CppCon 2026

Most bosses aren’t stupid, they just seem like it sometimes! This can be especially so when a great programmer first becomes a manager – suddenly the very attributes that made them good at their job become a problem. Whether you’ve just been ‘promoted’ to a management position, you hope to be some day, or you want to know how to deal with a difficult manager – it’s very useful to understand the world from a boss’s perspective. Not all leaders are bosses (and not all bosses are truly leaders): if you want to get something meaningful done then you’ll need to influence other people.

Whether or not you're a boss, leadership is important. To do meaningful/large things, we need to work with other people. Encouraging and persuading peers in the right way will make your and your peers' working lives better.

Lots of war stories (anonymised to protect the guilty) and tips and tricks, this talk is basically 'how to win friends and influence people' for programmers.