![Lena Reinhard](https://res.cloudinary.com/leaddev/image/upload/q_100,c_fill,g_auto:classic,e_sharpen,h_100,w_100/prod/sites/default/files//contributors/2024-01/Lena Reinhard.png)
Lena
Reinhard
Engineering Leadership & Executive Coach
Welcome to LeadDev Berlin 2024
A welcome to LeadDev Berlin 2024 from the host Lena Reinhard.
Your host Lena Reinhard welcomes you to the day, run through our code of conduct and let you know what we've got coming up.
Lena Reinhard has dedicated her career to building successful, high-performing globally distributed engineering organisations, and helping teams thrive in times of high change like hypergrowth. She now offers transformational leadership coaching and consulting for leaders. Previously, Lena served as VP Engineering with CircleCI and Travis CI, as well as a startup co-founder & CEO, and through her cross-functional background and experience, she brings a unique perspective on systems of technology, business, and people.
View Lena's LeadDev articles and talksIrina has over a decade's experience in software engineering where she has worked for companies like Google and Uber. As the founder and CEO of The Caring Techie, she curates an audience of over 45,000 engineering leaders who she has helped navigate software engineering leadership.
Full talk details coming soon!
Irina has over a decade's experience in software engineering where she has worked for companies like Google and Uber. As the founder and CEO of The Caring Techie, she curates an audience of over 45,000 engineering leaders who she has helped navigate software engineering leadership.
With 14 years of experience in building software products, Irina has done it all: grew from junior software engineer all the way to staff software engineer, was the Tech Lead for numerous large cross-functional projects at Big Tech companies such as Google and Uber, and also managed people.At Google, Irina's team built dynamic ad insertion in the linear and on-demand TV streams for the Google Fiber Mobile TV App. The project involved multiple orgs: Google Fiber, YouTube and DoubleClick, and Irina successfully influenced across all 3 organizations. At Uber, Irina’s team was in charge of the entire Eater Delivery Experience in the Uber Eats Eater app, which was a place of intersection for multiple other teams and functions.Currently, Irina is a leadership coach, content creator, and the author of “The Caring Techie Newsletter”. In the last year, by continuing to use her personal brand and influencing skills, she grew her newsletter audience to over 20k subscribers and is a Top Voice on LinkedIn with more than 30k followers.
View Irina's LeadDev articles and talksIn this talk, Luis will propose a method of switching estimations from cost and effort to a probability map for time of delivery, making conversations about estimates easier with engineers and useful for stakeholders in order to have a better answer to ... "When will this be ready?"
It is well understood that developing solutions to complex problems is not an industrial process.
It is full of uncertainties, research, ongoing problems and stoppers, but since these solutions always have a supporting business case, we have to be ready to deal with plans and schedules for getting things into production.
In this regard, one of the most difficult tribulations in routine work in the tech industry is when somebody asks for an estimate. If you want a seasoned senior engineer to sweat, ask them for an estimation over a user story: “When will this be ready?". I have always felt that the underlying problem is that expectations and roles over this process have never been correctly understood.
This way, we usually think about estimations in terms of the cost and effort needed for developing a feature, but in reality, the conversation is all about when something will be ready.
What if we could change our mental model about estimations? What if there is a model that removes toil from the process while increasing trust and commitment?
In this talk, I propose a method of switching estimations from cost and effort to a probability map for time of delivery, making conversations about estimates easier with engineers and useful for stakeholders in order to have a better answer to ... "When will this be ready?"
Luis is from Donostia-San Sebastian, although you can also find him around Galicia in the summer and joins Cabify after being the CTO of a SaaS company for 4 years where he led the construction from scratch of a sizing recommendation solution. Before that Luis was General Manager at a boutique IT consulting firm where he managed a team of Engineers for more than 10 years, and also had to deal with the boring side of the business, you know, accounting, billing, that stuff...Luis is an enthusiastic person; devours Wikipedia, cooks with love, is amazed by rocket launches (never misses one if cast on YouTube), and loves debating everything regarding the business of technology.
View Luis 's LeadDev articles and talksA sneak peek into the 2024 LeadDev Engineering Management report: how the role is changing and what these changes mean for the industry at large.
Over the last two years, the tech industry has been going through big changes
After a decade of boom, a lot of companies have been running layoffs, and headlines were dominated by CEOs talking about a need for “fewer managers”, “more efficiency”, and “more AI.” Throughout this time, many engineering leaders have been really busy turning a lot of these decisions into reality, while trying to make sense of these large and rapid changes beyond just headlines and anecdotes. Many leaders have been wondering what the industry shifts mean for them, asking questions like:
I’m a VP Engineering and coach to engineering leaders, and, like you, I’ve been trying to get these answers—and now I’m sharing them with you: “The Engineering Leadership Report 2024”, produced in partnership with LeadDev and based on insight of over 1,100 engineering leaders. Join me for this talk to hear answers to these and more questions about the future of engineering leadership.
You’ll walk away with a clearer understanding of the shape of a changed industry, and the nuances in those changes, as well as concrete ideas for what you can do to navigate it successfully. During the office hours afterwards, co-producer Scott Carey, Editor in Chief at LeadDev, and I will be happy to answer your questions.
Lena Reinhard has dedicated her career to building successful, high-performing globally distributed engineering organisations, and helping teams thrive in times of high change like hypergrowth. She now offers transformational leadership coaching and consulting for leaders. Previously, Lena served as VP Engineering with CircleCI and Travis CI, as well as a startup co-founder & CEO, and through her cross-functional background and experience, she brings a unique perspective on systems of technology, business, and people.
View Lena's LeadDev articles and talksScott Carey is the Editor in Chief at LeadDev. An experienced technology journalist, he has covered software development for Computerworld, CIO, and InfoWorld before joining LeadDev.
View Scott's LeadDev articles and talksOffice hours is your opportunity to connect face-to-face, ask questions and find out more.
Inspired by Lara Hogan’s Manager Voltron, build your personal network at LeadDev Berlin.
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Work together to find ways of solving a common problem posed by our moderator.
Join facilitated conversations on running effective code reviews.
In this talk, Aman discusses Booking.com's launch of a Generative AI-powered travel companion in 2023, outlining the journey from conception to successful launch within a tight three-month timeframe. The presentation will offer insights into the intricate process of delivering a complex product within a short duration through a focused team effort. It covers best practices for forming a tiger team, efficient delivery mechanisms, and transitioning the product into a permanent setup, post-launch.
The talk discusses Booking.com's launch of a Generative AI powered travel companion in 2023, outlining the journey from conception to successful launch within a tight three-month timeframe.
This achievement was delivered by the formation of a dedicated tiger team. The presentation offers insights into the intricate process of delivering a complex product within a short duration through a focused team effort. It covers best practices for forming a tiger team, efficient delivery mechanisms, and transitioning the product into a permanent setup, post-launch. The travel companion is live on Booking.com apps in the US & UK, offering users a novel way to search and explore by providing relevant travel recommendations.
Key takeaways:
Aman is a senior engineering leader at Booking.com, one of the world’s leading digital travel companies. He is leading product innovations on Booking.com mobile applications. Part of his portfolio is the AI Trip Planner which is built upon the foundation of Booking.com’s existing machine learning models and partially powered by large language model (LLM) technology from OpenAI’s ChatGPT API.
View Aman's LeadDev articles and talksIn this talk, Christoph wants to share a few ideas that you can copy or that inspire you to come up with your own games!
Principles (or tenets, team manifests, values etc.) can shape the culture of an Engineering organization.
They can guide Engineers if they apply them in their day-to-day work . When I was promoted to a Director role, creating Engineering Principles was one of the first things I tackled. However, I quickly found out that just having them was not enough - our Engineers need to remember them to apply them.
Bringing our Engineering Principles up in 1-on-1 conversations I had with my direct reports proved helpful, but I wouldn’t reach everyone I wanted.
Should I force everyone to memorize our Engineering Principles, and have them take tests? That feels like 4th grade!
Instead, I came up with a few interactive games that we play as warm-up sessions or team-building exercises. In this talk, I want to share a few ideas that you can copy, or that inspire you to come up with your own games!
Christoph has been working in Software and Startups for over 10 years. In 2015 he joined the startup commercetools and has achieved many firsts there, including being the first Tech Lead and the first patent granted for the company. He helped shape the architecture and the technical leadership at commercetools from pre-product/market fit to its unicorn status today. Before commercetools, Christoph founded a startup (which failed) and spent time freelancing. To unwind from work, Christoph likes to spend time with his wife and two kids in nature.
View Christoph's LeadDev articles and talksThe role of a Staff Engineer often involves work across the org chart, reaching out to unfamiliar teams and colleagues with competing incentives and varying levels of enthusiasm for our unsolicited bright ideas. With no direct reports to instruct, no cash to flash, and no authority to wield, overcoming the inertia of large-scale, cross-cutting projects can seem daunting. In this talk, Ross follows a multi-team project where organisational dynamics shaped some architectural decisions and inter-team friction was clouding judgement. He looks at how empathy, inclusive language, and collaborative exercises helped to break the impasse and bring a feature from hunch to implementation. He also considers international diplomacy to see the surprising parallels between API design and negotiating with terrorists.
No carrots, no sticks. How can I make my colleagues do things?
The role of a Staff Engineer often involves work across the org chart, reaching out to unfamiliar teams and colleagues with competing incentives and varying levels of enthusiasm for our unsolicited bright ideas. With no direct reports to instruct, no cash to flash, and no authority to wield, overcoming the inertia of large-scale, cross-cutting projects can seem daunting. Technical Diplomacy is the long game of building relationships, understanding, and a shared vision to make collective progress.
We’ll follow a multi-team project where organisational dynamics had shaped some architectural decisions and inter-team friction was clouding our judgement. We’ll look at how empathy, inclusive language, and collaborative exercises helped to break the impasse and bring a feature from hunch to implementation. We’ll also consider international diplomacy to see the surprising parallels between API design and negotiating with terrorists.
You should leave this talk curious and keen to apply technical diplomacy to your role. You’ll have some ideas for where to start, and what you can do together with your colleagues to build a better understanding. You’ll be able to spot obstacles and will have some tricks up your sleeve for getting around them. And you’ll have no excuse for repeating my silly mistakes. Ultimately, you’ll be ready to embrace your colleagues — even the difficult ones — in the pursuit of shared success.
Key takeaways:
Ross McFarlane is a Staff Engineer at Form3, where he supports a team of engineers building realtime payment products for banks. For a software engineer, he spends rather a lot of time talking and drawing diagrams. Having been in leadership positions for the past fifteen years, he’s made plenty of mistakes and learned from most of them.
View Ross's LeadDev articles and talksMany organizations have embraced FinOps to optimize costs and solutions. But with stretched resources, how can engineering teams integrate sustainability? Explore the world of Green Software and discover how GreenOps seamlessly extends FinOps and DevOps principles. Sarah delves into the multidisciplinary aspects of Green Software and how green operations further unlock efficiency and automation – a crucial step in tackling climate change.
Many organizations have embraced FinOps to optimize costs and solutions. But with stretched resources, how can engineering teams integrate sustainability?
Explore the world of Green Software and discover how GreenOps seamlessly extends FinOps and DevOps principles. We'll delve into the multidisciplinary aspects of Green Software and how green operations further unlock efficiency and automation – a crucial step in tackling climate change.
Key takeaways:
A passionate advocate for sustainable software development, Sarah (Chun-Wei) Hsu is a leading voice. She promotes green software practices through speaking engagements, writing, and collaborative projects. Her contributions include co-authoring the O'Reilly book "Building Green Software," leading the Green Software Foundation's Green Software Course project, and launching the free online course "Green Software for Practitioners" with the Linux Foundation. Currently, Sarah is a Site Reliability Engineer at Goldman Sachs, working on a distributed platform on Google Cloud.
View Sarah (Chun-Wei)'s LeadDev articles and talksOffice hours is your opportunity to connect face-to-face, ask questions and find out more.
Join facilitated conversations on tackling difficult conversations.
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In this talk, Ayelen dives deep into the story, the challenges, solutions, and the iterative process of implementing a unique on-call rotation when traditional SRE support was unavailable. Discover how this approach not only reduced costs and complexity but also empowered developers to take ownership of their services, fostering a culture of collaboration, knowledge sharing, and continuous feedback.
Embark on a journey of innovation and empowerment as we explore the transformative impact of scaling on-call across multiple teams.
In this talk, I’ll dive deep into our story, the challenges, solutions, and the iterative process of implementing a unique on-call rotation when traditional SRE support was unavailable.
Discover how this approach not only reduced costs and complexity but also empowered developers to take ownership of their services, fostering a culture of collaboration, knowledge sharing, and continuous feedback.
Join me to learn how this new setup improved service quality, and documentation, and brought teams together as a cohesive unit.
Key takeaways:
Ayelen Chavez is a dedicated Head of Engineering at OLX Group in Berlin, Germany, originally hailing from Argentina. As a mom of two, she skillfully balances her professional responsibilities with her family life. Drawing from over 5 years of experience as an Engineering Manager and a master's degree in computer science, Ayelen brings a unique blend of technical expertise and leadership abilities to drive growth strategies across multiple dimensions within the company. Ayelen is not just a leader; she's a compassionate guide, dedicated to empowering her team and driving success together.
View Ayelen's LeadDev articles and talksThis talk will delve into the intimate realities of the candidate experience, powered by first-hand accounts and data analysis collected via the 'What the Candidate says' podcast series and interviews with candidates, hiring managers and recruiters.
In this dynamic, digitally-infused era, tech hiring is rapidly evolving.
This talk will delve into the intimate realities of the candidate experience, powered by first-hand accounts and data analysis collected via the 'What the Candidate says' podcast series and interviews with candidates, hiring managers and recruiters. We'll explore the impact of the recent mass layoffs, scrutinize job market trends, inspect industry requirements, hiring processes, and salary expectations.
We'll also discuss the psychological nuances of job searching and the significance of empathy refining the candidate experience. The presentation aims to create a well-rounded, transparent picture of what candidates face in today's tech job market, inspiring leaders to revamp hiring practices for a more inclusive, candidate-friendly future
Elif Schaefer is a distinguished Data Engineering Manager with over a decade of managerial experience in the tech industry. With a passionate focus on people leadership, her strength lies in mentoring, coaching and cultivating high-performing (data) engineering teams. Shifting from hands-on technical work early in her career, Elif has flourished in roles that allow her to guide, inspire and influence those around her.
View Elif's LeadDev articles and talksThis talk, from a security engineer (and recovering browser engineer) takes you through some of these lessons.
We take browsers for granted; they're ubiquitous and they've been around for ages... But have you ever stopped to think about what they _do_?
They execute arbitrary code, from untrusted sources on the Internet... by design. And were supposed to be OK with that? Unsurprisingly, how they do this provides some useful lessons in how we can design and build secure systems. This talk, from a security engineer (and recovering browser engineer) takes you through some of these lessons.
Mark is a software developer turned security specialist and has worked in Application Security for almost 20 years and has been involved in building and securing all manner of systems from financial services, in vehicle systems, mobile applications and browsers.
View Mark's LeadDev articles and talksOffice hours is your opportunity to connect face-to-face, ask questions and find out more.
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Hear from the LeadDev content team on the secrets of crafting winning speaker submissions and effective article proposals.
Join facilitated conversations on innovating with fewer resources.
In this talk, Lisa will explain how we can break this cycle, providing an alternative approach for delivering incremental value while building your catalogue. This will include tips to take back to your teams, whether you’ve got a catalogue or haven’t even started.
Service catalogs promise a lot of things: powerful automations, insights into your technology estate.
But over the last few years, many of us have learned that setting up and maintaining a service catalog is **really hard**.
Building out a catalog from a standing start can take months, or even years. Too many people get stuck in a chicken-and-egg situation, where you can’t deliver value because you don’t have the data in your catalog, and you can’t convince anyone to spend time helping you because the catalog doesn’t do anything yet.
We’ll talk about how we can break this cycle, providing an alternative approach for delivering incremental value while building out your catalog. This will include tips to take back to your teams, whether you’ve got a catalog already or haven’t even started.
We’ll then talk about how we can apply the same principles beyond just ‘services’, to get more value across the rest of your organisation and drive genuinely impactful automation and insights.
Lisa started out as a consultant working with HMRC and then smart meters, before accidentally becoming a developer. She worked as a tech lead at GoCardless and has recently joined as employee #2 at incident.io, providing tooling to help your whole organization manage incidents better. She loves building stuff, but is also really interested in how people interact with each other in a work environment - particularly in software engineering. Having seen the 'old way' at Accenture (large-scale waterfall projects), she's now looking at taking the lessons from that environment to the start-up scene.
View Lisa's LeadDev articles and talksDrawing from learning science and best practices in teaching, as well as her unique perspective at the crossroads of education, professional development, and engineering, Erica will share techniques for effective feedback that range from narrowing and defining the scope of your feedback to understanding your audience and meeting them where they are, to returning to, building upon, and recognizing progress made on past feedback.
Giving feedback is an essential part of a manager or leaders’s role in helping their team learn, grow, and perform to each individual’s full potential.
Yet so often feedback conversations can prompt feelings of anxiety, fear, and frustration (on both sides), and erode trust and communication within managerial relationships. In this interactive session with a former teacher turned software engineer, participants will discover strategies for offering feedback in a way that opens up communication, makes space for vulnerability, and helps the recipient not only receive but also absorb and meaningfully incorporate the feedback.
Drawing from learning science and best practices in teaching, as well as my unique perspective at the crossroads of education, professional development, and engineering, I will share techniques for effective feedback that range from narrowing and defining the scope of your feedback, to understanding your audience and meeting them where they are, to returning to, building upon, and recognizing progress made on past feedback. Through interactive activities audience members will experience and internalize key learning science concepts, such as the zone of proximal development and the role of working memory, and apply those concepts toward optimizing their approach to feedback. Attendees will leave feeling empowered to make their next feedback conversation more effective, human-centric, and growth-oriented.
Erica Chesley is a Software Engineer at Plaid. She is based in Amsterdam, where she supports Plaid’s European products and customers in pursuit of the company’s mission of unlocking financial freedom for everyone. She serves as a global co-chair of Plaid’s Women+ employee resource group (ERG) and leads a team of volunteers in delivering programming and other initiatives aimed at increasing belonging and inclusion, fostering personal and professional development, and advocating for their community. Erica spent the first decade of her career working in education - as a teacher, educational technologist, and program manager - and now leverages that background to help bring best practices in learning and human development to the tech workplace. She holds a Masters degree in Learning, Design, and Technology from Stanford’s Graduate School of Education.
View Erica's LeadDev articles and talksOn June 1, 2009, Air France flight 447 departed from Rio de Janeiro, Brazil with 228 passengers and crew onboard on an overnight flight to Paris. They would never make it. The Airbus A330 operating the flight was one of the safest planes in the sky, with zero major accidents in 15 years of commercial service, so what was different the night that AF 447 crashed into the Atlantic? When the aircraft’s black boxes were finally recovered from the ocean floor two years later, they told the harrowing tale of an accident sequence that only lasted four minutes and twenty-three seconds from start to finish. Let’s dig into what happened that night because there’s a lot for us to learn from this aircraft and crew about the systems we build and how we build them.
On June 1, 2009, Air France flight 447 departed from Rio de Janeiro, Brazil with 228 passengers and crew onboard on an overnight flight to Paris. They would never make it.
The Airbus A330 operating the flight was one of the safest planes in the sky, with zero major accidents in 15 years of commercial service, so what was different the night that AF 447 crashed into the Atlantic?
When the aircraft’s black boxes were finally recovered from the ocean floor two years later, they told the harrowing tale of an accident sequence that only lasted four minutes and twenty-three seconds from start to finish. Let’s dig into what happened that night because there’s a lot for us to learn from this aircraft and crew about the systems we build and how we build them.
Nickolas Means loves nothing more than a story of engineering triumph (except maybe a story of engineering disaster). He’s a student of building healthy culture for technical teams and thinks we have a lot to learn from those who have come before us. He hails from Austin, TX, and spends his spare time hanging out with his wife and kids, building keyboards, and pursuing the perfect cup of coffee.
View Nickolas's LeadDev articles and talksOffice hours is your opportunity to connect face-to-face, ask questions and find out more.
Welcome to LeadDev Berlin 2024
A welcome to LeadDev Berlin 2024 from the host Meri Williams.
Your host Meri Williams welcomes you to the day, run through our code of conduct and let you know what we've got coming up.
Meri is an experienced CTO and leader of technology organisations. She particularly enjoys helping others to level up as technical leaders and managers of organisations and works as a CTO coach and tech advisor / NED to various companies in this capacity through micro-consultancy ChromeRose. She has led teams ranging in size from 30 to 300, in a range of organisations from Procter & Gamble, to the Government Digital Service, award-winning online print company MOO, mobile-first challenger bank Monzo and patient-inspired AI-driven rare disease treatment discovery company Healx, amongst others. A published author and international speaker, she is the chair of The Lead Developer conference and a tech advisor for Kindred Capital. She’s also a trustee at Stonewall, the UK’s leading LGBTQ+ rights charity and together with her wife runs micro-charity One Goes Up to help young women & enby folks pursue STEM education & careers.
View Meri's LeadDev articles and talksSooner or later, tech debt accumulates. Much like financial debt, it’s not universally a bad thing. After all, sometimes we need to build something fast to test and learn, meet an external deadline, or have to accept something imperfect to make progress. But the problem comes when you start paying your mortgage on your credit card. In this talk, join Meri - a seasoned CTO - talking through real-life experiences of categorising, understanding, evangelising about and tackling tech debt across a range of company types and sectors.
Sooner or later, tech debt accumulates. Much like financial debt, it’s not universally a bad thing.
After all, sometimes we need to build something fast to test and learn, meet an external deadline, or have to accept something imperfect to make progress. But the problem comes when you start paying your mortgage on your credit card.
In this talk, join a seasoned CTO talking through their real-life experiences of categorising, understanding, evangelising about and tackling tech debt across a range of company types and sectors.
Meri is an experienced CTO and leader of technology organisations. She particularly enjoys helping others to level up as technical leaders and managers of organisations and works as a CTO coach and tech advisor / NED to various companies in this capacity through micro-consultancy ChromeRose. She has led teams ranging in size from 30 to 300, in a range of organisations from Procter & Gamble, to the Government Digital Service, award-winning online print company MOO, mobile-first challenger bank Monzo and patient-inspired AI-driven rare disease treatment discovery company Healx, amongst others. A published author and international speaker, she is the chair of The Lead Developer conference and a tech advisor for Kindred Capital. She’s also a trustee at Stonewall, the UK’s leading LGBTQ+ rights charity and together with her wife runs micro-charity One Goes Up to help young women & enby folks pursue STEM education & careers.
View Meri's LeadDev articles and talksIn this talk, Andreas will explore how established testing patterns, such as the testing pyramid, can be applied in the context of accessibility and can help us overcome these challenges and improve product quality.
Over 90% of the world's top websites lack full accessibility, impacting over a billion people globally.
Yet, acknowledging accessibility as both a social responsibility and a driver for product quality and innovation, resulting in business value, seems to be no priority for most organizations. The reason for this is simple: a lack of awareness and practice.
We have integrated automated tests as a crucial part in our development flow, profiting from faster feedback cycles and enabling continuous integration. Nevertheless accessibility is often tested - if at all - on a manual or end-to-end test level, leading to longer feedback times, higher test fragility and increased implementation costs.
In this talk we are going to explore how established testing patterns, such as the testing pyramid, can be applied in the context of accessibility and can help us to overcome these challenges, as well as improve the product quality.
Andreas is a dedicated fullstack software developer at Thoughtworks, with a background in business informatics. His expertise lies in frontend and product development, where he aims at creating inclusive and accessible experiences. He is passionate about building inclusive and accessible software, and he actively advocates for bringing this perspective into agile delivery teams. With a keen eye for user needs and a commitment to fostering diversity, Andreas strives to make a positive impact in the world of software development.
View Andreas's LeadDev articles and talksIn this talk, Yamila will share her experience with you and walk you through the strategies she implemented to achieve this at team and personal levels, as well as the importance of practising self-compassion. You should walk away with some new ideas and understand how caring about the people in your team can be key to delivering projects successfully.
Have you ever been going through a tough personal time, and right then, your team gets assigned the highest priority project in the company?
One of those projects so big, so important, and with urgent expectations that may burn out your whole team in a sprint, if you are not careful.
I did, and I was concerned not only about being able to pull this off but also about my team’s mental health and my own. Burnout takes months to recover from. My goal and whole purpose became to see everyone through this exhausted, but not burned out.
In this talk, I’ll share my experience with you, and walk you through the strategies we implemented to achieve this, at team and personal levels, and the importance of practicing self-compassion. You should walk away with some new ideas and an understanding of how caring about the people in your team can be key to delivering projects successfully.
Yamila Maio is a People First Engineering Manager passionate about leadership who believes nothing is more important than people when leading a team. With ten years of leadership experience in different roles and types of companies, countless experiments and self-improvement attempts, active listening, and genuinely caring about her teams through the years, she's acquired various tools and tips to build effective, tight knight teams, and help engineers progress and grow. Her mission is to influence leaders towards a more involved people management approach by sharing practical examples and highlighting the importance of caring for our team members.
View Yamila's LeadDev articles and talksOffice hours is your opportunity to connect face-to-face, ask questions and find out more.
Join facilitated conversations on learning from incidents.
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Join Renu on a tech odyssey as she recounts the epic journey of migrating one of Grab's largest loyalty programs from a poorly designed architecture to a scalable, cutting-edge tech platform. This colossal mission wasn't just about mastering new technology, but also about ensuring operational excellence, continuous feature development, and navigating the high seas of scale. This talk offers a candid exploration of those lessons and a guide to the pitfalls to avoid when embarking on your own tech migration adventures.
Join me on a tech odyssey as I recount our epic journey of migrating one of our largest loyalty programs from a poorly designed architecture to a scalable, cutting-edge tech platform.
This colossal mission wasn't just about mastering new technology, but also about ensuring operational excellence, continuous feature development, and navigating the high seas of scale. We encountered numerous challenges, setbacks, and multiple iterations, each teaching us valuable lessons. This talk offers a candid exploration of those lessons and a guide to the pitfalls to avoid when embarking on your own tech migration adventures.
Takeaways:
Renu is an Engineering Manager with deep experience in assembling and leading various remote teams. She has been instrumental in tripling the size of organisations, thanks to her leadership abilities and her dedication to creating an inclusive work environment. A frequent speaker at international conferences, Renu enjoys sharing her insights and experiences with others. She believes in the importance of community and networking and is an active participant in the tech industry. With a focus on developing talent and fostering continuous growth, Renu continues to make valued contributions to engineering management.
View Renu's LeadDev articles and talksWith promotions that come with a significant change to the role, we will never know if the changes will be positive or negative before trying. Jakob experienced this when making the transition from an Engineering Manager with two teams to Head of Tech with seven teams. In the presentation, Jakob shares his experiences and thought processes to help others in the same situation make the right call. The goal of this talk is to encourage you to start thinking about what your "right" place on the engineering management ladder might be if you haven't thought about it already.
With promotions that come with a significant change to the role, we will never know if the changes will be positive or negative before trying.
I experienced this myself when I went from being an Engineering Manager with two teams to Head of Tech with seven teams. I tried making it work for three years, but in the end had to accept that although my performance was good, I was not able to reconcile the extra stress with my personal life.
I quit, took a break, and applied as a single-team-EM at a different company. And I consider this the best decision I ever took concerning my career.
In this presentation, I will describe my experiences and thought processes to maybe help others in the same situation make the right call.
Specifically, I will discuss:
The goal is to nudge people who either haven't thought about the "right" level for them or people who think about it only in a "line goes up" kind of way to start thinking about what their "right" place on the engineering management ladder might be.
Key takeaways:
Jakob is an engineering leader with a well-trained change-muscle. He has led the full range from a small team to entire business units and has a clear preference now. In his free time, Jakob really enjoys walking and tends to score high on nerd-bingo - if you think of a hobby as nerdy, he is probably doing it.
View Jakob's LeadDev articles and talksIn this talk, Lyubomira will discuss what ML platform and operations are, how to assess ML platform maturity, and how to discover, understand, and prioritise the requirements for your ML platform.
Over the past decade the development of ML and AI technologies has proliferated with unprecedented progress being made in many fields.
We now have AI systems that process, categorise and make predictions on data for ever increasing types of applications from various recommender systems, medical condition detection, teacher grading scores and many more. We have systems adding filters to photos, airbrushing images or creating new images from words. We have systems that handle our customer service queries, drive our cars and verify our identities. All this progress has resulted in the average automated system being significantly larger in scale and complexity than a decade ago.
This acceleration is partially enabled and driven by the development of tools facilitating anyone and any company, from experts to novices, to develop and launch models to the world. In 2023 there were 1,426 companies offering ML tools, compared to 139 in 2012. This represents a +1,000% increase! Evidently there is a huge need for tools to support the various technical requirements of your ML workflows. However, simply adopting one of the sometimes costly tools available is not likely to be sufficient to solve your challenges and accelerate your ML development by itself.
The cornerstone of your ability to stay competitive and to innovate with speed and confidence using AI and ML technologies is employing a holistic approach to your ML platform and operations.
In this talk, I will discuss:
Last but not least, I will discuss real lessons from building and scaling our own ML platform and operations from scratch.
Lyubomira is a Senior Director of Technical Programme Management at Onfido, an AI Identity Verification company. Throughout her career Lyubomira has delivered several end-to-end fraud prevention AI products. She has also started and led the ML Ops team at Onfido, building and scaling the ML platform from scratch. She has expertise in scaling ML Operations and engineering teams to industrialise AI product delivery.
View Lyubomira's LeadDev articles and talksThis talk is about the finer mechanics of day-to-day engineering management, and how small decisions accrue an effect over time on team dynamics. Denise illustrates how an engineering leader can optimize for the entire party, not just the "hero", by creating just enough structure, clarity, and accountability. Building a team with diverse skill sets and experiences, and then intentionally managing the day-to-day "experience point distribution" of the team, journeying along the path to an empowered, high-performing team.
A lot has been said in recent years about building high-performing teams, as a long-term, holistic goal to work towards.
But, from day to day, engineering managers are tasked with low-level, immediate-term decisions: What work should be scheduled next? How should it be organized and tracked? Who should implement, who should review, and who should take ownership?
This talk is about the finer mechanics of day-to-day engineering management, and how small decisions accrue an effect over time on team dynamics. I've been a fan of role-playing games for my entire life, and even though different games take different approaches to storytelling and battle mechanics, the most fun role-playing games have one thing in common: the hero's party. In the greatest role-playing games like Final Fantasy VII, Chrono Trigger, XenoGears, and more, we consistently learn that a well-balanced party leads to the best endgame outcomes.
This talk will illustrate how an engineering leader can optimize for the entire party, not just the "hero", by creating just enough structure, clarity, and accountability. Building a team with diverse skill sets and experiences, and then intentionally managing the day-to-day "experience point distribution" of the team is journeying along the path to an empowered, high-performing team.
Key takeaways:
Denise is an Engineering Manager at HashiCorp, working on improving Provider Developer Experience within the Terraform Ecosystem group. She previously worked at GitHub and Pivotal Cloud Foundry. She has spoken extensively at conferences over the last few years, and she also recently illustrated a book to help children (and adults) learn about becoming an AWS practitioner.
View Denise's LeadDev articles and talksOffice hours is your opportunity to connect face-to-face, ask questions and find out more.
Dedicated sessions on how to take the next step in your career for:
Hear from the LeadDev content team on the secrets of crafting winning speaker submissions and effective article proposals.
Join facilitated conversations on measuring engineering success.
This talk will serve as a catalyst for change, equipping attendees with actionable insights to become better allies, managers, and contributors in the journey towards embracing neurodiversity.
Over the years, conferences like LeadDev have played a crucial role in fostering discussions on inclusion, empathy, mentoring, and diversity.
These talks have been instrumental in educating our community on critical topics, shaping our perspectives, and encouraging positive change. However, amidst these commendable efforts, there remains a significant knowledge gap in our community when it comes to working with, managing and supporting colleagues with hidden disabilities.
Recognizing this genuine problem, it is time for us to address this void and shed light on an important facet of diversity: neurodiversity. In this conference talk, I propose to share insights gained from my personal experiences and learnings as I navigated through my journey of running an employee resource group for individuals with disabilities.
Neurodiversity, an umbrella term encompassing various neurodevelopmental conditions, will be the focal point of this talk. We will explore conditions such as ADHD, Autism, Dyslexia, Dyspraxia, Dyscalculia, and Dysgraphia. Drawing from my direct experiences, I will candidly discuss my own journey, starting with the discovery of my dyslexia and dyspraxia at the age of 17, followed by my realization of being autistic during the pandemic.
By sharing these deeply personal experiences, I aim to foster empathy and understanding among the audience. Together, we will delve into practical strategies and perspectives that can help create a more inclusive and supportive environment for individuals with hidden disabilities. This talk will serve as a catalyst for change, equipping attendees with actionable insights to become better allies, managers, and contributors in the journey towards embracing neurodiversity.
Join me as we embark on a transformative exploration, where personal narratives converge with practical guidance, unveiling a world that celebrates the unique strengths and perspectives of every individual, regardless of their neurodiversity. Let us together take this step towards a more inclusive future.
Staff Engineer at Spendesk, Speaker about hidden disabilities and web
View Jonathan's LeadDev articles and talksIn this talk, Tristan introduces the approaches to native development that are worthy of consideration in 2024 and the reasons and motivations that may lead you to consider one over the other. This will be an evidence based exploration of how companies are making some well known apps that may well be on your phones today.
So you need a native app ! Great - let’s go hire some developers and off we go.
Well - not so fast. Are we going to use the default approach of using the OS vendor recommended tools such as Xcode with Swift and Android Studio with Kotlin? That seems inefficient to write one app for 2 platforms. Maybe we can use one of those cross platform frameworks, like Xamarin, React Native, Ionic or even Flutter.
With an ever evolving landscape of ways to build apps for iOS and Android, it can be hard to know which approach to choose when starting out. Worse still, what if you’ve already chosen a technology and are wondering whether it is worthwhile changing to a different framework?
Over the last 15 years, I have experienced delivering native apps across a variety of frameworks, from native ObjC/Swift and Java/Kotlin to Xamarin and React Native, and a fair few things in-between. I have also dabbled in that questionable approach deservedly relegated to history; PhoneGap !!
In this talk I introduce the approaches to native development that are worthy of consideration in 2024, and the reasons and motivations that may lead you to consider one over the other. This will be an evidence based exploration of how companies are making some well known apps that may well be on your phones today.
Factors I will discuss include maturity of framework, availability of support, hirability of required skills, performance, and other key points that need to be considered.
You will leave this talk with a good outline understanding of the factors you should consider when choosing the right technology for your iOS and Android app.
Tristan is a Principal Software Engineer for Eventbrite 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 talksDuring this talk, Alisa will help you navigate this challenge; there are several easy-to-remember tips and examples that you can use during one-on-ones and feedback talks. By implementing these tips and considering cultural differences, you can elevate your feedback sessions to a new level, thus improving team performance.
Providing feedback is a crucial aspect of team management.
However, it is challenging because it takes work to provide constructive, unbiased, and influential feedback that will motivate your team to grow. This task becomes even more complicated when working in an intercultural team (as most of us are today), as cultural differences can affect how feedback is received and perceived. How you provide feedback plays a significant role in team performance and morale. It is essential to understand the cultural nuances and tailor feedback accordingly during feedback sessions. During this talk, Alisa will help you navigate this challenge; there are several easy-to-remember tips and examples that you can use during one-on-ones and feedback talks. By implementing these tips and considering cultural differences, you can elevate your feedback sessions to a new level, thus improving team performance.
Alisa has over 12 years of experience in the Information Technology industry, with a strong background in technical project management, agile development, and process improvement. Currently, as the Engineering Lead at eyeo, Alisa is responsible for the strategy and delivery of solutions that protect the privacy and security of millions of online users. She leverages her skills in business analysis, requirements elicitation, scope management, risk and dependency management, progress monitoring and reporting, team coordination, and distributed software development to lead multiple projects and teams across different locations and time zones. She has experience designing and developing web applications using JavaScript and popular JS-based frameworks. Alisa is passionate about creating and implementing innovative, user-friendly solutions that enhance the online experience and empower users to control their data. After work, Alisa likes spending quality time with her husband and little son and reading influential books.
View Alisa's LeadDev articles and talksOffice hours is your opportunity to connect face-to-face, ask questions and find out more.
Work together to find ways of solving a common problem posed by our moderator.
Join facilitated conversations on management skills for AI.
Come with Eugene on a journey of change as they transform their experimentation platform at GetYourGuide.
Come with us on a journey of change as we transform our experimentation platform at GetYourGuide.
At first, it was complicated and hard to understand, even though we were running 50 experiments at any given time. But with a team effort, we made it better by breaking it down into smaller parts and improving them bit by bit. In this talk, I'll share how we did it, from fixing what wasn't working to making it easier for everyone to join in and be creative. We'll talk about the challenges we faced and how we made experimenting faster and better for everyone. Our story, full of new ideas and interesting twists, will inspire you to think differently about how we do things. Come along as we show you how we turned confusion into clarity and made experimenting together a lot more fun.
Eugene is an experienced Data Engineer with a track record of success in fast-growing tech startups. Holding a Master's degree in System Optimization, he currently serves as a Staff Data Engineer at GetYourGuide, where he drives impactful insights and innovations in Marketing and Marketplace domains. Prior to this role, he held positions as Engineering Manager, demonstrating his leadership and technical prowess in the field.
View Eugene's LeadDev articles and talksIn this talk, Najla discusses how to build trust and empathy with your team when your organizational lines and remote working setup don’t create those moments organically. She will go over tangible strategies for building rapport within a large and distributed team. For example, you may have heard about skip-level 1-on-1s, but what should you talk about, and how often should you do them? Outside of those, how do you build continual moments of connectivity and make space for difficult conversations when those moments feel sparse?
In the beginning, it feels manageable to connect with everyone on your team as a front-line manager.
You have weekly 1 on 1s with your engineers, talk shop in your daily standups, create moments for feedback like retrospectives, and run team events every once in a while. These interactions create trust in your leadership, enable hard conversations to happen with ease, and make the work more fun.
However, moving up can mean that you start managing managers, creating layers of separation between you and the people that you’re ultimately trying to support and influence. Interactions with engineers become more high stakes; your touch points may cover more high-level topics like market conditions, company strategy, and organizational change. Meanwhile, they know less about how you work and who you are as a person.
In this talk, we’ll discuss how to build trust and empathy with your team when your organizational lines and remote working setup don’t create those moments organically. We will go over tangible strategies for building rapport within a large and distributed team. For example, you may have heard about skip-level 1 on 1s, but what should you talk about, and how often should you do them? Outside of those, how do you build continual moments of connectivity and make space for difficult conversations when those moments feel sparse?
Having a strategy around connection not only creates levity in the day-to-day, but also clues you into focus areas for your organization. Engineers reveal information that can help find commonalities among projects, possibly leading to streamlined execution and mentorship moments. You may learn more about underrepresented folks on your team who might need more attention or opportunities. Either way, a little bit of effort in this area can go a long way towards strengthening your team.
In Najla's last role as a Director of Engineering at Etsy, she led product teams across several domains, including mobile, fullstack, machine learning, and adtech. Her passions lie in coaching managers and engineers to grow in alignment with themselves and the business, positioning teams in high-leverage ways, and creating community - all in service of delivering value to customers. Most recently, Najla moved to Mexico City to help open up Etsy's first office in Latin America. She is a big believer in growing teams with empathy, bringing people along for tough decisions, and advocating for others
View Najla's LeadDev articles and talksFrom implementing enterprise applications at Accenture in the 1990s to his current role as a Staff Engineering Manager at GitHub, Anjuan learned several essential lessons about the software industry. These lessons were often learned the hard way as an individual contributor and as an engineering manager. What would he say to himself if he could go backwards in time and help past versions become compatible with what he knows now? This talk is that conversation.
From implementing enterprise applications at Accenture in the 1990s to my current role as a Staff Engineering Manager at GitHub, I’ve learned several essential lessons about the software industry.
These lessons were often learned the hard way as an individual contributor and as an engineering manager. I’ve often wondered what I would say to myself if I could go backwards in time and help past versions of myself become compatible with what I know now. This talk is that conversation. Attendees will learn how to better guide their own careers in software development today from the things I wish I knew in the past.
Key takeaways:
Anjuan Simmons is a technologist with a successful track record of delivering technology solutions from the user interface to the database. He is an energetic and informative speaker who presents at conferences, seminars, schools, and community centers around the world on topics including Agile software development, diversity, and leadership. Anjuan has an undergraduate degree in electrical engineering from the University of Texas at Austin and an MBA from Texas A and M University.
View Anjuan's LeadDev articles and talksTo grow our technical leadership skills, it’s critical to lean on one’s network of support. We often find mentors: people who can give us helpful advice. But what can be even more valuable is finding “sponsors”, who help us find new opportunities and improve the visibility of our work.
To grow our technical leadership skills, it’s critical to lean on one’s network of support.
But what can be even more valuable is finding “sponsors”, who help us find new opportunities and improve.
As sponsorship is especially important for members of minoritized communities in tech, Lara Hogan walks through tactics you can employ today to be a sponsor for those around you, too.
Lara is the VPE at Fly.io and has been an author, coach, and trainer for managers and leaders across the tech industry over the last decade. She champions management as a practice, building fast websites, and celebrating your achievements with donuts (and sometimes sushi). Her latest book, Resilient Management, is here to help those who find themselves responsible for supporting a team of people.
View Lara's LeadDev articles and talksClosing session
Meri is an experienced CTO and leader of technology organisations. She particularly enjoys helping others to level up as technical leaders and managers of organisations and works as a CTO coach and tech advisor / NED to various companies in this capacity through micro-consultancy ChromeRose. She has led teams ranging in size from 30 to 300, in a range of organisations from Procter & Gamble, to the Government Digital Service, award-winning online print company MOO, mobile-first challenger bank Monzo and patient-inspired AI-driven rare disease treatment discovery company Healx, amongst others. A published author and international speaker, she is the chair of The Lead Developer conference and a tech advisor for Kindred Capital. She’s also a trustee at Stonewall, the UK’s leading LGBTQ+ rights charity and together with her wife runs micro-charity One Goes Up to help young women & enby folks pursue STEM education & careers.
View Meri's LeadDev articles and talksStay up-to-date with everything that's happening at LeadDev Berlin.