7.4 KiB
1:1 with Nate Merritt
One final meeting with Nate Merritt to go over a few things before he leaves.
Ricardo Blanco will have 1:1s with the team, so they go through him for managerial things.
Toby Steele and Nolan Stidham are close to promotions.
Nolan
Nolan's been here a long time. He's hopped between different teams, morale has been low because of this. Nolan's addressed some negatives from the past, mostly around: getting stuck, not getting work done, communicating if he is stuck. Nate has encouraged him to not take on things so generously that he knows nothing about. Nate advised him to pick something and get really good at it. Nolan's been picking up lots of the stuff that Oscar and Toby have not been doing (subscriptions and Algolia work). He's been doing Impact.com stuff. Should be getting code review from Nic Hoza.
Toby
Toby Steele close to senior engineer. Ricardo Blanco will probably push forward. Looking for technical excellence. Has teamwork down great. Nate has encouraged him to look into new versions of React, should we update Skeletor?
Will likely defer to me for decisions, even if he knows more. Needs to be progressing here, but is making good progress making decisions.
Toby probably needs some more salary adjustment.
Oscar
Oscar Martin is senior, acts more like an SE2. Nate has been mostly the technical owner for Algolia/search. Since Nate had a lot of history with search, may have been deference to Nate's experience and seniority. Oscar is more backend. Needs to do more code review for the group. Since he's backend-focused, perhaps doing more code review for Business Enablement Team or Payments Team.
Nate not excited about need for DW integration to achieve product ownership search. Algolia doesn't support ownership filtering live. Oscar's work will never get to real-time--maybe daily or two-days. Collections can change, produce source token can change, user can purchase things.
Source token changes are done sparingly, but done for various important reasons like a publisher no longer allowing a resource to be sold but we can't take it away from customers who already purchased it. Can't just create a new product for reporting, track products, etc--many configuration reasons.
Old product-ownership solution included calculating all owned product IDs and sending them to elasticsearch to filter in/out owned products.
Edgar
Edgar Martinez goes under the radar, gets work done. Likes frontend. Ventures into backend have taken longer. Not expanding skills when he does frontend stuff. Does take other asks and works on them. He takes frontend stuff out of the sprint. Toby and Mitch also enjoy frontend.
Doesn't do as much code review, doesn't look for it.
Mitch
Mitch Myers is a really good developer. Goes into unknown codebases and does a good job. Did account verification work in AccountServices. Mitch's challenge is communication with other devs and stakeholders. Nate got him to SE2 a year ago. Came over from ServentKeeper. Has also switched teams. Salary was below entry-level when he came over, got him corrected.
Has ways he can grow and have more influence. Is primary code reviewer for a lot of frontend stuff.
Mitch and Toby own Skeletor. Toby would say Mitch is good at React. Both do well at code review.
Nate didn't do much code review for Skeletor/frontend stuff. Edgar, Mitch and Toby run that show. Nate spoke on behalf of the user, design or marketing might ask, etc.
Commerce team
One concern for the team, inclined to work on whatever is in the sprint. Don't worry about anything out of the sprint--what's coming next? What's the most important?
Need to at least point out that we have to kick our velocity cases. Velocity label is commerce-velocity. Christmas bug bash sprint had to be cancelled because other work bled through. Michael Fisher and Kate Neale are still new and don't do well yet in prioritizing velocity work. Nate tried to limit velocity to things devs want to do. Doesn't always work--need to update elasticsearch? No one wants to, but needs to be done.
Put things in future sprints to at least have the conversation about it.
Launch Readiness
Nate tried to spread out the work on launch day. Day-of tasks were much due to lack of preparation or other teams hitting their deadlines.
Beta sites were a game changer for much of launch day stuff.
Nate has proposed MVPs looking at beta site before launches to come look at things. Supported through group membership.
Last launch (Logos 10) Nate took on Skeletor launch, which he hadn't done before. Had a lot of things last time we don't need this time with the move to Azure.
Launch night is tough--could be up all night and then needed when all the traffic hits the next morning. Everything is documented, even timeline of launch night and day.
Bigger thing (than launch night) is who owns what to be ready. Be proactive, pain will come if we're not prepared.
Josh Grantham, Mike Haines, Mitch Snyder, good to know for launch. Natalie Winburn product managing the launch. Be proactive to establish those communication channels.
Staff Engineer feedback
Look at what Logos says a staff engineer is versus what they are at Logos. Not all uniform--given to people in certain salary band. Aspirational in many aspects for some. Some are really good senior engineers who ship a lot of code.
Focus on team lead, tech lead competencies. Continue impact on Business Enablement team, look into Payments team.
Book recommendation: The Manager's Path won't all be relevant, but be good. Don't really recommend Staff Engineer, but has a good website. Really good: The Staff Engineer's Path ownereship, initiative, pro-active thinking, where to take the team, where to be in five years.
Nic Hoza been asking for promotion to staff engineer for a couple of years, would be most likely to get position for Business Solutions Group.
Follow-up meetings:
- Review commerce velocity
- Review commerce backlog
Commerce Backlog Refinement meeting
#meeting Reviewed configuration wizard for Skeletor for subscription levels.