What “managing up“ really means: A Practical Guide to Working with Your Manager
Human & Leadership Growth Busra Koken Human & Leadership Growth Busra Koken

What “managing up“ really means: A Practical Guide to Working with Your Manager

Managing up might sound like corporate jargon, something only senior folks or managers in big companies worry about. But in reality, it’s something most of us do, consciously or not, as part of everyday work.

In this post, I share what managing up really means, how I came to understand it more deeply after becoming a manager myself, and a set of practical, human-centered ways to build a clearer, more supportive relationship with your own manager. Whether you’re an engineer or a first-time manager, I hope this gives you something useful to work with.

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Three Guiding Lights on Sustaining Resilience
Reliability & Resilience Busra Koken Reliability & Resilience Busra Koken

Three Guiding Lights on Sustaining Resilience

When it comes to building reliability and resilience, there’s no perfect checklist. But there are a few grounding ideas I keep coming back to, especially when things get messy.

In this post, I share three principles that continue to guide my work: focusing on what really matters to users, creating psychological safety around failure, and letting incidents shape what we learn and prioritize.

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