Issue #103, 14th November 2014

This Week's Favorite


Fault Injection in Production
12 minutes read.

Some of you may have read this post as it was an internal link in a post from last week (on Stripe's Game Day). I felt this is such an important post I should publish it on its own. I cannot think of a better way to let talented people learn from each other and have fun together. Share it with your team, and brainstorm on how you could apply it in your company.

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


Culture


We Let Them See Their Families
2 minutes read.

A friend of mine sent me this video and I couldn't stop laughing (my wife gave me a crazy look, so I had to stop at some point). Great way to start your weekend.

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


What if Your Team Was Working Remote?
5 minutes read.

This post is by yours truly. I've got no doubt that future employment will have less to do with where geographically you want to work and more on why you decided to join the team and work on that specific project. Without the immediate peer pressure you have when working in a shared location, how do you still inspire others and create an alignment? This post, I hope, will make you think harder on some interesting questions we should all ask, regardless of whether or not your team is working remote.

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How to Go From Structureless to Structured Without Losing Your Vibe
5 minutes read.

Camille Fournier (CTO at Rent the Runway) shares her lessons learned on creating an engineering ladder. A lot of pragmatic tips you can take from it, mostly around making sure to write things down and iterate on your plans while seeking for feedback. Asking many successful entrepreneurs about what worked best for them was always "to over communicate". Camille's approach to building organizational structure while focus on clarity and success metrics is how I believe companies should strive to introduce structure without neglecting the meaning behind this transition.

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The Stages of Life for Code in a Start-Up
4 minutes read.

If you ever worked in a startup and had the "pleasure" to write some code that you knew would (read: should) change drastically (read: cursing driven development), you'll enjoy reading this one. Arik Galansky writes it like it is.

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Peopleware


The Update, the Vent, and the Disaster
7 minutes read.

Old one, but had the pleasure to read it again a few days ago and I thought you'd enjoy it as well. Michael Lopp (aka Rands) shares some concepts you can use for your 1:1s with your teammates. Insightful, funny and always interesting.

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The 10 Principles of Good Management
7 minutes read.

"Applying Dieter Rams’ 10 principles of good design to the job many people fall into. Managing other designers." - Taking concepts from design is a great way to have a fresh look (at least for me) on how to make management useful instead of wasteful. My favorite section: "Good management is unobtrusive".

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Velocity vs. Quality
3 minutes read.

The distinction Daniel is making between code quality and implementation quality is a great tool you can use to judge and set standards for the way you write code in your company. The best advice I can give you is simply read this post. Daniel Pupius (Engineering at Medium) should write more often.

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Share it via Twitter or email.


Inspiring Tweets


@jamesjyu: Email overload is the enemy of long-term strategic thinking.

@hnshah: Having a sense of urgency is a requirement for startup growth

- Oren

P.S. Can you share this email? I'd love for more people to experiment and improve their company's culture.

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