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Engineering Reflections

Asking For Help From Senior Software Engineers

By balki | September 21, 2020 | 0 Comment

Why Are We so terrified of asking for help? So what stops us from seeking the help that we need? According to Leon Ho, sometimes it is the fear of being perceived as weak, needy or incompetent in front of our peers and superiors. Imposter syndrome comes to mind, doesn’t it? Especially if you’re in a competitive, fast-paced […]

How a team’s chemistry can be indicative of company culture

By balki | April 6, 2017 | 0 Comment

At the last meetup we had a terrific company (Jet Reports) and an engaged audience of many software professionals. We had a leadership team of 4 members from Jet Reports! Thank you Sam McCurdy, Scott Oshiro, Emiley Oster, and Malu Parthasarathy for joining us. It was the first time we showcased a company with a team and it […]

Anonymous (from twitter.com)

By balki | February 23, 2017 | 0 Comment

Give people what they want and they will like you for now. Give people what the need and they will value you forever.

10 quick lessons from Michael Belding

By balki | February 9, 2017 | 0 Comment

Last night at our meetup, we had Mike Belding as our special guest. And here’s the top 10 takeaways we learned from his experience leading engineering teams at Shiftwise. Learned about leadership, why you got it into and enabling others to succeed Life-long learning organization – as a new code school graduate, this is heartening to […]

22 terrific takeaways from Dana Lawson

By balki | January 5, 2017 | 0 Comment

NOTE: I originally wrote this article for LinkedIn back in October 2016. Last Wednesday night, we had Dana Lawson as our special guest at the I want to work for _ _ _ _ _ _ _ meet up. One attendee described Dana’s awesome personality like this: “I have never smiled and felt so good about […]

How We Light weighted Our Agile Development Process

By balki | November 17, 2016 | 0 Comment

This post was originally published by me in April 2016, while I worked as an Engineering Manager at New Relic. When I first joined the .NET Agent engineering team at New Relic last fall, the rock solid team was already doing great work at a good pace. At the same time, though, we knew we […]

I wish. I like. I wonder

By balki | August 16, 2016 | 0 Comment

At my last job leading a team of technical folks, I had great flexibility to try new ways to motivate the team. Looking back, the team was way too patient with my various experiments in the name of “agile”. I am surprised now that there wasn’t a riot to overthrow me as the team manager. […]