Software Lead Weekly

Sourcing for Founders and Other Really Busy People (Slides)
8 minutes read.

Aline Lerner shares practical tips for you to improve your candidates' flow and the experience they'll have interacting with your company. This should level up your game by x100. Her tips are useful for sourcing, and for pitching the company on-site or on the phone, so share it with people who are part of the interviewing process.

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When You Hire More Developers to Speed Things Up Instead of Fixing Organizational Issues
1 minutes read.

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

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Developers Mentoring Other Developers: Practices I've Seen Work Well
7 minutes read.

Once you reach a certain size (50+ engineers?), setting a clear mentorship plan in your company can really help leverage each other's strength to spread knowledge and habits. I'm going to try out Gergely Orosz's (Engineering Manager at Uber) suggestions and apply them in my company as we're reaching that size, and the value in a well-defined process becomes clearer.

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The 10x Engineer - Making a Whole Team 10x Better
10 minutes read.

Shahar Talmi writes about the qualities, habits, and goals that Senior ICs should aim for to increase their impact. An excellent read worth sharing with your teammates and have a good conversation around it during lunch.

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Been Thinking About Ways Companies Can Differentiate. What Am I Missing? (Thread)
3 minutes read.

For those of you who want to gain some more perspective to your business, try to map out where your company is at. Also, see if you can take that exercise and apply it to "Think about ways companies' employees experience (and hiring brand) can differentiate."

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Avoid Your Own Blind Spot
8 minutes read.

Vivian Cromwell shares a lot of great ways to proactively raise awareness and set structure to increase diversity. I learned a lot from Vivian's advice (near the end), setting (in writing) the frameworks and goals to build your hiring pipeline and process around.

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The First Email I Send Every Founder After We Fund Them
3 minutes read.

I'd apply the same concept that Delian Asparouhov does for founders he invested in with employees you join to the team. What would you recommend a new teammate who joins you to read? Which books? Which blog posts or talks? What should they try to get from it and why it's relevant for the company's culture or for their ability to succeed in the company? Try it out.

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Lessons From Leading a Remote Engineering Team
7 minutes read.

I think the section about "Charge Your Trust Battery" is relevant for all organizations, but for sure in a remote setup, you have to test for it and encourage that: "Trusted relationships don’t just happen, but they can be given a push. Be open about yourself and encourage people to share details about themselves that you’d typically get with “water cooler” conversation."

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@dvassallo: It's a very bad sign when an employer demands ASAP all the time. It's a sign of bad judgment, of short-sightedness, of delusions of grandeur, and most importantly, of fragility. If a process/business/team depends on always-on urgency to function, then its days are numbered.

@rakyll: I used to think "In the End" by Linkin Park was about relationships, it is about open source and vendor wars.