Software Lead Weekly
Issue #145, 4th September 2015
This Week's Favorite
Five Years, Building a Culture, and Handing It Off
5 minutes read.
Kellan Elliott-McCrea writes about his 5 years as Etsy's CTO, and it's packed with so many gems you'll enjoy. Do not miss the sections about "Technology is the product of the culture that builds it" and "Software development should be thought of as a cycle of continual learning and improvement rather a progression from start to finish, or a search for correctness."
Read it later via Pocket or Instapaper.
Share it via Twitter or email.
5 minutes read.
Kellan Elliott-McCrea writes about his 5 years as Etsy's CTO, and it's packed with so many gems you'll enjoy. Do not miss the sections about "Technology is the product of the culture that builds it" and "Software development should be thought of as a cycle of continual learning and improvement rather a progression from start to finish, or a search for correctness."
Read it later via Pocket or Instapaper.
Share it via Twitter or email.
Culture
"Hello Everybody.. I'm Doing a (free) Operating System.. Just a Hobby" - Linus Torvalds, 1991
1 minutes read.
Not the typical ha-ha! moment, but something to inspire us all how a small side-project can turn out to be such a huge milestone for our industry.
Read it later via Pocket or Instapaper.
Share it via Twitter or email.
1 minutes read.
Not the typical ha-ha! moment, but something to inspire us all how a small side-project can turn out to be such a huge milestone for our industry.
Read it later via Pocket or Instapaper.
Share it via Twitter or email.
The Right Way to Ship Software
8 minutes read.
Experience teach us that we know very little about methodologies, technology, business, and the gap only grows as we learn more. That's part of the fun for the curios mind: "But if shipping so much software has taught me one thing, it’s to be an agnostic." The story of how the engineers at Facebook thought of mobile development is specifically interesting, and probably captures how we need to adjust and keep an open mind: "We were all family but violently disagreed in fundamental ways."
Read it later via Pocket or Instapaper.
Share it via Twitter or email.
8 minutes read.
Experience teach us that we know very little about methodologies, technology, business, and the gap only grows as we learn more. That's part of the fun for the curios mind: "But if shipping so much software has taught me one thing, it’s to be an agnostic." The story of how the engineers at Facebook thought of mobile development is specifically interesting, and probably captures how we need to adjust and keep an open mind: "We were all family but violently disagreed in fundamental ways."
Read it later via Pocket or Instapaper.
Share it via Twitter or email.
Making Travis CI a Family-Friendly Place to Work: Our Maternity and Paternity Leave for US Employees
5 minutes read.
Do your best to take care of your employees. When done poorly, and most of us experience it during our career, it sounds like this: "Once I even worked for a company that created a Dogs In The Office policy before creating a Maternity Leave policy" -- well done, Travis CI!
Read it later via Pocket or Instapaper.
Share it via Twitter or email.
5 minutes read.
Do your best to take care of your employees. When done poorly, and most of us experience it during our career, it sounds like this: "Once I even worked for a company that created a Dogs In The Office policy before creating a Maternity Leave policy" -- well done, Travis CI!
Read it later via Pocket or Instapaper.
Share it via Twitter or email.
Agile Software Development Process: 90 Months of Evolution
10 minutes read.
An incredible set of notes, graphs and lessons learned about forming teams and processes over time at Targetprocess. The level of details captured as the company grew really helps to understand why things were changed to fit the size of the team and the technologies involved.
Read it later via Pocket or Instapaper.
Share it via Twitter or email.
10 minutes read.
An incredible set of notes, graphs and lessons learned about forming teams and processes over time at Targetprocess. The level of details captured as the company grew really helps to understand why things were changed to fit the size of the team and the technologies involved.
Read it later via Pocket or Instapaper.
Share it via Twitter or email.
Peopleware
You’re Not Listening
7 minutes read.
I find myself reading this great post by Michael Lopp (aka Rands) once a year. There is nothing worse than the feeling of not being heard, so learn how to pay attention and actually listen to understand rather than to provide an immediate answer.
Read it later via Pocket or Instapaper.
Share it via Twitter or email.
7 minutes read.
I find myself reading this great post by Michael Lopp (aka Rands) once a year. There is nothing worse than the feeling of not being heard, so learn how to pay attention and actually listen to understand rather than to provide an immediate answer.
Read it later via Pocket or Instapaper.
Share it via Twitter or email.
How the Hell Do I Prioritize Work, Blog & Find Balance?
5 minutes read.
Mark Suster's writing is always fun to read, and no doubt he is one productive individual. Some great lessons on how he manages his time, my favorite: "I start, I finish."
Read it later via Pocket or Instapaper.
Share it via Twitter or email.
5 minutes read.
Mark Suster's writing is always fun to read, and no doubt he is one productive individual. Some great lessons on how he manages his time, my favorite: "I start, I finish."
Read it later via Pocket or Instapaper.
Share it via Twitter or email.
The Number One Trait of a Great Developer
5 minutes read.
Great judgement skill is probably also the number one skill you should learn how to look for during the interview process. It's so easy today to overkill pretty much everything you build ("let's throw Kafka and Spark on it, heard a great talk about it yesterday!"). I'm not sure if judgement is first, or curiosity, but no doubt they're pretty close.
Read it later via Pocket or Instapaper.
Share it via Twitter or email.
5 minutes read.
Great judgement skill is probably also the number one skill you should learn how to look for during the interview process. It's so easy today to overkill pretty much everything you build ("let's throw Kafka and Spark on it, heard a great talk about it yesterday!"). I'm not sure if judgement is first, or curiosity, but no doubt they're pretty close.
Read it later via Pocket or Instapaper.
Share it via Twitter or email.
Inspiring Tweets
@andrewtraviss: Having a baby has really driven home how terrible it is when several issues result in the same error message
@polotek: If you're rude to my recruiters, I really don't care how good you are. Plenty of other places are looking for talented assholes. Good luck.
- Oren
P.S. Can you share this email? I'd love for more people to experiment and improve their company's culture.
P.S. Can you share this email? I'd love for more people to experiment and improve their company's culture.