I originally published this article in Dec 11, 2025. I had been thinking about what it means to lead a team for awhile now.

2025 was the first time I became a people manager. I always assumed that I was not suited to be a people manager. That assumption led me to prefer being an individual contributor. I still prefer to stay as an individual contributor, but I am no longer opposed to being a people manager.

1. I believe that my primary goal when leading a team is to optimise for my team’s learning. If I have optimised for my team’s learning, anything else (delivering a product) is a side effect. Don’t get me wrong, the side effect is the entire reason we get paid as software engineers.
2. Regular interactions drive the growth of the engineers under my care. These regular interactions happen in weekly 1:1s, code reviews, architectural discussions, over lunch and whatnot.
3. Psychological safety is the foundation of growth for my team. Psychological safety is a result of making sure that an engineer has their personal life sorted, a comfortable working environment, feels included in the team, has some downtime for reflection, and an avenue to express their hopes and frustrations. We all need to vent once in awhile.
4. The only thing I can ask of an engineer is to strive to do good work.
5. Seniority is defined by scope of work. We can tell if an engineer has grown when they start out working on a small component in a service and then graduate to working on an entire module in a service.
6. It is very important that the team celebrates victories often. We shipped a feature on time? We’re gonna get some snacks to celebrate!
7. A good whiteboard and a set of nice whiteboard markers is one of the best investments you can make for a team (hot take: even better than a Claude Pro subscription). I bought a set of Pilot V Board Master markers and brought it with me around the office. You’ll see that set of markers in every discussion we have now.
8. Always be leaving. Man, this is hard. I’m still working on it.