Software Lead Weekly

Starting With Failure Is Good for Creativity, as Long as You Get Started
3 minutes read.

"At first, creating for an hour is hard. Every five minutes our mind itches for interruption: to stretch, get coffee, check e-mail, pet the dog" -- Something in this post gave me the motivation to just start something, so I did. Working on a Slack bot for SoftwareLeadWeekly at 2AM, learning Go on the go. Let me know if you'd like to help out testing it out when I'm ready to launch.

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East Village Coffee Shop Guys Looking Like the Pokemon Evolutions of Each Other
1 minutes read.

My humble effort to help you start the weekend with a smile on your face.

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MeetEdgar Culture Guide
5 minutes read.

I love such guides as they provide a lot of interesting opportunities to think of the kind of guide you'd like to have in your company. My favorites: "Why We Make Plans Instead of Goals" and "Value for Value at MeetEdgar"

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It’s Never Too Early to Fire (Senior Executives)
9 minutes read.

Waiting too much; I made this mistake too. It's hard to fire someone, but we have to keep in mind is the team, not the individual: "In fact that’s a higher cost than any of the other losses because it becomes a systemic, organization-wide problem: the company that employees no longer trust, that no longer demands or values their highest performance."

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Can Do vs Must Do
3 minutes read.

Fred Wilson will challenge you to carefully think of what you're willing to commit to. Worth reading the conversation at the end, a lot of good observations (e.g. check David Semeria's questions to judge value).

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How to Move From a Non-Technical Role Into Engineering
5 minutes read.

Regan Starr from Zapier shares his lessons learned, making the transition from Customer Support to Engineering. A great career advice regardless of your current position. These two are golden: "Become a Top Performer in Your Non-technical Role First" and "Default to Action".

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Your Team Is Brainstorming All Wrong
4 minutes read.

I was facing a similar situation at work: how can we make sure brainstorming sessions are effective? I prefer to agree on the dilemma/problem beforehand and have that as the context for the meeting. Then, write expectations of how/if people should come prepared and only then decide how to run the session.

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What You Want in a VP Eng From the Recruiters Behind Twitter and Zappos
10 minutes read.

If at some point you'd like to be hired as VP Engineering, this one is for you: "People need to leave the VP’s office and feel like they’re smarter than when they walked in... They have to be looked at as someone who isn’t just pulling levers in the ivory tower – they have to bring something more to the table. They need to set up robust recruiting programs to get the greatest people, build brand awareness, they have to be out there interacting with people, the tech blogs, letting their people make the world aware about the cool stuff they’re doing."

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@dcancel: There are more smart people outside your company than inside your company. Remain open minded.

@DanielMorsing: I'm naming my cats-to-be kafka, cassandra and pagerduty so that I will be less surprised when they wake me up in the middle of the night