Name: Amr AbdelHamid

Title: Architect and Technical Lead

Organisation: Oracle

A software architect, full-stack engineer, and technical leader of large engineering teams. Over the past 16 years, led engineering teams building large-scale services that impact millions of users and hundreds of businesses.

Thank you to the 2,000 leaders who’ve generously done the 7 Questions on Leadership!

I hope Amr Abdel's answers will encourage you in your leadership journey. Enjoy!

Cheers,

Jonno White

1. What have you found most challenging as a leader?

The most critical leadership challenges are to harness collective wisdom and maintain team engagement toward the team goals.

2. How did you become a leader? Can you please briefly tell the story?

Twelve years ago, when I joined Microsoft as a member of a remote team, our lead developer accepted an external offer, and our test lead was on personal leave. I had two choices: lead both the development and test teams and get them back on track or move to a new role within the company, leaving the team to be disbanded and some team members to lose their jobs.

I've taken on a leadership role to save my teammates' jobs. However, this role came with several challenges, including rebuilding trust with the parent team, aligning the synergies between the test and development teams, and juggling the roles of a technical lead, program manager, and individual contributor.

3. How do you structure your work days from waking up to going to sleep?

I usually start my day around 7 a.m. During the first two hours, I catch up on reading and reviewing materials before the meetings start. I spend the day in architecture reviews, road mapping, brainstorming sessions, and coding for my projects until 6 p.m. The rest of the day is divided between dinner, family time, working out, and meeting with friends. Then, it is bedtime between 11 p.m. and 12 a.m.

4. What's a recent leadership lesson you've learned for the first time or been reminded of?

I am constantly reminded that a team whose members feel like contributors to the direction and decision-making of a project is much more productive, and successful than a team whose members feel like mere resources.

5. What's one book that has had a profound impact on your leadership so far? Can you please briefly tell the story of how that book impacted your leadership?

I would choose ‘Noise’ by Daniel Kahneman. The book delves into the reasons behind inconsistency and bias in decision-making and offers practical solutions to reduce noise. I have personally applied many of the book's suggestions to effectively harness the wisdom of the crowd while avoiding the negative effects of information cascade and groupthink. As the technical lead of one of Microsoft's projects, my team and I had different opinions on the best technical stack to deliver our service. To make the best decision, we utilized decision hygiene strategies from Noise.

During our discussions regarding which direction to take, team members independently weighed in based on their expertise. Ultimately, we decided to use a hybrid stack that incorporated most of the benefits of both options while allowing us the flexibility to change our stack if a need arises.

6. If you could only give one piece of advice to a young leader, what would you say to them?

“Own without Ego”. This is one of Oracle's core principles and one that I take to heart. Leaders are not necessarily the most knowledgeable or smartest of the team, but they excel at incorporating a team's talents and energy into the most efficient unit for the project they are tackling. There's no reason for a leader to be arrogant or egotistical. The team's real stars are the members doing the work, such as coding, deploying, and handling live site issues.

7. What is one meaningful story that comes to mind from your time as a leader, so far?

It would be my first mentorship experience with university interns. It was a 6-month internship of a group of 12 split into 3 teams. Each team was tasked to build an app for Xbox. Throughout the mentorship, I had one-on-one time with each member, discussing the technical direction and team dynamic. We also spent time writing code, debugging, and testing.

It was exciting to see how the time I took out of my week, which was not much, was shaping the minds of my interns and the apps they were building. At the end of the internship, they departed with a thoughtful note that I have kept to this day, thanking me and expressing their gratitude for what they have learned. Years later, most have been able to land return offers to the company.

At least 3 of them are now seniors at one of the large software companies. One has co-founded his own company, successfully raising millions of dollars. What makes this a memorable story is that it made me realize how much impact a leader can have by investing time, as little as it could be, to grow their team members technically and personally.