In October, I had the opportunity to talk about Growing the Next Generation of Leaders at LeadingEng West Coast (awesome conference, great content line up!). My slides and video are now available below. The step from manager to director oftentimes feels like a leap. The scope of skills that you need to become a senior... Continue Reading →

'Twas a night during change freeze, and all through the code, Not a PR was committing, no push, no upload. The engineers were all nestled, snug in their beds, While visions of hotfixes danced in their heads. The software was frozen, no updates allowed, In fear of breaking something, causing a crowd. But out on... Continue Reading →

As I see more and more folks tweeting and posting about experiencing the sting of being laid off, I share this story to give you hope. Returning to the scene of the crime I walked into the lobby this morning past the 201 sculpture and rode the elevators up — but the open desk space,... Continue Reading →

About a year ago, in July 2021, I'd been leading my group at Twitter, Infrastructure Automation, for three years as a director. We'd formed new teams for managing both on-prem and public cloud infrastructure, tripled our size, promoted amazing and diverse individuals, delivered on board-reviewed initiatives and were involved in acquisitions and contracts worth anywhere... Continue Reading →

Sometime in April 2022, I realized I needed to invest in some significant development of my crisis management skills. I had the book The Splendid and the Vile on my reading list, recommended to me as not just a history lesson about London during the Blitz, but a great book on leadership as well. It... Continue Reading →

#OneTeam happiness https://twitter.com/kathleencodes/status/1217704325679632385?s=20u0026amp;t=6vIKjQkg3XNF64xkAMh00g https://twitter.com/kathleencodes/status/1217820749253238784?s=20u0026amp;t=6vIKjQkg3XNF64xkAMh00g https://twitter.com/kathleencodes/status/1217539474302865409?s=20u0026amp;t=6vIKjQkg3XNF64xkAMh00g https://twitter.com/kathleencodes/status/1218037858642092032?s=20u0026amp;t=6vIKjQkg3XNF64xkAMh00g Working with globally distributed teams https://twitter.com/kathleencodes/status/1217518525616676864?s=20u0026amp;t=6vIKjQkg3XNF64xkAMh00g Amazing engineers https://twitter.com/kathleencodes/status/1218093651152252928?s=20u0026amp;t=6vIKjQkg3XNF64xkAMh00g https://twitter.com/kathleencodes/status/1217699557351530497?s=20u0026amp;t=6vIKjQkg3XNF64xkAMh00g TwitterForGood https://twitter.com/kathleencodes/status/1217960399557009409?s=20u0026amp;t=6vIKjQkg3XNF64xkAMh00g Helping send people to TED https://twitter.com/kathleencodes/status/1217698660357681152?s=20u0026amp;t=6vIKjQkg3XNF64xkAMh00g Crossing paths at multiple companies https://twitter.com/kathleencodes/status/1217466750142468096?s=20u0026amp;t=6vIKjQkg3XNF64xkAMh00g Getting teased by our head of engineering https://twitter.com/kathleencodes/status/1217610204646383619?s=20u0026amp;t=6vIKjQkg3XNF64xkAMh00g Blackbirds events https://twitter.com/kathleencodes/status/1225114031326822400?s=20u0026amp;t=6vIKjQkg3XNF64xkAMh00g Covid usage spike, reliability, and service continuity https://twitter.com/kathleencodes/status/1243603795147280384?s=20u0026amp;t=6vIKjQkg3XNF64xkAMh00g https://twitter.com/kathleencodes/status/1243622713152778240?s=20u0026amp;t=6vIKjQkg3XNF64xkAMh00g Contributing to the Remote Work... Continue Reading →

Visting Twitter NYC and attending #SRECon https://twitter.com/kathleencodes/status/1110382711309512704?s=20u0026amp;t=oFwprI2s_NLA-QjmbDOUTA https://twitter.com/kathleencodes/status/1111109802569154560?s=20u0026amp;t=oFwprI2s_NLA-QjmbDOUTA Escape Rooms https://twitter.com/kathleencodes/status/1106724329687937024?s=20u0026amp;t=oFwprI2s_NLA-QjmbDOUTA Working with GCP as one of our cloud vendors https://twitter.com/kathleencodes/status/1104156028407472128?s=20u0026amp;t=oFwprI2s_NLA-QjmbDOUTA Director’s offsite in Colorado https://twitter.com/kathleencodes/status/1118733544682086401?s=20u0026amp;t=oFwprI2s_NLA-QjmbDOUTA WomEM dinners https://twitter.com/kathleencodes/status/1131400852688650240?s=20u0026amp;t=oFwprI2s_NLA-QjmbDOUTA TwitterForGood https://twitter.com/kathleencodes/status/1129502110226292737?s=20u0026amp;t=oFwprI2s_NLA-QjmbDOUTA https://twitter.com/kathleencodes/status/1129496756842971137?s=20u0026amp;t=oFwprI2s_NLA-QjmbDOUTA Director offsite at the Zen center https://twitter.com/kathleencodes/status/1136482842479738880?s=20u0026amp;t=6vIKjQkg3XNF64xkAMh00g Deprecating and deleting old software https://twitter.com/kathleencodes/status/1144273934210277377?s=20u0026amp;t=6vIKjQkg3XNF64xkAMh00g Surviving major outages https://twitter.com/kathleencodes/status/1149694840835207169?s=20u0026amp;t=6vIKjQkg3XNF64xkAMh00g Supporting eng apprentices https://twitter.com/kathleencodes/status/1149101286614110209?s=20u0026amp;t=6vIKjQkg3XNF64xkAMh00g Lots of... Continue Reading →

I took a long, long trip down memory lane over my six incredible years at Twitter. My heart is full of gratitude for the amazing people I met and learned from, and the experiences I was able to have. So much love, so many thanks. 💙 Tweet highlight reel below! First day tweet https://twitter.com/kathleencodes/status/760145695953125377?s=20&t=oFwprI2s_NLA-QjmbDOUTA Meeting... Continue Reading →

In April, I became a fellow with American Leadership Forum Silicon Valley. ALF has a long history of creating courageous, diverse networks of cross sector leaders who are working towards an equitable and thriving Silicon Valley. I'm honored to have been nominated and to be able to participate (thanks Twitter!). We meet once a month... Continue Reading →

I’ve been thinking about the techniques that work for me when things are stressful and thought I’d share in case they help you. Zoom Out: It helps me to take a step back to look at my career from a broader view. Today is just one day and one part of a larger story. In... Continue Reading →

Google Cloud invited me to participate in their programming for International Women's Day 2022 to celebrate women in technology and business. The theme this year is #BreakTheBias. I shared my thoughts on Women's History Month in this video from @googlecloud - and what I'm doing to celebrate. https://twitter.com/googlecloud/status/1506996847075856388?s=20&t=Ke7r4X4aLJ1LHBNwjknDpQ https://youtu.be/Yi5Wr5js2To Photo: Napa Women's Half Marathon

ROI Training invited me to speak on a panel for their Women in Technology Day along with Rochana Golani from Google Cloud Learning and Kate Kustermann Rivera from the Deloitte Cloud Institute. Their free, day-long training workshop, called “Journey to the Cloud,” hosted over 400 tech women attendees from around the world. One of ROI’s... Continue Reading →

Photo: Kathleen Vignos presenting to Jack Dorsey, Twitter Hackweek 2016 I love hack weeks. I feed on the energy, the buzz, and the creativity during the week and for months after. I thrive on meeting new people from across the company and collaborating together in new ways. And every once in a while, I’m lucky... Continue Reading →

As an instructor and content developer for engineering management training, and as a director who hires and manages engineering managers, I'm constantly thinking about how to help engineering managers be more effective. Whether you're new to management, or have managed teams for years, it's likely that at some point you'll need to assess a team.... Continue Reading →

I was invited to share my experience with GCP Cloud Architect Certification training -- both as the person who helped schedule and facilitate the training for engineers in our Platform engineering organization, and also as someone who directly participated in the hands-on training -- on Google's blog today. You can read it here: Why a... Continue Reading →

Friends and family frequently reach out to me with requests to meet with someone who has aspirations toward a career in tech. "Our good friend's daughter just graduated from {college} and is looking for a job and hopes to find something in tech." "{Name} is interested in finding an entry level role in tech/programming and... Continue Reading →

I was invited to participate in a LeadDev panel on continuous learning, which is one of my very favorite topics, especially in the context of engineering management. I had a great conversation with Kevin Goldsmith from Anaconda, Tara Ojo from the Financial Times, Kristen Spencer from TWG, and Krishnan Srinivasan from Target. https://twitter.com/TheLeadDev/status/1336996082115612673?s=20 These are... Continue Reading →

A couple of years ago I started working with teams at Twitter working on making public cloud offerings available to our developers, and as part of my ramp up, I started taking Google's Cloud Architect training classes for certification. I recently participated in a webinar about certification where I particularly focused on the value it... Continue Reading →

I have had three conversations this very week where I shared direct feedback on problematic behavior, and the theme of the responses has been the same: But that person has good intentions. He/she didn't mean it. He/she just has a rough/tough/{insert cultural reference here} personality. He/she is just misunderstood. He/she is just so passionate about... Continue Reading →

Given national advocacy for the #blacklivesmatter movement, I'm hearing a lot of folks looking for ways to increase their allyship.   I took some time to reflecting on my own efforts and considered them against Twitter's published Inclusion & Diversity Report.   Previous published targets have aimed to increase workforce representation for under-represented minorities, specifically... Continue Reading →

Remote, distributed engineering teams often rely on periodic in-person offsites or meetups to forge the kind of personal connections that contribute to a great, collaborative working environment. However, with the restrictions we are all experiencing due to COVID-19, it could be a while before we’re able to get our teams together IRL. So today we... Continue Reading →

I had the pleasure of being interviewed by Ari Font (@quicola), Director of Engineering in Twitter's Cortex ML Platform (and our New York Site Lead) recently for her #AmazingWomeninTech series, which she kicked off as part of International Women's Day in March. Interview topics include: #yourstory #whatmakesyouyou #yourhurdles #gratitude #success #privilege #empathy #leadership #covid19 At... Continue Reading →

As part of #LeadDevLive, a 2-day virtual conference for engineering leaders, I was honored to host a panel as moderator where we discussed how we are all shifting to working remotely due to shelter-in-place orders related to COVID-19. It was my first time moderating a panel. White October Events, the conference organizer, was excellent about... Continue Reading →