Category: Leadership

Reflections and strategies on leading by example, mentoring developers, and growing both people and culture in a PHP-driven environment.

  • From Developer to Leader: Lessons I Wish I Knew Earlier in My PHP Journey

    From Developer to Leader: Lessons I Wish I Knew Earlier in My PHP Journey

    If you told 25-year-old me that one day I’d be managing a team of PHP developers, reviewing performance metrics, and negotiating deadlines with stakeholders, I probably would’ve laughed and gone back to refactoring some poorly written legacy class. I didn’t start my career with ā€œleadershipā€ in mind—my focus was all about clean code, fast queries,…


  • How to Lead a Remote PHP Team Without Burning Out Your Developers

    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.…


  • The Leadership Skill No One Talks About: Patience

    The Leadership Skill No One Talks About: Patience

    We love to talk about decisiveness. About boldness, charisma, vision. We glamorize ā€œmove fast and break thingsā€ 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…


  • Making Tough Calls: A Leader’s Daily Reality

    Making Tough Calls: A Leader’s Daily Reality

    When I first became a team lead, I thought ā€œtough decisionsā€ 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…


  • Helping Your Team See the Bigger Picture

    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…


  • Supporting Team Growth Without Micromanaging

    Supporting Team Growth Without Micromanaging

    I used to think being a good leader meant staying on top of everything—checking in constantly, reviewing every detail, giving feedback the moment something was off. You know, just making sure things don’t fall apart. But over time, I realized something: the more I tried to stay in control, the less control I actually had.…