Software Lead Weekly

Decision-Making Auditing
3 minutes read.

Tomasz Tunguz with a great advice on extracting value from others' experience: "Just by explaining it, I often saw something new, and a potential solution. Many times, he never said a word, just listened. That’s a critical part of decision-making auditing. As Epictetus said, we have two ears and one mouth for a reason. In other cases, my coding mentor might ask one or two questions, and that would be enough." -- next time you talk with someone else, try to think which questions you'd like them to answer and why. If you're unsure - ask them.

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How Software Engineers See Their Code
1 minutes read.

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

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Read This Before Joining as Employee 1 to 20 at a Startup
11 minutes read.

"Early employees: when it comes to time management, stack your priorities in two-week themes. That way you can balance actionability and flexibility." -- I'd actually follow this advice for pretty much any size of a company. It provides enough time to focus on what needs to be done now while allowing you to optimize for the longer term.

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A Letter to a Junior Engineer: What I’d Want to Know at the Beginning of My Career
5 minutes read.

Joe Moore with helpful tips to junior engineers to optimize their learning growth rate. My favorite pieces of advice were "Find A Wide Variety of Mentors" and "Ask for Constructive Feedback." Share it at the office with relevant team members and see if you can help them as a mentor.

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In Praise of SWARMing
12 minutes read.

Dan North will get you to think a lot about the processes you have and where you should take it next: "I am offering a new acronym, SWARMing: Scaling Without A Religious Methodology. My argument isn’t that packaged scaling methods are unhelpful per se, rather that they are neither necessary nor sufficient for successful transformation. They can be anything from a useful starting point to an expensive distraction, but one thing they are not is a solution." -- good time to try something new? A small iteration towards a better outcome?

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Manager README: John Cline, Blue Apron
5 minutes read.

John Cline's format is so clear and concise. Really well done, you should copy his format and try to write your own version.

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Manager README: Oren Ellenbogen, Forter
7 minutes read.

This one is mine. I'd love to get your feedback on it. Feel free to reach out to me via email (just reply to this email) or via Twitter if you have some feedback to share.

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Manager README: Scott Burns, Stratasan
4 minutes read.

The last one is by Scott Burns, and it's great. I also enjoyed the link to the company's handbook shared in it. Give it a look.

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@naval: Success is the enemy of learning. It can deprive you of the time and the incentive to start over. Beginner’s mind also needs beginner’s time.

@alambert: so, you avoid vendor lock-in by building your own. and then later realize you still have vendor lock-in, but you're the vendor, and there are no other customers. oops.