Peopleware
Heisenberg Developers
This post takes a strong side on getting engineers the autonomy they need to practice their craft and be active in leading features, without asking for time estimations or setting deadlines. I like this approach better, by the commenters: "I am 100% for autonomy, but not if the team is autonomously fixing the wrong problems... If you want to be allowed to work autonomously you need to provide some transparency for the management... At the end of the day people are paid to ship, not to polish."
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Three Common Mistakes of The First Time Tech Lead
Wonderful post by Patrick Kua, sharing his experience on where first time Tech Leads often fail. Patrick's point on "Forgetting about Cultivating Team Culture" is, I believe, one of the most important reminder when mentoring Tech Leads. They have to help the team scale, not only the technology.
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Why I Taught Myself to Procrastinate
This post reminded me of a book I read recently called "Slack: Getting Past Burnout, Busywork, and the Myth of Total Efficiency", where in order to allow creativity to emerge, you have to learn the context (i.e. what is the desired outcome), and slice the execution of it. The example of writing a draft for a post, and getting to it a few weeks later is a good one. The same applies to leaving an unfinished code before you go home, and let your brain think about the best way to solve the problem for the day after.
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