Ami Varsanyi

My favorite topic. I’ll be covering strategies for learning from past incidents, and honestly any situation (it doesn’t have to be an “incident”!). Developing a learning culture is so paramount to resilience and safety in operations. You’ll leave with changes you can start implementing today, techniques for getting better ROI out of past events, and ways to instill collaboration in learning across your organization. Come join!

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How you lead is as important as hitting your goals. Be the leader that people remember well.

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As I review resumes for a senior manager role, I’m surprised by how many people highlight managing large teams - sometimes up to 50 direct reports. Let’s be honest: leading well isn’t about how many people you manage. When you’re overseeing that many, it often shows a lack of delegation. Real leadership is about empowering others, building strong teams, and creating systems that can scale.

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My biggest takeaway from #ELCAnnual2024 last week was that trust and psychological safety are the foundation of everything we do. Whether I was listening to a talk on improving team velocity, product-engineering alignment, measuring performance, leading through change, or collaboration — trust was at the core. Without trust, your team will struggle to work through conflict.  Without trust, your team will become disengaged and stop delivering to its highest potential. Without trust, interactions will feel adversarial rather than collaborative. Here are 3 ways to build trust in your team: 1. Communicate the “why” behind decisions, rather than focusing on the “what”. 2. Start collaborating early in the process, asking for input and ideas on how to approach a project. Don’t show up with the solution and throw it over the wall to your team. 3. Address tension and conflicts directly. Working through conflicts builds trust because it shows you care about the relationship. What are your favorite ways to build trust on your teams? Check out all of the great resources from ELC: https://lnkd.in/gdZRuz-a

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Take mental health days. Assuming your company allows it, take them. At Yelp we changed sick days to wellness days to include all types of wellness. As a leader, even if you don't have the title of manager (senior/staff engineer, tech lead, architect, etc), you can set a healthy tone for your team by leading by example. It's one thing to tell my team to use their wellness when they need it, but way more powerful if I use it. I want my team to take that time. I would rather they don't work, take care of themselves, and come back when they can be present. Will people abuse the policy? Maybe. My team has to trust me with their careers, I trust them with a hell of a lot more than following expectations of a simple wellness policy. I'll choose trust here every time.

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Great option for your event planning needs.

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There are two kinds of failure. 1. "We're failing now and need to change strategies to succeed" 2. "This is a failure; let's not do this again" If you talk about failure, make sure your listeners understand which kind you mean! And, recall how powerful that first kind of failure is! It has given us basically anything worth having or inventing. If your children haven't given you the gift of asking to watch this clip 235,826 times already, I invite you to take the lesson straight from the sages: https://lnkd.in/gAyN3E9b

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Working at Twitch has reshaped how I view learning and personal growth. Twitch isn't just a workplace; it's a platform that transforms perspectives. My interactions with live streamers and witnessing software engineers openly share their processes on Twitch have profoundly influenced my approach to professional and personal development. Here’s what I've embraced more fully because of my experiences: - Learning in public. Observing and engaging with creators has encouraged me to be more open about my own learning journey. - Sharing my own stories. Inspired by the creators I've followed for years, I've started to write more on LinkedIn and even stream my own content. - Appreciating the inspirational ecosystem. The dedication and creativity of Twitch creators not only enhance our product but also motivate everyone around them to explore and express more openly. This unexpected yet invaluable aspect of my job at Twitch has taught me the power of visibility in learning and the inspiration it can bring. #ContinuousLearning • #Inspiration • #SoftwareEngineering ♻️ Repost if you found this valuable.

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It's been a while since my last blog post. Between work, Seattle summer (#IYKYK), and frequent updates to the TPM ladder guide from my last post, I've been busy! Oh, and how could I forget - I also had to prepare for my presentation for the TPM Summit last Friday. But I've been wanting to get back on the proverbial public writing horse, and honestly, I needed this writeup for my own use case at work 😜. It's kinda cool when life aligns priorities and free time 🪄. So, what did I write about? I've already shared how valuable I find personal weekly summaries, be they public or private. But I'm back to talk about *organizational* sunmaries, made from roll-ups of personal summaries. I call this "a pyramid of radical candor." If you work in a remote company and/or have different organizations for different job functions (Product, Design, Eng, etc) - Zillow is both - check this post out to see why this is valuable and how to do it. https://lnkd.in/grUx8H_V

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