Author: Mike Lopez
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Scaling PHP Projects: Management Tactics That Actually Work for Remote Teams
Scaling a PHP project while leading a remote team can feel like juggling fire—with one hand tied behind your back. The good news? It’s not magic. It’s management. And if you do it right, it actually scales. Here’s what’s worked for me. 1. Codebase ≠ Product ≠ Project This sounds obvious, but it’s a trap…
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How to Lead a Remote PHP Team Without Burning Out Your Developers
When I first started managing a remote PHP team, I made all the rookie mistakes: too many meetings, too few boundaries, and way too much Slack. Burnout wasn’t immediate—but it was inevitable. I’ve since changed the way I lead. Here’s what I’ve learned about keeping remote PHP developers productive without running them into the ground.…
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The Leadership Skill No One Talks About: Patience
We love to talk about decisiveness. About boldness, charisma, vision. We glamorize “move fast and break things” leadership like it’s the only kind that works. But there’s one leadership skill that rarely gets any spotlight—patience. It’s not sexy. It doesn’t make great TED Talk soundbites. But in my experience, patience is one of the most…
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What I Wish I Knew Before Becoming a Dev Manager
When I first stepped into a dev manager role, I thought I had a pretty good handle on what was coming. I’d been around long enough, led a few projects, mentored juniors, dealt with deadlines. Seemed like a natural next step. Spoiler: I was wrong. Becoming a dev manager isn’t a promotion—it’s a whole new…
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Why Developer Experience Matters in Plugin UX
When we talk about plugin UX, we usually think about the end user. Is the UI intuitive? Does the feature solve the user’s problem? Is the performance snappy? All valid questions—but often, we forget one critical piece: the developer’s experience building and maintaining that plugin. Developer Experience (DX) isn’t just an internal concern—it has a…
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Making Tough Calls: A Leader’s Daily Reality
When I first became a team lead, I thought “tough decisions” were rare—something you made in a crisis. Big stuff, like letting someone go or killing a project. What I didn’t realize is that making hard calls is a daily part of leadership—and usually, no one claps when you do it. No roadmap tells you…
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Aligning Roadmaps With Team Capacity
Early in my career, roadmaps felt like a wishlist. Marketing wanted X, sales wanted Y, and we—engineering—were somehow supposed to make it all happen. And when we couldn’t, we were labeled blockers. It took years (and more than a few failed quarters) to realize the issue wasn’t execution. It was misalignment. We were promising more…
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How to Onboard a New Developer to Your Plugin Codebase
Bringing a new developer into your plugin project can go one of two ways: smooth and productive—or completely chaotic. I’ve seen both. Whether you’re working on a public WordPress plugin or a custom solution for a client, onboarding a new dev isn’t just about giving them access to the repo and saying “good luck.” It’s…
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The Hidden Costs of Not Documenting Your Plugin Code
We’ve all done it. You’re deep in the flow, building out a plugin feature, squashing bugs, hitting milestones—and you think, “I’ll document this later.” Then later becomes never. I used to think documentation was a “nice-to-have.” Something you do when the real work is done. But over the years—especially maintaining my own WordPress plugins and…
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Helping Your Team See the Bigger Picture
I’ve worked with plenty of talented devs who could debug gnarly logic, optimize slow queries, and write clever abstractions—but struggled to see why their work mattered beyond the next ticket. Early in my leadership journey, I assumed it was enough to just assign tasks and let people do their thing. After all, I trusted the…