Software Lead Weekly
Issue #39, 16th August 2013
This Week's Favorite
Life Is Too Short to Work With Assholes
5 minutes read.
Are you working with someone everyone hate but who is simply "too good", that you're afraid of letting him/her go? It doesn't worth it. Most of the time, their skills are highly overrated. Also, people (including the assholes) wrongfully think that they are A+ players, and that's the cost of having brilliant people on the team. This assumption can kill your company. A+ players are smart, capable, passionate, opinionated and above all - humble enough to ask questions, learn, let others do their job and help their teammates to shine. Marc Barros with a great post you'd enjoy reading.
Read it later via Pocket or Instapaper.
Share it via Twitter or email.
5 minutes read.
Are you working with someone everyone hate but who is simply "too good", that you're afraid of letting him/her go? It doesn't worth it. Most of the time, their skills are highly overrated. Also, people (including the assholes) wrongfully think that they are A+ players, and that's the cost of having brilliant people on the team. This assumption can kill your company. A+ players are smart, capable, passionate, opinionated and above all - humble enough to ask questions, learn, let others do their job and help their teammates to shine. Marc Barros with a great post you'd enjoy reading.
Read it later via Pocket or Instapaper.
Share it via Twitter or email.
Culture
Amazon’s "Two-Pizza Teams": The Ultimate Divisional Organization
5 minutes read.
How do you create a divisional organization built of small teams with full autonomy and accountability? Jason Crawford shares his story, leading such team at Amazon. When your company keeps growing and you want to keep the entrepreneurial spirit, this approach of measuring teams by KPIs makes perfect sense. The only concern of course is to understand potential cannibalization between teams. Great read!
Read it later via Pocket or Instapaper.
Share it via Twitter or email.
5 minutes read.
How do you create a divisional organization built of small teams with full autonomy and accountability? Jason Crawford shares his story, leading such team at Amazon. When your company keeps growing and you want to keep the entrepreneurial spirit, this approach of measuring teams by KPIs makes perfect sense. The only concern of course is to understand potential cannibalization between teams. Great read!
Read it later via Pocket or Instapaper.
Share it via Twitter or email.
Do Things, Write About It
5 minutes read.
Every time I saw one of my friends or teammates writing about something interesting he did at work, it made me happy to know that more people are going to find about it, and see just how awesome this person is. Share this post with your teammates. Help them to write more often about their lessons learned, may it be in a blog post, publishing a project or simply answering more often at Quora or StackOverflow. There is a huge value in putting yourself out there - serendipity awaits you.
Read it later via Pocket or Instapaper.
Share it via Twitter or email.
5 minutes read.
Every time I saw one of my friends or teammates writing about something interesting he did at work, it made me happy to know that more people are going to find about it, and see just how awesome this person is. Share this post with your teammates. Help them to write more often about their lessons learned, may it be in a blog post, publishing a project or simply answering more often at Quora or StackOverflow. There is a huge value in putting yourself out there - serendipity awaits you.
Read it later via Pocket or Instapaper.
Share it via Twitter or email.
Applying Email Marketing to Impress Potential Hires
5 minutes read.
This post is by yours truly. I've always enjoyed "pitching" the company and team I've been working for to potential hires. It took me a few years to understand that timing is everything, even when it comes to recruiting. In this post, I share a little trick I've been applying for the past 5 years to improve my interview process. What I found out is that using this process both allows me to spend more time getting to know my interviewee, while also leave a better impression as they get to read a lot about the team and company in their own free time. This is something you can start using today, so drop me a line if you have some feedback or thoughts on it.
Read it later via Pocket or Instapaper.
Share it via Twitter or email.
5 minutes read.
This post is by yours truly. I've always enjoyed "pitching" the company and team I've been working for to potential hires. It took me a few years to understand that timing is everything, even when it comes to recruiting. In this post, I share a little trick I've been applying for the past 5 years to improve my interview process. What I found out is that using this process both allows me to spend more time getting to know my interviewee, while also leave a better impression as they get to read a lot about the team and company in their own free time. This is something you can start using today, so drop me a line if you have some feedback or thoughts on it.
Read it later via Pocket or Instapaper.
Share it via Twitter or email.
Peopleware
The Last 10%
3 minutes read.
I love how Cap Watkins keeps writing high quality posts about what really matters. What a great reminder to push ourselves and our team as we're moving towards our goals - "we’re not just doing this for fun or for the glory, but because we believe in what we’re doing."
Read it later via Pocket or Instapaper.
Share it via Twitter or email.
3 minutes read.
I love how Cap Watkins keeps writing high quality posts about what really matters. What a great reminder to push ourselves and our team as we're moving towards our goals - "we’re not just doing this for fun or for the glory, but because we believe in what we’re doing."
Read it later via Pocket or Instapaper.
Share it via Twitter or email.
Why Should Gen Y Get All the Love?
10 minutes read.
The best companies understand that they no longer lead by authority, money and fear. They lead by sharing a purpose and vision. Generation Y might helped speeding up this change, but in the long run this is exactly the kind of companies we all want to be apart of. Dharmesh Shah (Hubspot's CTO) explains why he believes that Gen Y isn't really different in what they want to achieve, but rather on how much they insist on understanding why their leaders act in a certain way. Are you sharing that purpose and being transparent with your own employees?
Read it later via Pocket or Instapaper.
Share it via Twitter or email.
10 minutes read.
The best companies understand that they no longer lead by authority, money and fear. They lead by sharing a purpose and vision. Generation Y might helped speeding up this change, but in the long run this is exactly the kind of companies we all want to be apart of. Dharmesh Shah (Hubspot's CTO) explains why he believes that Gen Y isn't really different in what they want to achieve, but rather on how much they insist on understanding why their leaders act in a certain way. Are you sharing that purpose and being transparent with your own employees?
Read it later via Pocket or Instapaper.
Share it via Twitter or email.
The Cascading To-Do List
5 minutes read.
It is so easy to jump between tasks and projects. Every day we've got dozens of distractions, and every feedback we get may lead us to dump everything we've worked on so far and start a new thing. How do you manage to stay focused and complete those BIG projects then? Brian Casel with a fantastic post, sharing his system to achieve that control. I'm definitely going to try this approach for a few months and write about it in my blog.
Read it later via Pocket or Instapaper.
Share it via Twitter or email.
5 minutes read.
It is so easy to jump between tasks and projects. Every day we've got dozens of distractions, and every feedback we get may lead us to dump everything we've worked on so far and start a new thing. How do you manage to stay focused and complete those BIG projects then? Brian Casel with a fantastic post, sharing his system to achieve that control. I'm definitely going to try this approach for a few months and write about it in my blog.
Read it later via Pocket or Instapaper.
Share it via Twitter or email.
Inspiring Tweets
@Evanish: When Someone Does Something Awesome, Do You Tell Them? Tell Them. Make Their Day and Encourage Them to Do More Like It. Everyone Wins.
@lukehohmann: Be Cautious About Labeling Insights Into How to Improve Your Code Tech Debt. You'll Kill Learning/Innovation. True Tech Debt Is a *Choice*
- 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.