There are various definitions surrounding the role of a Delivery Lead (DL) within the tech industry. The role of a DL is versatile and requires the ability to shapeshift to wear many hats confidently. Essential to the role are the abilities to skillfully steward stakeholders and development teams, lead strategy and project management, own the […] The post Steward, Strategist,…
#leadership
12 posts
1 Mar
25 Feb
The first time you realize you’re a safe leader, it feels like a victory. People tell you the truth sooner. They admit mistakes instead of hiding them. They bring you the messy thing instead of the polished story. The team takes more calculated risks, and the work gets better. If you care deeply about people — and if you’re reading…
28 Jan
Engineering VP Josh Clemm deep-dives into how we think about knowledge graphs, indexes, MCP, and prompt optimization using tools like DSPy.
10 Feb 2025
Leading while learning Why great managers don’t have all the answers I used to think leaders had to have all the right answers. Now I know that the best ones have all the right questions. Early in my career, I admired managers who seemed to have everything figured out. They spoke with certainty, made quick decisions, and never hesitated. I…
30 Aug 2024
Good leaders absorb risk to optimize learning rate, unblock teams, and break through indecision. A well-functioning team applies this fractally.
31 Jul 2024
All software is built atop a core set of assumptions. As new code is added and new use-cases emerge, software can become unmoored from those assumptions. When this happens, a fundamental tension arises between revisiting those foundational assumptions—which usually entails a lot of work—or trying to support new behavior atop the existing architecture. The latter…
21 Feb 2024
I have now been a Software Engineering Team Lead on the BBC Sounds mobile apps team for 4 years. So what have I learned from this once-daunting, now-familiar role? Leadership does not mean telling people what to do. Mother Goose is holding back here and letting the baby gosling stride confidently ahead Before working at the BBC, I thought a…
8 Aug 2023
Separate social, info-sharing, and decision-making meetings. Effective meetings require a process owner, agenda, preread, and curated attendees.
26 Jul 2023
Customer-first: Moving from Hero Engineering to Reliability Engineering From the beginning, Slack has always had a strong focus on the customer experience, and customer love is one of our core values. Slack has grown from a small team to thousands of employees over the years and this customer love has always included a focus on…
3 Feb 2023
Define the problem in own terms, take perspectives, validate signal, decide when to decide, and execute.
3 Oct 2022
Internships are a great opportunity for companies to invest in great talent and train future engineers. It is important to prepare a good mentorship plan for the interns, so that they make the best use of their time and acquire experiences that will help make them full-time employees in the future. The first step is…
3 Aug 2022
Leadership without management: the what, the how, the tools, and how to measure success as a Principal+ engineer.