Software Lead Weekly

Practical Tips for Applying the Growth Mindset to Product
9 minutes read.

Ask yourself -- which kind of leaders your company have? Which kind of leader you want to be to serve your team? Merci Victoria Grace is spot on with this one: "It is up to management to create a growth mindset culture — one that tolerates failure. High performers will leave companies that have a fixed mindset, since they won’t get stretch opportunities to continue growing and will be punished for taking bold steps."

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Slightly Obscure Nerd Jokes Are Best Nerd Jokes.
1 minutes read.

My humble effort to help you start the weekend with a smile on your face.

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Startups and Stoicism
3 minutes read.

Leo Polovets writes so well: "If you're aware of your attachments, willing to thoroughly contemplate worst-case scenarios, and limit your focus to things that are within your sphere of control, you'll be a better founder[or employee] and a happier human being." -- using Negative Visualization is a great tactic not many use: it can reduce stress and prepare you with enough ideas for anything that happens. It's a skill worth mastering.

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Brilliant Jerks in Engineering
11 minutes read.

I'd start reading this post by Brendan Gregg from the "When I acted like a jerk" section. The way the manager handled the situation and provided the feedback is how you help people take a better path. People should be open to feedback, and others should be wise in the way they deliver it.

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If You Were Going to Incorporate Questions Into a Survey to Assess Teams “sustainable Pace” (Or Otherwise) What What You Ask? (Thread)
2 minutes read.

This thread by Derek Winter is packed with some many great questions you can use when interviewing for a position or judging the culture you currently have in your company. My favorite question is: "How many more months could you continue working at the same pace as you've worked the past month?"

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Working on the Right Thing
5 minutes read.

Using Tom Sommer's "Ability, Affinity and Ambition" framework with Kent Beck's 3X (Explore, Expand and Extract) is a great way to think of how you can serve your team, who should you hire next and how to create an engaging Personal Growth plan for your teammates.

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Negotiation Cheat Sheet
3 minutes read.

After reading the book "Never Split the Difference", this cheat-sheet by Yan-David Erlich is super useful. One of those books that is worth reading as it can come handy talking with different types of people in different setting. To be honest, the cheat-sheet is useful even without reading the book (at least most of it).

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How to Level Up as a Developer W/ Scott Hanselman (Video)
61 minutes read.

The video by Scott Hanselman is one of those talks I wish I could listen to when I was in the beginning of my career. Niko's summary is worth reading as it's a good lesson into how to extract meaningful insights from the endless amount of information we consume these days.

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@xaprb: When you’re fundraising, it’s AI. When you’re hiring, it’s ML. When you’re implementing, it’s linear regression. When you’re debugging, it’s printf()

@mattbarcomb: When I changed the roles of senior dev to be actually responsible for developing junior devs I had more than half of them quit over 6 months. Fixed the hero culture problem too.