Leadership

The chapter where staff and team lead candidates most often sound generic. Everything here should become a concrete story or a concrete practice you can describe in ninety seconds, with a number in it.

Two structural habits carry most of the weight. First, tell stories in SCOR rather than STAR: Situation, Complication, Options, Result and reflection. The Options slot is the whole game, because it is what makes a story sound like judgment rather than a resume bullet. Second, for any role-play, state your first move, the information you would gather, and the line you would not cross. That three-part structure turns a vague answer concrete.

What this chapter covers

  • [done] The toxic code reviewer
  • [todo] Building a story portfolio, not answers to questions
  • [todo] SCOR in full, and mapping it back to STAR on demand
  • [todo] Unblocking: the four blocker types and the different fix each needs
  • [todo] Growing people: skill matrix, stretch ratio, the delegation ladder, SBI feedback
  • [todo] The underperformance sequence, and the no-surprises rule
  • [todo] PR review as a leadership lever: SLA, size, comment taxonomy, review order
  • [todo] The AI-era review queue problem, and the concrete counters
  • [todo] Capacity math and the three-bucket budget
  • [todo] Forecasting with cycle-time percentiles instead of story points
  • [todo] On-call design: rotation size, page budget, interrupt shield, toil cap
  • [todo] Product partnership: options with costs, and owning the non-functional requirements
  • [todo] Promotions won two quarters early, and the calibration room
  • [todo] Retention: knowing each person's actual motivator
  • [todo] Hiring: scorecard first, and defending the bar
  • [todo] Written-first culture, ADRs, and managing up with a monthly one-pager
  • [todo] Metrics a lead watches, and the 2026 DORA caveat
  • [done] The engineer who has missed three commitments
  • [todo] A PM promises a date without asking you
  • [done] The impossible date
  • [done] Two teams building the same service
  • [done] Making the reliability investment case
  • [done] Promotion when they are one level short
  • [todo] Inheriting a team with low morale after a reorg
  • [todo] Managing former peers, and glue work
  • [todo] Legacy modernisation as a narrative

Source: §8, §23, §38.6, §48.