Matthew Hawthorne at LeadDev West Coast 2023
summary
Argues concrete power moves: ask questions instead of statements to postpone a meeting (moves a “no‑meetings” day by one day), I'll take the blame if something goes wrong to absorb a two‑week schedule slip, and go straight to the source to resolve a 99% vs 70% data‑quality demand. Recommends mentoring actions: hand off document subsections to train skimming, keep a ready list of projects to grab freed engineers, set boundaries with let's talk about that tomorrow, and distribute visible work fairly.
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chapters (18)
- 0:00Staff engineer role confusion
- 2:50Power in practice
- 3:32Tricky situations
- 5:59Workplace capital
- 6:20I'll take the blame
- 7:25Shielding engineers
- 8:28Who's asking for this?
- 9:51Handling capacity requests
- 12:01Mentoring techniques
- 13:27Mentoring questions
- 14:10Project leadership
- 15:31Setting boundaries
- 16:14Training engineers
- 16:54Future team growth
- 17:36Fair work assignment
- 19:20Cultural impact on quality
- 20:25Cultural improvements
- 21:09Power to make progress
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