Lessons from Intercom on being a product engineering leader

I am finishing my time at Intercom and this post is an attempt of reflection and summary of lessons from my time there. I had a privilege to work there for 6 years, across 3 roles, in 3 product groups, with tens of unique, talented and engaged folks. There is...

Turning around a group of teams

At the beginning of this year as Intercom was going through a reorg, I took on leadership of a group of teams standing on shaky ground. We had experienced layoffs, endured challenging quarters, and accumulated multifaceted debt—product, personnel, and technology. Addressing such complex issues without being hands-on or without deep...

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The power of peer coaching for engineering managers

In a fast-paced environment of software today, it’s crucial for engineering managers to continually improve their skills and seek support to grow in their roles. While traditional coaching by your manager and mentoring have their merits, there’s a powerful tool that often goes untapped: peer coaching within your team of...

Software documentation in growing companies

Maintaining functional and correct architecture documentation for your product is basically an unsolved problem. There are companies where this is critical and rooted in compliance regulations - like aviation - and they do it right, but at a high cost. Architecture documentation is quickly outdated, and in fast-growing companies, the...

Learnings from Nonviolent Communication

I just finished reading Nonviolent Communication by Marshall Rosenberg. From the very beginning, I had this feeling that I should have read it a few years ago. I am so impressed by its simplicity in comparison to the value it brings that I decided to write a few minutes...

7 lessons on being Group Engineering Manager

Everyone knows this common mantra - when you start being an Engineering Manager, you are a junior and need to learn everything from scratch. I believe that’s very similar when you start managing managers - either by being Group Engineering Manager or Director of Engineering. You bring years of experience...

What is Principal Engineer role?

A principal engineer usually means one of the most experienced individual contributors in the organisation. It’s an ultimate step in the engineer career ladder that gives great recognition for folks in that role but also the highest expectations for their performance. Being principal engineer is not an easy task and...

Changing a manager as Engineering Manager

I changed managers recently. The reorganisation in my org slightly changed the north star vision for my group and also changed which engineering director is my manager. I totally underestimated how much energy it will cost and decided to write down the observations and lessons to be better prepared next...

Top 10 books for every software engineering manager

When I moved into the management world from being a software engineer, I quickly realised two huge surprises that I wasn’t expecting. First, the length of the feedback cycle is measured in months instead of minutes. I can’t run the code against my tests and check if my management decisions...

Tips on managing team with long running pressure or incident

A few months ago, I was involved in one of the longest-running incidents we ever had at Intercom. Even though I wasn’t involved in managing or leading the work to mitigate the incident, I was people manager for a few folks from the core team and learned a few lessons...