Nada Aldahleh is the director of engineering, productivity at GitHub—a fully remote position where she "manages managers." In our interview, Aldahleh gives honest insight on her life—sharing her thoughts on working remotely full-time, her advice for leaders, and why she doesn't believe in having it all. She didn't know what her dream career was when she was young—because she was malleable. Aldahleh wanted to be anything. She began where she could, and pursued whatever felt right at that time. Aldahleh's successful career—including a stint as an entrepreneur—was built on trusting her gut, working hard, and never accepting fear of failure as an excuse to not try. Here she is:

I used to change my mind with every experience. After visiting the eye doctor, I wanted to be an eye doctor. With time, I settled on favorite school subjects, and wanted to work in relevant fields. I liked math and physics, and thought that might translate into becoming an engineer or mathematics professor. I didn’t know what the day to day life of an engineer would look like—my decision was more based on liking math.

On Her Post-College Work With Semi-Conductors

I worked for Gennum, a company that manufactured semiconductors for hearing aids, video, and data communication devices. Semiconductors are the small chips that go into everyday devices. We had a design team that designed the chips. Once they get manufactured, they come back as wafers, a large circle containing multiple chips. We test each chip on that wafer according to the specs of the design. The tests that pass would get packaged, and the ones that failed would get disposed of. After packaging, we’d again run tests on all the packaged chips and sell the ones that pass.

My role was programming machines (called ATEs) to perform those tests. The role included writing a test plan, designing an interface board the chips hook up into, and writing a program for the machine to execute the tests. The goal was to maximize test coverage and test speed to reduce cost.

It tied into my degree as it involved software programming, digital programming, systems and signals, and electrical engineering—all things I studied in school as part of my degree. During that time, I did find myself wanting to transition into a purely software engineering role, which is what I ended up doing.

On Entrepreneurship

Before Sandglaz, I was leading a transition from a waterfall process into agile development at Longview Solutions. And my co-founder, who at the time was managing a team at CIBC, was looking for a tool to use with them. So discussing together we came with the idea of Sandglaz. A project management solution for all those who have flexible iterative plans.

My co-founder and I both moved to contract jobs so we can focus 50 percent on Sandglaz, and released our first MVP one month after. After the release we quit our jobs and focused on Sandglaz for 100 percent of our time, iterating from our MVP. Sandglaz went on to acquire a wide range of customers from fields like software development, marketing, design, and company owners. The commonality between all is the need for flexible planning.

I was co-founder and CEO of Sandglaz full time for 5 years, 2010 till 2015. Sandglaz didn't make it, and in 2015 we had to downsize our team down to the two co-founders and we both accepted jobs at GitHub. We kept Sandglaz running, but didn't continue to develop it. After a couple of years we sunsetted the product and the company.

On Managing Work-Life Balance

We all have the same 24 hours a day everybody has. There is nothing we can do to gain more hours. All we can do is choose how to spend our time. Find out what makes us happy: slow days, full-packed days, order, chaos, etc.

For myself, I’m a mom, wife, and Engineering Director. And the combination of all three takes most of my time. I also exercise, cook/eat healthily, socialize with friends, and enjoy a good night sleep. This means I seldom have slow mornings or slow afternoons. I can’t afford to spend time on my hobbies. I used to paint and dance. But it’s the current choices I’m making. I’m happy with them today, I may want something different in the future.

For that reason, I don’t believe in the “have it all”. If you spend more time on one thing, then you spend less time on another thing. Or in other words, any person can say they “have it all” if they’re genuinely content with how they spend their time.

On Mistakes + Lessons Learned

If I were to do a startup again I would do several things differently.

In terms of technology, we had made decisions to work with technology that was in its early stages. If I were to do it again, I would innovate less with technology.

In terms of hiring, we hired junior engineers and trained them, because we were on a tight budget. If I were to do it again, I would hire fewer people who are more senior.

In terms of people management, the first time an employee wasn’t a good fit, it took me 6 months to come to that realization and go for separation. If I were to do it again, I would be more aggressive with the timeline as it costs a lot of time and money.

In terms of finding Product-Market fit. We were very successful when we first launched, and then got eaten up by competitors who had raised a lot more money than we did, and could move much faster. We then tried to find a vertical within our space that has an unsolved problem, but it was a very competitive space. We didn’t succeed. If I were to do it again, I would ditch the entire space and start all over again in a new space.

On Working Remotely Full-Time

I have a home office and most of my time is spent there. I have worked in coffee shops but I don’t do it very often. I need a strong internet connection, and need to be in relatively quiet places, as I’m in many virtual meetings.

My favorite thing about it is the flexibility it provides, for example, I’m home so I can accept a delivery that happens mid-day. I also like not having a commute as it saves time.

One challenge is that synchronous communication needs planning. I can’t tap someone on the shoulder and talk to them for 5 minutes. Instead, I need to find a slot in their calendar and book a meeting, which is a costly exercise. I generally default to asynchronous communication, unless sync becomes very necessary. Also, when in doubt I default to over communication and providing as much context as I can.

Another challenge is the time zone. I’m on EST and work with folks across many time zones. EST and PST being the most common. When my work day is over, the PST folks are still hard at work, which makes it impossible for me to stop. This cuts into the home/work balance.

My advice for those considering remote work is “Go for it, it’s great. Especially if you’re looking for flexibility”. I would also advise looking for a workplace that is remote friendly. An environment where your co-workers are already working asynchronously, set up with the right mindset and right tools.

On Leadership + Managing

I support my team of leaders with the goal of making them and their teams large contributors to GitHub’s success. I work with my peers and my boss’s peers towards alignment, and then I use that to set a strategy and align the teams I lead.

I’m a fan of the “first team” concept. The leaders I manage think of their peers as their primary team and the goals of that team as their primary goals. Then they lead the teams they manage to contribute to those goals. This way we ensure we are all aligned and doing what’s best for the company rather than working in silos and looking for our own best interest or that of our own teams. 

I balance expectations with mentorship. I communicate strategy, expectations, and what I need from my leaders, then I expect them to lead and keep me informed. When needed, I mentor, advice, and ask for more information.

My advice for young leaders is to keep learning. Practice high self-awareness, and ask your reports, your peers, and your manager for feedback. Keep an eye on what’s working and what’s not, experiment, and adjust. Reading relevant books is also helpful. It can give you a framework for operating.

On GitHub + What's Next

GitHub has been growing and changing which gave me a lot of opportunities to keep learning and advancing in my career. I’m also very excited about GitHub’s future, and want to be a part of getting us there. I believe in GitHub’s future potential. I want to continue working with a talented leadership team at GitHub to make that future a reality.