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Navigating Uncertainty and Leading with Impact with Erica Stanley, Director of Engineering at Google

Published Aug 2, 2023

Updated Aug 9, 2023

3 min read

In this episode of the Engineering Leadership Series, Tracy Lee talked with Erica Stanley, Director of Engineering at Google Play, and the founder of the Atlanta network of Women Who Code and organizer for Refactr.Tech. In this interview, Erica shared her experiences and insights on navigating change, building resilient teams, and embracing opportunities in the face of uncertainty. Her wisdom and practical advice offer valuable lessons for professionals at all levels.

Establishing Identity and Building Culture: Erica discussed the early stages of her role at Google, where she helped build the Google Play Atlanta site from scratch. She emphasized the importance of establishing a unique identity and culture for the team, highlighting the pivotal role played by her management chain. This phase involved determining team charters, fostering partnerships, and hiring exceptional talent.
Transitioning and Realigning Teams: As the team grew and projects evolved, Erica spoke about the need to ensure productivity and facilitate transitions. This required helping the team adapt to new projects and stakeholders while maintaining a focus on high-performance outcomes. She highlighted the importance of realigning teams based on changing priorities and cultivating a culture of experimentation and continuous learning.
Moving Fast with High-Scale Considerations: Erica drew upon her experiences in both startups and large organizations to address the challenges of moving quickly without compromising reliability at scale. She stressed the need to balance speed, experimentation, and learning while ensuring the stability of systems that impact billions of users. Erica encouraged teams to anticipate user needs and build products that deliver delightful experiences.
Approaching Change and Uncertainty: Recognizing the impact of change on individuals and teams, Erica provided insights on approaching uncertainty. She emphasized the significance of processing change personally before engaging with the team, allowing for a more thoughtful and proactive response. Erica highlighted the importance of understanding the stages of change and embracing empathy, compassion, and support as individuals navigate their unique journeys.
Taking Care of Oneself and Filling the Cup: Erica underscored the importance of self-care and emphasized that one's ability to handle change is influenced by personal well-being. She advised investing time in mindfulness, journaling, and meditation to process change and build resilience. Erica advocated for therapy and recommended forming a trusted tribe of supportive peers and mentors to navigate the challenges of leadership.
Fostering Team Resilience: To help teams navigate the stages of change, Erica emphasized the need for leaders to meet individuals where they are in their journey. By acknowledging personal and professional impacts, leaders can guide teams towards acceptance and embrace change as an opportunity. Erica encouraged leaders to ensure teams stay motivated and connected to the larger purpose, focusing on the impact they make within the organization and the broader industry.
Empowering Individuals and Connecting to Business Objectives: Erica stressed the importance of individuals understanding the impact of their work on the business. She encouraged engineers to go beyond task-oriented updates and quantify the results of their work, enabling leaders to better appreciate their contributions. Erica recommended engineers learn about the business side of the organization and leverage this knowledge to align their work with broader objectives.
Embracing Change as an Opportunity: Erica urged professionals to view uncertainty and change as opportunities rather than threats. She advised individuals to explore new frontiers and invest in personal and professional growth. By being proactive, adaptable, and intentional in their career journeys, professionals can seize the possibilities that arise during periods of change.

Erica's interview offers invaluable insights into navigating change, fostering resilience, and embracing opportunities. Her emphasis on personal well-being, empathetic leadership, and a growth mindset provides a roadmap for professionals seeking to thrive in times of uncertainty. By adopting her advice and embracing change as an opportunity, individuals can position themselves and their teams for continued success in an ever-evolving tech landscape.

To watch the full conversation, check it out here.

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If you modify a property, it will only update that property and will not trigger an update on the whole object. It also supports triggering updates when methods like array.push are called. In previous versions, an assignment was required to trigger an update: ` To have a similar behavior of svelte 4 (no deep reactivity), use the $state.raw() rune. This syntax of .* is common for related features of a rune: $state.raw() will require an assignment to trigger reactivity. ` Because proxies are used, you may need to extract the underlying state instead of the proxy itself. In that case, $state.snapshot() should be used: ` $derived We will use $derived and $derived.by to declare a derived state. The two runes are essentially the same, except one allows us to use a function instead of an expression, allowing for more complex operations to calculate the derived values. ` $effect Effects are useful for running something triggered by a change in state. One of the things you'll note from the $effect rune is that dependencies don't need to be explicit. Those will be picked from reactive values read synchronously in the body of the effect function. ` Something to bear in mind is that these dependencies are picked each time the effect runs. The values read during the last run become the dependencies of the effect. ` Depending on the result of the random method, foo or bar will stop being a dependency of the effect. You should place them outside the condition so they can trigger reruns of the effect. *Variants* of the effect rune are $effect.pre, which runs before a DOM update, and $effect.tracking(), which checks for the context of the effect (true for an effect inside an effect or in the template). $props This rune replaces the export let keywords used in previous versions to define a component's props. To use the $props syntax, we can consider it to return an object with all the properties a component receives. We can use JavaScript syntax to destructure it or use the rest property if we want to retrieve every property not explicitly destructured.. ` $bindable If you want to mutate a prop so that the change flows back to the parent, you can use the $bindable prop to make it work in both directions. A parent component can pass a value to a child component, and the child component is able to modify it, returning the data back to the parent component. ` $inspect The $inspect rune only works in dev mode and will track dependencies deeply. By default, it will call console.log with the provided argument whenever it detects a change. 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Navigating Uncertainty and Leading with Impact with Erica Stanley, Director of Engineering at Google

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