Techpoint Charlie Raz, Yael, Noa and Alaa

Noa Tamir (Data Science Manager) and Raz Shuty (Engineering Manager) share with Alaa Sarhan (IC Fullstack-er) what management is about in general and why an IC (Individual Contributor) is nowadays more than ever empowered to not become a manager for the wrong reasons.

Sneak-peak reasons from the episode:
Manager role is totally different from a lead IC roleICs are paid more than managers Missing short reward cycles, a.k.a "It's not about you anymore"and more in our lovely conversation ;)Recommended reads on the topic:
Charity Majors' 17 Reasons NOT To Be A ManagerTanya Reilly's Not all engineering leaders are engineering managers
Music credits: Dan Lebowitz: Come and Get It! Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0 License 

Noa Tamir and Alaa Sarhan speak with Rony Lahav about the role of QA and Automation, Why do we need QA people (or why developers shouldn’t be the only testers), Different Test - Component, Integration, System, E2E, Is Manual QA dead?

We also touched on:
Automation is a software projectwhen should testing/QA stop? / what kind of bugs/edges cases are fine to be ignored or not covered?QA vs. Product Acceptance. How much do they conflict, and do they complement each other?what areas QA covers on top of "functional": performance, accessibility, usability, fault tolerance/recoverability, etc.In presence of QA team/role, what should Software Engineers test?Tracking data quality: tracking QA, and Functional QA (OSS tool from King https://github.com/king/tratt-api)Phases of QA: development, build, release, on-callWhat QA and TE gets that devs, PMs, and DS don’t get and what do we get when there are better collaboration and commsTeam testingMusic credits: Dan Lebowitz: Come and Get It! Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0 License 

Noa Tamir and Alaa Sarhan speak with Alexandra Paun (@ale_paun) about the Functional Manager hat that she often wears as part of her current job at King.

We learn from Alexandra the many intersections this role has with many, if not all functions and departments in the organization, even extending outside of it to negotiate, collaborate and continuously work with external partners and organization, to bring a great business initiative from conception to life.

In this episode we talk about the skill set of a functional manager, the phases a project goes through under their supervision and the challenges and rewarding aspects of this role.


Music credits: Dan Lebowitz: Come and Get It! Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0 License 

A quick episode where Raz Shuty, Noa Tamir, Alaa Sarhan (@TweetingAlaa) are randomly asking themselves a question and trying to see how they feel about it, in 20 minutes:

Have you used any persona framework at work. If so what did you like about it? What was it good for? What’s the downside of using them?

Nothing scientific here, more like a quick conversation about it :)

Also Available on:
Spotify, iTunes, Google, Stitcher, TuneIn, PlayerFM

Music credits: Dan Lebowitz: Come and Get It! Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0 License 

Noa Tamir and Alaa Sarhan meet with our lovely guest Phil Bennett to chat about Emotions at work

Triggered by an article Phil Bennett wrote called The Crying Game: It’s OK to Cry at Work!

Emotions are unavoidable and normal, but you have to understand the emotional Labour you’re putting on other people. That said, sometimes high emotions are the only way people can express what they really feel. Especially in times of frustration. 
In the episode:
Intro to Phil, and his experience from working in agencies Wearing your heart on your sleeve and its effect on others Perspectives on differences between individual contributors and managersGoing through personal difficulties while at work Emotional labour, empathy as a skill, and fairnessSupport frameworks we know: Step away or take a walkAsk people if they are OKManagers, HR, Trust keepers, Coaches, Psychologists
Also Available on:
Spotify, iTunes, Google, Stitcher, TuneIn, PlayerFM

Music credits: Dan Lebowitz: Come and Get It!
Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0 License