James Shore

JANUARY 10, 2025

This is a talk about what you do, as VP of Engineering, when somebody asks for the impossible. Its not about literally being the best product engineering org in the world. If you did this exercise with your leadership team, youd probably get different answers. Our engineering managers are at the forefront of that effort.

Engineering 141

Engineering Software Review Weak Development Team Agile 141

Honeycomb

AUGUST 19, 2022

Or, the small crisis with engineering management. In 2018, Honeycomb co-founder & CTO Charity Majors wrote a blog post titled, “An Engineer’s Bill of Rights (and Responsibilities).” These constraints incentivized managers to think hard about how to retain and grow their best senior engineers. This is good.

Engineering 145

Engineering Part-Time VPE CTO Coach Engineering Management 145

Gitprime

SEPTEMBER 30, 2019

Saminda Wijegunawardena , VP of Engineering at Box, calls this increasing distance “abstraction.” Therefore, empathy truly is within a manager’s domain. This role doesn’t change whether an engineering org is 5, 500, or 5000 strong. Those are opportunities you can create to stretch engineers,” he says.

Part-Time VPE 45

Part-Time VPE Fractional VPE Weak Development Team Culture 45

Gitprime

DECEMBER 31, 2018

GitPrime elevates engineering leadership with objective data. In this interview series, Engineering Leaders talk about how to build high performing teams. Johnathan Nightingale has seen first-hand how powerful a solid management structure can be for growing organizations. “We What are we doing as a business?

Engineering Management 40

Engineering Management Engineering Organization Part-Time VPE 40

Gitprime

MAY 30, 2019

Mailchimp’s engineering team is about 350 people, both distributed and remote, across the United States. Katie Womersley , VP of Engineering at Buffer. Buffer has a fully distributed engineering team—no home base, no hub, no offices. The engineering org is 35 people worldwide, covering nearly every time zone.

Engineering 75

Engineering Weak Development Team Part-Time VPE Technical Advisors 75

James Shore

OCTOBER 15, 2020

Here’s an example of how manager buy-in works in a complex situation, drawn from my experience as a consultant. I was originally approached by an engineering manager at a company with several hundred engineers and about 45 software teams. The manager was looking for someone to lead a small team.

Agile 103

Agile How To Weak Development Team Part-Time VPE 103

James Shore

DECEMBER 4, 2020

Large changes—those that directly impact more than 30-70 people—require professional change management. Depending on the size of your organization, your HR department may have change management experts on staff who can help. If not, you can hire consultants. The VP liked what I had to say. We spoke two weeks later.

Agile 94

Agile Weak Development Team Part-Time VPE Coaching 94