Research-Driven Engineering Leadership

Research-Driven Engineering Leadership is a newsletter that utilizes research to explore critical issues in engineering leadership, with a focus on improving engineer effectiveness, leadership strategies, communication, collaboration, and onboarding practices. It provides research-backed insights and practical recommendations for enhancing team performance and leadership within engineering contexts.

Technical Debt Goal Setting and OKRs Productivity and Developer Interruptions Team Communication Task Significance User-Centric Engineering Remote Work Best Practices Tool Adoption Developer Satisfaction Bug Fixing Approaches Cultural Fit Agile Development Contributions Sense of Belonging Engineering Management Meetings in Global Teams Non-Technical Productivity Factors Gratitude in Teams Onboarding Hackathon Team Formation Team Diversity Developer Happiness Conversations with ChatGPT Software Documentation Measuring Productivity Remotely Onboarding Engineers Work Burnout AI in Recruitment AI-Assisted Coding Imposter Syndrome

The hottest Substack posts of Research-Driven Engineering Leadership

And their main takeaways

RDEL #24: How does technical debt impact software engineering morale?

119 implied HN points • 08 Jan 24
🕹 Technology Software Engineering Technical Debt Productivity Engineering Leadership Research
  1. Technical debt negatively impacts developers' morale by reducing their confidence and hindering their progress
  2. Proper management of technical debt can have a positive influence on developers' morale as it is associated with progress and gratitude
  3. Dealing with technical debt thoughtfully and having a plan to repay it frequently can help minimize its negative impacts on engineering teams

RDEL #25: How can engineering managers improve the OKR and goal setting process?

99 implied HN points • 15 Jan 24
💼 Business Management Teamwork Strategy Communication Data
  1. Improving the OKR process can enhance team development by focusing on effective goal setting methods.
  2. Investing in data quality and transparency and promoting communication can address challenges in working with others and ensuring alignment on goals.
  3. Striving for consistency, promoting learning communities, and guiding teams in OKR implementation can lead to successful adoption and use of OKRs across the organization.

RDEL #42: How does developer satisfaction lead to improved productivity?

19 implied HN points • 13 May 24
💼 Business Productivity Research Work Culture Leadership Employee Satisfaction
  1. Empowerment is key: Giving engineers more control over their work leads to higher productivity and job satisfaction.
  2. Promote continuous learning: Encouraging ongoing learning and development increases adaptability and productivity.
  3. Ensure engineers feel valued: When engineers feel their contributions are important, it results in higher-quality outcomes.

RDEL #28: What type of interruptions impact developer productivity most?

39 implied HN points • 05 Feb 24
🕹 Technology Productivity Software Engineering Research Developer Tools
  1. Self-interruptions (voluntary task-switching) are more disruptive for developers than external interruptions.
  2. Contextual factors like interruption type (self vs external) and time of day have a stronger impact on disruption than task-specific factors like priority.
  3. Developers are more vulnerable to task-switching and interruptions when switching between programming and testing tasks compared to other development tasks.

RDEL #37: What drives sense of belonging on software teams?

19 implied HN points • 08 Apr 24
💼 Business Team Dynamics Leadership Work Culture Employee performance
  1. Teams with a strong sense of belonging are more effective and deliver more value due to better communication, trust, and a supportive environment for experimentation.
  2. Factors such as psychological safety and work appreciation positively impact the sense of belonging on software teams.
  3. For managers, recognizing and appreciating team efforts significantly influences the sense of belonging and overall team productivity.
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RDEL #34: How do developers adopt new tools? (with Monica Bajaj, VP Developer Experience at Okta)

19 implied HN points • 18 Mar 24
🕹 Technology Development Tools Engineering Software Innovation
  1. Engineers build trust in tools through factors like usability, testing, documentation, support, flexibility, security, maintainability, and extensibility.
  2. Biggest challenges in tool adoption include lack of usability, cost, integrations, and organizational support.
  3. Managers can evaluate tool effectiveness by considering the effort (onboarding, adoption, integration, customization) and impact (productivity, quality, cost).

RDEL #29: Besides coding, how do software engineers contribute to the agile development process?

19 implied HN points • 12 Feb 24
🕹 Technology Engineering Agile development Software Leadership Research
  1. Software engineers in Agile development contribute beyond just coding.
  2. Non-technical tasks such as process improvement, goal setting, and meeting attendance are crucial for software engineers in Agile development.
  3. Engineers play a vital role in correctly scoping, communicating, and completing projects in Agile development processes.

RDEL #1: What’s the best way for eng teams to communicate via Slack?

39 implied HN points • 17 Jul 23
🕹 Technology Engineering Communication Remote work Research Collaboration
  1. Effective communication in engineering teams via Slack involves 'burstiness', quick and synchronous messaging followed by periods of silence.
  2. Research shows that 'bursty' communication styles correlate with higher team performance in distributed software engineering teams.
  3. To improve team 'burstiness', managers can observe current communication styles, consider time zone overlaps, and foster a culture of synchronous collaboration.

RDEL #26: What are the top challenges with meetings for globally distributed teams?

19 implied HN points • 22 Jan 24
🕹 Technology Meetings Engineering Research Software Communication
  1. Distributed teams spend somewhat more time in meetings per day than co-located teams, even though they attend the same number of scheduled meetings on average.
  2. The number of participants in a meeting can affect its perceived value, with distributed teams typically having larger meetings than co-located teams.
  3. In globally distributed teams, top challenges with meetings include low availability of key people in far-shore projects, missing meeting facilitation in virtual meetings, and lack of organizational support for unscheduled meetings.

RDEL #22: How does gratitude influence the stress levels of software engineers?

19 implied HN points • 11 Dec 23
🏥 Health & Wellness Mental health Productivity Leadership Teamwork Gratitude
  1. Gratitude has a significant negative relationship with perceived stress and fatigue in software engineers - more gratitude means less stress and fatigue.
  2. Women software engineers reported higher levels of stress and fatigue on average compared to men in the study.
  3. Showing gratitude in software engineering teams can reduce stress, increase happiness, and boost productivity - leaders should prioritize cultivating a culture of gratitude.

RDEL #19: How does user-centricity impact engineering performance?

19 implied HN points • 20 Nov 23
🕹 Technology Engineering Teams Team performance Research Leadership
  1. User-centric engineering teams lead to 40% higher organizational performance and 20% higher job satisfaction.
  2. Understanding user needs, aligning with those needs, and using user feedback for prioritization positively impacts team outcomes.
  3. User-centricity should be applied across different types of engineering teams, from product delivery to platform engineering, to improve performance.

RDEL #12: How to improve WFH for software engineers

19 implied HN points • 02 Oct 23
🕹 Technology Remote work
  1. Improving connectivity and providing better hardware are key for sustained productivity while working from home for software engineers.
  2. Consider providing stipends for internet and a WFH environment setup (hardware, ergonomic furniture) to help engineers create an office-like environment at home.
  3. Creating blocks of uninterrupted 'deep work' time and minimizing meetings can significantly boost productivity and focus for software engineers working remotely.

RDEL #10: How much does task significance improve performance?

19 implied HN points • 18 Sep 23
💼 Business Leadership Research Engineering Productivity Empathy
  1. Connecting work with impact significantly improves performance. Demonstrated impact on performance by showing employees how their work benefits others.
  2. Engineers can lose empathy for the significance of their work especially on internal-facing teams. Engineering managers must find ways to connect engineering work with the end user to boost performance.
  3. Tying engineering tasks to real outcomes for customers boosts empathy and productivity. Strategies like sharing customer feedback and shadowing customer success teams can help engineers understand the impact of their work.

RDEL #7: How does language signal cultural fit?

19 implied HN points • 28 Aug 23
💼 Business Engineering Leadership Team culture Communication Employee retention Organizational Behavior
  1. Cultural fit is crucial in engineering teams, impacting performance and tenure. It's a continuous process that can change over time.
  2. Language can signal cultural fit in teams. Monitoring language changes can offer insights into potential issues with team dynamics.
  3. Using language as a tool, leaders can detect changes in cultural fit early. This can help in supporting team members better and retaining talent.

RDEL #35: Which team formation is best for corporate hackathons?

0 implied HN points • 25 Mar 24
💼 Business Management Teamwork Innovation Research Leadership
  1. Hackathons in tech companies foster innovation, creativity, skill development, and team building among employees.
  2. Research shows that pre-existing teams focus on innovations within their regular work, while flash teams explore broader innovations and gain networking and skill development benefits.
  3. For corporate hackathons, consider using a pre-existing team when focusing on demonstrating existing skills and project sustainability, and opt for a flash team to increase networking opportunities and introduce new skills.

RDEL #8: How does nationality and team virtualization impact software teams?

0 implied HN points • 05 Sep 23
🕹 Technology Software Engineering Team Dynamics Virtualization
  1. Social dynamics are crucial for software engineering teams' productivity. Factors like team distribution and cultural diversity significantly impact how well teams work together.
  2. Teams with diverse nationalities experience fewer challenges and disagreements. Diversity leads to more acceptance of various viewpoints and procedures.
  3. Virtual teams face challenges like lack of experience due to the nature of remote work. Active efforts like creating dedicated time for team-building help reduce friction in remote collaborations.

RDEL #36: What are the most common conversations developers have with ChatGPT?

0 implied HN points • 01 Apr 24
🕹 Technology AI Software Engineering Conversations Research Productivity
  1. The most common conversations developers have with ChatGPT include code generation, conceptual questions, how-to guides, issue resolution, and code review.
  2. Developers often engage in multi-turn conversations with ChatGPT to refine or expand upon its responses.
  3. Sharing ChatGPT conversations with teammates can aid in knowledge transfer, clarification in code reviews, and issue discussions.

RDEL #20: What type of work leads to the most burnout, and how can technology help?

0 implied HN points • 27 Nov 23
🕹 Technology Burnout Engineering Teams Technology impact Research Findings Work Culture
  1. Improving employee well-being is crucial for team performance. Factors like organizational culture, stability, job security, and knowledge transfer can significantly reduce burnout.
  2. Underrepresented groups, especially women, tend to experience higher levels of burnout. They often do more repetitive work that may not be recognized or aligned with their skills.
  3. To combat burnout, teams can focus on distributing non-promotable work evenly, streamlining code writing and review processes, and prioritizing a healthy culture which leads to improved productivity.

RDEL #18: Can better documentation come at a cost for some teammates?

0 implied HN points • 13 Nov 23
🕹 Technology Documentation Team performance Job Satisfaction Burnout
  1. Improved documentation quality lifts every technical capability measured in teams.
  2. Better documentation decreases burnout and increases job satisfaction and productivity, but can lead to increased burnout for underrepresented teammates.
  3. Recognizing the importance of documentation's impact and managing distribution of 'glue work' can help improve team performance and well-being.

RDEL #6: Software Engineering Productivity: How do you measure it? (Part II)

0 implied HN points • 21 Aug 23
🕹 Technology Software Engineering Productivity Metrics Framework Research
  1. There is no single measure of productivity in software engineering; a combination of different metrics across satisfaction, performance, activity, communication/collaboration, and efficiency/flow are crucial.
  2. The SPACE framework, introduced by researchers at Microsoft in 2021, is a popular and effective way to measure developer productivity, focusing on dimensions like satisfaction, performance, activity, communication/collaboration, and efficiency/flow.
  3. When implementing the SPACE framework, start with a clear goal, choose metrics that cover diverse categories, include both system and perception metrics, conduct regular developer surveys, and engage the team to make productivity measurement a collective effort.

RDEL #4: What’s harder about remotely onboarding engineers?

0 implied HN points • 07 Aug 23
🕹 Technology Engineering Remote work Productivity Communication Onboarding
  1. Remote onboarding of engineers faces challenges in communication, collaboration, team connections, finding documentation, technical issues, and equipment permissions.
  2. New hires benefit from short remote communication sessions of less than 30 minutes, with 43.4% preferring sessions under 15 minutes for effectiveness.
  3. Efforts to improve remote onboarding should focus on assigning onboarding buddies, building team connections, and streamlining the process to enhance new engineer productivity.

What to expect from this newsletter

0 implied HN points • 07 Jul 23
💼 Business Leadership Research Engineering Productivity
  1. The newsletter focuses on a single topic in engineering leadership every Monday, covering a range of areas like engineer effectiveness, onboarding, leadership, communication, and collaboration.
  2. The content is research-backed, summarizing recent research studies that are applied to engineering teams to provide actionable tips for improvement.
  3. Readers can expect direct application of the research discussed in the newsletter to help make their engineering teams better.

RDEL #38: Does AI help or hurt gender diversity in tech hiring?

0 implied HN points • 15 Apr 24
🕹 Technology AI Diversity Research Recruitment Bias
  1. AI in recruitment can increase gender diversity in tech hiring by improving the completion rate of job applications among women.
  2. Providing AI-generated scores alongside applications can reduce gender bias in evaluations and lead to more equal assessment of male and female candidates in tech hiring.
  3. Although concerns exist about bias in AI tools, research shows that AI can outperform human bias in the hiring process, offering a promising solution to create a more diverse and qualified tech workforce.

RDEL #33: Does AI-assistance lead engineers to write more insecure code?

0 implied HN points • 11 Mar 24
🕹 Technology AI Security Programming Research Development
  1. Using AI coding assistants can lead engineers to produce less secure code compared to not using these tools.
  2. Engineers tend to overestimate the security of code generated with AI assistants, creating a false sense of security.
  3. Integrating specific security practices into the development workflow when using AI coding assistants can help uphold security standards and guidelines.

RDEL #30: How does imposter syndrome impact developer productivity?

0 implied HN points • 19 Feb 24
🕹 Technology Research Software Engineering Imposter syndrome Team Management
  1. Imposter syndrome affects software professionals significantly, with over half experiencing intense imposter feelings.
  2. Software engineers with imposter syndrome reported lower productivity across various dimensions, highlighting the negative impact on performance.
  3. Managers can help reduce imposter feelings in their team by prioritizing psychological safety, implementing mentorship programs, and addressing diversity to improve team dynamics and productivity.

RDEL #23: The most popular posts of 2023.

0 implied HN points • 18 Dec 23
💼 Business Leadership Management Productivity Diversity Teamwork
  1. The best managers create a positive work environment, foster autonomy, and help their team grow in the eyes of engineers.
  2. While better documentation improves team performance, it can contribute to burnout for underrepresented team members.
  3. There is a gender disparity in the code review process, particularly when reviews are manually assigned. Gender biases can also be present in review suggestion tools.

RDEL #17: How does your engineering team type indicate team performance?

0 implied HN points • 06 Nov 23
🕹 Technology Engineering Team performance
  1. Different types of engineering teams show different performance patterns on key performance indicators, such as software delivery performance, operational performance, and user-centricity.
  2. User-centric teams prioritize delivering user needs, leading to high organizational performance and job satisfaction, but they can be prone to burnout.
  3. Balanced teams, with a sustainable approach to technology use, show the lowest rate of burnout and enable enduring teamwork.

RDEL #16: What makes a code review useful?

0 implied HN points • 30 Oct 23
🕹 Technology Code Review Coding Engineering Research Collaboration
  1. Good code review comments can enhance a coder's skills and lead to better implementation.
  2. Certain factors like the number of iterations and author participation can impact the usefulness of code review comments.
  3. Maintaining a positive tone, having focused conversations, and keeping reviews manageable in size are key to improving the effectiveness of code reviews.

RDEL #14: How does psychological safety affect engineering teams?

0 implied HN points • 16 Oct 23
💼 Business Psychological safety Engineering Teams Team performance Innovation Research
  1. Psychological safety in teams allows for open communication without fear of reprimand, crucial for innovation and risk-taking.
  2. Team autonomy positively correlates with psychological safety, but this relationship differs based on project type and alignment.
  3. High psychological safety levels can reduce turnover and boost project performance in engineering teams, making it a key factor in team success.

RDEL #11: What is the relationship between self-reported productivity and system-measured productivity?

0 implied HN points • 25 Sep 23
🕹 Technology Productivity Software Engineering Data Analysis Research Management
  1. Combining self-reported data with system-measured data provides a more complete picture of productivity in software engineering.
  2. Long coding stretches can positively impact a developer's perception of productivity.
  3. Sharing productivity data with the team can empower engineers and improve overall productivity.

RDEL #9: Is there a gender disparity in the code review process?

0 implied HN points • 11 Sep 23
🕹 Technology Research Code Reviews Algorithms
  1. Research shows that women perform fewer code reviews than men, and there is a gender disparity in the code review process.
  2. Men and women are equally likely to complete an assigned review, but women submit slightly fewer but larger changelists.
  3. To address code review inequities, consider implementing a round-robin review process and tracking pull request distribution to promote fairness and balance in team code reviews.

RDEL #5: Software Engineering Productivity: How do you define it? (Part I)

0 implied HN points • 14 Aug 23
🕹 Technology Software Engineering Productivity Research Measurement
  1. Software engineering productivity is challenging to define due to the complexity of human input in the software development process.
  2. Productivity in software engineering involves a balance of efficiency, effectiveness, and quality.
  3. Measuring a team's productivity requires evaluating both the efficiency of input and the effectiveness (including quality) of output.

RDEL #40: Do nudges improve code review completion?

0 implied HN points • 29 Apr 24
🕹 Technology Software Development Machine Learning Productivity Tools
  1. Nudges can significantly improve code review completion times by up to 60%, resulting in positive outcomes for developers.
  2. Processes and tools like code review notification tools, equitable distribution of code reviews, and team agreements can help enhance code review speed and prevent delays.
  3. Teams should focus on reducing code review cycle times, addressing bottlenecks, and improving knowledge sharing opportunities through effective code review practices.

RDEL #32: Do return-to-office (RTO) mandates lead to better performance?

0 implied HN points • 04 Mar 24
💼 Business Research Company performance Employee Satisfaction Work-life balance Productivity
  1. Reducing flexibility by mandating a return to the office decreases employee satisfaction, work-life balance, and culture.
  2. Just being in the office every day does not necessarily lead to improved firm performance.
  3. Enforcing return-to-office mandates should consider factors beyond just performance, as decisions involve balancing WFH flexibility with in-office collaboration and culture.

RDEL #27: The frequency and impact of destructive code reviews

0 implied HN points • 29 Jan 24
🕹 Technology Engineering Software Diversity Feedback Management
  1. Destructive code reviews can negatively impact team cohesion, trust, and psychological safety. It's crucial to address feedback delivery to maintain a positive work environment.
  2. 22% of respondents reported inconsiderate feedback at least once a year, showing a notable frequency of damaging criticism in code reviews. This highlights the importance of promoting constructive feedback culture.
  3. Destructive criticism was perceived to be less valuable and appropriate, especially impacting motivation and mood. Recognizing and addressing such feedback biases can help improve team dynamics.