Software Lead Weekly

This Week's Favorite

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How to Run Inclusive Meetings
5 minutes read.

Franklin Hu with a post that every leader in the organization should read. "For managers who see this feedback for their direct reports and notice that they’re quiet in meetings, take a moment to step back and reflect on why this individual isn’t participating... Shaping the environment that meetings happen in helps to lower the barrier for people to contribute in meetings by hopefully eliminating entire classes of extrinsic factors that may dissuade individuals." -- Franklin's questions and observations will transform the way you run meetings, and how people feel about sharing their thoughts (psychologically safe environment)

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Culture

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Looks at Our Bug Tracking After Not Looking For A While...
1 minute read.

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

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Flavors of Engineering Management
5 minutes read.

Benjamin Encz shares three different "flavors" of Engineering Managers. I find it useful as it helps you to understand the strengths and weaknesses of each flavor, and how you need to hire to compliment the team. I'd add to it that usually the Product and People-oriented managers are usually better at providing business context while missing subtleties in Tech Debt tradeoffs.

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Who I Want to Work For
4 minutes read.

Keavy McMinn covers the leadership qualities she'd like to see in her current and future managers. "Whether it’s about large or small tasks, new features or regular maintenance, you value the work of those around you. Everyone knows you value them and their work, primarily because you regularly tell them so. You cultivate a culture of giving credit where and when it’s due." -- I wish more people would write such expectations doc and share it publicly. We should hold managers accountable, to lead with purpose.

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The Big Secret of Small Improvements
4 minutes read.

Tal Bereznitskey shares a nice approach for fixing small things that can win customers' hearts. I've seen before the reaction of reaching out to customers, telling them "The small improvement you offered to our product a few days ago is now live! Thank you for raising our attention, our product is better now because of you.". Reminds me of Medium's "Jank 'n' Drank" process that I've shared before.

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Peopleware

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How to Fail as A New Engineering Manager
10 minutes read.

Brad Armstrong shares anti-patterns you should become aware of and avoid while leading a team. The most common I've seen is "Avoiding hard conversations", "Focusing only on the work, not the people." and "Expecting without expressing" -- all of them can impact the trust you have with your teammates, and your ability to lead rather than direct ("manage" / give orders).

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6 Lessons From Lara Hogan on Humanizing Management
5 minutes read.

“When you leave knowing how to solve the things that you’ve royally screwed up the next day, that’s a good day. All the mistakes that I made today, I aim to have a game plan for addressing them tomorrow.” -- Lara Hogan applies her Growth Mindset to management. She knows that becoming a better manager takes time and practice. When she fails, she holds herself accountable, looking for ways to fix her mistakes.

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The Role, Skills, And Duties of A Software Architect
5 minutes read.

The title of "Software Architect" is hard to define because each company has a different definition (I've seen some companies with multiple definitions). I enjoyed reading Iren Korkishko's view as it's explicit and clear. While it may be applicable only to some, it's useful to learn from these perspectives and compare it to the way you grasp such roles (and other roles, like Tech Lead).

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Inspiring Tweets

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@nickstenning: Flat organisational structures do not exist. There are only organisations with visible structure and organisations with invisible structure.

@noahkagan: Bitcoin's price goes down. Changes job title from Crypto Investor back to Entrepreneur.