Diversity, specific feedback, and performance axes 💡
Monday Ideas — Edition #163
1) 📑 Knowledge will always live on multiple tools
This idea is brought to you by today’s sponsor, Unblocked!
A couple of weeks ago we wrote a full article with the guys at Unblocked about how AI is changing engineering documentation.
There we documented (pun intended) many emerging workflows, discussed which docs are becoming more important, and which instead we’ll probably never write anymore.
One thing is clear, though: knowledge will always be scattered across multiple tools:
Tickets live in project management tools — like Linear or Jira.
Ephemeral chats live on Slack or Teams.
Code and system docs live in repos.
Goals and principles may live in separate wikis, like Notion or Confluence.
Each tool has its own strengths, and we are always going to use many at the same time, but this doesn’t mean we can’t use AI as a horizontal layer that helps navigate through it all.
This is where Unblocked shines. It connects to all of your tools so it answers your questions by fetching info from everywhere — Notion, Github, GDocs, Linear, Slack, you name it.
Also, it’s 100% plug and play: you don’t need to change anything in your workflows, and it immediately brings value.
You can find the full article here, and you can learn more about Unblocked below 👇
2) 🤝 Diverse teams are better teams
One of the ugliest trends in our industry in recent years is the pushback on the value of diversity in engineering teams.
What is diversity in a team? People immediately think about genders and ethnicities, but it’s about much more:
It’s people from different levels (juniors & seniors)
It’s different age groups
It’s introverts vs extroverts
It’s people with kids vs no kids
It’s movie guys vs TV show guys
Diverse just means having people around that are different from you. That think differently from you. This is valuable because we all have biases and blind spots — and the more similar we are, the more likely it is that we have the same ones.
In a diverse team, people hold each other to higher standards. This is absolutely obvious to anyone who has been lucky to work on a team like that, but it’s (somewhat understandably) hard to grasp for those who have not.
To many, this looks like a moral argument — but it is a very practical one.
The most effective argument in favor of diverse teams is not some ethical obligation that companies should match the composition of society—that’s at least debatable—is that diversity makes for better teams, full stop.
So how diverse should your team be?
Your team exists to serve your users, so my rule of thumb, which I stole from Dana, is that you want a team whose composition at least reflects that of your community of users. You create better products by better relating to your users.
Do you serve a global, diverse community of people? The best way to serve their needs is to craft a team that reflects that. Which is just common sense.
I wrote more about hiring principles for engineering teams in this recent piece 👇
3) 📣 Good feedback is always specific
Kim Scott has seen it all.
She led teams at Google, coached Twitter and Dropbox CEOs, managed a pediatric clinic in Kosovo, and started a diamond-cutting factory in Moscow.
She spent a lifetime managing the most diverse people and leading them to success. Later, she wrote about her learnings in one of the world’s most popular books about management and feedback: Radical Candor.
Kim breaks feedback into four quadrants. On the horizontal axis you have unclear to clear feedback, and on the vertical you have negative to positive.
One of the best insights in the book is that feedback, whether positive or negative, always needs to be clear and specific. Otherwise, it sets up our reports for failure.
Softening negative feedback is human — we want to avoid adding even more pressure on our teammates. Cruel empathy, though, doesn’t give them the tools to do things differently. It dampens their growth.
Unclear positive feedback is equally ineffective. Simply saying “you are doing a great job” doesn’t cut it, because it doesn’t bring any learning. In the worst case, it feels artificial and a way to balance the bad one.
So how can you give feedback that is clear and kind, even when it might not be nice? We covered this in an evergreen article from a few years ago 👇
4) 📊 The four axes of engineering performance
Performance management is a nuanced topic that can get more or less complicated based on the scale and growth stage of your company.
There is an almost infinite level of depth we can get into by talking about performance reviews, career frameworks, compensation, up to succession plans for critical roles.
About engineering performance, I particularly like Gusto’s simple approach, which takes care of four axes, and is a great starting point for small to medium-sized companies:
🗃️ Project — the direct impact you or your team (if a manager) have on deliverables. It's best described in terms of customer behavior changes (e.g., increased product usage, higher NPS) or learnings that influence product direction.
🔨 Engineering — improvements in systems that boost engineer effectiveness. It includes reducing test time, error rates, or new hire ramp time. Its importance grows with seniority due to the broader expected impact on the overall system.
🪴 People — enhancing team efficiency and health through things like hiring, mentoring, providing feedback, and code reviews. Metrics for People impact include team engagement, effective hiring, team health, and qualitative feedback from team members and peers.
🏢 Organization — improving the overall health of the organization. Examples include enhancing the hiring process through new interview questions or rubrics, driving diversity programs, and representing the company at external events.
I wrote more about calibration in two previous pieces:
🏅 Performance Reviews — a first-principles approach to performance management + a practical workflow + wild ideas from successful companies.
🪜 Career Frameworks — what they are useful for, how to use them, and the various styles and examples.
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I wish you a great week! ☀️
Luca