Software Lead Weekly

I Am Repeatedly Surprised in How Ahead of the Curve One Can Be by Following the Right People on Twitter, for Many, Many Curves. (Thread)
3 minutes read.

Patrick McKenzie (aka @patio11 on the Twitters) is someone you should follow if you're in the software business. I shared this tweet as I think that Twitter is still one of the most underrated platforms to accelerate your learnings. Surround yourself with interesting people, and they'll tell you about interesting concepts to explore or great content to consume. I've shared my method of leveraging Twitter in my talk "How to Find Growth Material & Learn x2 Faster," and you can also check Julian Shapiro tweet on "Here's a look into how I use Twitter."

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Going to Any Website in 2020
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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Frameworks
9 minutes read.

I enjoyed going over Sarah Tavel's frameworks and learned so much from them. Specifically, "The Mitochondria in Startups" and "Learning cycles". Take a good cup of coffee or tea, and explore. Share your insights with your teammates.

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Why IPOs, Direct Listings, and SPACs Will Flourish in Startupland
3 minutes read.

Tomasz Tunguz shares a helpful analysis to understand why more companies are going public in 2020. This trend can control decision making, at least on a yearly level (2021), thus important to be aware of.

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Assign Problems (Not Work) to Your Teams to Build Extraordinary Products
6 minutes read.

You cannot instill motivation in others. You can set the north star, the goal, and encourage them to get there. Supporting them doesn't mean solving for them. Raphaela Wrede shares two stories to learn how to increase the team's retention.

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Being Visible.
4 minutes read.

Being promoted to Staff Engineer levels and above has to be around the impact you're working on and producing visibility around it - where are we heading, can we feel the confidence we need when you lead it, how others around you feel about it. Will Larson wrote a post I believe all software engineers should read: "Find the right mix of activities that leverage your strengths, aren’t already overburdened with volume, and feel authentic to you. If you’ve never done much communication of your work, it may feel awkward to self-promote your work. You never want to wholly lose that sense of awkwardness–restraint helps–but you will have to get comfortable with some of it."

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To Accelerate Your Progress on Any Given Goal, You Either Need To... (Thread)
3 minutes read.

Julie Zhuo brings up an interesting question - are you investing more of your time in doing or in planning? Do you think your balance is healthy? How would you measure that? I like to put IQ over time as a graph to look at when I finish a project and ask myself if I put enough time into planning (high IQ - thinking hard about what is needed, why, and how) at the beginning of the project. I try to observe spikes in the process, and ask myself, "could I have predicted it?"

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Your First Day as a New Engineering Manager
5 minutes read.

Alex Bachuk with wonderful advices on joining the team as the new engineering manager. This one is absolutely critical to focus on: "The role of engineering manager may vary from company to company. Before you start running, take a moment to understand what others expect of you in the new organization, not only from the job description but, most importantly, from your team. Learn what they expect of you as their new manager. You may be surprised, and sometimes it may contradict your assumptions. Perhaps they need process improvement and more ways to communicate and less technical strategy from you. When you meet your team, your peers and your manager ask them this question: What do you expect of me as a new manager on the X team?"

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@dvassallo: There are no facts. Only likelihoods and unlikelihoods. Outside of math & logic, nothing can be proven true; only proven false. Once you get this, you will see the world differently. You will start thinking in probabilities and bets instead of truths and facts.

@igrigorik: When making a decision, have a meeting if you're optimizing for speed, write first if optimizing for quality. Good decisions require clear thinking. Clear thinking requires sitting with the problem to understand it deeply, which writing forces you to confront...