It’s been almost nine months since my last blog entry. I’ve never been a prolific writer as you can see this in the gaps between posts. I think I’ve found the reason why. Recently I came across the article Speed Matters by James Somers. Right there, in the second paragraph of the article, Somers summed up exactly my relationship with this blog: “If every time you write a blog post it takes you six months, and you’re sitting around your apartment on a Sunday afternoon thinking of stuff to do, you’re probably not going to think of starting a blog post, because it’ll feel too expensive.

Scheduled deletion of my Facebook account. I'd recently removed it from my phone and disabled my account. #DeleteFacebook — Steve Bennett (@stevebennett) March 20, 2018 Late in March 2018 I decided to delete my Facebook account. This isn’t the first time I’d decided to do this. In 2014, as Facebook turned 10, I decided to put my own usage of the social network on pause. This didn’t last too long and only a few months later I’d decided to reactivate my account.

I’ve been spending a fair amount of time recently reworking our career paths. Our current documents are heavily based on the work by Radford, which defines 6 levels for each job family. Whilst our career path was very well defined and comprehensive, we are finding that the documentation is a little incomprehensible and causes difficulty as people try to self-assess their position on the career path. Through conversations about this, it’s clear our team members want something simpler against which they could measure their progress and plan their development.

I believe that one of the most powerful things you can do as a leader is to own your mistakes. Nobody is perfect, and therefore it’s inevitable that you will make mistakes. Often, holding a leadership or management position means that these mistakes are magnified and have a impact on many more people. So why admit your mistakes? Wouldn’t this be showing a weakness? Wouldn’t it show that your infallible? Won’t people judge you closer?

Choosing the “best tool for the job” is a mantra that many software engineers repeat when asked to explain their choice of tool, language or framework. In some cases, this choice is right, however far too many times in my career I’ve seen “best tool for the job” loosely translate to whatever was top of Hacker News this week. The unintended consequence of always choosing the “best tool for the job” is a software inventory which spans multiple languages, frameworks, build systems and deployment tooling.

I was fortunate enough to spend the last couple of days at Lead Developer 2017 in London. The conference has been described as a leadership and management conference dressed up as a technical conference. It’s one of my “must-attend” conferences of the year. There were some clear themes from the talks this year, with perhaps the strongest message coming across that as technical leads and managers it’s own responsibility to build safe, inclusive environments where people can thrive.

Part of the role of an Engineering Manager is to help others to achieve their career aspirations. However, it’s not always easy for people to articulate the direction they hope their career will take them. For some, it can be difficult to describe their ideal future role, or to answer that “where will you be in 5 years time?” question. I have struggled with this question too. I wanted to share a technique one of my previous managers used with me to uncover my aspirations.

There are few truly great places to work, therefore you should aim for a place that gives you the freedom to make it great. — Steve Bennett (@stevebennett) February 17, 2017 Early today I tweeted this, and I thought it was worth giving a little more detail as to what was underlying this pithy sound-bite. Over the last year, I’ve changed companies twice. At the start of 2016 I left eBay and started a new role with Marks and Spencer.

This is part two of my review of books I’ve read in 2016. Part One can be found here. My complete “Year in Books” can also be found on Goodreads. Continuous Delivery: Reliable Software Releases through Build, Test, and Deployment Automation by Jez Humble, David Farley 🔗Quite simply, this is a must read for any modern software engineer, or for anyone associated with building software. The nitty-gritty of implementation isn’t really covered, so don’t expect to finish the book with all the answers.

At the start of 2016, I made a resolution to read more. I managed to do this, and read more this year than I’ve been able to do in recent years. Most of my choices have been leadership or management books, or those related to sport. It’s also been mostly non-fiction. Over the coming posts, I’m going to share the books I’ve read this year, and my thoughts on them. Part one, starts below.