Making the jump from line manager to director — essentially overnight with Christian Helvin from Tithely

Christian Helvin is an Engineering Director at Tithely. In this episode, Rebecca and Christian chat about his career journey, about being part of an acquisition, transitioning from agency work to software development, and his focus on developer happiness.

Find the transcript at: https://www.unblocked.fm/episodes/christian-helvin-tithely-from-engineering-line-manager-to-director

Timestamps (00:00) Introduction (00:42) Christian’s journey at Tithely so far (01:39) Being a part of an acquisition (04:22) The difference between running small and large teams (05:32) Leading a geographically distributed team (07:00) Running an agency vs. running a product organization (09:04) Leveling up from a line manager to a director (10:42) Running productive skip-level meetings (13:20) Deciding on which problems to tackle first (15:51) Microservicing (18:30) Measuring the effect of productivity changes (19:52) Introducing cohesion to siloed teams (24:08) Managing expectations from the business (28:39) Growth plans in the current macroeconomic climate

Where to find Christian • LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/cphelvin/ • Twitter: https://twitter.com/PHPWarrior

Where to find Rebecca • LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/rmurphey/ • Twitter: https://twitter.com/rmurphey

Links and mentions • Tithely: https://get.tithe.ly/ • Breeze: https://www.breezechms.com/ • Holding Skip-Level Meetings: skills you need to build bridges across teams: https://www.amazon.com/Holding-Skip-Level-Meetings-skills-bridges-ebook/dp/B01N6SSN0E/ • American Truck Simulator: https://americantrucksimulator.com/ • Euro Truck Simulator: https://eurotrucksimulator2.com/