Software Lead Weekly

This Week's Favorite

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The Uncanny Valley Of A Functional Organization
15 minutes read.

Reading this post was the first time I really understood the deep foundations required to shift your organization toward functional structure. The risk in this transition is enormous, so there is so much to learn from Ben Thompson and the way he analyzes Microsoft recent reorganization. Highly recommended!

Read it later via Pocket or Instapaper.
Share it via Twitter or email.

Culture

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There is no Talent Shortage (Slides)
10 minutes read.

Andrew Shafer with a thought-provoking ideas on culture, incentives and building a learning organization. His message is clear - we're building organizations around titles and culture buzzwords, instead of educating our people to learn to ask the right questions: "you are either building a learning organization, or you will be losing to someone who is."

Read it later via Pocket or Instapaper.
Share it via Twitter or email.


That Little Bit Extra
5 minutes read.

Adii with a short post that I enjoyed about the power of one "extra" investment. Can you think of a small gesture to show your gratitude to your teammates for their hard work? Can you do the same for yourself? (you deserve it!)

Read it later via Pocket or Instapaper.
Share it via Twitter or email.


Funny Out of Office Messages: Top 13 Ideas For Your Out of Office Replies
2 minutes read.

Noah Kagan (of AppSumo) with some great Out of Office replies you can use to have fun with your teammates on your next OOO. Personally, I liked best "Thank you for your message, which has been added to a queuing system. You are currently in 352nd place and can expect to receive a reply in approximately 19 weeks."

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Peopleware

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The Solution to Technical Debt
15 minutes read.

This post can be used as a great reference for ongoing handling of Technical Debt. Henrik Kniberg offers a simple way to measure your satisfaction of your code quality and how to improve it over time. Eliminating Technical Debt should be part of your planning (e.g. part of writing features, or as tasks in the sprint/backlog). My advice is to pay attention as you don't want to invest time in eliminating Technical Debt in features/systems that are not useful for the business. It will always be cheaper and more beneficial to cut out some features and reduce your code-base. Share it with your technical leads and have a discussion about your current satisfaction with your code, and the approach you should use for handling quality in the long run.

Read it later via Pocket or Instapaper.
Share it via Twitter or email.


6 Secrets For Building A Super Team
5 minutes read.

Greg Brockman shares 6 lessons learned from hiring at Stripe, a company with probably one of the best engineering team in the world. My favorites are "Only hire people who make others want to be around them" and "Everyone gets a veto". Having these guidelines for hiring can help you check candidates for culture fit.

Read it later via Pocket or Instapaper.
Share it via Twitter or email.


How do I Tell my Team to Work More Hours to Hit A Launch Date?
10 minutes read.

What a great post by Edmond Lau (ex-Quora Engineer). If there is only one thing I could take from it, I'd choose "Focus on the overarching mission of the project, team, or organization, and why it's critical to that mission to meet the launch date". It is nearly impossible to enforce a commitment. Build relationships with them now, to allow such openness in the future. Invest the time, share your thoughts, help them succeed. It would pay off when you'll need their help.

Read it later via Pocket or Instapaper.
Share it via Twitter or email.

Inspiring Tweets

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@joshlong: Writing is the best way to improve your thinking.

@dcancel: "I believe you have to be willing to be misunderstood if you're going to innovate." - Jeff Bezos