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Sydney Tech Leaders

@sydtechleaders.bsky.social

49 followers 30 following 62 posts

We are a professional group focused on Technology Leadership. A place for CTOs, Dev Managers, Directors and Team Leads (and those aspiring to those positions!) to go and share ideas, discuss problems, network, and provide/receive mentoring.

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Sydney Tech Leaders @sydtechleaders.bsky.social · Oct 2

And now it’s time for our patented #sydtechleaders Q&A panel! We’ve already had questions about distinguishing good vs bad productivity; how to respond when you ask someone if they’re okay and they say “no”; how to respond when the request is for YOU to do something differently…

A man and a woman seated in front of an audience at a meetup

Sydney Tech Leaders @sydtechleaders.bsky.social · Oct 2

Ultimately avoiding burnout is not about minimising stress; it’s about figuring out how to recover in a way that allows you to get stronger (like an athlete). That’s how you stay in the game long term. #sydtechleaders

Sydney Tech Leaders @sydtechleaders.bsky.social · Oct 2

It’s not always easy for people to ascertain how they feel (if they have trauma, if they are neurodivergent, etc). It’s important to keep in mind when having conversations about stress and mental health. #sydtechleaders

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Sydney Tech Leaders @sydtechleaders.bsky.social · Oct 2

So what is effective recovery? Move (rather than exercise), create (and play), connect (with people and places and yourself), reflect, rest… and repeat. #sydtechleaders

A man presenting at a tech event with a slide illustrating ineffective and effective ways to recover from stress

Sydney Tech Leaders @sydtechleaders.bsky.social · Oct 2

Everybody knows how to talk about stress; what they struggle with is effective recovery. Drinking too much, doomscrolling, signing up to expensive gym memberships you won’t use… these are not great ways to recover. #sydtechleaders

Sydney Tech Leaders @sydtechleaders.bsky.social · Oct 2

Bodies don’t differentiate between paid and unpaid work. Stress in your personal life contributes too. You do your best to manage it, but the tank never manages to get topped up. With burnout, you’re always drawing down. #sydtechleaders

A man speaking at a tech meetup in front of a slide. The slide has a graph of “managing stress” with a line that follows a sine curve slowly trending downwards.

Sydney Tech Leaders @sydtechleaders.bsky.social · Oct 2

Our second speaker for the night is Navin Keswani talking about burnout - a topic really important to most of us in the room. The pandemic hit many in tech hard. #sydtechleaders

A man speaking at a lectern at a tech meetup with a slide that says:
Beat
burnout
Find
Alourishing

A man speaking at a lectern in front of a tech meetup with a slide with a parody of the “This is fine” meme. A man in a burning room sits in front of a laptop and says “This is fine,” and someone on the laptop says “You’re on mute.”

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Sydney Tech Leaders @sydtechleaders.bsky.social · Oct 2

To have meaningful mental health conversations, you need to make sure you’re in the right space yourself. Then ALEC - Ask RUOK?; Listen; Encourage action; and Check-In. #sydtechleaders

Sydney Tech Leaders @sydtechleaders.bsky.social · Oct 2

This year, over half of Australians say that rising cost of living is having a big impact on their mental health. This is very real, and there’s probably someone you know who is not okay. #sydtechleaders #ruok

Sydney Tech Leaders @sydtechleaders.bsky.social · Oct 2

Our workplaces don’t always lend themselves to kindness. We have to make the effort to pause and remember to see our teammates as human beings, check in with them, and really listen. #sydtechleaders

Sydney Tech Leaders @sydtechleaders.bsky.social · Oct 2

Tonight’s talks are obviously going to be a bit more personal than usual, so social media posting will be restricted to high level topics. ❤️ #sydtechleaders

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Sydney Tech Leaders @sydtechleaders.bsky.social · Oct 2

Our first speaker is Saliya Kutungu-Moran talking about leading with kindness and creating space for mental health conversations. She’s an RUOK ambassador with lots of experience in tech, and we’re so glad she’s here. #sydtechleaders

An African woman speaking in front of a lectern with a slide that says:
Leading with Kindness:
Creating Space for
Meaningful mental health
Conversations

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Sydney Tech Leaders @sydtechleaders.bsky.social · Oct 2

Reminder that we are still looking for Lightning talk speakers for our Nov. 6 meetup. Great for first timers, and we’ll even give you some mentoring if you like! #sydtechleaders

A woman speaking at a lectern at a tech meetup

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Sydney Tech Leaders @sydtechleaders.bsky.social · Oct 2

Tonight’s STL is kicking off at Atlassian! Nice big crowd for an important topic - mental health. Thanks as always to Atlassian for hosting! #sydtechleaders

A woman speaking at a lectern at a meetup

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Sydney Tech Leaders @sydtechleaders.bsky.social · Sep 4

Engineers like to focus on their little patch of the code base and getting it just right, but leaders need to remind them of the bigger picture. And sometimes you have to make a trade-off, and it just sucks. #sydtechleaders

Sydney Tech Leaders @sydtechleaders.bsky.social · Sep 4

Right into the AI questions! Jeroen thinks that smaller teams might struggle to take advantage of agentic coding assistants because they will quickly run out of the expertise to review all the suggestions appropriately. #sydtechleaders

Sydney Tech Leaders @sydtechleaders.bsky.social · Sep 4

It’s time for the patented #sydtechleaders panel!

A man holding a microphone cube, with four speakers seated in a panel

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Sydney Tech Leaders @sydtechleaders.bsky.social · Sep 4

Really the goal for teams that want to tackle tech debt is to ESTABLISH TRUST. You want leaders to let you do this again! #sydtechleaders

A slide that says:
Aim for trust
"That was really worth while! We trust you can do this again"

Sydney Tech Leaders @sydtechleaders.bsky.social · Sep 4

And at the end of that project, you need to validate the impact and tell the story of the improvement. Data and graphs can really make that story clear (if they are accurate!). #sydtechleaders

Two men presenting at a tech event. The slide says:

Validate Impact
Progress against baseline

What moved?
Something to speak to
How much?
Images over words
What did we learn?
Target next hypothesis

Sydney Tech Leaders @sydtechleaders.bsky.social · Sep 4

When you get the refactor project approved, don’t rush to get started too quickly. You need to establish some metrics and a baseline to show the improvement! #sydtechleaders

A slide that says:
Measure it
No baseline, no goal

Rough numbers
Something to speak t
Visual sizing
Images over words
Forecast
Target hypothesis

Sydney Tech Leaders @sydtechleaders.bsky.social · Sep 4

The lead engineer needs to be able to SELL the tech debt problem to the manager. Some suggestions are hiring challenges, velocity and cycle time, risk of vulnerabilities and incidents… #sydtechleaders

A slide that says:
I'm telling you, we have a problem!
Hiring challenges
That technology is so old that we cannot scale the team
VULNs and incidents
That library is abandoned and not supported anymore
Velocity and cycle time
The process to deploy that service requires careful manual orchestration
"Rule of two"
There are 4 different in-memory stores adapters

Sydney Tech Leaders @sydtechleaders.bsky.social · Sep 4

“I’m telling y manager that this code is 💩 but they won’t even listen!”

A man role playing a developer, while another man playing a manager holds a sign that says “Who gives a crap?”

Sydney Tech Leaders @sydtechleaders.bsky.social · Sep 4

Final talk - Alberto and Fernando from Atlassian talking about how to actually deal with the tech debt that’s been accumulating. Apparently there will be role play!

Sydney Tech Leaders @sydtechleaders.bsky.social · Sep 4

Jeroen venturing a hot take - he’s a big fan of AI and how it can help ensure code quality! #sydtechleaders

A man presenting with a slide that says:
Quality - Green field
Doc
Testing
Input
Cognitive load (Educational)

Sydney Tech Leaders @sydtechleaders.bsky.social · Sep 4

There are so many ways a project can go wrong and incur debt. Wrong conclusions, optimisation trade-offs, evaluation defects… and especially when bad info ends up in the sales brochure! #sydtechleaders

A man presenting at a tech event with a slide showing many boxes with stages of software development and opportunities for tech debt to accumulate