SE Radio 627: Chuck Weindorf on Leaders and Software Engineers

Chuck Weindorf, a retired IT director and chief engineer with nearly 40 years' experience in software engineering, joins host Jeff Doolittle for a conversation about the concepts in Chuck's book, Leaders & Software Engineers. Through personal anecdotes and insights gleaned from his extensive career, Chuck underscores quality assurance's critical role in building trust with users and fostering a proactive culture of defect resolution within development teams. He highlights how ethical considerations underpin trust and integrity within the software engineering profession. Chuck and Jeff examine the significance of thorough documentation and the vital role of effective communication in overcoming silos within organizations, and ensuring that projects meet their intended objectives while maintaining high standards of quality and reliability. They discuss how to cultivate a positive, innovative culture within engineering teams. Chuck shares strategies for addressing challenges and opportunities presented by change, advocating for adaptability and continuous learning as essential qualities for both new and experienced engineers navigating the evolving technological landscape. He offers advice for those transitioning into leadership roles, emphasizing the importance of developing soft skills and the ability to empathize with and inspire team members. Finally, the episode explores the potential impact of emerging technologies, such as low-code platforms and artificial intelligence. Brought to you by IEEE Computer Society and IEEE Software magazine.

Chuck Weindorf, a retired IT director and chief engineer with nearly 40 years’ experience in software engineering, joins host Jeff Doolittle for a conversation about the concepts in Chuck’s book, Leaders & Software Engineers. Through personal anecdotes and insights gleaned from his extensive career, Chuck underscores quality assurance’s critical role in building trust with users and fostering a proactive culture of defect resolution within development teams. He highlights how ethical considerations underpin trust and integrity within the software engineering profession. Chuck and Jeff examine the significance of thorough documentation and the vital role of effective communication in overcoming silos within organizations, and ensuring that projects meet their intended objectives while maintaining high standards of quality and reliability. They discuss how to cultivate a positive, innovative culture within engineering teams. Chuck shares strategies for addressing challenges and opportunities presented by change, advocating for adaptability and continuous learning as essential qualities for both new and experienced engineers navigating the evolving technological landscape. He offers advice for those transitioning into leadership roles, emphasizing the importance of developing soft skills and the ability to empathize with and inspire team members. Finally, the episode explores the potential impact of emerging technologies, such as low-code platforms and artificial intelligence.

Brought to you by IEEE Computer Society and IEEE Software magazine.

Show Notes

• CharlesWeindorf.com

• Low code: aws.amazon.com/what-is/low-code

• Leaders & Software Engineers (Mudsox Publishing, 2021)

From IEEE Computer Society

• Rethinking Engineering Leadership

• The Leadership Lever

• Leadership education for engineering students

• Leadership Annoyances

• Innovating AI Leadership Education

• Leveraging leadership lessons from software process improvement efforts for architecture leadership & management

• Regulatory Focus, Transformational Leadership, and Job Satisfaction

From SE Radio

• Episode 574: Chad Michel on Software as an Engineering Discipline

• Episode 520: John Ousterhout on A Philosophy of Software Design

• Episode 447: Michael Perry on Immutable Architecture

• Episode 407: Juval Löwy on Righting Software

• Episode 396: Barry O’Reilly on Antifragile Architecture

• Episode 331: Kevin Goldsmith on Architecture and Organizational Design

Transcript

Transcript brought to you by IEEE Software magazine and IEEE Computer Society. This transcript was automatically generated. To suggest improvements in the text, please contact [email protected] and include the episode number.

Jeff Doolittle 00:00:18 Welcome to Software Engineering Radio. I’m your host, Jeff Doolittle. I’m excited to invite Chuck Weindorf as our guest on the show today for a conversation about leaders and software engineers. Chuck is a retired IT director and chief engineer with nearly 40 years of experience in software engineering. He encourages software engineers to understand their responsibilities, see their value, adapt to change, and focus on future direction with stories and humor. He influences software engineers to excel in their craft. Chuck is the author of the book Leaders and Software Engineers , which is the topic for this episode. Chuck, welcome to the show.

Chuck Weindorf 00:00:56 Hi Jeff. It’s great to be here. I’ve been looking forward to this.

Jeff Doolittle 00:00:58 Me too. So tell us what encouraged you to write this book, Leaders and Software Engineers ?

Chuck Weindorf 00:01:04 Well, I was an amateur writer as part of my part-time fund. While I was making an earning as a software engineer, and I got a flare for being able to communicate to my peer engineers on the happenings and what was going on, when I stepped into leadership, it became a weekly article. So I would communicate with 200 and some engineers and 700 folks in IT through this email and the demands of it, keep adding to my mailing list. So the company was passed around quite a bit and the things that I like to focus on were the things that helped other folks understand engineers from the outside. So not only were we encouraging engineers to do their best work, it was also helping the organization understand how to work with engineers because personality types weíre somewhat rare and very unique in the business place.

Jeff Doolittle 00:01:52 Okay. So you had some experience basically writing the book or elements of the book, I imagine, just as a natural part of your career.

Chuck Weindorf 00:02:00 Yes, so it is a compilation. So itís over about three years of articles written within the company I was working with and encouraging engineers then became, once I was nearing retirement, I began to assemble those stories into a war(?).

Jeff Doolittle 00:02:13 How did you end up as a software leader?

Chuck Weindorf 00:02:15 My journey to a software leader came from the ground up. So it came right out of high school as a hobbyist, and I was making pong type games and the like with a home computer. Went down to a company and they just says, I make these programs. You guys do any of this down here. And the company was Erie Insurance and are my local town. And I said, yeah, we got big mainframes here. So I came up that channel where I was constantly learning new things and technologies, each new technology that came out, I was jumping into it, folks began to, let’s say, follow along with my career. So a group of folks who were like-minded began to do that to the point where I’d reached in my forties and they said, look, you really ought to be in formal leadership track.

Chuck Weindorf 00:02:55 Now let’s move you over into that role, but we want you to stay technical. So I had that wonderful experience of being able to learn new technologies, be an evangelist for them, and be able to encourage others to try them and really help the company move ahead. This company was very traditional and so took a little extra effort to get them to try new technology. So that was my leadership role, was maybe being the first penguin to jump in the water. And if I don’t get eaten by all the killer whales, then great. Other folks are jumping.

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