I recently had the opportunity to share my thoughts on engineering leadership with EngineerJobs.com, the most-visited engineering career site online. It's a tricky and dare-I-say controversial topic, not the milquetoast subject you might imagine. The innate traits required to be a successful leader balanced against the learned ones, the nature vs the nurture, and the importance of technical skills in a role that traditionally is heavy on soft skills - I touch upon them all and more.

I get it. You're busy. Maybe you have a family, maybe you don't. Maybe you spend too many hours at the office, and volunteer for those extra projects that end up with thankless overtime, forgetting (or likely, not) that you're on salary and not by the hour. And then you get home and the last thing you want to think about is being productive. But you feel guilty and mad at yourself. How am I ever going to finish these projects when I'm tired, busy, unmotivated...? I get it.