ALEXANDRA SUNDERLAND

Alexandra Sunderland is an Engineering Manager at Fellow.app, a platform where teams gather to build collaborative meeting agendas, record decisions, and keep each other accountable.

Alexandra has been working as an engineer for nearly a decade, and regularly publishes articles and speaks internationally about tech and teams, all while designing and sewing clothes that incorporate custom 3D printed elements.

Alexandra is also the co-leader of the Slack Platform Community in Ottawa.

Code deploys are among the most routine and process-led events that an engineering team takes part in, and yet, this chronic task can lead to an extensive range of intense emotions across an entire company if not handled properly. From people in sales feeling upset when they weren’t made aware of UI changes that affect their demos, to those in support who feel nervous about incoming requests when they haven’t been properly trained on new features, the reach of deploys goes far beyond the immediate developers working on them.

As a manager, it’s important to ensure psychological safety and wellbeing for everyone, and to do that we need to take a step back and look at the larger picture of not only how our team feels, but how our team is making others feel too. In a remote-first world where it’s easy to hide feelings of anger, frustration, and fear behind screens, it’s critical to dive deeper into how our actions and decisions are affecting others, and course-correct to create a better environment for all.

In this talk, we’ll explore how a variety of people in different roles are affected by deploys, what emotional responses you might not be noticing, and how to better manage future releases to mitigate any negative effects from hidden feelings.