The Rocks in the River
AI is doing to software what Toyota did to manufacturing: pulling out the buffer that let every broken process hide. The rocks are coming up. That's the point.
Gergely Nemeth on engineering leadership, web and open-source
Hey! My name is Gergely, and this is where I write about engineering management and open-source.
Latest posts
Echoes
Managing managers means you're accountable for outcomes you can't directly observe. Here's what I learned about building systems that make surprises rare and recoverable.
Faster Pipelines, Emptier Benches
AI tools are automating the work that once grew junior engineers into senior ones. If we lose the mentorship layer, we'll have faster pipelines and emptier benches.
Managing Through Reorganizations
How to communicate reorganizations effectively: lead with direct conversations, own the narrative, and remember that how you treat people during change matters the most.
Growing Engineering Managers
Growing engineering managers takes months (if not years) of intentional work—career conversations, shared reading, real apprenticeship—before they're ready for the role.
The Engineering Manager Interview
Why do experienced managers struggle to answer simple questions about their work? What I learned from hundreds of interviews about self-reflection.
The Future is Now
Generative AI in Support of Developer Experience
ChatGPT on Managing Humans
A quick and fun exploration into what ChatGPT thinks about managing humans
How to Provide Feedback
My take on providing feedback, and a list of techniques that worked well for me in the past.
6 Tips For Your Performance Reviews
Tips to get the most out of your performance reviews to help your professional growth.
On-calls and Incident Response
A quick overview on how to set up on-call rotations, on-call playbooks, as well as how to handle incident response and post-mortems.
Team Charters
Team charters are living documents that align team members to a common goal, and inform the organization where they can be most effective.
On Releasing Major Software Versions
As software engineers, the goal is always to improve the quality of the software we help develop, especially if other engineers are depending on this quality to complete their own projects. However, these improvements come with a price.
Mentoring First-Time Managers
Transitioning from a software engineering position to a managerial one can be quite a leap. This article offers a few practical tips you can follow to help new engineering managers succeed.
The Truth Behind Employee Pulse Surveys
Employee Pulse or Satisfaction Survey gives you some metrics on how your organization does in certain areas. To make improvements, you have to dig deeper and get to the truth behind these numbers.
Better Quarterly Plannings
This article is an attempt in providing a framework for engineering and product teams to reduce the inherent friction and the time required to complete planning cycles.
The Tyranny of Metrics
There seems to be a growing trend in technology--and in all aspects of our lives, really--to measure everything: business outcomes, organizational success, and individual performance. But does it improve our lives?
Coach! Football is life.
Ted Lasso is one series we all need in 2020. It reminds us that kindness, being nice to each other, can make a difference and what good leadership is like
6 Quick Tips to Build Your Blog From Scratch
Modern web development came a long way. This article is a summary of how you can build your blog using React, Next.js and Base Web.
Playbook for Running Sprints
A primer on running efficient sprints
Engineering Productivity: Measure What Matters
Measuring engineering productivity should be focused on outcomes and not outputs. This article provides a few ideas on how to go about it on the company, team and individual levels.
The Quest to Take Your Time Back
An article that contains small tips and practices that I've been following for years and helped me regain some of my time
Announcing a 1:1 Question Collection Chrome Extension
The Manager 1:1 Questions extension tries to provide you questions that you can use as conversation starters or dive deep on different topics
Manager's Club Interview on Engineering-Management
With Vidal Graupera, we've dived into engineering managment, and my background in it.
The Whats and Hows of Meaningful 1:1s
Most managers have 1:1s with their team members - hopefully, this article helps you get the most out of yours!
Lessons Learned from Working on a Design System as an Engineering Manager
Lessons learned from working on Base Web, Uber's new extensible design system architecture
Engineering-Management Books of the Trade
Engineering-management books that help you become the manager you’ve always wished to have
Coding as an Engineering Manager
Coding as an engineering manager can challenging - this article helps you find the opportunities to do so
Deploying Applications Using Kubernetes
By 2017, 71% of us were using Kubernetes. This article helps you master Kubernetes, so you can deploy applications with confidence.
You Might Not Need Homebrew
Instead of Homebrew, Docker may be just fine
Using Skaffold and LocalStack to Develop Cloud Applications Locally
This article helps you set up your local environment, so you can develop against AWS services locally, without provisioning any resources in the cloud
The State of Node.js Security - April, 2018
A quick update on Node.js Security - npm acquires the Node.js security project, npm 6 ships with `npm audit`
Using Kubernetes for Local Development
This article walks you through how you can develop an application locally using Kubernetes
Learning Go as a Node.js Developer
With Docker and Kubernetes Go got quite some traction - it’s time to learn it!
Building Secure JavaScript Applications
Tips and best practices on how to build secure JavaScript applications
Node.js Best Practices - How to become a better Node.js developer in 2018
A list of guides / best practices, which if you follow, you may become a better Node.js developer in 2018
Health Checks and Graceful Shutdown for Node.js Applications
Terminus adds graceful shutdown and health checks for your applications
How to handle errors in Express
On creating a unified error handling logic for your Express applications
Browser automation revisited - meet Puppeteer
Puppeteer is a Node library which provides an API to control headless Chrome over the DevTools Protocol.
What's new in Node.js 9?
Node.js 8 became the LTS version on 31 October 2017, and Node.js 9 became the current Node.js version
Node.js Async Function Best Practices
Mastering async functions in Node.js - error handling, parallel execution and complex control flows
Node.js Security Overview
A look at where we are with Node.js security, and what you can do to keep your customer's data safe
Using GitHub for comments on your blog
A free Disqus alternative using GitHub comments, mainly for blogs with developer audiences
A New Chapter
On leaving RisingStack, and starting at GoDaddy on 2 October