(2016 - 4/9) What Should I Be Doing Right Now?

Calibrate 2016 (4/9) - http://www.calibratesf.com/

"What Should I Be Doing Right Now?" - Cynthia Maxwell, Slack, Director of iOS Engineering

"As a manager, time is one of your most precious resources, and it can be a challenge to allocate it effectively and efficiently. In my presentation, I will be focusing on simple tools to help you focus and plan your day. We will start by breaking down the major job functions of a manager and then explore detailed examples of strategies to resolve competing priorities. I will also share resources that work for me personally as a manager. By the end of our discussion, I hope that you will have the tools to be able to quickly judge where your attention is most needed at any given time."

Cynthia is a Director of iOS Engineering at Slack and has led flagship mobile engineering projects for other companies such as Apple and Pinterest. She has a Ph.D. in Computer Science from UC Berkeley and a MS in Mechanical Engineering from Stanford. She is a Code2040 mentor and advisor to women in technology.

https://twitter.com/uicynthia

Calibrate is a conference for new engineering leaders hosted by seasoned engineering leaders. Organized and hosted by Sharethrough, it was conducted on September 30, 2015 and September 30, 2016 in San Francisco, California.

Transcript

1. What should I be doing right now? Cynthia Maxwell
4. meant working extra hours during weekends or staying up late hours to help teams located half way around the world. She ensured that the team was unblocked at all times and strived to maintain high team morale. Her experience and technical acumen was vital in pushing boundaries to build high performant pixel-perfect product experiences without sacrificing quality on both iOS and Android. Cynthia has been an awesome mentor for me and many other people on the team. I was fortunate to have her as the engineering manager and lead. She was the backbone and did everything to set the team up for success. Her depth of knowledge in mobile technology coupled with product sense, design intuition and ninja leadership qualities make her an invaluable asset for any team. Cynthia was my mentor when I was a CODE2040 Fellow in 2013. This entailed meeting on a regular basis during the Summer to discuss my professional and personal goals. Cynthia took the time to understand me and my interests to help me focus on the things that I want to achieve. She provided me with advice, resources, and actions to take in order to improve myself professionally. She is a caring individual who saw me as a capable person and helped me seek opportunities while helping me connect with other people. Cynthia's experience and achievements are incredible, making her a truly awesome and admirable role model and someone I respectfully look up to. I had the fortune to have her as a mentor who has continued to find ways to help me along the way. Whenever I'm having a difficult time making lifelong career decisions or have more in depth technical questions, I know that I can always count on her for guidance. Cynthia is one of those people who can juggle product, engineering, management and polish all at the same time and make it look easy. She cares deeply about producing top quality work and her attention to detail is startling. All of this shows in her work, where the final product is achingly beautiful, fast, and elegantly coded. Did I mention that she's brilliant as well? It was an honor working with her, and under her leadership, her team produced a phenomenal product. Cynthia stands out as a passionate, detail- oriented engineer and a natural leader. As a member of the community team at Pinterest, I worked closely with Cynthia to represent the voice of the user. I was always impressed by how she valued the community, whether personally reviewing hundreds of messages from users, or quickly resolving any bugs. Somehow, she also found the time to oversee the creation of the very popular Pinterest apps you see today. Cynthia has my highest recommendation, and I hope to have the opportunity to work with her again. Cynthia and I worked together on the iPad application for Pinterest. I was the design lead and she was the lead developer and mobile manager on the project. She was fast, organized and laser focused about what we needed to get done and in what order. As a result we launched the app in great time which has created a great base to build on going forward. Cynthia knows her stuff cold and is a total self starter. She has a ton of experience in high pressure environments where she's had to deliver at a very high bar repeatedly. Simply put there aren't a lot of people out there with her set of skills and level of execution. Tech is a small business and I'm sure our paths will cross again and I look forward to it. I feel very fortunate to have had the opportunity to work with Cynthia at Pinterest. As Lead iOS Engineer, Cynthia knew what it took to build great products and executed on that. She is an extremely talented engineer and was able to successfully architect a flagship application for Pinterest that was flexible enough to grow and change as the product evolved over time. She was also very successful at leading our small team of engineers to build out this product in a very coherent and methodical process that built upon a solid architecture. Her understanding of what it takes to build great products is absolutely phenomenal. The entire team and the product greatly benefited from her experience and knowledge in this regard. As the Mobile Engineering Manager, Cynthia's strong leadership skills really were invaluable. She was able to guide and manage multiple engineering efforts, prioritizing tasks and keeping engineering focused on building quality products. Cynthia continuously removed roadblocks and did whatever it took to keep development on track and on target. She really looked out for her team and put them before herself. It was really an honor to work with Cynthia and I sincerely hope that one day I will have the chance to again. Cynthia and I worked together on the iPad and iPhone applications focus attention detail-oriented detail organized execution execution laser-focused methodical process
5. “I think your super power is your ability to keep so many plates spinning. You’re highly organized, and hold a lot of state in your head with regards to roadmap, releases, bugs, and people.” My name is Devin Foley and I approve this message.
8. Work hard and go home!
11. Team
 Building
12. Delivering Results
13. Crafting your vision
14. Team
 Building Delivering Results Crafting your vision
16. Team
 Building
17. Coaching
18. Coaching Building Relationships
19. Coaching Recruiting Building Relationships
20. Delivering Results
21. Coordinating
22. Controlling Risk Coordinating
23. Using Your Expertise Controlling Risk Coordinating
24. Crafting your vision
25. Roadmapping
26. Learning Roadmapping
27. Exploring Learning Roadmapping
28. Coaching Recruiting Building Relationships Controlling Risk Coordinating Using Your Expertise Exploring Learning Roadmapping
29. Coaching Recruiting Building Relationships Using Your Expertise Exploring Learning Roadmapping Controlling Risk Coordinating
30. Recruiting Exploring
31. Coaching Recruiting Building Relationships Using Your Expertise Exploring Learning Roadmapping Controlling Risk Coordinating
32. Example 2 Coaching Controlling Risk
33. Coaching Recruiting Building Relationships Using Your Expertise Exploring Learning Roadmapping Controlling Risk Coordinating
34. Building Relationships Learning
35. Coaching Recruiting Building Relationships Using Your Expertise Exploring Learning Roadmapping Controlling Risk Coordinating
38. CHALLENGE SKILL Flow anxiety boredom apathy
39. CHALLENGE SKILL anxiety
40. CHALLENGE SKILL boredom
41. CHALLENGE SKILL Flow
46. Offer Signing Application Phone screen Onsite
47. Offer Signing Application Phone screen Onsite
48. Offer Signing Application Phone screen Onsite
49. Offer Signing Application Phone screen Onsite
52. Today Open bug count Ideal bug count
53. Milestone
54. Person 1 Person 2 Unassigned
56. Crash free user rate Crash free session rate Active users New users Tickets created Week over Week Delta: App store rating Cold start time FPS of main screens Memory high water mark Main thread blocked time per session Battery usage per session Data usage per session
62. Coaching Priority High Low
63. Relationship building Coaching Priority High Low
64. Relationship building Coaching Controlling risk Priority High Low
65. Relationship building Coaching Controlling risk Coordinating Priority High Low
66. Relationship building Coaching Recruiting Controlling risk Coordinating Priority High Low
67. Relationship building Coaching Recruiting Controlling risk Coordinating Road mapping Priority High Low
68. Relationship building Coaching Recruiting Controlling risk Coordinating Learning Road mapping Priority High Low
69. Relationship building Coaching Recruiting Controlling risk Coordinating Using Your Expertise Learning Road mapping Priority High Low
70. Relationship building Coaching Recruiting Controlling risk Coordinating Using Your Expertise Exploring Learning Road mapping Priority High Low
72. Using Your Expertise Exploring Learning Priority High Low
73. Coaching Recruiting Controlling risk Coordinating Using Your Expertise Exploring Learning Priority High Low
74. Coaching Recruiting Controlling risk Coordinating Using Your Expertise Exploring Learning Relationship building Road mapping Priority High Low
79. Work hard and go home!
80. Thank you for your attention!