Techsgiving

We just discussed this literally with the group here at eHeads 14. So I suggest you come. I took three main takeaways for underperforming team members.

The first one is to get upward communication moving: from the underperforming team member towards you. Ask them what's going on. Are you dealing with something personal? Something financial? What do you need? Do you need mentoring?

The second is that you also have to get downward communication moving: from the company. What can the company do? How do you champion their case to the rest of the company? Let's get mentoring for this. Let's get training. Maybe they're struggling with their roles. That's something the company can help with, and you can help champion that cause.

The third thing is to keep things actionable. If you nail down exactly why they're underperforming, say there are three things they have to improve on, take an actionable point for each. Let's say we meet every week. This time next week, I want you to do X, Y, Z that addresses one of those three points. The next week, we address the second one. The next week, the third. They get an actionable plan they can take away and work on themselves.

The way I encourage people to be collaborative in a hybrid or remote setup is to have open communication. We have a huddle where my team members can join and have a discussion with their peers. You can just jump into a call and invite someone to a discussion. If someone needs help, they can join that meeting any time.

And of course, there's still something really important when it comes to people meeting up once a week. That helps build up camaraderie between engineers, or members of your squad. They can have lunch together. That also helps bring people closer in your team.

Scope creep is very common in the startup space, and priorities shift, because in a fast-paced environment like a startup, we should be adaptable to changes. For managing a team, initially we need to really set expectations first. Eventually it becomes a culture for the whole team to adjust and adapt to different priorities and changes as the business improves. At the end of the day, we need to produce a sellable product.

Blogs: I follow popular engineering blogs, like Netflix's. And also curiosity. If you love solving problems and staying relevant on how to solve those problems, by exploring and mentoring your juniors, they also follow the same. Those are the practices I follow personally: on my own time, trying out new things, and solving the same kinds of problems we have at the company by applying what I read or watch on the internet. And then sharing it with them: "Hey, this might be a good idea to try, and maybe you can do it on your own too." That's how I stay updated with the latest trends in technology, especially in this new age.

Staying updated with all the upcoming technologies and frameworks, as an individual developer and as a team, is something we found a fun way to stay on top of. My team, actually multiple teams, we don't stop talking about the technologies we work with. There are a lot of times where we take even just 30 minutes out of a random Tuesday and we just talk about the things that we've learned, or the things we're working on that are new or unfamiliar to us or to others on the team. It's a not-so-properly-scheduled time where everyone shares learnings with each other, and why they work for the use cases the situation calls for.

It's just a simple "Hey, what did you learn? I learned this. This is great for doing this or that." And the best case is when a teammate comes back and says, "Remember that technology you told me about? We're using it now. I brought it up with my team, and it's been working great so far." That's how we stay on top of new and upcoming technologies.