👋 Hey, it’s Stephane. Welcome to my weekly newsletter where I share lessons, and stories from my journey to help you lead with confidence as an Engineering Manager.
It’s Friday afternoon. You’re hosting your team’s biweekly retro and one of the points of discussion is coming from one of your most thoughtful engineers:
“I feel like we’ve been fixing bugs and working on simple features for months.”
You’ve felt it, too. The spark is missing. The team isn’t lazy, they’re just tired of grinding through the backlog and maintenance tickets. No one feels proud of the work they’re doing really. And if things don’t change soon, you might start losing people.
So now what?
Outline
- 🔒 What are your options?
- 🔒 Breaking down each approach
- 🔒 What I would do in this situation
- 🔒 How the decision can backfire and what to do about it
- 🔒 Takeaways
- 🔒 Some useful links from me
If you enjoy posts like this, consider supporting my work and subscribing to this newsletter.
As a free subscriber, you get:
✉️ 1 high value post per week
As a paid subscriber, you get:
🔒 50 Engineering Manager templates and playbooks (worth $79)
🔒 The Engineering Manager’s Field Guide (worth $29)
🔒 A weekly "What would you do?" scenario & breakdown from real challenges EMs face
🔒 The complete archive