[torben-friis]

1 - Took care of his teammates at a level that bordered comedy. If you said in passing "oh man there's never knives in the lunch room" and he heard you, the next day you'd see a new pack of knives there. Taught me to consider every minor opportunity for improvement that life throws at you.

2 - Casualness in the face of problems. If a junior came and told him that production was down, he would just laugh and say something like "ok man that's gonna be a fun story next Friday, let's take a look". That mentality of "everything is solvable, nothing is worth being angry at" was really contagious.

3 - If he didn't believe something was good, he wouldn't do it just to do what's expected. That includes canceling meetings we were invited to with a "nah this can be an email", making technical choices that were against common knowledge at the time if he felt it made sense, or being fully honest during daily meetings, sometimes saying things like "yesterday I didn't do anything productive whatsoever. I was not focused, but I expect to perform better today". Again very powerful as a formative experience for junior devs, as the honesty was a total antidote to impostor syndrome.

He was a great dev in technical terms as well, but I don't think his technical choices mattered even a fraction of the leadership aspect.

[silisili]

Sounds like an awesome teammate.

#2 is a big one, personally.

When I started, and was on call, every page was an 'omg omg' moment, and your brain rattles as you stare blankly at the screen. And I noticed nearly everyone is the same way, at some point at least.

But when I wasn't on call, and people called me to help anyways, it was much more relaxed(hey, not my butt this time) and it was a very level-headed approach.

Eventually I learned to just internalize 'be calm, we got this' even when flying solo, and it helped tremendously. Unfortunately, I have no advice as to how I actually achieved that over time.

[torben-friis]

Yeah, the way I got over it is just by remembering all the previous times that the sky was supposedly falling on us, and everything ended up fine.

But you need to have those memories in the first place, so the first mistakes are going to be tough. I now try to be that casual person for newcomers, because I know the reaction of those around you causes a big difference in your stress levels.

[nicbou]

> That includes canceling meetings we were invited to with a "nah this can be an email"

I've done this, and it went down really well. Even if you can't cancel the meeting, you can send a single person instead of the whole team. You can also send people back to their desks if their part in the meeting is over. I was also adamant on all meetings having some sort of description and agenda, so that people can tell if it's worth attending or not. That was more difficult.

[qmmmur]

Dude....