LeadDev London: An Odyssey of Engineering Leadership
Hello to all tech enthusiasts out there! I have just returned from the LeadDev London conference, an event that gathers engineering leaders from across the UK. The conference was a platform for sharing strategies, insights, and stories to empower us all to become more effective technical leaders. Today, I’m excited to share my learnings with you.
Talks Summaries
From captivating case studies to thought-provoking sessions, LeadDev London proved to be a wellspring of knowledge and learning. The talks presented a perfect blend of technical insight and people-focused discussions, reinforcing the notion that effective leadership is as much about fostering healthy team dynamics as it is about maintaining technological prowess.
“Cultural Postmortems” shone a light on the importance of recovering from management failures through open communication, mutual learning, and the creation of a non-blaming culture. This theme of human-centred leadership was echoed in talks such as “Keeping Team Health After a Layoff”, where the emphasis was placed on nurturing team morale through transparency, empathy, and open dialogue.
“Feature Flags Unleashed” gave us an enhanced view of the development, QA, and production support landscape. We learned that by harnessing the power of feature flags, we can create a flexible, robust safety net that empowers us to ‘toggle’ functionality as needed.
The lack of structured onboarding processes for engineering managers was a wake-up call to many of us during the “No Onboarding Plan for Engineering Managers?” talk. The session underscored the importance of structured onboarding, which promotes role clarity, faster integration, and increased productivity. In the same vein, the “Onboarding to a Company’s Legacy Codebase” session provided invaluable strategies to ease the transition onto a legacy codebase, highlighting the role of documentation, mentorship, and ‘buddy systems’.
Sessions like “Red 2.0: Transforming a Game Company” demonstrated how companies can embrace change to stay relevant and innovative in fast-paced industries. Similarly, “Managing at the Threshold” offered crucial insights into leading during periods of significant change and uncertainty, with adaptability, compassion, and clear communication being the cornerstones of this approach.
Inclusivity and diversity were other standout themes at the conference. “Creating Inclusive Career Ladders”, “Building for the Underserved, Solving for All”, and “Engineering a More Equitable Hiring Process” stressed the importance of understanding individual aspirations, focusing on underserved markets, and eliminating biases in hiring, ultimately aiming to create a more inclusive and diverse tech industry.
The “Code is Poetry” session reminded us of the elegance and creativity inherent in coding, encouraging us to rekindle our passion for the craft, while the “Orchestrating Bots from the Cloud” talk explored how cloud-based bot orchestration can enhance efficiency and enable us to dedicate more time to such creative endeavours.
Finally, the sobering session on “The 9.1 Magnitude Meltdown at Fukushima” served as a potent reminder of the grave consequences when things go wrong, underscoring the importance of thorough safety measures, robust planning, and effective crisis management. This, coupled with sessions like “The Awful Agony of the App Store” and “AI and Tech Leadership”, illustrated the diverse challenges we face in the tech industry and the importance of maintaining a keen focus on innovation, user trust, and ethical decision-making.
Each talk presented unique insights, but a common thread ran through them all — the importance of empathy, inclusivity, innovation, and adaptability in becoming effective tech leaders in these challenging times. These are the lessons I’ll be taking away from LeadDev London and applying them in my role as a lead developer.
Mentorship with Mathias Meyer
One of the most valuable aspects of the LeadDev Conference was the group mentor sessions led by Mathias Meyer. Mathias is an executive leadership coach and advisor to founders and CTOs. His journey began as an engineer, mastering debugging, and fixing production code to keep things up and running. Over time, he developed a keen interest in company culture, organisational behaviours, and psychology, with a firm belief that great products come primarily from people who are nurtured, supported, and able to contribute broadly.
Mathias co-founded two companies in the developer tools space, both of which enjoyed successful exits. At Travis CI, he transitioned from a co-founding engineering role to a managerial one, eventually assuming the position of CEO. His focus shifted from building excellent products to creating organisations that build excellent products. Debugging has remained one of his most useful skills throughout this journey, but now he applies it to coaching co-founders and CTOs in their organisations.
Mathias has extensive experience in building distributed organisations across the globe, making him a proficient leader and builder of truly remote teams. He strongly believes in sharing these experiences to aid others in their journeys.
In the mentor sessions with Mathias, he shared his insights and experiences, offering valuable guidance on effective leadership, building nurturing cultures, and maintaining organisational agility amidst rapid growth. His unique perspective, stemming from his engineering background and subsequent transition into leadership, provided a nuanced understanding of both the technical and human elements of our roles. His advice was pragmatic, actionable, and deeply resonated with many of the challenges we face as tech leaders.
Through his mentoring, we were inspired to see our challenges not as obstacles but as opportunities for growth and learning. The insights from these sessions with Mathias greatly enriched the knowledge we gained from the LeadDev Conference. These lessons will certainly play a big role in shaping my approach to leadership in the future.
Takeaways: Five Key Points to Enhancing Leadership
Embrace the Human Element
Many talks, from cultural post-mortems to compassionate on-call and managing team health after layoffs, highlighted the importance of the human element in technical leadership. Emphasising empathy, understanding, and compassion as much as technical expertise is crucial in forming a cohesive, motivated, and high-performing team.
Promote Inclusivity and Diversity
Sessions like “Building for the Underserved” and “Creating Inclusive Career Ladders” remind us of the importance of inclusivity and diversity in the tech industry. As leaders, we should strive to create an environment where diverse perspectives are welcomed and where everyone feels seen, heard, and valued.
Focus on Value Delivery
From unleashing feature flags to questioning where we’re going wrong with developer productivity, the conference emphasised the shift from ‘doing’ to ‘delivering value’. As leaders, it’s our role to ensure that we’re providing real value to our customers and stakeholders, rather than just focusing on the volume of output.
Navigate Change Gracefully
Sessions like “Red 2.0” and “Managing at the Threshold” stressed the importance of adaptability in times of change. Whether it’s company transformations or industry evolution, the ability to guide our teams through change with a clear vision and communication is a mark of effective leadership.
Encourage Continuous Learning and Improvement
Whether it’s learning from failures, improving on-call workflows with atomic habits, or exploring new areas like AI in tech leadership, the conference emphasised the importance of continuous learning and improvement. As leaders, fostering a culture of curiosity, learning, and innovation can help our teams stay relevant, motivated, and effective in the ever-evolving tech industry.
Conclusion
This year’s LeadDev Conference was a tremendous learning experience, filled with tangible strategies and inspiring stories. I look forward to applying these insights and hope my reflections inspire others on their leadership journey. Until the next conference!
