Getting Started

Technology changes extremely rapidly. Your role may be changing in size and scope. As a technical leader, you need to rapidly make decisions regarding technical topics, and then convince people to follow along.

How will you keep up and lead effectively through all of this change?

This site is based on the premise that truly new concepts are rare: we build upon the foundations of the past. Thus, the better grounded you are in these foundations, the more effectively you can flex to accommodate new changes.

It’s perhaps obvious that technical skills are needed for our jobs. But often, the many complex abstractions we’ve built over the decades obscure the fundamentals. We can operate at the level of React components, maybe without as deep an appreciation for how a browser renders HTML. We can write SQL queries, maybe without understanding how the database plans to execute that query. Periodically refreshing this knowledge can help you understand new areas quickly, ask better questions, and make more informed decisions.

Similarly, in the practice of leadership and management, we need to inspire and persuade our directs, our peers, and our bosses. Our skills in this areas are often intuitive. We’ve been reasonably successful to date, but maybe lack principles or tools to adapt … as teams become more cross-functional and distributed, as projects become more complex.

By making use of this site, you’ll develop a strong mental model of how to work with people and technology, with the practical skills to make use of that knowledge.

Learning is not linear. It is iterative and works best when you are an active participant. Draw maps! Take notes! Work examples and problems! Relate what you are reading and doing in the content here to your day-to-day work.

Here are some places you can start.

Dive deeper into a technical area
Explore some people leadership principles
Pick something from our general catalog of resources