Hello, I'm
Simon Young.
I'm a software engineering leader based in London.
Sometimes I speak at conferences. I'm also a photographer.
I'm a software engineering leader based in London.
Sometimes I speak at conferences. I'm also a photographer.
By Simon Young
As the team I lead grows substantially, I have personally transitioned over 2019 and the first part of 2020 from leading engineers to increasingly leading leaders who lead engineers.
One of the most obvious challenges in this period has been how to distil the principles by which I led engineers directly in such a way that as our leadership team became larger we could maintain some level of consistency and structure for our engineering organisation. As we grow we want to take advantage of new perspectives on engineering leadership whilst at the same time maintaining a clear and unified direction for our organisation.
By Simon Young
I have been involved in leading software engineering teams for more than a decade — first as a technical lead, and then as a member of senior management teams where I have been responsible for software teams of different sizes using very different technology stacks. I am now responsible for leading a large and growing software engineering team as well as being responsible for our overall e-commerce platform architecture.
Over that time I’ve come to settle on some principles that I’d like to share here which I feel are key to developing and leading successful software engineering teams.