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ShopifyToni AkinwumiExplainer
Director of Engineering, Lawrence Mandel Talks Road to Leadership, Growth, and Finding Balance.
Summary
Lawrence Mandel, a Director of Production Engineering at Shopify, describes a career that moved from software development into technical leadership and the lessons behind that transition. He leads Developer Acceleration, a team that builds tools, conventions, and documentation so Shopify’s development organization can scale effectively. His path included web services, XML, open source, release engineering, project and release management, and self-taught Perl and CGI programming during a work term at IBM. Mandel says leadership required accepting that he could not know every technology or always be the most knowledgeable person in the room, while trusting others’ expertise. He also says prioritizing family and health before work improved his relationships and made his work more deliberate and efficient.
Context
The interview is part of the Behind The Code series, which shares employee stories about solving problems at Shopify and beyond. Mandel has led Shopify’s Developer Acceleration team for over a year and previously worked at IBM and Mozilla.
Approach / What changed
Developer Acceleration supports organizational scale by building and providing tools, conventions, and documentation for developers. Mandel’s approach to balance is to assign time to family, health, sports, and exercise before allocating remaining time to work, which he says made his work more deliberate and efficient.
Takeaways
Developer Acceleration builds tools, conventions, and documentation to help Shopify’s development team scale effectively.
Mandel’s leadership transition involved moving from doing all the work to enabling others, accepting that he would not always be the most knowledgeable person in the room.
Assigning time to family and health before work helped Mandel improve personal relationships and become more deliberate and efficient at work.
FAQ
What does Shopify’s Developer Acceleration team build?
The team builds and provides tools, conventions, and documentation for Shopify’s developers. Its purpose is to help the development organization scale effectively as its work and team grow.
How did Mandel adjust to becoming a technical leader?
He learned to be comfortable without having every answer or knowing every technology in depth. He focused on understanding how he could contribute, asking questions, and trusting other people’s knowledge.
What work-life balance change did Mandel make?
He began assigning personal time to his family, health, sports, and exercise before fitting in additional work. He says this changed his priorities, improved his relationships, and made him more deliberate and efficient professionally.
Source and freshness
- Source
- shopify.engineering
- Published
- Added to Yomu
Summaries are generated from the original by a language model. Check the original before relying on it.
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