Software Lead Weekly
Issue #169, 19th February 2016
This Week's Favorite
Don’t Create a Sense of Urgency, Foster a Sense of Purpose
4 minutes read.
The problem with creating a sense of urgency rather sense of purpose, is that it's really hard to sell over time. People are smart, they can read the BS we're throwing at them. Am I doing enough to foster a sense of purpose over urgency? Is our mission strong and bold enough? Clearly this is something to constantly revisit.
Read it later via Pocket or Instapaper.
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4 minutes read.
The problem with creating a sense of urgency rather sense of purpose, is that it's really hard to sell over time. People are smart, they can read the BS we're throwing at them. Am I doing enough to foster a sense of purpose over urgency? Is our mission strong and bold enough? Clearly this is something to constantly revisit.
Read it later via Pocket or Instapaper.
Share it via Twitter or email.
Culture
The 10x.engineer Website
1 minutes read.
My humble effort to help you start the weekend with a smile on your face. Funny and true!
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1 minutes read.
My humble effort to help you start the weekend with a smile on your face. Funny and true!
Read it later via Pocket or Instapaper.
Share it via Twitter or email.
Good Intentions Fail at Scale
3 minutes read.
I agree with Rachael Ludwick's words so much: "But if you’re hundreds or thousands of people strong? Transmission of culture is hard. Only part of it will happen. Even if you start out with the intent to build an inclusive culture that can actually retain a workforce similar to humankind, it won’t easily happen as you grow." -- if you don't think about how to proactively (and repeatedly) scale these "good intentions" as you grow, your culture will break at certain point very much like a Culture Debt that nobody notice until everyone quit, throwing "it used to be fun working here".
Read it later via Pocket or Instapaper.
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3 minutes read.
I agree with Rachael Ludwick's words so much: "But if you’re hundreds or thousands of people strong? Transmission of culture is hard. Only part of it will happen. Even if you start out with the intent to build an inclusive culture that can actually retain a workforce similar to humankind, it won’t easily happen as you grow." -- if you don't think about how to proactively (and repeatedly) scale these "good intentions" as you grow, your culture will break at certain point very much like a Culture Debt that nobody notice until everyone quit, throwing "it used to be fun working here".
Read it later via Pocket or Instapaper.
Share it via Twitter or email.
Beginning With Ourselves: Using Data Science to Improve Diversity at Airbnb
10 minutes read.
Being mindful in the way you approach hiring is easier said than done. Great post by the team at AirBnB, focusing on increase top-of funnel candidates (hint: put your people first, let them shine so others would like to join them) then understanding how to improve the conversion by removing biases. Fascinating read if you care about building an inclusive culture.
Read it later via Pocket or Instapaper.
Share it via Twitter or email.
10 minutes read.
Being mindful in the way you approach hiring is easier said than done. Great post by the team at AirBnB, focusing on increase top-of funnel candidates (hint: put your people first, let them shine so others would like to join them) then understanding how to improve the conversion by removing biases. Fascinating read if you care about building an inclusive culture.
Read it later via Pocket or Instapaper.
Share it via Twitter or email.
Building a Technical Career Path at Spotify
5 minutes read.
Here is the not obvious part, where you think that others figured it out at the get go, and you're stuck behind just to figure out you're wrong: "At Spotify, we’d waited almost eight years before deciding that it was time to create a career pathing framework. The company’s anti-hierarchical culture probably was a large part of the reason for not seeing this as a need. Honestly, this was likely too long to wait, and some of the issues we had when we rolled it out were presumably due to the fact that we hadn’t done it sooner." -- use this post and read the next one on the series, to learn from Spotify but come up with a framework of your own at the right time.
Read it later via Pocket or Instapaper.
Share it via Twitter or email.
5 minutes read.
Here is the not obvious part, where you think that others figured it out at the get go, and you're stuck behind just to figure out you're wrong: "At Spotify, we’d waited almost eight years before deciding that it was time to create a career pathing framework. The company’s anti-hierarchical culture probably was a large part of the reason for not seeing this as a need. Honestly, this was likely too long to wait, and some of the issues we had when we rolled it out were presumably due to the fact that we hadn’t done it sooner." -- use this post and read the next one on the series, to learn from Spotify but come up with a framework of your own at the right time.
Read it later via Pocket or Instapaper.
Share it via Twitter or email.
Peopleware
The Unexpected Consequences of Consumerism
2 minutes read.
Buying things as a way to fool ourselves that we're in the right direction. Cannot agree more with Chad Fowler. I've bought so many books about programming languages, without ever practicing them. What a waste. Need to develop some Chrome extension to disable Amazon's one-click checkout, maybe with CoffeeScript. I wonder if I should buy a book about it...
Read it later via Pocket or Instapaper.
Share it via Twitter or email.
2 minutes read.
Buying things as a way to fool ourselves that we're in the right direction. Cannot agree more with Chad Fowler. I've bought so many books about programming languages, without ever practicing them. What a waste. Need to develop some Chrome extension to disable Amazon's one-click checkout, maybe with CoffeeScript. I wonder if I should buy a book about it...
Read it later via Pocket or Instapaper.
Share it via Twitter or email.
How Making Time for Books Made Me Feel Less Busy
5 minutes read.
It's so tempting to go visit my gmail or twitter again, to find out a silly update or an email that can wait for tomorrow. In the past month I've started to put a pile of books next to my bed again, trying to read 30 minutes before calling it a day, instead of watching the TV. No iPhone is allowed. Which bad habits are you trying to break this year?
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5 minutes read.
It's so tempting to go visit my gmail or twitter again, to find out a silly update or an email that can wait for tomorrow. In the past month I've started to put a pile of books next to my bed again, trying to read 30 minutes before calling it a day, instead of watching the TV. No iPhone is allowed. Which bad habits are you trying to break this year?
Read it later via Pocket or Instapaper.
Share it via Twitter or email.
This Is How Effective Leaders Move Beyond Blame
10 minutes read.
This lesson is so important for conducting a successful learning review: "The root cause for both the functioning and malfunctions in all complex systems is impermanence (i.e., the fact that all systems are changeable by nature). Knowing the root cause, we no longer seek it, and instead look for the many conditions that allowed a particular situation to manifest. We accept that not all conditions are knowable or fixable." -- great read, with many gems by Dave Zwieback.
Read it later via Pocket or Instapaper.
Share it via Twitter or email.
10 minutes read.
This lesson is so important for conducting a successful learning review: "The root cause for both the functioning and malfunctions in all complex systems is impermanence (i.e., the fact that all systems are changeable by nature). Knowing the root cause, we no longer seek it, and instead look for the many conditions that allowed a particular situation to manifest. We accept that not all conditions are knowable or fixable." -- great read, with many gems by Dave Zwieback.
Read it later via Pocket or Instapaper.
Share it via Twitter or email.
Inspiring Tweets
@asolove: Chaos Monkey People: every week, one randomly-selected person must take the whole week off regardless of their current work. Org must adapt.
@levelsio: The only way to beat the seemingly random odds of success is persistence, not giving up and trying MANY times seems to work...sometimes
- 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.