Twelve engineers, nine nationalities, one potluck: what a lunch taught me about managing people

السلام عليكم. A short one, and not very technical.

I manage twelve engineers at a logistics company in Dubai. Between us we are from Sudan, Egypt, India (three of them, from three states that will never agree on rice), Pakistan, the Philippines, Jordan, Nigeria, Ukraine and Russia. Yes, both. They sit next to each other and review each other's pull requests, and I will come back to that.

Every quarter, instead of a team dinner at a restaurant, we do a potluck in the office. Everyone brings something from home. I started it for a selfish reason, the restaurant budget was cut, and it became the most useful thing I do as a manager.

What I learned from the food

• Who speaks up. In standups, two of my engineers almost never talk. At the potluck, one of them, from Kerala, explained his mother's fish curry for ten minutes with his hands, and the whole team listened. The next sprint he presented his own design in the review. I did not do anything except notice.
• How people take feedback. Our engineer from Lagos brought jollof, and our Egyptian engineer said, very politely, that it needed more salt. The table went silent. She laughed and said "come to Lagos and say that". That is exactly how she takes code review too: direct, warm, and not afraid. Knowing this made me stop softening my feedback to her.
• What people miss. Our Ukrainian engineer brought varenyky and said his grandmother taught him on a video call because she cannot leave her town. Our Russian engineer helped him carry the tray. Nobody said anything about it. Sometimes management is just making a space where people can be decent to each other without speeches.
• Diets and assumptions. We have people who do not eat pork, people who do not eat beef, one vegan, and one who was fasting that day. We label every dish now. It takes two minutes. It means nobody has to ask, and nobody has to explain themselves.

What I brought

Kisra and mullah, the way my mother makes it in Khartoum. Or made it there. She is in Port Sudan now, and the recipe came to me as a voice note with the sound of a generator behind it. Two of my engineers asked for the recipe. I sent them the voice note. They did not understand a word, but they said it sounded like home anyway.

If you manage a mixed team: feed them, and then listen. You will learn more in one lunch than in three months of one-on-ones. Inshallah your budget allows it. Ours barely does.