Hey, it's George

About this blog

This blog is all about helping software engineers and engineering managers grow.

Here, you’ll find ideas, lessons learned, and experiments that you can try in your day-to-day work.

Topics include:

• 💥 How to be effective and productive
• 📈 How to grow professionally
• 🦸🏻‍♀️ How to make an impact on your team

Here’s a collection of recent posts:

Hiring Engineers as an Early-Stage CTO

Hiring engineers at an early-stage startup is a different game. There’s no structured onboarding, no product team handing off detailed specs, and no safety net of internal tools to make development easier. You need people who can figure things out, build fast, and communicate well. And as the CTO, it’s on you to find them. I’ve been through this process, and I’ve learned a few things along the way. Here’s how to approach hiring your first few engineers.

Life Is a Sine Wave

When you start something new, like a job, a project, or joining a team, it’s often exciting. The thrill of novelty pushes you to dive headfirst into the endeavor. But as you get into it, you find that it’s hard. You face many challenges, there’s much you don’t know, and things move slowly. You might feel like an imposter but you shouldn’t. Here’s why…

7 Lessons Learned from 7 Years in Engineering Leadership

In the past 7 years I ran 13 different teams, lead over 70 different engineers and managers, and ran over 400 interviews. Here are 7 lessons learned that I wish I knew from day 1.

How to Write Better Weekly Check-ins

Writing great weekly check-ins is important for software engineers of all levels because it helps communicate your impact and challenges, get better feedback, grow faster, and get promoted easier. So how can you both spend less time and write more effective check-ins?

How to Evaluate the Performance of Software Engineers

If you manage software engineers, evaluating how well they perform is essential. You’ll want to know if they are productive, write good code, focus on the right things, leave good PR comments, etc. So how do you do this with confidence, without wasting a lot of time and effort?

11 Ways I Use Loom as an Engineering Leader

Async video messaging is all the rage these days and Loom is one of the leaders in the space. But many of us struggle when trying to figure out what to “loom” about. I struggled too, but I’ve finally figured it out. Here’s what I learned.

6 Years Later: Why am I still at HubSpot?

This week I celebrate 6 years since I joined HubSpot. It’s been a heck of a ride, no doubt! But why am I still at HubSpot? Is it still that great or have I just settled for something mediocre?