Software Lead Weekly
Issue #203, 14th October 2016
This Week's Favorite
The KPI Org Chart
7 minutes read.
"What if the org chart didn’t map titles, but KPIs? What if the KPIs of the entire org were mapped in a structure reflecting their dependencies, dotted line influences, and combinations?" -- What a powerful concept, putting KPIs in the center instead of everything else. Obviously, there is a lot of complexity involved with any org chart (mix of control, feelings, ability to hire etc.) but it's facsinating idea.
Read it later via Pocket or Instapaper.
Share it via Twitter or email.
7 minutes read.
"What if the org chart didn’t map titles, but KPIs? What if the KPIs of the entire org were mapped in a structure reflecting their dependencies, dotted line influences, and combinations?" -- What a powerful concept, putting KPIs in the center instead of everything else. Obviously, there is a lot of complexity involved with any org chart (mix of control, feelings, ability to hire etc.) but it's facsinating idea.
Read it later via Pocket or Instapaper.
Share it via Twitter or email.
Culture
Maslow's Hierarchy of Dev Needs
1 minutes read.
My humble effort to help you start the weekend with a smile on your face.
Read it later via Pocket or Instapaper.
Share it via Twitter or email.
1 minutes read.
My humble effort to help you start the weekend with a smile on your face.
Read it later via Pocket or Instapaper.
Share it via Twitter or email.
Increasing Your Team's Capacity to Win (Audio)
48 minutes read.
Wade Chambers (Twitter's Head of Revenue Engineering) shares his wisdom and practical tips, built by great personal stories on the pains moving from IC to managerial position. Wade made the transition back to IC, thinking that managing is not for him, and 2.5 years later decided to try again. This is something I wish more people would be open to, trying, failing and trying again. Good conversation to listen to on your commute to work.
Read it later via Pocket or Instapaper.
Share it via Twitter or email.
48 minutes read.
Wade Chambers (Twitter's Head of Revenue Engineering) shares his wisdom and practical tips, built by great personal stories on the pains moving from IC to managerial position. Wade made the transition back to IC, thinking that managing is not for him, and 2.5 years later decided to try again. This is something I wish more people would be open to, trying, failing and trying again. Good conversation to listen to on your commute to work.
Read it later via Pocket or Instapaper.
Share it via Twitter or email.
The Real Reason Women Quit Tech (And How to Address It)
11 minutes read.
The gap is so big, I feel that we can all do better job fostering an environment where everyone will feel safe. This is something we can do today, as a first step: "Analyze your company’s data on performance reviews, salaries, and promotions. Correct any salary inequalities. If there are differences between groups in performance reviews or promotion rates, investigate why."
Read it later via Pocket or Instapaper.
Share it via Twitter or email.
11 minutes read.
The gap is so big, I feel that we can all do better job fostering an environment where everyone will feel safe. This is something we can do today, as a first step: "Analyze your company’s data on performance reviews, salaries, and promotions. Correct any salary inequalities. If there are differences between groups in performance reviews or promotion rates, investigate why."
Read it later via Pocket or Instapaper.
Share it via Twitter or email.
Education Through Automation: Slack Concierge
5 minutes read.
Using slack bots to assist with onboarding of new engineers is a great idea. The example of talking with a single bot user that redirects the message to the right person behind the scene can be applied to many things. Practical advices if you want to get knowledge sharing, customer support or "onboarding support" much easier and fun.
Read it later via Pocket or Instapaper.
Share it via Twitter or email.
5 minutes read.
Using slack bots to assist with onboarding of new engineers is a great idea. The example of talking with a single bot user that redirects the message to the right person behind the scene can be applied to many things. Practical advices if you want to get knowledge sharing, customer support or "onboarding support" much easier and fun.
Read it later via Pocket or Instapaper.
Share it via Twitter or email.
Peopleware
Practical Frameworks for Beating Burnout
14 minutes read.
"Different people manifest burnout in different ways, but I think for all of us, it’s some variety of a shutdown... Parts of your personality start to contract. Your range of expression shrinks. Your world view narrows. Burnout is deadly to startups because it kills perspective." -- The biggest takeaway I believe we should pay extra attention to, is judging the real impact of any delay. The trick is writing it down and showing it to someone else. Reading it out loud, or simply talking about it, will calibrate your real thoughts on it: "... if that was delayed by two weeks, no one would die. In fact, nothing would happen. The urgency I felt was artificial."
Read it later via Pocket or Instapaper.
Share it via Twitter or email.
14 minutes read.
"Different people manifest burnout in different ways, but I think for all of us, it’s some variety of a shutdown... Parts of your personality start to contract. Your range of expression shrinks. Your world view narrows. Burnout is deadly to startups because it kills perspective." -- The biggest takeaway I believe we should pay extra attention to, is judging the real impact of any delay. The trick is writing it down and showing it to someone else. Reading it out loud, or simply talking about it, will calibrate your real thoughts on it: "... if that was delayed by two weeks, no one would die. In fact, nothing would happen. The urgency I felt was artificial."
Read it later via Pocket or Instapaper.
Share it via Twitter or email.
The 3 Motivational Forces of Developers
5 minutes read.
Ben Northrop with a helpful framework (even if not complete) to understand developers' motivation. This, from my experience, is something that tends to change along the years. We can utilize it both as developers and managers to push ourselves and our teammates further.
Read it later via Pocket or Instapaper.
Share it via Twitter or email.
5 minutes read.
Ben Northrop with a helpful framework (even if not complete) to understand developers' motivation. This, from my experience, is something that tends to change along the years. We can utilize it both as developers and managers to push ourselves and our teammates further.
Read it later via Pocket or Instapaper.
Share it via Twitter or email.
So You're Looking to Hire?
5 minutes read.
Planning and executing on an effective and positive hiring process is hard. A lot of great observations by Allison McMillan, if you'd like to retrospect on your process. If you give home assigments or testing people on site, make sure you're not making this mistake: "As I solved take home code projects that had nothing to do with the every day job of being a developer and weren’t related to anything I had accomplished in the past two years, I found myself getting more and more frustrated. These projects didn’t test my abilities. They tested if I had time."
Read it later via Pocket or Instapaper.
Share it via Twitter or email.
5 minutes read.
Planning and executing on an effective and positive hiring process is hard. A lot of great observations by Allison McMillan, if you'd like to retrospect on your process. If you give home assigments or testing people on site, make sure you're not making this mistake: "As I solved take home code projects that had nothing to do with the every day job of being a developer and weren’t related to anything I had accomplished in the past two years, I found myself getting more and more frustrated. These projects didn’t test my abilities. They tested if I had time."
Read it later via Pocket or Instapaper.
Share it via Twitter or email.
Inspiring Tweets
- 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.