Software Lead Weekly

Building a Lever
4 minutes read.

Jason Fried with the best advice I've read (and can give) for someone who asks "How I can change my workplace when I don't have the power to make decisions?" -- share it with your teammates, and other leaders in the organization.

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I Survived Another Meeting That Should Have Been an Email
1 minutes read.

My humble effort to help you start the weekend with a smile on your face. I'd order 90 of those myself.

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The ‘Hello World’ Fallacy
3 minutes read.

Simplifying a concept to be able to demonstrate value quickly is a powerful method, but can be also extremely misleading. It doesn't matter if you demonstrate a new language or framework, or sharing concepts such as "We don't need managers" (GitHub style, a few years ago). There is so much context and people involved, that you often end with excitement that never reach your team or production. Filip Hracek (Google) with an important fallacy we should all be more aware of.

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Why Release Notes Important to Us at Slack
3 minutes read.

It's the way you do the little things that show the most about your company's vibe. Every time I see an update for my Slack app on my iPhone, I know I'm going to smile and enjoy it. This can be applied to so many things in the way we build products and companies.

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Why You Should Care About Engineering Culture, Even if You’re Not a Developer
3 minutes read.

Karen Meep (Product Architect at Wix) explains why should understand and be able to contribute to the company's engineering culture: "Bottom line is, if you want to work with top notch people to create a top notch product, you should care about how the entire team is treated." -- Effective companies are able to move fast because product and engineering work extremely well together, as trust is being nurtured and earned every single day.

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Trying to Convince People to Change
2 minutes read.

"Poor reactions to difficult situations can negatively impact the team and it's your job as a manager to help people identify these behavioral issues. Books can be great for this, but they are rarely going to shortcut the process of change. No matter what, don't forget to look at the circumstances that are triggering the behavior" -- understanding what is it for them to gain from this change, and being able to provide concrete feedback every time you see such behavior is where you should start.

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Creative Confidence
5 minutes read.

Julie Zhuo shares her view on a wonderful question a candidate asked her: "Recently, someone I was interviewing asked me what I looked for in the perfect maker?" -- I find it hard to pick which part I enjoyed most, as I agree with all of Julie's points, but something about "Takes a rigorous approach to her work" jumps out of the list. This, I believe, creates confidence in the organization around the person who leads this effort.

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@dcancel: Mastery comes from spending a lot of time on the edge of your abilities.

@avibryant: Group chat brings some of the benefits and many of the drawbacks of open-plan offices to distributed teams.