Code, Leadership & the Remote Dev Life

Category: Leadership

  • 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.

    1. Start With Trust, Not Surveillance

    Remote work isn’t about fancy time trackers or monitoring keystrokes. If you’ve hired professionals, treat them like professionals.

    Set expectations around outcomes, not hours. Give clear goals and let the team figure out how to get there.

    Micromanagement doesn’t scale—especially remotely.

    2. Protect Focus Like It’s Sacred

    Developers need uninterrupted time to build. It’s not a luxury—it’s a requirement.

    I’ve learned to:

    • Reduce daily meetings to the absolute minimum
    • Replace stand-ups with async check-ins
    • Schedule meetings during shared overlap windows (not someone’s 10 p.m.)

    Slack doesn’t have to be on all the time. It’s okay to be “away.”

    3. Create Space for Deep Work

    I encourage “focus blocks”—dedicated time slots for writing and problem-solving. I even block them on my calendar and encourage my team to do the same.

    If something’s urgent, we handle it. If it can wait, it should.

    That quiet space is where the real engineering happens.

    4. Build Feedback Into the Culture

    Just because we’re remote doesn’t mean feedback should be rare.

    We use:

    • Pull request comments for micro-feedback
    • Regular 1:1s for deeper coaching
    • Retrospectives to talk about what’s working (and what’s not)

    This helps me catch burnout early. When someone starts missing deadlines or seems “off,” I don’t guess—I ask.

    5. Respect Time Zones—and Personal Time

    One of my developers is in Egypt, another in the Philippines. If I try to make everyone align, someone suffers.

    So I don’t.

    Instead, I:

    • Schedule critical meetings in shared overlap hours
    • Record calls when needed
    • Push for async documentation wherever possible

    Also: no weekend pings. No late-night emergencies unless something’s actually on fire. Work can wait. Health can’t.

    6. Celebrate the Wins—Even Small Ones

    Remote work can feel thankless if you’re not careful. That “quick good job” someone might say in the hallway? It doesn’t exist.

    So I make it a point to:

    • Highlight good commits in team chat
    • Shout out thoughtful code reviews
    • Thank people often, publicly and privately

    It builds morale—and reminds everyone they’re seen.

    7. Let Developers Influence the Process

    Burnout often comes from feeling powerless. To fight that, I involve devs in how we build—not just what we build.

    We’ve had devs help reshape our:

    • Sprint planning cadence
    • Deployment process
    • Tooling decisions

    Autonomy = investment. When they help shape the system, they feel more ownership (and less resentment).

    8. Talk About Burnout Openly

    It’s okay to say, “I’m tired.” I try to normalize that.

    We talk openly about workload, energy, and mental health in our 1:1s. Sometimes that means encouraging someone to take a break—or stepping in to reprioritize the backlog.

    Pretending burnout isn’t real doesn’t make it go away.

    Final Thought

    Leading a remote PHP team well isn’t about squeezing more output from developers. It’s about building an environment where good code—and healthy people—can thrive.

    The best teams I’ve led didn’t just ship great features. They stuck around, supported each other, and grew together.

    That doesn’t happen by accident. It happens when you lead with intention.

  • 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 “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 underrated, overused, and completely necessary tools in a leader’s arsenal.

    Let’s unpack that.

    1. Patience is Not Inaction

    First, let’s kill the myth that patience means doing nothing.

    Patience is deciding to do nothing right now—because the timing isn’t right, the information is incomplete, or the person in front of you needs room to grow. It’s restraint with intention.

    Sometimes that’s the hardest kind of action.

    2. People Don’t Grow on Command

    You can give someone the clearest task and the best tools—and they’ll still fumble.

    The instinct? Step in. Fix it. Move on.

    But if you do that every time, you’re not leading. You’re just babysitting.

    Patience is what turns mistakes into lessons. It’s giving space for growth, not just efficiency. Leadership isn’t about showing how capable you are—it’s about building capability in others.

    3. Waiting Can Be a Power Move

    There are times when I’ve held off on making a decision—sometimes for days, weeks, or longer—because I sensed the team wasn’t ready yet. Or because the situation still had room to shift.

    And it usually did.

    Patience lets you observe the undercurrents. The politics, the stress signals, the emerging patterns. Sometimes by simply waiting, you see truths that would’ve stayed hidden if you acted too fast.

    4. Patience Builds Trust

    Nobody likes a knee-jerk boss.

    If your team knows you won’t overreact at the first sign of trouble, they’ll bring issues to you earlier. If they see you take time to understand before acting, they’ll feel heard—and that earns you loyalty.

    In a world obsessed with urgency, patience is a signal: “I’m steady. I’m not going to flinch. I’ve got your back.”

    That kind of leadership is rare—and incredibly powerful.

    5. It’s Hard, and That’s Why It Matters

    Patience doesn’t come naturally to most of us. It definitely didn’t for me. I had to unlearn the instinct to fix, jump in, rush. I had to sit with discomfort, uncertainty, silence.

    But every time I managed to hold space instead of fill it, I noticed something: things unfolded better. Smarter decisions. More capable teams. Less emotional whiplash.

    So no, it’s not glamorous. But it works.

    Final Thoughts

    If you’re leading a team, you’re not just making decisions. You’re shaping growth, culture, and character—starting with your own.

    And that takes patience.

    Not the passive kind. The active, gritty, intentional kind. The kind that says, “I trust you. I’m here. I’m not in a rush to prove anything.”

    The kind that makes space for real leadership.

  • 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 “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 when to delay a launch to avoid burnout, or when to back a teammate whose opinion clashes with the stakeholders. And the toughest ones? They’re the decisions where both choices suck, just in different ways.

    Here’s what I’ve learned navigating those calls:

    1. Clarity Beats Consensus

    As a dev, I used to aim for alignment. But as a leader, I’ve had to let go of consensus as the goal. Sometimes, not everyone will agree. And that’s okay.

    What your team really needs is clarity—a clear direction and the rationale behind it.

    I’ve found that saying, “This is a tough one, but here’s why I’m choosing this path,” builds more trust than pretending everyone is on the same page when they’re not.

    2. Short-Term Pain vs Long-Term Gain

    Most hard decisions pit short-term discomfort against long-term outcomes. Think: choosing to push back on a client request and risk friction now… versus setting a sustainable precedent for your team.

    I try to pause and ask: “Which version of this will I be glad I picked three months from now?”

    It doesn’t make the decision easier, but it usually makes it clearer.

    3. Emotional Toll Is Real

    No one talks enough about the emotional weight of leadership. You’ll second-guess yourself. You’ll worry about how others perceive your choices. You’ll carry things your team never sees.

    That’s part of the job—but it doesn’t mean you go it alone. I’ve leaned on mentors, peers, and even a journal to process what I can’t always say out loud.

    Make space for reflection. It’s not a luxury. It’s a survival tool.

    4. It’s Still Your Job to Decide

    You can gather input, empathize, weigh tradeoffs—but at the end of the day, someone has to make the call.

    And that someone is you.

    When I avoid tough decisions, my team feels it. Progress stalls. People get confused. Doubts creep in. Even silence becomes a kind of signal—one that says, “I don’t know what we’re doing.”

    Leading means deciding, even when the answer sucks.

    5. The Hardest Calls Are About People

    Deadlines and features are one thing. But it’s the people calls—the ones where you balance empathy with performance—that really test your values.

    Letting go of someone who isn’t thriving on the team. Calling out behavior that doesn’t align with your culture. Holding space for someone who’s struggling personally while still managing delivery.

    These decisions define your leadership, not just your team’s outcomes.

    No One Applauds the Hard Decisions—Until Much Later

    Most of the tough calls I’ve made weren’t popular in the moment. Some were questioned. Some were misunderstood. But months later? That’s when people say, “I’m glad you did that.” Sometimes they never say it out loud—but you feel it in the team’s stability, growth, or regained trust.

    So if you’re in a season of hard decisions, take heart.

    Leadership isn’t about always knowing the right answer. It’s about carrying the weight of uncertainty, choosing with intention, and standing by your team as you navigate it together.

  • 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 team. But over time, I realized something was missing. People were shipping code, but they weren’t invested. They didn’t feel like owners. They were solving technical puzzles, not business problems.

    And that’s when it hit me: we were shipping features without context.

    Why Context Matters

    When people understand the why behind their work—how it connects to customers, revenue, or product direction—they make better decisions. They also care more. They ask smarter questions. They challenge assumptions. They propose better solutions.

    Without that context, even the best engineers become task robots.

    What Helped Me Turn the Corner

    It wasn’t a grand strategy. Just a shift in how I communicate:

    • Start with the goal. Every task or project starts with a short narrative: what we’re doing, who it helps, and why it matters now. This isn’t just for PMs—it’s for everyone.
    • Connect to user impact. Even a backend caching change can be tied to how fast a user sees search results. Engineers light up when they realize they’re shaping experience, not just writing code.
    • Regularly share progress at the business level. Not just burndown/burnup charts. Share “what this release unlocked” for the team or customer. Celebrate not just commits, but outcomes.

    Seeing the Shift

    Once you start being more intentional with sharing context, you’ll see something surprising: junior devs will begin asking product-level questions. QA will start offering UX feedback. Engineers will volunteer to talk directly with users (or maybe not, but hey… who knows). It’s not because you asked them to—it’s because they care.

    Giving people the bigger picture doesn’t dilute focus. It deepens it.

    Devs Want Purpose, Not Just Process

    We underestimate how hungry smart people are for purpose. When all they see are feature requests and sprint boards, they can lose sight of why they got into tech in the first place: to build things that matter.

    Helping your team see the bigger picture is a leadership multiplier. You won’t just ship features—you’ll grow people. And in my book, that’s the better metric.

  • 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. My team became hesitant, overly dependent, and slower to move. And honestly? I was tired.

    Eventually, I had to learn how to support my team’s growth without breathing down their necks. If you’ve ever felt stuck between wanting things done right and wanting your team to grow—this one’s for you.

    1. Set Expectations, Then Step Back

    Micromanaging usually starts from a good place. You care about the work. You want to hit deadlines. You want the team to do their best.

    But here’s the trap: when you start giving too many instructions, people stop thinking for themselves. They become task-takers instead of problem-solvers.

    These days, I try to focus on outcomes instead of step-by-step instructions. I’ll say something like, “This is what we’re aiming for. Let me know if you hit any blockers,” and then I give them space to figure it out.

    The magic happens when people take ownership of their approach. They start coming up with better ideas than I would have thought of anyway.

    2. Be a Coach, Not a Cop

    I used to treat 1:1s like mini status reports. “What’s done? What’s next? Why isn’t this finished?”

    Now I see those check-ins differently—they’re a chance to coach, not command.

    Instead of asking for updates, I ask questions like:

    • “What’s working for you right now?”
    • “What’s been tricky?”
    • “Anything you’re stuck on that I can help with?”

    This shifts the energy completely. People open up, share real challenges, and I can support them without taking over.

    The goal isn’t to catch mistakes. It’s to build confidence so they can handle bigger challenges over time.

    3. Write Stuff Down So You Can Let Go

    One reason I used to micromanage was because I was the only one who knew how certain things worked. Every process lived in my head, which meant people had to come to me for everything.

    Bad system.

    Now I try to document as much as I can. If we have a repeatable process, it goes in a shared doc. If there’s a weird edge case, I note it somewhere searchable. The goal is to make myself less essential, not more.

    The bonus? Once I started handing over more responsibility with clear documentation, I noticed people started improving the process on their own. They weren’t just following instructions—they were making things better.

    4. Give Feedback That Actually Helps

    There was a time when I gave a lot of feedback—most of it unsolicited and focused on what was wrong.

    I’ve learned that if you want someone to grow, feedback has to build them up, not break them down. Now, I follow a pretty simple pattern:

    1. Highlight something they did well.
    2. Explain why it matters.
    3. Offer one area to improve.
    4. Encourage the next step.

    For example, instead of saying, “This design feels off,” I’ll say, “I really like how clean this layout is—it’s a big step up. If anything, I’d push the typography a bit more to match the boldness of the concept. You’ve definitely got a strong eye for detail.”

    It takes a few extra seconds, but the impact lasts way longer.

    5. Trust First, Don’t Wait to “Earn It”

    This one was hard for me. I used to think people had to earn my trust before I gave them real responsibility.

    Now I flip that. I trust them first. I let them lead, take ownership, and even mess up a little. It’s scary sometimes—but it pays off.

    When you start from a place of trust, people tend to rise to it. They take the work more seriously. They double-check things. They come back with ideas and solutions because they know they’re not just executors—they’re owners.

    If someone drops the ball, I treat it like a learning moment. We talk about what happened, why, and what we’ll do differently next time. That’s how people grow.

    Bonus: Busy ≠ Productive

    Let’s be real—watching your team’s every move might feel productive, but it’s not. I used to obsess over who was online, how long tasks were taking, or how often someone was pushing code. None of that tells you if the work is actually moving forward.

    Now, I care more about results. Are we shipping value? Are clients happy? Is the team learning and improving?

    You don’t need to watch every move if you’ve built a system where people are trusted, supported, and clear on what matters.

    Final Thoughts

    Micromanagement feels safe in the short term, but it’s a long-term trap. Your team gets stuck. You burn out. Nobody wins.

    But when you shift your mindset—when you set clear goals, coach instead of control, document and delegate, and give real trust—you build a team that doesn’t need constant oversight. You build a team that thrives.

    And you? You get to focus on bigger-picture thinking, creative work, or just taking a break without worrying the whole thing will fall apart.

    It took me a while to get here, but I’m glad I did. If you’re in the same boat, trying to loosen the grip without losing your edge—know that it’s possible.

    Your team doesn’t need a micromanager. They need a leader who believes in their growth.