Category: Leadership
Reflections and strategies on leading by example, mentoring developers, and growing both people and culture in a PHP-driven environment.
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From Developer to Leader: Lessons I Wish I Knew Earlier in My PHP Journey
If you told 25-year-old me that one day Iād be managing a team of PHP developers, reviewing performance metrics, and negotiating deadlines with stakeholders, I probably wouldāve laughed and gone back to refactoring some poorly written legacy class. I didnāt start my career with āleadershipā in mindāmy focus was all about clean code, fast queries,…
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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 wasnāt immediateābut it was inevitable. Iāve since changed the way I lead. Hereās what Iāve 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 āmove fast and break thingsā leadership like itās the only kind that works. But thereās one leadership skill that rarely gets any spotlightāpatience. Itās not sexy. It doesnāt make great TED Talk soundbites. But in my experience, patience is one of the most…
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Making Tough Calls: A Leaderās Daily Reality
When I first became a team lead, I thought ātough decisionsā were rareāsomething you made in a crisis. Big stuff, like letting someone go or killing a project. What I didnāt realize is that making hard calls is a daily part of leadershipāand usually, no one claps when you do it. No roadmap tells you…
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Helping Your Team See the Bigger Picture
Iāve worked with plenty of talented devs who could debug gnarly logic, optimize slow queries, and write clever abstractionsābut 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…
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Supporting Team Growth Without Micromanaging
I used to think being a good leader meant staying on top of everythingāchecking in constantly, reviewing every detail, giving feedback the moment something was off. You know, just making sure things donāt fall apart. But over time, I realized something: the more I tried to stay in control, the less control I actually had.…