Leading distributed engineering teams between Lund and Beijing

Between 2009 and 2012, during my years at Sony Ericsson (later Sony Mobile), I traveled regularly to China to work with our teams in Beijing. Beyond visiting the Great Wall six times over those years, working closely on-site with our Beijing organization shaped much of how I think about distributed engineering leadership today.

1. Presence and context beat pure process

Collaborating across continents and time zones is hard if people only exist as names in an issue tracker. Spending time together in the same room, reviewing architectures on a whiteboard and understanding local operational constraints, removed misunderstandings that would have taken weeks of emails to untangle.

2. Clear outcomes over micromanagement

When leading teams across Lund and Beijing, trying to control every daily step from afar never works. What worked was agreeing on clear, measurable outcomes, establishing transparent engineering standards, and reviewing progress regularly so teams had the autonomy to solve problems locally.

3. Investing in real relationships

Technical delivery moves much faster when there is genuine trust. Some of my fondest memories from those trips happened outside formal meetings: being invited to dinner at a colleague’s grandmother’s home, getting lost inside the Forbidden City, and bringing a Swedish Dalahäst and a full wooden game of Kubb in our luggage to play in the Beijing office.

Looking back, those years between Lund and Beijing were a masterclass in cross-cultural engineering leadership, and built friendships that I still value deeply today.