Herding cats: lessons from 15 years of managing engineers at Microsoft
summary
15 years of Microsoft management experience distilled into concrete practices: manage a 30‑engineer developer‑experience team for Azure Cosmos DB, previously ran asp.net and teams of 6–7; build visible metrics like a TFS dashboard on a TV so the team takes ownership (builds go from flaky to self‑fixed); coach by asking questions not giving answers; spend time on top performers and use performance reviews as self‑development; assign an ABC task mix (above/at/below level), use OPR decision roles, run bounded experiments and let people fail under mitigations.
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chapters (15)
- 0:00Introduction
- 2:12Coaching in management
- 8:37Focus on top performers
- 10:41Performance reviews purpose
- 20:57Clear direct feedback
- 25:33Design feedback 590 rule
- 29:31Dangers of hero manager
- 31:43Learning from failure
- 36:39ABC framework task assignment
- 41:17SCARF model motivation
- 46:34Accountability follow-up techniques
- 50:30Nudges and team values
- 52:57Improving decisions
- 58:15Disagree and commit
- 1:00:00Closing anecdote
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