Software Lead Weekly
Issue #371, 3rd January 2020
This Week's Favorite
Effective Mental Models for Code and Systems
14 minutes read.
Cindy Sridharan is such a fantastic thinker and writer: "Code is an artifact of a team’s possibly incomplete, possibly flawed and possibly ambiguous understanding of a problem and as such is possibly an embodiment of all of these shortcomings. Tests written in support of a given piece of code share the same fate." -- I've shared this post with many examples and ideas with my team. For example, I highly recommend reading twice the section about “Identify all the different target audience” so it would be easy to understand by future you, and future employees. To make it concrete: “When dealing with a specific target audience, it is essential that the APIs they are exposed present a vocabulary that feels natural to them, even if that might not necessarily be the semantics the implementors might be the most comfortable with.”
Read it later via Pocket or Instapaper.
Share it via Twitter or email.
14 minutes read.
Cindy Sridharan is such a fantastic thinker and writer: "Code is an artifact of a team’s possibly incomplete, possibly flawed and possibly ambiguous understanding of a problem and as such is possibly an embodiment of all of these shortcomings. Tests written in support of a given piece of code share the same fate." -- I've shared this post with many examples and ideas with my team. For example, I highly recommend reading twice the section about “Identify all the different target audience” so it would be easy to understand by future you, and future employees. To make it concrete: “When dealing with a specific target audience, it is essential that the APIs they are exposed present a vocabulary that feels natural to them, even if that might not necessarily be the semantics the implementors might be the most comfortable with.”
Read it later via Pocket or Instapaper.
Share it via Twitter or email.
Culture
The Ultimate Slack Client
1 minutes read.
My humble effort to help you start the weekend with a smile on your face. This is true for Slack or for my Chrome. Too many open tabs.
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. This is true for Slack or for my Chrome. Too many open tabs.
Read it later via Pocket or Instapaper.
Share it via Twitter or email.
Career Growth Frameworks in Software Engineering: A Review
19 minutes read.
As I'm pretty sure some of you go through Performance Review at this time of the year, Simon Gerber shares a helpful historical context and comparison between different companies (even if some outdated by now). For those of you with context, you can skip to "What is everyone else doing?" and go from there. It's excellent.
Read it later via Pocket or Instapaper.
Share it via Twitter or email.
19 minutes read.
As I'm pretty sure some of you go through Performance Review at this time of the year, Simon Gerber shares a helpful historical context and comparison between different companies (even if some outdated by now). For those of you with context, you can skip to "What is everyone else doing?" and go from there. It's excellent.
Read it later via Pocket or Instapaper.
Share it via Twitter or email.
Delivering on an Architecture Strategy
5 minutes read.
I like the framing of "Aligned autonomy" by Pete Hodgson. It made me think a lot about the aligned vision (and consider who should own it) teams should have to move in the right direction in the long run: "Individual delivery teams are working on technical initiatives that seem strategic to them, but a lack of alignment across those teams means that there’s little forward progress on an architectural level."
Read it later via Pocket or Instapaper.
Share it via Twitter or email.
5 minutes read.
I like the framing of "Aligned autonomy" by Pete Hodgson. It made me think a lot about the aligned vision (and consider who should own it) teams should have to move in the right direction in the long run: "Individual delivery teams are working on technical initiatives that seem strategic to them, but a lack of alignment across those teams means that there’s little forward progress on an architectural level."
Read it later via Pocket or Instapaper.
Share it via Twitter or email.
Running an All-Hands
9 minutes read.
Gokul Rajaram with a post you can bookmark and copy ideas to try out in your company. There is a lot to gain from iterating on this format as you have your entire company there (which is extremely expensive).
Read it later via Pocket or Instapaper.
Share it via Twitter or email.
9 minutes read.
Gokul Rajaram with a post you can bookmark and copy ideas to try out in your company. There is a lot to gain from iterating on this format as you have your entire company there (which is extremely expensive).
Read it later via Pocket or Instapaper.
Share it via Twitter or email.
Peopleware
The Seven Habits of One Highly Effective Manager of Managers: Things I Learned From Charity Majors
7 minutes read.
I'm a big fan of Charity Majors for her courage to say things that very few dares to say. She talked a lot about Parse and the painful acquisition by Facebook. She was open about her struggles as a CEO (now CTO) and her management journey (and the pendulum from management to IC). Emily Nakashima works with her at Honeycomb and shares a few stories learning from her on the job. My favorites: "Spread the good gossip" and "Give to and accept help from your network."
Read it later via Pocket or Instapaper.
Share it via Twitter or email.
7 minutes read.
I'm a big fan of Charity Majors for her courage to say things that very few dares to say. She talked a lot about Parse and the painful acquisition by Facebook. She was open about her struggles as a CEO (now CTO) and her management journey (and the pendulum from management to IC). Emily Nakashima works with her at Honeycomb and shares a few stories learning from her on the job. My favorites: "Spread the good gossip" and "Give to and accept help from your network."
Read it later via Pocket or Instapaper.
Share it via Twitter or email.
Going to Run an Experiment: What's the Top Thing You Learned This Year That You Can't Share Publicly? DM Me and I'll Anonymously Post the Best. (Thread)
4 minutes read.
Brent Beshore did an interesting experiment that was both interesting to read but also to consider - can do that at work (anonymous feedback) to surface issues more often, and see if we can resolve them? How can we filter actual pains and things we should try to solve? This medium leads to a lot of people sharing overly negative opinions. Our brains are primed to seek for faults.
Read it later via Pocket or Instapaper.
Share it via Twitter or email.
4 minutes read.
Brent Beshore did an interesting experiment that was both interesting to read but also to consider - can do that at work (anonymous feedback) to surface issues more often, and see if we can resolve them? How can we filter actual pains and things we should try to solve? This medium leads to a lot of people sharing overly negative opinions. Our brains are primed to seek for faults.
Read it later via Pocket or Instapaper.
Share it via Twitter or email.
Inspiring Tweets
- 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.