Derek Prior - Empathetic Management

Show Description

Derek Prior is an engineering manager at GitHub. Working to improve developer productivity, he and the team have delivered such hits as: Suggested Changes, Free Private Repos, Community Contributors, and GitHub Sponsors. Prior to that, Derek was a Development Director at thoughtbot, and co-host of The Bike Shed podcast.

The Bike Shed has got to be one of my favorite podcasts out there, and I was super excited at the opportunity of catching up with Derek. Our conversation spanned all sorts of topics I've been curious about, and I came away from this session with a whole new perspective on management.

On the show, we walk through his experiences learned transitioning from engineer to manager, the unexpected challenges that came along the way, and helpful advice for building a healthy and productive team.

Time Jumps

• 07:47 Give away your legos.

• 15:55 Day as an engineering manager.

• 20:04 A player-coach doesn't scale.

• 24:07 Unexpected challenges.

• 32:16 An onboarding ramp.

• 35:28 Connecting, when remote.

• 42:48 Implementing a strong code review culture.

• 47:35 The ultimate decision on what to do lies with the person deploying the code.

• 49:26 Purpose, direction, and motivation.

For expanded show notes on this episode, head on over to https://www.dayasadev.com/episodes/empathetic-management-with-derek-prior.