Software Lead Weekly

This Week's Favorite

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Notes on Startup Engineering Management For Young Bloods
Wonderful advices on the big differences of the type of leadership needed in the early days, where process is lacking and the required knowledge or experience is not always available. Camille Fournier shares some of her lessons learned from her long and successful career. Read it, it's golden.

Time investment: 8 minutes, add to: Pocket, Instapaper.
Inspire others: share it via twitter or email.

Culture

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Do It! (Shai Labeouf) Chrome Extension
Shia LaBeouf's "Just Do It" Motivational Speech as a Chrome extension. Made me laugh hard and actually write this email! Do it! If you prefer to avoid installing something on your browser, just look for the video on YouTube.

Time investment: 1 minute, add to: Pocket, Instapaper.
Inspire others: share it via twitter or email.


Paul Graham’s Startup Advice For The Lazy
Great summary of different posts and talks by Paul Graham and his advice for building successful companies.

Time investment: 13 minutes, add to: Pocket, Instapaper.
Inspire others: share it via twitter or email.


How to Scale Your Company Culture
I love the advice by the Keen IO on having scalable values (e.g. introspection) and non-scalable tactics (e.g. their Anxious/Excited meetings). It reduces a lot of the fear with experimenting with new methods, just as we cannot imagine how it would work when we will X2 the team. How can this attitude be applied at your company?

Time investment: 5 minutes, add to: Pocket, Instapaper.
Inspire others: share it via twitter or email.


Building Humane Automation Systems
This video should be watched by people who build software for other people, i.e. all of us. Listened to it on my way to work, and it made me think of the amount of mental effort, compassion and patience we have to invest in order to build something of value.

Time investment: 36 minutes, add to: Pocket, Instapaper.
Inspire others: share it via twitter or email.

Peopleware

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Defaulting to Positive
Watch out, some language ahead but really enjoyed reading this post as someone who've been through multiple startups: "It costs you exactly zero to tell them how you think they could get their crazy idea to succeed, instead of the ways they will probably fail." -- also, worth following StartupLJackson on Twitter. Funny, sarcastic and awesome.

Time investment: 2 minutes, add to: Pocket, Instapaper.
Inspire others: share it via twitter or email.


My Simple Ways to be A Happier, Smarter 30-something
I'm 31 years old, and posts like this one by one of my favorite entrepreneurs and writers (go Jason Cohen!) just felt right to share with you. Some gems that would probably help me bring some of my energy levels back up: "Pay attention to how you feel after eating something" and "Eat lots of protein and no carbs for breakfast, within an hour of waking up".

Time investment: 4 minutes, add to: Pocket, Instapaper.
Inspire others: share it via twitter or email.


Taking Care of Business, Taking Care of Yourself
This post stroke a chord in me, as I move more and more towards to a role of a manager and less to a maker. The stress to make sure everyone are happy and engaged with their work, as we're rapidly scaling our business, can often lead to chasing bigger and bigger goals without enjoying the journey: "... one of their junior people asked me a seemingly simple question: “What do you do for fun?” I was stunned, and I didn’t have an answer."

Time investment: 5 minutes, add to: Pocket, Instapaper.
Inspire others: share it via twitter or email.

Inspiring Tweets

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@Una: You don't have to be a manager to be a multiplier & enabler of others

@mitchellharper: The 3 things that stop most people from succeeding: 1) their own laziness, 2) fear of failure, 3) comparison to others.