Issue #146, 11th September 2015

This Week's Favorite


Do the Simple Thing First: The Engineering Behind Instagram
8 minutes read.

Great view into the core value of Instagram from the get go: start simple. While lacking the early days of Burbn, leading to the pivot from that product to Instagram, it was interesting to read what they took with them, as the started to utilize more and more of Facebook's infrastructure and grow the company.

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Culture


20 Years of Apps Eating the Work Desk
1 minutes read.

Remarkable GIF that tells the entire story. Software is indeed eating the world, as Marc Andreessen says.

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Making Badass Developers - Kathy Sierra (Serious Pony) Keynote
23 minutes read.

A talk you should definitely listen to on your next commute to work, or if you're seeking for some good food for your brain.

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How We Onboard New Employees Differently at Bizzabo
4 minutes read.

Your onboarding process should fit the kind of culture you want to promote, and the kind of people you want to hire that will shine because of it. Bizzabo's process is a great example of a company that prefers to do things differently, yet with a lot of thinking of the details and the intent behind it.

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$2,300,000 to One (Or How We Support 1,650 Customers With Just One Rep)
8 minutes read.

Doing more with less is a state of mind. It requires a lot of creativity, but the team at StatusPage will take you through the details of how it can be done. Plenty ideas to barrow and try at your company.

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Peopleware


Stop Saving Them: Why You Should Give People the Chance to Fail
3 minutes read.

This lesson is something that took me a couple of years to learn in my early days as an Engineering Manager. It's not only figuring out that failure is part of the learning process, it's also to make room for others to experiment.

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The Management Technique Essential to Google’s Growth
4 minutes read.

Having an internal Office Hours is an interesting concept. It creates room for people to share their concerns and for the organization to deal with it in a concentrated manner.

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Software Is 10% Code
4 minutes read.

The part in the post about "Bad Writing is a Meeting Factory" is so important, that I recommend reading it multiple times and sharing it with your teammates.

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Inspiring Tweets


@sama: Best career advice I have: learn BOTH how to build things and how to understand people (to create products for them, manage them, etc.)

@PicardTips: Maintenance of existing systems is just as important as building new capabilities.

- 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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