Fifteen years leading small and mid-sized technical teams

I started my leadership journey in my mid-twenties, first as a martial arts instructor. Now, you might not think teaching martial arts would prepare me for leading corporate teams, but you would be wrong. I promise you trying to wrangle a group of rambunctious children is much harder than organizing adults. It also taught me that you can’t fake energy or enthusiasm. Of course, I made lots of mistakes along the way, but I used those as learning opportunities to improve skills.

My corporate career started back in 1999, where I spent many years as a software developer. I had graduated college with a major in History and a minor in Geography, which did little to prepare me for the world of programming, so most of that was self-taught. Over the years I learned that, while I enjoyed coding, my true passion was leadership. I went from being a software architect to managing software development and QA teams. Later in my career, I became the Director of Global DevOps and eventually the Director of Cloud Operations.

Along the way, I learned so many things about leadership, including the fact that sometimes conventional wisdom is… well, not very wise. I discovered a set of habits, tactics, and even tricks that proved effective in building and leading teams. Now I want share that knowledge with others.