Software Lead Weekly
Issue #206, 4th November 2016
This Week's Favorite
The Art of the Awkward 1:1
5 minutes read.
Mark Rabkin (Eng & Product VP @ Facebook) with a wonderful framing of great 1:1s: "But, ask yourself: is the conversation hard? Are you a little nervous or unsure how to get out what you’re trying to say? Is it awkward? Because if it’s not a bit awkward, you’re not talking about the real stuff." -- truly an eye-opener on making your time more valuable during 1:1s, with this one as my favorite advice: "Commit to saying one rather awkward thing every 1:1, and get the other person to commit too."
Read it later via Pocket or Instapaper.
Share it via Twitter or email.
5 minutes read.
Mark Rabkin (Eng & Product VP @ Facebook) with a wonderful framing of great 1:1s: "But, ask yourself: is the conversation hard? Are you a little nervous or unsure how to get out what you’re trying to say? Is it awkward? Because if it’s not a bit awkward, you’re not talking about the real stuff." -- truly an eye-opener on making your time more valuable during 1:1s, with this one as my favorite advice: "Commit to saying one rather awkward thing every 1:1, and get the other person to commit too."
Read it later via Pocket or Instapaper.
Share it via Twitter or email.
Culture
When You Inform Management That There’s No Way That App Can Go Live With Those Vulnerabilities and They Say: “I Accept the Risk”
1 minutes read.
My humble effort to help you start the weekend with a smile on your face.
Read it later via Pocket or Instapaper.
Share it via Twitter or email.
1 minutes read.
My humble effort to help you start the weekend with a smile on your face.
Read it later via Pocket or Instapaper.
Share it via Twitter or email.
About Predictability and Clearly Defining Team Goals
5 minutes read.
"“Achieved items”->”Predictability”->”Features in time”. All links on the chain." -- Getting into a clear and predictable delivery capacity is a critical trait of any engineering organization, as it builds trust and confidence within the company to experiment with different features and products. Such trust allows the company to test multiple assumptions, and adjust the product to find a successful, scalable business model.
Read it later via Pocket or Instapaper.
Share it via Twitter or email.
5 minutes read.
"“Achieved items”->”Predictability”->”Features in time”. All links on the chain." -- Getting into a clear and predictable delivery capacity is a critical trait of any engineering organization, as it builds trust and confidence within the company to experiment with different features and products. Such trust allows the company to test multiple assumptions, and adjust the product to find a successful, scalable business model.
Read it later via Pocket or Instapaper.
Share it via Twitter or email.
How to Make A Great Tech T-Shirt
5 minutes read.
Adam Nash's with a series of blog posts on how to create legendary t-shirts your teammates will proudly wear. His posts about "Metrics" and "Goals" are wonderful as they hold interesting keys into how you define and measure a success, or notice when it fails: "In the failure case, everyone takes a t-shirt, but somehow, you never see people wear them around the office... When you ask about them, people tell you “Oh, I wear it on the weekend” or “I use it for the gym”"
Read it later via Pocket or Instapaper.
Share it via Twitter or email.
5 minutes read.
Adam Nash's with a series of blog posts on how to create legendary t-shirts your teammates will proudly wear. His posts about "Metrics" and "Goals" are wonderful as they hold interesting keys into how you define and measure a success, or notice when it fails: "In the failure case, everyone takes a t-shirt, but somehow, you never see people wear them around the office... When you ask about them, people tell you “Oh, I wear it on the weekend” or “I use it for the gym”"
Read it later via Pocket or Instapaper.
Share it via Twitter or email.
1/3rd of Klarna TLV Engineers Are Women. How We Achieved It and Why the Road Ahead Is Still Long (Video)
4 minutes read.
Michal Tirosh shares 8 great tips on making your job descriptions, interviewing process and environment more women-friendly. The best four minutes you can listen to in terms of pragmatic advice you can follow to hopefully increase the ratio in your team.
Read it later via Pocket or Instapaper.
Share it via Twitter or email.
4 minutes read.
Michal Tirosh shares 8 great tips on making your job descriptions, interviewing process and environment more women-friendly. The best four minutes you can listen to in terms of pragmatic advice you can follow to hopefully increase the ratio in your team.
Read it later via Pocket or Instapaper.
Share it via Twitter or email.
Peopleware
On Being Thankful at Work
4 minutes read.
Here is something you can try on your next 1:1 with your teammates: figure out about their relationships with other teammates. Figuring out style, building trust and solid communication can lead to magical feeling, or as Katherine Daniels writes it down so elegantly: "When you know each other well, it’s easier to figure out how to make each other’s work lives better, even without consciously trying. When you know each other well, it’s easier to be thankful to work together... developing a common language and shared understanding of how you work, both individually and together, is key to helping a new team or group come together and helping to cultivate thankfulness at work."
Read it later via Pocket or Instapaper.
Share it via Twitter or email.
4 minutes read.
Here is something you can try on your next 1:1 with your teammates: figure out about their relationships with other teammates. Figuring out style, building trust and solid communication can lead to magical feeling, or as Katherine Daniels writes it down so elegantly: "When you know each other well, it’s easier to figure out how to make each other’s work lives better, even without consciously trying. When you know each other well, it’s easier to be thankful to work together... developing a common language and shared understanding of how you work, both individually and together, is key to helping a new team or group come together and helping to cultivate thankfulness at work."
Read it later via Pocket or Instapaper.
Share it via Twitter or email.
Yes, Your Team Should Be Blogging
4 minutes read.
There is no doubt that building an engineering-brand is one of those long-term investments you should constantly strive to. When companies seek to grow, they are often "surprised" that no one actually knows something about them. Make sure you regularly encourage your teammates to invest in answering questions on Stack Overflow or Quora, writing blog posts, giving a talk in some meetup or conference, contributing to open-source projects and anything else that comes to mind. Branding matters.
Read it later via Pocket or Instapaper.
Share it via Twitter or email.
4 minutes read.
There is no doubt that building an engineering-brand is one of those long-term investments you should constantly strive to. When companies seek to grow, they are often "surprised" that no one actually knows something about them. Make sure you regularly encourage your teammates to invest in answering questions on Stack Overflow or Quora, writing blog posts, giving a talk in some meetup or conference, contributing to open-source projects and anything else that comes to mind. Branding matters.
Read it later via Pocket or Instapaper.
Share it via Twitter or email.
Focus
7 minutes read.
Henrik Kniberg summarizes his key points from his talk on extracting more value from his available time. Read and then read again Henrik's point on "“Busy-ness” is an artificial concept".
Read it later via Pocket or Instapaper.
Share it via Twitter or email.
7 minutes read.
Henrik Kniberg summarizes his key points from his talk on extracting more value from his available time. Read and then read again Henrik's point on "“Busy-ness” is an artificial concept".
Read it later via Pocket or Instapaper.
Share it via Twitter or email.
Inspiring Tweets
@mrb_bk: An engineering blog with actual things that actual engineers have shipped is the best recruiting tool there is
@sean_a_rose: Fun Slack hack: set "hate" as a highlight word and quickly find out what's annoying everyone on your team.
- 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.