Software Lead Weekly 
Issue #106, 5th December 2014
This Week's Favorite
Resumes Suck. Here’s the Data.
10 minutes read.
"On average, participants guessed correctly 53% of the time... they might as well be flipping a coin" - Interesting read backed with some data behind why resumes are so terrible resource to learn about our candidates. There has to be better way to get the right information to make a decision, and make it scalable. So far resumes stick because there is no really better way. GitHub profiles are nice, side-projects are awesome, but still we all go back to resumes. This is broken. Do you have some interesting ways to fix the funnel? Share it with me by replying to this email.
Read it later via Instapaper.
Share it via Twitter or email.
10 minutes read.
"On average, participants guessed correctly 53% of the time... they might as well be flipping a coin" - Interesting read backed with some data behind why resumes are so terrible resource to learn about our candidates. There has to be better way to get the right information to make a decision, and make it scalable. So far resumes stick because there is no really better way. GitHub profiles are nice, side-projects are awesome, but still we all go back to resumes. This is broken. Do you have some interesting ways to fix the funnel? Share it with me by replying to this email.
Read it later via Instapaper.
Share it via Twitter or email.
Culture
Gangnam Style Has Been Watched So Many Times on YouTube, Its View Count Caused an Integer Overflow.
1 minutes read.
From the team at YouTube: "We never thought a video would be watched in numbers greater than a 32-bit integer (=2,147,483,647 views), but that was before we met PSY." We all hope to have YouTube's problems someday, I guess. Hope this made you smile, in a nerdy way.
Read it later via Instapaper.
Share it via Twitter or email.
1 minutes read.
From the team at YouTube: "We never thought a video would be watched in numbers greater than a 32-bit integer (=2,147,483,647 views), but that was before we met PSY." We all hope to have YouTube's problems someday, I guess. Hope this made you smile, in a nerdy way.
Read it later via Instapaper.
Share it via Twitter or email.
The AngelList Way
5 minutes read.
"Specialization is for insects" - AngelList are doing things differently since the begining. They're well-known for how many different hats each team member holds to execute on such a scale with a relatively small team. These are wonderful culture slides, not in a sense that you'd agree with 100% of the things written there, but you at least feel the authenticiy and courage that comes out of their brand. It obviously works well for them, and it helps them attract the talent that appreciate this kind of appraoch.
Read it later via Instapaper.
Share it via Twitter or email.
5 minutes read.
"Specialization is for insects" - AngelList are doing things differently since the begining. They're well-known for how many different hats each team member holds to execute on such a scale with a relatively small team. These are wonderful culture slides, not in a sense that you'd agree with 100% of the things written there, but you at least feel the authenticiy and courage that comes out of their brand. It obviously works well for them, and it helps them attract the talent that appreciate this kind of appraoch.
Read it later via Instapaper.
Share it via Twitter or email.
Evolution of Employees
1 minutes read.
One photo that shares the story behind the Evolution Of The Employee. Useful mind-map to remind us that we still have a long way to go to actually fulfill these changes.
Read it later via Instapaper.
Share it via Twitter or email.
1 minutes read.
One photo that shares the story behind the Evolution Of The Employee. Useful mind-map to remind us that we still have a long way to go to actually fulfill these changes.
Read it later via Instapaper.
Share it via Twitter or email.
How Etsy Increased Diversity in Its Engineering Department
43 minutes read.
If you care about diversity in your engineering team, watch this video. Great insights by Marc Hedlund, such as why they cancelled whiteboard interviews, how they source for candidates, who send these candidates emails or why they stopped repeating the competition attitude we sometimes overcommunicate ("we have the hardest interviews!"). We should never compromise on quality, but we should always explore and experiment with our methods.
Read it later via Instapaper.
Share it via Twitter or email.
43 minutes read.
If you care about diversity in your engineering team, watch this video. Great insights by Marc Hedlund, such as why they cancelled whiteboard interviews, how they source for candidates, who send these candidates emails or why they stopped repeating the competition attitude we sometimes overcommunicate ("we have the hardest interviews!"). We should never compromise on quality, but we should always explore and experiment with our methods.
Read it later via Instapaper.
Share it via Twitter or email.
The Lindy Effect on Startup Potential
5 minutes read.
Jason Cohen with another fantastic post. Actually the best way I can summarize this post is taking part of Jason's response to one of the questions raised in the comments section: "It's an interesting observation that business growth feeds growth, whereas project growth feeds pain. Both can get caught in its own momentum, however, with software creating legacy code-bases, and companies creating legacy reputations, cultures, and product-lines. Both ensure some sort of longevity, but both devolve into a lack of innovation. Those who can break that pattern and continue innovation, can truly build something special."
Read it later via Instapaper.
Share it via Twitter or email.
5 minutes read.
Jason Cohen with another fantastic post. Actually the best way I can summarize this post is taking part of Jason's response to one of the questions raised in the comments section: "It's an interesting observation that business growth feeds growth, whereas project growth feeds pain. Both can get caught in its own momentum, however, with software creating legacy code-bases, and companies creating legacy reputations, cultures, and product-lines. Both ensure some sort of longevity, but both devolve into a lack of innovation. Those who can break that pattern and continue innovation, can truly build something special."
Read it later via Instapaper.
Share it via Twitter or email.
Peopleware
The QA Mindset
5 minutes read.
Working without a QA department is still a pretty new approach, but one that grows quickly as engineers are feeling more comfortable with taking ownership over the quality and health of their services. I agree with Michael that we need to keep (and distribute) that sense of high quality deliveries. We also must make sure that the quality is being measured by taking business and customer impact. I had my fair share of fixing bugs in features no customer have used. Interesting balance to watch as our culture shift to empowering engineers to own their work. "My concern is that the absence of QA is the absence of a champion for aspects of software development that everyone agrees are important, but often no one is willing to own."
Read it later via Instapaper.
Share it via Twitter or email.
5 minutes read.
Working without a QA department is still a pretty new approach, but one that grows quickly as engineers are feeling more comfortable with taking ownership over the quality and health of their services. I agree with Michael that we need to keep (and distribute) that sense of high quality deliveries. We also must make sure that the quality is being measured by taking business and customer impact. I had my fair share of fixing bugs in features no customer have used. Interesting balance to watch as our culture shift to empowering engineers to own their work. "My concern is that the absence of QA is the absence of a champion for aspects of software development that everyone agrees are important, but often no one is willing to own."
Read it later via Instapaper.
Share it via Twitter or email.
What It's Really Like to Grow a Team When You're Focused on Culture-Fit
5 minutes read.
Joel from Buffer shares how he set focus around hiring (and firing) for culture-fit in order to grow the team. In order to scale the company in a way that would remain consistent in terms of values, you need to think of these things early on. The behaviours you appreciate, the state of mind you're looking for, the vibe you want to have at the office. Buffer are doing exceptional job at it, or at least at trying to figure that out instead of waiting for it to "just happen" by itself. I recommend also reading the internal links inside of this post, they are a great supplement.
Read it later via Instapaper.
Share it via Twitter or email.
5 minutes read.
Joel from Buffer shares how he set focus around hiring (and firing) for culture-fit in order to grow the team. In order to scale the company in a way that would remain consistent in terms of values, you need to think of these things early on. The behaviours you appreciate, the state of mind you're looking for, the vibe you want to have at the office. Buffer are doing exceptional job at it, or at least at trying to figure that out instead of waiting for it to "just happen" by itself. I recommend also reading the internal links inside of this post, they are a great supplement.
Read it later via Instapaper.
Share it via Twitter or email.
Code Reviews
5 minutes read.
"There’s a thin line, a dance between order and creativity that creates maintainable code" - Dor Kalev offers his 3 lessons learned to get most of your Code Review sessions. Writing a maintainable code at scale, both in terms of how big is your team and how big is your user base, can be a tricky skill to master. Effective Code Reviews could be used to distribute this knowledge and teach others various "Code Smells" they should be aware when writing software.
Read it later via Instapaper.
Share it via Twitter or email.
5 minutes read.
"There’s a thin line, a dance between order and creativity that creates maintainable code" - Dor Kalev offers his 3 lessons learned to get most of your Code Review sessions. Writing a maintainable code at scale, both in terms of how big is your team and how big is your user base, can be a tricky skill to master. Effective Code Reviews could be used to distribute this knowledge and teach others various "Code Smells" they should be aware when writing software.
Read it later via Instapaper.
Share it via Twitter or email.
Inspiring Tweets
@destraynor: "The rate at which an organization learns may become the only sustainable source of competitive advantage." — Peter Drucker
- 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.