Kind Engineering
I was reading The Staff Engineer's Path, when I stumbled upon the link to this article in the book. This is probably one of the finest writing I have come across in a long time (probably because I can resonate with almost all the stuff mentioned in there).
Summary
Honesty
- Be kind not just nice.
- Care about the people you work with and share more than just your work self.
- Be more than “just professional” and bring your rounded self to work.
- Be open about your life and be human to help build trust.
- Challenge people directly but care personally.
- White lies aren’t evil but they don’t help people grow.
- Be honest, praise good work and give clear ways to improve.
Code Reviews
- Try to understand more of the Why of a change, and not just the What and the How.
- Don’t assume malice or ineptitude. Assume you might be missing something and ask for clarification rather than correction
- Ask open-ended questions instead of making strong or opinionated statements.
- It’s important when calling out a nitpick that it’s clearly labelled.
- A lot of nitpicks may suggest a larger problem with your tooling.
- If there are a lot of comments, try and switch to a synchronous form of communication.
Safety
- Be the first to ask for feedback from your team/peers.
- A really simple structure of feedback is: What went well? What went badly? What can we do again in the future?
Be Inclusive
- Be open and aware of people’s backgrounds, history and personal preferences.
- Keep an eye out for people who maybe don't contribute as much in meetings or in documents and try to find ways to give them a voice.
- Give people a voice by letting them express themselves in whatever format they feel is right.
No Blame
- Often an individual failure is actually a failure of either process, environment or workflows.
- We succeed together, we fail together.
Handling Failure
- Every “failure” or incident should be celebrated as an opportunity to grow and learn.
- To promote innovation, we need to encourage people to take risks and experiment - and feel safe doing it.
Feedback and Criticism
- Be the first to ask for criticism, don’t start by dishing it out.
- Don’t make it personal.
- When giving feedback/praise, try to be as specific and thorough as possible.
- If you give someone critical feedback, try to also offer a solution.
Receiving
- Understand your own feedback preferences.
- Listen, understand and then Thank the person for the feedback.
- Don’t react in the moment, take some time to gather your thoughts and process the feedback.
- Ask for clarifications and/or examples.
Giving
- Remember the 3 elements of giving feedback: emotion, credibility and logic.
- Take the listener’s emotions into account, not your own.
- Demonstrate expertise and humility.
- Show your work and how you reached the conclusion.