Kate Wardin
Senior Engineering Manager @ Netflix
Kate Wardin is an Engineering Manager at Netflix and is based in Minneapolis, Minnesota. She enjoys exploring the psychology of happiness at work and is passionate about building inclusive and high performing teams via people-first leadership. She believes in the power of humor to bring people together to create a positive and cohesive workplace. In her free time, Kate enjoys unwinding by watching The Office or chasing her toddler and dog.
Presentations
Foundations of Tech Leadership Deep Dive
Monday, 9:00 AM EST
According to a CareerBuilder study, only 40% of new tech leaders receive formal training when they become a boss for the first time. The rest are forced to get scrappy to quickly equip themselves with new skills, techniques, and mindsets to effectively transition into their new roles.
This workshop was designed to fill this gap; providing tactical techniques and resources for both new and seasoned technical leaders!
In this full day workshop, you will learn how successfully navigate the complexities of Engineering Management. Topics include:
Purposeful leadership, emotional intelligence, self awareness, time management, prioritizing the right things, social styles, giving feedback, career conversations, 1:1s, psychological safety, recruiting, interviewing, onboarding, measuring team metrics, motivation, engagement, team building, and building sustainable relationships.
Interactive group exercises will help you practice these new ideas and techniques in a safe and engaging environment.
You will leave with new perspectives on Engineering Management, as well as handouts and plenty of resources to grow and further develop skills in your daily work.
Please download (and print if possible) the handout before joining this workshop! (located with session slides).
8 ways to build a sustainable engineering culture
Tuesday, 8:30 AM EST
Contrary to popular belief, software engineering culture is not about the free food, open office spaces, and ping pong tables.
You can sense a great team culture when you observe it, and unfortunately you've probably experienced (or are currently experiencing) elements of a bad team culture. Not to worry - it's never too late to grab the reins and make small changes to steer your team in the right direction!
In this talk, Kate will highlight 8 tactical tips that attendees can implement on their teams immediately to help shape their team's culture!
Giving Effective Feedback
Tuesday, 10:30 AM EST
Delivering feedback is arguably the hardest part of being a leader. Eventually, the time will come when someone on your team isn’t meeting expectations, and you will be faced with a choice. You can choose to ignore the situation, hope it improves organically, and accept the toll it takes on the broader team, or you can choose to have the tough conversation.
In this interactive session, you will learn more about your communication style, a simple framework to provide actionable feedback, common red flags to watch out for, and advice on how to quickly course correct on a dev team. You’ll leave with a template for giving feedback that you can tie directly to a situation you’re currently facing as well as plenty of examples that you can leverage in the future.