Software Lead Weekly
Issue #341, 7th June 2019
This Week's Favorite
7 Absolute Truths I Unlearned as Junior Developer
8 minutes read.
One of my favorite posts of the year (not just this week!) by Monica Lent. This post is going to be added to my "favorite resources" for engineers who seek to grow and improve in their craft, having the right mindset to allow a sustainable career. Share it with both junior engineers and senior engineers. It has many points in it worth talking during your 1:1 with them.
Read it later via Pocket or Instapaper.
Share it via Twitter or email.
8 minutes read.
One of my favorite posts of the year (not just this week!) by Monica Lent. This post is going to be added to my "favorite resources" for engineers who seek to grow and improve in their craft, having the right mindset to allow a sustainable career. Share it with both junior engineers and senior engineers. It has many points in it worth talking during your 1:1 with them.
Read it later via Pocket or Instapaper.
Share it via Twitter or email.
Culture
Five Whys vs Reality
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.
Debugging Your Startup: What to Do When Things Aren’t Working
12 minutes read.
Justin Kan (CEO of Atrium) shares his debugging and recommendations dealing with difficult situations as a leader of a company. This will be one of my go-to posts to examine different phases of companies, may it be in companies I'm working at or when people are seeking advice.
Read it later via Pocket or Instapaper.
Share it via Twitter or email.
12 minutes read.
Justin Kan (CEO of Atrium) shares his debugging and recommendations dealing with difficult situations as a leader of a company. This will be one of my go-to posts to examine different phases of companies, may it be in companies I'm working at or when people are seeking advice.
Read it later via Pocket or Instapaper.
Share it via Twitter or email.
Be Great. (Video)
2 minutes read.
Draymond Green from GSW with an inspiring speech: “Before you can reach anything, you have to believe it. You don’t just mistakenly become great at something.” -- Who were those people who helped giving your the confidence you need? Your parents? A teacher? A colleague? Did you thank them for that? Can you help others have that faith in themselves by telling them why they're great?
Read it later via Pocket or Instapaper.
Share it via Twitter or email.
2 minutes read.
Draymond Green from GSW with an inspiring speech: “Before you can reach anything, you have to believe it. You don’t just mistakenly become great at something.” -- Who were those people who helped giving your the confidence you need? Your parents? A teacher? A colleague? Did you thank them for that? Can you help others have that faith in themselves by telling them why they're great?
Read it later via Pocket or Instapaper.
Share it via Twitter or email.
How to Lead an Engineering Team During A Period of Hypergrowth: An AMA With Chris Slowe, CTO at Reddit
11 minutes read.
Chris Slowe shares many gems he picked up along his journey at Reddit and Hipmunk. I love this one: "I think the value of one-on-ones definitely comes from it. We need to make sure that the one-on-one has a structure and that there is a path towards having the career advancement discussion on a regular basis. Not everyone thinks about their career or at least doesn’t say they are and so if you don’t have that outlet to actually talk about your career it can be very stressful to the actual IC." -- The power of 1:1s is to help connect the dots between the employee, the manager, and the company, by looking at intrinsic motivations and long-term goals on all sides.
Read it later via Pocket or Instapaper.
Share it via Twitter or email.
11 minutes read.
Chris Slowe shares many gems he picked up along his journey at Reddit and Hipmunk. I love this one: "I think the value of one-on-ones definitely comes from it. We need to make sure that the one-on-one has a structure and that there is a path towards having the career advancement discussion on a regular basis. Not everyone thinks about their career or at least doesn’t say they are and so if you don’t have that outlet to actually talk about your career it can be very stressful to the actual IC." -- The power of 1:1s is to help connect the dots between the employee, the manager, and the company, by looking at intrinsic motivations and long-term goals on all sides.
Read it later via Pocket or Instapaper.
Share it via Twitter or email.
Peopleware
Undervalued Software Engineering Skills: Writing Well
4 minutes read.
Do what Gergely Orosz says: "For software engineers, writing becomes the tool to reach, converse with and influence engineers and teams outside their immediate peers. Writing becomes essential to make thoughts, tradeoffs and decisions durable. Writing things down makes these thoughts available for a wide range of people to read. Things that should be made durable can include proposals and decisions, coding guidelines, best practices, learnings, runbooks, debugging guides, postmortems. Even code reviews."
Read it later via Pocket or Instapaper.
Share it via Twitter or email.
4 minutes read.
Do what Gergely Orosz says: "For software engineers, writing becomes the tool to reach, converse with and influence engineers and teams outside their immediate peers. Writing becomes essential to make thoughts, tradeoffs and decisions durable. Writing things down makes these thoughts available for a wide range of people to read. Things that should be made durable can include proposals and decisions, coding guidelines, best practices, learnings, runbooks, debugging guides, postmortems. Even code reviews."
Read it later via Pocket or Instapaper.
Share it via Twitter or email.
Don’t Feel Like an Expert? Share Anyway.
7 minutes read.
Sara Wachter-Boettcher with a post that I've shared internally with a few teammates, people I think have a lot to say and contribute yet hold themselves back. Try to (kindly and gently) challenge that perception of "who am I to talk about it?". Tell them they're amazing and offer a few examples of how their work and lessons learned could make an impact on others. Help them imagine the value they'd bring, and how success looks like for them in that stage.
Read it later via Pocket or Instapaper.
Share it via Twitter or email.
7 minutes read.
Sara Wachter-Boettcher with a post that I've shared internally with a few teammates, people I think have a lot to say and contribute yet hold themselves back. Try to (kindly and gently) challenge that perception of "who am I to talk about it?". Tell them they're amazing and offer a few examples of how their work and lessons learned could make an impact on others. Help them imagine the value they'd bring, and how success looks like for them in that stage.
Read it later via Pocket or Instapaper.
Share it via Twitter or email.
What Advice Seems Obviously Right, Is Relatively Easy to Follow, and Is Usually Ignored? (Thread)
3 minutes read.
I love this question by Sam Altman. You can browse around and pick up things you'd like to follow and make it part of your character. This is probably my favorite in terms of being more aware and actively make a decision, both at work and home (friends, family, etc.): "Spent time with people who make you happy."
Read it later via Pocket or Instapaper.
Share it via Twitter or email.
3 minutes read.
I love this question by Sam Altman. You can browse around and pick up things you'd like to follow and make it part of your character. This is probably my favorite in terms of being more aware and actively make a decision, both at work and home (friends, family, etc.): "Spent time with people who make you happy."
Read it later via Pocket or Instapaper.
Share it via Twitter or email.
Inspiring Tweets
@tomdale: 39-year-old with 9 direct reports at a big company: Engineering Manager. 22-year-old with no direct reports at a startup: Senior VP of Enterprise CSS and Cloud Strategy
@theitskeptic: We believe 3 things at work: This is biggest shift in thinking about work in 100 years. You can't directly change a human complex system and you can't make it change itself quickly (except in special times). Those who sell a single method are wrong. The solution is in the people
- 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.