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Monday 3-2-1 – timeboxing tasks, onboarding buddies, coaching 💡
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💡 Monday 3-2-1

Monday 3-2-1 – timeboxing tasks, onboarding buddies, coaching 💡

Edition #29

Luca Rossi
Dec 19, 2022
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Hey, Luca here 👋 welcome to the Monday 3-2-1 ✨

Every Monday I will send you an email like this with 3 short ideas about engineering management, technical strategy, and good hiring.

You will also receive the regular long-form one on Thursday, like the last one:

  • AI & The Future of Coding 🤖

To receive all the full articles and support Refactoring, consider subscribing if you haven’t already!

Become a better tech leader today ✨

p.s. you can learn more about the benefits of the paid plan here.



1) ⏱️ Calendar & Timeboxing

When it comes to planning everyday tasks, I do two main things:

  • 🗓️ I put tasks on my calendar, using Akiflow. Akiflow is hands-down the best calendar app I have ever used.

  • 🍅 I work in batches of 25 min + 5 minutes of rest, following the pomodoro technique. I do this with a small app called BeFocused (mac only).

This combination of calendar + pomodoros has been very effective for me. Here is how:

  • Calendar — putting tasks on my calendar helps me with motivation and getting into a state of flow. Having my day fully organized removes the friction of thinking what to do next.

  • Time-boxing — the pomodoro technique helps me stay productive during the day. By keeping regular pauses I feel I can better manage my energy so I never really burn-out. Also, it helps me measure my productivity: my output has become the number of pomodoros I can do every day (usually around 12).

My experience with and without pomodoros

More about tools I use everyday 👇

Refactoring
My Tool Stack 🧰
Read more
a year ago · 13 likes · Luca Rossi

2) ❓ Coaching is about questions

Mentorship is about answers, Coaching is about questions.

Quoting Robert Blakemore, coaching is:

a partnership that helps the individual work out what they need to do themselves to improve and, in the process, what motivates them and what gets in their way (attitudes, prejudices, preconceptions, assumptions)

Coaching does not provide any direct solution — but rather helps the individual to find solutions themselves. To do so, the coach should ask questions in a way that is authentically curious and not judgemental.

Here is a great list by Lara Hogan that shows how you can turn "regular", sometimes judgy questions into open, psychologically safe ones 👇

I wrote more about coaches, mentors, and sponsors in a previous article 👇

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People who make you grow 🌱
Read more
a year ago · 6 likes · 6 comments · Luca Rossi

3) 👯 Onboarding buddies

Some call them buddies, Wework calls them Onboarding Champions, Robinhood calls them Onboarding Mentors. The point is simple: having someone accountable for the onboarding process of a new hire.

This is opposed to the common strategy of having the training done by multiple people, each about their own domain. A dedicated person to run everything, instead, has many advantages:

  • 👑 Go-to person — new hires don’t know how the company works and who is responsible for what. It is reassuring to know who to reach out to for any issue or question, without having to figure it out by themselves.

  • ✨ Cover the intangibles — the onboarding is also made of cultural and personal moments, like meeting and greeting co-workers, or having lunch together. Buddies make sure these don’t fall through the cracks.

  • 🌱 Growth opportunity — people are generally happy to mentor new hires. You can consider it part of their growth, and also a rite of passage among engineers — a sign that you are now a full, trusted part of the team.

The buddy / onboarding manager doesn’t need to be the same person as the new hire’s manager. It might be even helpful to separate these roles and have people who are appointed to onboarding duties.

More tips about onboarding engineers 👇

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How to Onboard Engineers 🎒
Read more
a year ago · 27 likes · 2 comments · Luca Rossi

🏅 Join the Refactoring Talent Club

If you’re looking for a new gig, join to get personalized opportunities from hand-selected companies. You can join publicly or anonymously, and leave anytime.

Apply now ✨

If you’re hiring, join the Refactoring Talent Club to start getting bi-monthly drops of world-class hand-curated Engineering people who are open to new opportunities.


And that’s it for today! If you are finding this newsletter valuable, consider doing any of these:

1) ✉️ Subscribe to the newsletter — if you aren’t already, consider becoming a paid subscriber. You can learn more about the benefits of the paid plan here.

Get full access to Refactoring today ✨

2) ❤️ Share it — Refactoring lives thanks to word of mouth. Share the article with your team or with someone to whom it might be useful!

Share

I wish you a great week! ☀️

Luca

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