Software Lead Weekly

Open-Ended Questions
5 minutes read.

Paul Barnes aggregated a terrific list of open-ended questions you're going to bookmark and get back to at least every month. It's that good. You can use it for hiring, 1:1s or when you're thinking about your career and where you want to grow. Pick a few and add it to your list of questions to ask yourself or others around you to spark some good conversation.

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Choose Your Quarantine Character PART 2!
1 minutes read.

My humble effort to help you start the weekend with a smile on your face, even in this difficult time.

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Seniorless — 5 Reasons You Should Hire More Juniors
5 minutes read.

I enjoyed Gabriel Grinberg's double post on why to hire less experienced engineers and how to onboard them properly. Thinking about the ratio of engineering experience (and why it fits the challenges) is critical when building a strong and sustainable team: "I’ll even argue that if your last 5 hires were all senior developers, it’s as harmful as if the 5 hires were all juniors."

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Carta’s Covid-19 Layoff (How We Approached It)
6 minutes read.

Henry Ward, Carta's CEO, shared the communication he had in the company: "Below is the announcement I made to the company at our all-hands this morning. I’m sharing in the hope that it will help other CEOs as they think about their layoff programs." -- while this is extremely painful (I still remember the pain of firing 50% of my team in 2008), your job as a CEO is to keep the lights on, own the decision, and help the company navigate in this hard time: "If you are one of those affected, it is because I decided it. Your manager did not. For the majority of you it was quite the contrary. Your manager fought to keep you and I overrode them. They are blameless. If today is your last day, there is only one person to blame and it is me."

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Driving Change: Why Are Your Ideas Being Rejected?
5 minutes read.

We all want to make an impact and help our teammates and company do better. I enjoyed the tips by Bartosz, as it would help you diagnose the reasons why you might have lower conversion rates from ideas you bring to how people adopt them today. If you're looking for more content around that, I'll add a shameless plug and tell you to look up an old talk I gave "The Subtle Dynamics Of Leading Without Authority As A Technical Lead"

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Managing Remotely: Collected Tips on Working From Home During Lockdown
6 minutes read.

Julie Zhuo is always useful and inspiring. I'm really terrible at this, so taking it as a challenge for the next few weeks: "Find your team's unique way of sprinkling in moments of celebration and levity.[...] It's not appropriate for every team, scenario or meeting, but these times are tough and anxious enough that if you can create an outlet for creativity and fun, do so.[...] Do what feels authentic to your team."

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@andreasklinger: If you are completely drained after week 3 or 4 of emergency work-from-home, that's not a *you* problem. That's an *everyone* problem.