And that’s it! See you all next month… (maybe?)
Sydney Tech Leaders
@sydtechleaders.bsky.social
We are a professional group focused on Technology Leadership. A place for CTOs, Dev Managers, Directors and Team Leads (and those aspiring to those positions!) to go and share ideas, discuss problems, network, and provide/receive mentoring.
Final speaker is Dan, who will be doing a live (non-deterministic!) demo! Could a nefarious agent use prompt injection to break into your app? 😱 #sydtechleaders
Next up is Hemanth talking about harness engineering. Can AI really increase your team throughput? #sydtechleaders
Next up is Atlassian’s own Rodolfo sharing lessons learned from evolving Forge Storage. #sydtechleaders
I heard Molly speak last year, and one tip she shared really stuck with my: you “took a redundancy.” You didn’t “get made redundant.” One is active, and one is something that happened to you. Reframe your story to be ACTIVE. #sydtechleaders
Super useful new site that Molly just shared with everyone - sackedmate.com. Hopefully you don’t need it anytime soon! #sydtechleaders
Sacked Mate — Your mate for getting through redundancy in Australia
Just got sacked? Plain-English guide to your rights, entitlements, and what to do first. Free. Australian.
sackedmate.com.
Final speaker for this session is Molly sharing a common worry - how to negotiate a redundancy. 😱 #sydtechleaders
<meta>With so many talks tonight, I’ll do my best to capture one takeaway from each speaker… but don’t expect more than that! 😅 #sydtechleaders
The official part of the festivities has begun! We have NINE lightning talk speakers tonight. ⚡️ #sydtechleaders
There’s a sense of excitement as Jack wrangles cats (and speakers) for tonight’s lightning talks! #sydtechleaders
And now it’s time for our patented #sydtechleaders Q&A panel! We’ve already had questions about distinguishing good vs bad productivity; how to respond when you ask someone if they’re okay and they say “no”; how to respond when the request is for YOU to do something differently…
Ultimately avoiding burnout is not about minimising stress; it’s about figuring out how to recover in a way that allows you to get stronger (like an athlete). That’s how you stay in the game long term. #sydtechleaders
It’s not always easy for people to ascertain how they feel (if they have trauma, if they are neurodivergent, etc). It’s important to keep in mind when having conversations about stress and mental health. #sydtechleaders
So what is effective recovery? Move (rather than exercise), create (and play), connect (with people and places and yourself), reflect, rest… and repeat. #sydtechleaders
Everybody knows how to talk about stress; what they struggle with is effective recovery. Drinking too much, doomscrolling, signing up to expensive gym memberships you won’t use… these are not great ways to recover. #sydtechleaders
Bodies don’t differentiate between paid and unpaid work. Stress in your personal life contributes too. You do your best to manage it, but the tank never manages to get topped up. With burnout, you’re always drawing down. #sydtechleaders
Our second speaker for the night is Navin Keswani talking about burnout - a topic really important to most of us in the room. The pandemic hit many in tech hard. #sydtechleaders
To have meaningful mental health conversations, you need to make sure you’re in the right space yourself. Then ALEC - Ask RUOK?; Listen; Encourage action; and Check-In. #sydtechleaders
This year, over half of Australians say that rising cost of living is having a big impact on their mental health. This is very real, and there’s probably someone you know who is not okay. #sydtechleaders #ruok
Our workplaces don’t always lend themselves to kindness. We have to make the effort to pause and remember to see our teammates as human beings, check in with them, and really listen. #sydtechleaders
Tonight’s talks are obviously going to be a bit more personal than usual, so social media posting will be restricted to high level topics. ❤️ #sydtechleaders
Our first speaker is Saliya Kutungu-Moran talking about leading with kindness and creating space for mental health conversations. She’s an RUOK ambassador with lots of experience in tech, and we’re so glad she’s here. #sydtechleaders
Reminder that we are still looking for Lightning talk speakers for our Nov. 6 meetup. Great for first timers, and we’ll even give you some mentoring if you like! #sydtechleaders
Tonight’s STL is kicking off at Atlassian! Nice big crowd for an important topic - mental health. Thanks as always to Atlassian for hosting! #sydtechleaders
Engineers like to focus on their little patch of the code base and getting it just right, but leaders need to remind them of the bigger picture. And sometimes you have to make a trade-off, and it just sucks. #sydtechleaders
Right into the AI questions! Jeroen thinks that smaller teams might struggle to take advantage of agentic coding assistants because they will quickly run out of the expertise to review all the suggestions appropriately. #sydtechleaders
