit and building a powerful and connected remote team.
If you were to ask her, she would say that her journey began when she wrote her first line of code at the age of 12, igniting her passion for programming. However, in terms of professional experience, her journey spans over two decades. Throughout this time, she has held various roles in both individual contributor and manager paths, driven by her desire to help people and teams growth. Currently serving as an Engineering Manager, she continues to empower and nurture growth within her team. Originally from Ibiza, she has called Barcelona home for the past 10 years. Beyond work, she embraces a diverse range of interests. You might find her engrossed in a captivating book, drawing & planning in her bullet journal, enjoying music, playing board games, resolving escape rooms, paddle surfing, and more. With so many passions to pursue, she is constantly reminded that time is the only limiting factor in her endeavour.
View Marina 's LeadDev articles and talksIn this talk I will share stories from my experiences in leading engineering teams that illustrate the dynamics between team members and with stakeholders that lead teams to lose control of code quality.
The best engineering leaders know that you can have both speed and quality when developing software.
The best engineering leaders know that you can have both speed and quality when developing software. Indeed, the only way to keep up the pace of delivery is to build high quality software. Everybody wins.
However, all too often, it can feel like you are not in control of the quality of your code. You can feel like your team doesn’t have time to develop high quality code. You can feel like you are forced to make a trade off between the quality of code and speed of development. And when you do you typically end up with neither.
How do you take back control of your code quality? How do you get your team and stakeholders to believe that this will enable you to develop faster? What practices do you need to put in place to make this true>
In this talk I will share stories from my experiences in leading engineering teams that illustrate the dynamics between team members and with stakeholders that lead teams to lose control of code quality.
And I will share a set of practices and techniques that you can take away and use to support your team to take control of their code quality, deliver rapidly and keep stakeholders on your side.
Joel Chippindale is an Engineering Leadership Coach and Adviser. He has about 20 years experience building, scaling and leading software development teams, including CTO roles at Econsultancy, FutureLearn and Unmade. He values building inclusive, empowered, sustainable teams. He has experienced the challenges of nurturing the cultures, skills and practices that enable teams and individuals to achieve their full capabilities. Joel uses his experience, beliefs and skills to help organisations overcome the challenges they face in building more effective and inclusive software development teams.
View Joel's LeadDev articles and talksIn this talk, I'll spotlight the often-underestimated influence of menstruation on tech teams. Through personal anecdotes, I'll offer actionable insights on fostering conversations around this topic, paving the way for both inclusivity and heightened productivity.
In my journey through the tech industry, I've been fortunate to be part of some teams that prioritize diversity and gender inclusivity.
However, there's a crucial topic I've noticed remains largely untouched: menstruation. It's not enough to merely celebrate diverse teams; we must understand and embrace the experiences that come with them. For leaders in the tech space, understanding these nuances isn't just about being considerate; it's a strategic imperative. Menstruation and conditions like endometriosis aren’t merely personal challenges; they have tangible implications on performance and team dynamics. In this talk, I'll spotlight the often-underestimated influence of menstruation on tech teams. Through personal anecdotes, I'll offer actionable insights on fostering conversations around this topic, paving the way for both inclusivity and heightened productivity. Gone are the days where we sidestep topics like menstruation. Addressing them head-on can lead to optimized workplaces where every team member feels validated and supported. By shedding light on menstruation and its workplace implications, we champion a tech industry that's not only diverse but also informed, compassionate, and at its productive best.
Amy, a proud queer and disabled woman in tech, has over 10 years experience in the industry, with expertise across multiple fields, from fintech to environmental tech. Early in her career, she discovered her passion for QA and testing, but it was her love for mentoring, coaching, and leadership that truly ignited her professional journey. Today, Amy thrives as an Engineering Manager at Olio, a sharing app dedicated to reducing waste in local communities. Beyond her impactful work, she actively champions women in tech, LGBTQ+ rights, and disability/health initiatives, using her voice to support and empower others.
View Amy 's LeadDev articles and talksEnjoy some refreshments during the break
In this talk, we will look at how a data team was led through a difficult reorganization to deliver company-wide impact and customer value. We will cover common pitfalls in setting up data organizations and how to lead data organizations to success.
Data is referred to as the new oil, following the Forbes article in 2019, and strategic differentiator for competitive advantage for businesses.
However, organizations, including digital natives, find it difficult to leverage one of their most valuable assets to the fullest. As a result, there is a never ending blame-game from business executives to data teams to product teams. Furthermore, as businesses grow, the need for data to drive business decisions as well as integrating analytics/AI into technology products to delight customers and stay competitive increases. So, how might data organizations collaborate with software teams to deliver customer value and strategic impact for organizations?
In this talk, we will look at how a data team was led through a difficult reorganization to deliver company-wide impact and customer value. We will cover common pitfalls in setting up data organizations and how to lead data organizations to success based on:
Olalekan Elesin is an astute technology leader with a decade of experience in building data and AI-enabled technology products at scale. He combines experience working across 2 continents and 5 different market segments ranging from telecommunications, e-commerce, online marketplaces and currently business travel. He built the AI Platform 1.0 at Scout24. He currently leads the data platform team and 3 cross-functional data product teams at HRS Group, creating data-driven experiences in business travel. Lekan is also an AWS Machine Learning Community Hero, the first in Germany. During his free time, Lekan maintains a number of open-source projects in the data and machine learning space.
View Olalekan's LeadDev articles and talksIn this talk I will explain how autism works, what the traits are and how you can coach people with autism in tech. I explain how the different traits can manifest.
Autism, Autism Spectrum is a condition where the brain of a person works different.
With different I mean: not worse nor better. Just different connections wired in the brain. Predictions, behavior, communication, social interaction, and more are different. In this talk I will explain how autism works, what the traits are and how you can coach people with autism in tech. I explain how the different traits can manifest. I will talk about the underlying patterns and layers, and how traits that at first sight are a disadvantage can be an advantage in the right context. I teach you coaching techniques helping you to change the context. If you change the context, you change the outcome. I will also explain how you can coach yourself if you have autism. This is because coaching can come from external resources, but also from within. If you start to know yourself from the inside, you start seeing patterns what works in which scenario. This is a very powerful tool to be more productive, more happy and more successful in life.
Dennie is Microsoft MVP Developer Technologies and has experience in accessibility with Microsoft technologies. In daily life Dennie is president and developer at DDSoft, a nonprofit that connects IT to People who are less tech-savvy. Dennie invented technical solutions and systems to help people with disabilities to participate in their daily life. Thanks to his autism he's the right man at the right spot to contribute as a volunteer in function of people with disabilities.
View Dennie's LeadDev articles and talksThis talk is aimed at engineers, tech leads, managers, humans - anyone who makes decisions. Making better decisions is a skill that you can improve on, and this talk will introduce some ways to do that.
Making mistakes is one way to learn.
But no matter how many times someone says that to me, it still feels bad when it happens. This talk shares some ways to help you make fewer mistakes by making better decisions. I’ve heard people say as a joke that engineers “type for a living”, but I think it’s more realistic to say that we make decisions for a living. Decisions about what code to write (or not write), what to learn next, whether to hire a candidate or not. Whether to invest in or close down one project or another, or to reorganise teams. And that’s saying nothing about personal decisions like whether to move house or change jobs. And then even if you make the decision, how do you know it was the right one? Making a bad choice, in hindsight, usually feels bad, and could have a negative impact. Making mistakes is not necessarily bad - it’s one way to learn - but it can be stressful. But there are tools and frameworks that you can use to sense-check when you’re about to make a difficult choice, to help you have the best possible outcome (or to learn better from a choice that in hindsight you think was wrong). This talk is aimed at engineers, tech leads, managers, humans - anyone who makes decisions. Making better decisions is a skill that you can improve on, and this talk will introduce some ways to do that.
Nicky is a Principal Technologist at dxw, providing technical leadership and support to the Technology Team and dxw's clients. She has spent more than two decades as a freelance and in-house developer, delivering successful projects for clients ranging from global banks and major publishing houses to indie storytelling agencies. She’s worked with designers all over the world, making beautiful websites that work for everyone. Offline, Nicky enjoys watching bad TV and learning new stuff: this year it's a serious sewing/dressmaking habit.
View Nicky's LeadDev articles and talksClosing session
Patrick Kua is a seasoned technology leader with 20+ years of experience. His current mission is accelerating the growth of technical leaders through coaching, mentoring and training. He has had many years of hands-on experience, leading, managing and improving complex organisations and software systems as the CTO and Chief Scientist of N26 (Berlin, Germany) and as a Technical Principal Consultant at ThoughtWorks. He is a frequent keynote and conference speaker, author of three books including The Retrospective Handbook, Talking with Tech Leads and Building Evolutionary Architectures and runs the free popular newsletter for leaders in tech, “Level Up” (http://levelup.patkua.com) and the Tech Lead Academy, offering online training for technical leaders. You can find him online on Twitter as @patkua or running his very popular “Shortcut to Tech Leadership” workshop. Join Pat on December 7, 2022 for his workshop 'Shortcut to tech leadership'.
View Pat's LeadDev articles and talksJoin us for the networking drinks reception
End of event
Welcome to LeadDev Berlin 2023
A welcome to LeadDev Berlin 2023 from the host Pat Kua.
Your host Pat Kua welcomes you to the day, run through our code of conduct and let you know what we've got coming up.
Patrick Kua is a seasoned technology leader with 20+ years of experience. His current mission is accelerating the growth of technical leaders through coaching, mentoring and training. He has had many years of hands-on experience, leading, managing and improving complex organisations and software systems as the CTO and Chief Scientist of N26 (Berlin, Germany) and as a Technical Principal Consultant at ThoughtWorks. He is a frequent keynote and conference speaker, author of three books including The Retrospective Handbook, Talking with Tech Leads and Building Evolutionary Architectures and runs the free popular newsletter for leaders in tech, “Level Up” (http://levelup.patkua.com) and the Tech Lead Academy, offering online training for technical leaders. You can find him online on Twitter as @patkua or running his very popular “Shortcut to Tech Leadership” workshop. Join Pat on December 7, 2022 for his workshop 'Shortcut to tech leadership'.
View Pat's LeadDev articles and talksThis talk contains the secret sauce to building high performing teams that thrive in any economic climate. You will learn practical strategies to keep growing your team’s careers (as well as your own), retain your top talent, bolster morale, and get shit done!
Economic downturns are a part of life in tech, how leaders navigate through them has a direct impact on how strongly we emerge on the other side.
This talk contains the secret sauce to building high performing teams that thrive in any economic climate. You will learn practical strategies to keep growing your team’s careers (as well as your own), retain your top talent, bolster morale, and get shit done!
Downturns can be scary; top worries are about job security quickly followed by lack of opportunities for growth. But, they also present unique opportunities for growth and efficiency. Slow team growth doesn’t need to put a stop to team and personal development, in fact it presents a great opportunity to focus on the craft of leadership. This session will leave you with actionable strategies to harness the power of a stable team, do more with less while avoiding burning out, and adapt your leadership style to thrive through the downturn.
Shawn has spent the last 25 years building low-latency highly available systems across the US and Canada. Early in his career, Shawn lived in NYC building ultra-low-latency single dealer platforms for Wall Street's biggest banks, hedge funds, and exchanges. He then moved to AWS helping build the world's largest cloud computing platform, and designing planetary-scale systems for the likes of Comcast, NYTimes, Weather Channel, etc. After moving back home to Canada and launching the first Canadian AWS Region, Shawn joined the Royal Bank of Canada as the Chief Digital Architect where he married AI with day-to-day retail banking. Building on this, Shawn rejoined AWS as the Head of AI Solutions before joining Shopify's latest growth initiative, Shopify Logistics.
View Shawn's LeadDev articles and talksAllison Malloy leads the Inventory Management team as Senior Engineering Manager at Shopify. Allison is an experienced technology leader and team builder having spent many years in the defence and aerospace sector, including leading the engineering effort at Flirtey, a drone delivery company; working in a variety of roles at Kongsberg Geospatial and General Dynamics. Based in Ottawa, Canada, she also sits on the Industry Advisory Board for the department of Systems and Computer Engineering at Carleton University and developed the civic engagement and social impact platform: KindVillage.
View Allison 's LeadDev articles and talksThis talk presents my journey in helping my company successfully modularise its frontend codebase, that started off being single product single platform to multiple products spanning multiple tech stacks across web, mobile and TV platforms today.
The journey of a tech startup from a tiny venture to an SME to a large company is one where early vital decisions to launch "something" to the market are good for then, but then as the company grows, both in scale and scope, additional desirable complexity brings with it a code base that is also complicated, and often tightly coupled and increasingly difficult to increment on.
This talk presents my journey in helping my company successfully modularise its frontend codebase, that started off being single product single platform to multiple products spanning multiple tech stacks across web, mobile and TV platforms today. Finding simplicity in growing complexity is essential as tech companies grow and is just as important in the frontend as it is the backend. I cover how we solve the problems of complicated dependency graphs between modules of front end code, and how the problems of “dependency hell” are minimised in a large group with multiple teams with similar and potentially conflicting dependencies. I show how we have leveraged concepts from backend architecture (microservices) to deliver similar benefits in the frontend.
Tristan is a Principal Software Engineer for FanDuel and has a passion for finding simplicity in complexity. He has recently spearheaded the Unified Modules initiative that aims to significantly improve the experience of developers working in the front end when making changes that impacts functionality core to all products and platforms. In his spare time (when there is some), Tristan likes to fly planes and socialise with friends (although not usually at the same time).
View Tristan's LeadDev articles and talksLutz will talk about the importance of a strategic approach to software architecture, that prevents teams from becoming architecture firefighters, who spent an excessive amount of energy applying short-term fixes to architectural problems.
In the sociotechnical system that is software development, software architecture plays a crucial role.
We strive to design our systems in a way that allows us to scale, both technically and organizationally. In a way that allows a fast flow of change. Succeeding in doing so will be a significant competitive advantage. But how do we ensure we follow the right architecture principles across the organization, in times of empowered teams and extreme ownership? Lutz will talk about the importance of a strategic approach to software architecture, that prevents teams from becoming architecture firefighters, who spent an excessive amount of energy applying short-term fixes to architectural problems. He'll explore the options to implement architecture strategy in a modern software development organization that is built on value stream aligned teams. Developers in such organizations will flat-out reject any "ivory tower architects", or needing approval of architectural decisions by some governance body - and rightfully so. Having experience as a software architect, as a manager of an "enabling team" of architects, and as an engineering manager in setups with no designated architects at all, he will share his learnings and provide some heuristics on which approach to choose when.
Lutz is the Head of Engineering for Investment & Custody Solutions at Upvest, a fintech that aims to democratize investment. In previous positions, taking on the roles of architect or head of engineering, he lead the development of software for container shipping, online retailers, financial institutions, cruise ships, and others. He's passionate about the intricate relationship of architecture and organization, event-driven architecture, and building successful software engineering organizations.
View Lutz's LeadDev articles and talksEnjoy some refreshments during the break
In this talk, Anna will share the learnings from growing 2 team leads within her org, where the change ended up being a win-win-win situation for her, the teams, and the new team leads.
Sooner or later in your manager journey, one of your ICs will express their interest in pursuing management as the next career step.
Most likely, when that happens, the only such role on your team would already be taken: by you. While you can’t immediately resign and have the person in question get a new title, there are ways to help them prepare for the next opportunity, one of which could be by having them manage a few of their peers as a team lead. In this talk, Anna will share the learnings from growing 2 team leads within her org, where the change ended up being a win-win-win situation for her, the teams, and the new team leads. Anna will cover the steps she took with her team leads to help them get started in the role: forming teams, getting the leads trained and mentored (Anna’s focus was on giving and receiving feedback, having difficult conversations, and overall creating a set of behaviors expected from leads), making announcements, and actually transitioning into the new team structure. Anna will also talk about ways to grow the leads' visibility in the organization beyond initial responsibilities, and some mistakes she made with the steps above. Most of the ideas from this talk also apply to the process of training a successor for a manager.
Anna is an engineer-turned-Engineering Manager at Red Hat, focusing on increasing product adoption through best-in-class technical training. She aligns product and engineering priorities while providing growth opportunities for her team. Her credo as a manager is to be kind and embrace discomfort as part of learning. Outside of work, Anna is an athlete, a makeup collector, and since recently a piano player.
View Anna's LeadDev articles and talksIn this talk, I will share my own experiences in this transition, the errors I made, and how I overcame them.
Transitioning from a Senior Engineer to an Engineering Manager can be a daunting task, particularly when navigating the job market.
In this talk, I will share my own experiences in this transition, the errors I made, and how I overcame them. I will offer practical advice on tailoring resumes for management roles, unexpected return of cover letters, preparing for leadership-focused interviews, the crucial questions to ask potential employers, and other nuances of the job hunt.
Ferit Topcu, a Berlin-based Engineering Manager at RedCare Pharmacy, leverages a decade of software engineering expertise. Known for his humor, often derived from his adventures raising three kids, Ferit currently leads four teams with a keen focus on enhancing the customer journey. His skills span client-side architecture, agile workflows, and a sincere commitment to diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI). As an active community contributor, Ferit founded an Employee Resource Group for Muslim colleagues, providing steadfast support. In the tech industry, Ferit stands out for merging professional expertise with a deeply human approach to leadership.
View Ferit's LeadDev articles and talksIn this short and fun talk (yes it’ll be fun!) - we’ll lament about the top blockers of PRs, but cheer up - because we’ll also provide insights into how to unblock them.
We’ve all experienced what we believe to be perfectly crafted PRs getting blocked for seemingly arbitrary reasons.
In this short and fun talk (yes it’ll be fun!) - we’ll lament about the top blockers of PRs, but cheer up - because we’ll also provide insights into how to unblock them. We’ll share better mechanisms for qualifying PRs than just the binary block/allow, and how and why you should codify your development process (and not just rely on oral tradition). You’ll come away with good ideas for how to mix and match rules and inputs to intelligently delegate PRs to the right people and optimize your PRs for the process so they don’t just end up in the dead queue of a failed build.
Avishag started her tech career at the young age of 18, as a soldier in Unit 8200, an Israeli Intelligence Corps unit of the Israel Defense Forces responsible for collecting signal intelligence (SIGINT) and code decryption. Avishag worked as a Business Intelligence Developer for a few years, and then made the move to Allscripts Healthcare Solutions, where she joined as a software engineer. A few years later, Avishag joined Cisco, where she developed features for Cisco Umbrella’s (SWG). 10 months ago, Avishag came to LinearB, where she develops features for their web app, WorkerB and publicAPI. Outside of work, Avishag loves to dance. In fact, you can find her teaching Zumba classes in her spare time.
View Avishag's LeadDev articles and talksIn this talk, I'll share my management experience and insights from leading a team of 8 senior engineers.
In the age of distributed work, global events can impact the workplace in unpredictable ways.
As a manager leading a distributed team in the wake of Russian aggression in Ukraine, I have had to draw on exceptional leadership capabilities and resilience to ensure my team's success and impact on our product and users. In this talk, I'll share my management experience and insights from leading a team of 8 senior engineers. I'll highlight the key leadership strategies and techniques that enabled me to succeed despite adversity. From fostering a robust and outcome-oriented team culture to maintaining productivity in challenging life circumstances — I'll provide practical tips and guidance that engineering managers and leaders can apply in their work and to their own teams.
Bohdan Kit is the Head of Product for Non-Ad Monetization at Tumblr. As part of his role, Bohdan is reinventing the platform’s business model to make it more sustainable and valuable for both its hundreds of millions of users and advertisers. Before Tumblr, Bohdan was a PM at Amazon Ring, where he worked on the R&D of advanced technologies for the smart home and security industries. In his free-from-work time, Bohdan volunteers at KOLO, a non-profit he cofounded to make the Ukrainian defenders more technologically advanced.
View Bohdan's LeadDev articles and talksWe'll take a break for lunch
Talk details coming soon!
Indu enjoys designing distributed systems using event-driven architecture style and domain-driven design principles. She has over 15 years of software development experience working in various industries like healthcare, finance, biotech, and emergency services. She is currently a Principal Engineer at the New York Times. She is passionate about diversity and inclusiveness in the tech industry. When not working, she's an occasional rock climber, who loves to chill in sunny southern California with her kids and giant puppy.
View Indu's LeadDev articles and talksIn this talk I will go through some of the key actions a manager should take to make sure their team gets through difficult times . Whether it’s managing expectatioñs, focusing on the essential, or celebrating small successes, you will leave with the essential toolbox you need to weather the storm.
Many managers have spent careers working in a constant state of growth.
Growth requires a certain set of skills and we as an industry have become very good at detailing the best practices to make sure it can occur smoothly. However, in the current macroeconomic environment many of us have found ourselves in a situation we have never experienced where growth is no longer the primary goal. Instead we are shifting to a state where stability is the most important for organizations, and in some cases this means having to make difficult decisions.
In this talk I will go through some of the key actions a manager should take to make sure their team gets through difficult times . Whether it’s managing expectatioñs, focusing on the essential, or celebrating small successes, you will leave with the essential toolbox you need to weather the storm.
David LaMothe is a Development Manager at Shopify, where he focuses on enabling remote teams to build eCommerce systems. His career has been a mix of roles across all parts of the tech stack, where he always looked to solve the right problem at the right time. As a manager, his passions are simplifying processes, architecture, and adapting organizations to make sure people are constantly solving the kinds of problems they are best suited for.
View David's LeadDev articles and talksI'll talk about our bespoke training initiative called develop, which is designed to bring python and other critical technical skills to the masses, including resolute technophobes, and how just 18months after launching over half of our firm now use python - including compliance officers, communications professionals, operations analysts and lawyers!
I'll talk about our bespoke training initiative called develop, which is designed to bring python and other critical technical skills to the masses.
Including resolute technophobes, and how just 18months after launching over half of our firm now use python - including compliance officers, communications professionals, operations analysts and lawyers! Roughly 10 years ago I learnt Python, and I soon found it so powerful, so useful, that I had an idea to bring the power of Python to the masses – to resolute non-programmers and technophobes. We've taught critical technical skills, predominantly python, to: all teams such as our lawyers, sales, HR professionals, to our charitable partners with the aim of improving diverse representation in tech, and to our clients too. I’m going to tell you what I did with this idea, where I failed, how we've taught almost 300 people critical technical skills in our first 18months, how to manage the risks that this unleashes, and why you should embark on a similar initiative to teach python, data science, basic machine learning (including generative AI), and technical operational risk management to anyone who will let you! No prior knowledge is needed for this talk.
Charlie Beeson is the Chief of Staff in the global People team at Man Group where she focuses on business management, departmental governance, general executive support to the CPO, special projects, and data and digital skills development across the firm. As lead of the People Transformation team, she oversees project management, risk management, people analytics and people systems strategies for the global People team. Previously, Charlie was the Deputy Chief of Staff to Robyn Grew (then President of Man Group) where she focussed on supporting the firm’s Infrastructure departments and its executives. Prior to this, Charlie served as a Senior Business Manager for Alpha Technology where she was a member of the Technology Leadership Committee, as Business Manager for Man AHL, and has also held a number of software engineering roles within the Man AHL Technology teams. Charlie holds an MSc in Physics with Astronomy, jointly awarded by the University of Southampton and Harvard University. Her research contributions to the field of near-Earth asteroids at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics were recognised with the naming of a main-belt asteroid in her honour, “5241 Beeson”. She also holds an MSc in Financial Computing from University College London and is currently completing the Executive MBA programme at the University of Warwick.
View Charlie's LeadDev articles and talksEnjoy some refreshments during the break
This talk is about my ongoing journey towards recognising the different patterns of people pleasing that I tend to fall into, like countless other folks, and how this impacts my work as an engineering leader.
As a South-Asian woman, I was conditioned from a young age to prioritise the needs of others over my own, limit my self-expression, take up as little space as possible, and be adaptable, even at the cost of my own personal and professional growth. This talk is about my ongoing journey towards recognising the different patterns of people pleasing that I tend to fall into, like countless other folks, and how this impacts my work as an engineering leader.
Most importantly, I'll share strategies and learnings on how to break free from the people-pleasing trap, while still being an effective, empathetic and authentic leader. Whether you're a seasoned professional or just starting out in your career, I hope you’ll leave this talk, having had some aha moments of your own tendencies, and a deeper understanding of how people-pleasing can hold you back and how you can overcome them.
Nikita Rathi is a dog-mum, a wife, a foodie amongst other things, and an engineering manager by day. She has spent her career in the tech industry between Illinois, New York, Dublin and Berlin solving problems, writing code, and managing engineering teams and now is a Senior Engineering Manager at Taxfix, a tax startup in Berlin that reduces the complexity of tax filing and helps save it's users time and money. She has found herself ever-curious about human relationships and brings that curiosity to her work. Her thoughts and research have led her to think about different perceptions that folks might have based on past experiences and years of socialization and how that impacts the careers of those that are marginalized.
View Nikita's LeadDev articles and talksIn this talk, I’d like to share what I have learned. Specifically, I will talk about how I have been measuring learning culture and using the data to uplift learning capability in different organizations and teams. While still an experiment in progress, the methods and tools I’m using are mature enough to be shared, so as to invite commentary and feedback from fellow practitioners.
Learning is a core capability of high-performing software teams.
It comprises the skills and behaviours that support continuous improvement and nudge us into the funnel of flow - that joyous place where we become one with our work. As engineering leaders, it is important then, that we consider the learning culture and capabilities of our teams if we are to support them in delivering value. But how? In 2022 I spoke at LeadDev Berlin about a Lean DevOps approach to continuous learning. Towards the end of the talk I raised the question: How can we measure learning culture? I invited people to come forward and be part of an experiment aimed at answering this question. In this talk, I’d like to share what I have learned since. Specifically, I will talk about how I have been measuring learning culture and using the data to uplift learning capability in different organizations and teams. While still an experiment in progress, the methods and tools I’m using are mature enough to be shared, so as to invite commentary and feedback from fellow practitioners. I’ll also make a case for letting teams own and discover their learning and development goals and tooling, explaining why, in a sector that is constantly in flux, a team-first approach to learning is one that makes sense.
Sorrel is an independent consultant on continuous learning working exclusively in the software delivery space. With an eclectic background spanning academia, teaching, acoustics and software development, Sorrel brings creativity, curiosity and critical thinking to her practice. She is a passionate advocate for continuous learning, daring leadership and diversity in the technology industry.
View Sorrel's LeadDev articles and talksIn this talk, we share insights on how to adapt to this changing landscape, and factor in the human impact of our work while building systems and products with AI.
AI is becoming mainstream, with companies across multiple industries increasingly integrating it into their solutions.
Decisions taken in engineering teams can have an unexpected widespread impact on factors like diversity, accessibility, security, privacy, and mental health in our society. This will cause a shift in roles and responsibilities of engineers and product specialists. In this talk, we share insights on how to adapt to this changing landscape, and factor in the human impact of our work while building systems and products with AI. The talk also explores some of the ways in which Gen AI affects society (ie how reliable and accurate is the info provided by a LLMs and GenAI-powered applications, would It make job’s redundant, how can engineers and technologies build GenAI products in a ethical way)
Maria is a senior technology leader with 15+ years of experience building highly scalable systems with an emphasis on software delivery excellence and achieving produt-market fit. She is currently Vice President of Engineering at BCG Digital Ventures, where she helps organisations innovate at scale. She is passionate about technical leadership, building high performing teams, and empowering other women to succeed in the IT industry.
View Maria 's LeadDev articles and talksPriyanka Syal currently works at Senior Engineer at BCG Digital Ventures, Berlin. She has previously worked as a Software Engineer at multiple places including Microsoft and Dell EMC across different domains like CRM, cloud storage and AdTech. She is passionate about diversity and inclusion in tech and has worked as a part of various initiatives to support women in technology.
View Priyanka's LeadDev articles and talksClosing session
Patrick Kua is a seasoned technology leader with 20+ years of experience. His current mission is accelerating the growth of technical leaders through coaching, mentoring and training. He has had many years of hands-on experience, leading, managing and improving complex organisations and software systems as the CTO and Chief Scientist of N26 (Berlin, Germany) and as a Technical Principal Consultant at ThoughtWorks. He is a frequent keynote and conference speaker, author of three books including The Retrospective Handbook, Talking with Tech Leads and Building Evolutionary Architectures and runs the free popular newsletter for leaders in tech, “Level Up” (http://levelup.patkua.com) and the Tech Lead Academy, offering online training for technical leaders. You can find him online on Twitter as @patkua or running his very popular “Shortcut to Tech Leadership” workshop. Join Pat on December 7, 2022 for his workshop 'Shortcut to tech leadership'.
View Pat's LeadDev articles and talksEnd of event