How I Use AI to Manage A Tribe Without Losing the Plot
An AI-augmented journal that turns scattered Slack threads, Confluence pages, and meetings into a living map of your work, so you can pick up any leadership thread without rebuilding context from scratch.
Mews R&D MiniPodcast with Stephan Delbos
In this episode, our host sits down with Stephan Delbos, Senior Director of Product Knowledge Activation at Mews, to explore how bringing documentation, education, and knowledge management together can transform the user experience. Stephan shares how his team is shaping an AI-first approach to content creation, from internal GPT-powered documentation to smarter onboarding through Mews […]
Mews R&D Podcast with Yael Barak and Joel Ndreu
In this episode, R&D Community Lead Jan Meissner sits down with Yael Barak and Joel Ndreu, two new leaders at Mews with very different journeys—one through fintech, the other through real estate and big tech. From early online payments and designing the World Trade Center to stints at Facebook and Zoom, they share what drew […]
Mews R&D MiniPodcast with Richard Schäfer
In this episode, our host chats with Richard Schäfer, Director of Developer Experience at Mews, about what it takes to create a seamless experience for engineers and how developer tooling can scale with a growing company. From his journey from engineer to DX leader to why small teams don’t always need dedicated DX, Richard shares […]
Mews R&D MiniPodcast with Richard Valtr
In this episode, our R&D Community Lead, Jan Meissner, goes freestyle with Mews founder Richard Valtr in what might just be our first-ever “mini–maxi” podcast. From what a founder’s day really looks like to why staying connected to customers of all sizes matters, Richard shares candid thoughts on leadership, culture, and the fine balance between […]
Bring your “coffee machine chit-chat experience” online with Lean Coffee
At the time, the term “T-shaped” was starting to become more common in product and engineering conversations. The idea? Someone with deep expertise in one area (say frontend), but with broad working knowledge across many (such as backend, product thinking, security, threat modeling, performance, deployment, etc.). In practice? It meant stepping into ambiguity, learning fast, and finding your own path through it.
Mews R&D Podcast with Matt Welle
In this episode, R&D Community Lead Jan Meissner sits down with our CEO, Matt Welle, for a behind-the-scenes look at how Mews evolved from whiteboard wireframes to a leading hospitality platform used by thousands. From launching a PMS with zero lines of code to learning what it really takes to set up a product team, […]
Forget the Formula: Build Your Leadership Style Around Your Strengths
This series is designed to provide you with practical advice for your first steps as a manager.
First steps as a new manager: unblock your team and unlock its full potential
This series is designed to provide you with practical advice for your first steps as a manager.
First steps as a new manager: unblock yourself to focus on what truly matters
This series is designed to provide you with practical advice for your first steps as a manager.
Mews R&D Podcast with Ryan Tomlinson & Conor Winders
In this episode, Jan chats with our VPs of Engineering—Ryan, who leads the Platform team, and Conor, who leads the Product team—about their journey to Mews and how they collaborate. Ryan and Conor have been with Mews for about two years. They both came from large corporations but have experience with small startups. They are […]
Overcoming information overload
Data and information attack us from every angle. Let me guide you through my journey of learning how to work with it and eventually finding a system that works.
How important are personal relationships and empathy in organizations?
Let’s take a look at how mutual trust, empathy, and openness will help you develop the right relationships within your team, shorten and strengthen the feedback cycle, and eventually bring your organization to a new level.
Get the best out of your candidates in the hiring process
Finding the right talent relies on the efficiency of your interview process. Let’s reveal 6 ways to lead fruitful discussions with your candidates!
From Individual Contributor to Engineering Manager: Before you start
Are you an individual contributor considering a career change? Do you think of management as the next step in your career? Not sure if it’s right for you? Don’t know where to start? Then read on, this article is just what you’re looking for! I’ve been in a similar situation, so let me share […]
How to give your career growth a boost and unleash your resources
Career growth is getting more complex and in order to tackle this complexity you will need an innovative approach as an alternative for the classic ones.
Gaining a sense of accomplishment as a manager
Do you often feel like you got nothing done by the end of the day? That you lack any sense of accomplishment, which you had as an individual contributor, but now cannot find as a manager? That you approach things reactively instead of proactively? That you are not feeling in control or on top of […]
VP of Engineering @ Mews
A look back on my 1st year 🚀 Take off Life is fun! Joining a new company in April 2020 couldn’t have been easier: The Prague HQ office got closed due to the virus whose name we shall not mention. That said, all my individual introductions with engineers, team leads, my peers, and the leadership […]
How to Make Your Teams Beat OKRs
and deliver 80%+ of key results consistently. Many tech companies have adopted the OKR system. Compared to the old-fashioned yearly SMART goals, the shorter quarterly-based objectives of OKRs are more likely to result in strategic initiative completion due to the shorter feedback loop and regular monthly updates. On the other hand, it is more challenging […]
Incident management for 10+ cross-functional teams
When scaling our tech organization, the biggest paradigm shift happened at around 20 developers. Prior to that, we had a single tech team that was taking care of everything. The only distinctions in this team were by function: backend developers, frontend developers, etc. Different functions had distinct methods of logging, error reporting, and performance monitoring. […]
Learn or die
At work, do you need to be a stronger weightlifter to outdo more senior guys? Not necessarily. The difference lies in learning. You will come to a point where knowledge gathering from more senior peers becomes less enriching. While reading, you might stumble upon an article describing an obscure tool or innovative technology which could solve […]
Connecting devs & product: Key lessons learned
In early 2020 we decided to kick off a series of events bringing insights from engineering leaders at Czech tech scaleups (as we like to call companies already past the initial startup phase). Up to now, we have organized three TechUncovered panel discussions. The previous two events focused on scaling tech teams and leading tech […]
Manage people like a boss: how to guarantee fair salaries
A few weeks ago, our founder Richard mentioned that everyone in a tech company should be striving to create intellectual property that would outlast them. The important message is that this applies to everyone. Not just tech and product where it comes naturally, but in all departments, roles or responsibilities. No matter that it gets […]
How to excel in engineering management
For a Software Developer, it can feel unrealistic to think of being the Engineering Manager of, say, dozens of people in the future. Time passes by. The future turns into the present. One day you realize that being a manager has the potential to dramatically increase the influence you have. Together with your teams, you […]
How to build career framework like an RPG
The CTO role, especially for a first-timer, is sometimes tough because nobody gives you specific things to work on or tackle. Of course, there are some expectations imposed on the technical department which can be summarized as “delivering quality solutions as fast as possible”. People outside of tech or product would sum it up as […]
How to build trust with engineering teams
In engineering management, my vision is to create a productive software delivery environment that developers are proud to work in, with a focus on tangible outcomes across the company. It’s a system with the proper guidelines and the right level of automation, so standard development work gets done seamlessly. That’s why, in the engineering department, […]
Find the purpose
Three months back, I started my journey of VP of Engineering in Mews. In the following blogpost, I’d like to elaborate on my experience and discoveries so far. Build on your Experience On my path, I was fortunate to work with leaders worth following. I learned a lot from others. When I couldn’t find such […]
Scaling tech teams: Key lessons learned
The very first TechUncovered event focused on the challenges of building and scaling engineering teams, career development, and maturing processes. Scaling tech teams is not a simple task, it’s tough work. As we witness the Prague startup scene constantly growing and getting more and more into the scaleup stage, we decided to bring together some […]
Mews tech principles
In the year 2019, Mews tech team grew from 20 to 70 people. Leading such a big group of people (at least for me as a first time manager) brings lot of challenges, especially when the growth is as rapid as in our case. During this phase, I realized that we’re becoming a big unit […]
CI as continuous improvement
Everybody in tech world understands CI as continuous integration, but the other and maybe even more important meaning of this abbreviation is continuous improvement. It is easy to say that we encourage progress and learning, but as people get overwhelmed with daily tasks, these more abstract goals are pushed to background, unless you are super-disciplined. […]