Software Lead Weekly
Issue #644, 28th March 2025
This Week's Favorite
High Agency in 30 Minutes
30 minutes read.
I love the entire setup of this essay (the domain is just the cherry on top) and the quality of the content. Share it with your teammates and consider if you want to change some of your interviewing process to check for agency: "Optimism states the glass is half full. Pessimism states the glass is half empty. High agency states you’re a tap. You look in the mirror and see a giant tap staring back at you."
Read it later via Pocket or Instapaper.
Share it via Twitter or email.
30 minutes read.
I love the entire setup of this essay (the domain is just the cherry on top) and the quality of the content. Share it with your teammates and consider if you want to change some of your interviewing process to check for agency: "Optimism states the glass is half full. Pessimism states the glass is half empty. High agency states you’re a tap. You look in the mirror and see a giant tap staring back at you."
Read it later via Pocket or Instapaper.
Share it via Twitter or email.
Culture
Everyone Tonight
1 minutes read.
My humble effort to help you start the weekend with a smile on your face.
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.
Read it later via Pocket or Instapaper.
Share it via Twitter or email.
The Price of Distinctiveness
2 minutes read.
"The world wants you to be typical – in a thousand ways, it pulls at you. Don’t let it happen." -- Tomasz Tunguz shares how companies and humans should consider their tracks.
Read it later via Pocket or Instapaper.
Share it via Twitter or email.
2 minutes read.
"The world wants you to be typical – in a thousand ways, it pulls at you. Don’t let it happen." -- Tomasz Tunguz shares how companies and humans should consider their tracks.
Read it later via Pocket or Instapaper.
Share it via Twitter or email.
Jevons Paradox: A Personal Perspective
6 minutes read.
"This is the paradox of our time: the very tools designed to free us from labor are trapping us in an endless cycle of escalating work. As our productivity increases, our standards and expectations rise even faster, creating a psychological Jevons Paradox that threatens to consume our humanity in the pursuit of ever-greater output. We become victims of our own efficiency." -- The world needs more builders, so while some stress will be attached to it, it will also enable many others to join the creators' community as the bar just got much lower. How will it shift our attachment to time and measure our life? It is becoming an area in which more people will look deeper into themselves to find answers.
Read it later via Pocket or Instapaper.
Share it via Twitter or email.
6 minutes read.
"This is the paradox of our time: the very tools designed to free us from labor are trapping us in an endless cycle of escalating work. As our productivity increases, our standards and expectations rise even faster, creating a psychological Jevons Paradox that threatens to consume our humanity in the pursuit of ever-greater output. We become victims of our own efficiency." -- The world needs more builders, so while some stress will be attached to it, it will also enable many others to join the creators' community as the bar just got much lower. How will it shift our attachment to time and measure our life? It is becoming an area in which more people will look deeper into themselves to find answers.
Read it later via Pocket or Instapaper.
Share it via Twitter or email.
Being an Engineering Manager at Meta
5 minutes read.
There is a reason why Meta continues to innovate and compete on multiple fronts. Gilad Naor shares some interesting insights that make management at Meta different from most companies: "The most common question during performance calibrations for managers is: what did the manager contribute? Or, in other words, what would have been different if the manager wasn’t there?"
Read it later via Pocket or Instapaper.
Share it via Twitter or email.
5 minutes read.
There is a reason why Meta continues to innovate and compete on multiple fronts. Gilad Naor shares some interesting insights that make management at Meta different from most companies: "The most common question during performance calibrations for managers is: what did the manager contribute? Or, in other words, what would have been different if the manager wasn’t there?"
Read it later via Pocket or Instapaper.
Share it via Twitter or email.
Peopleware
Why AI Will Never Replace Human Code Review
5 minutes read.
An interesting take on how "value verification" will work in the future. I'm stating "value" as code is a tool. If the target at some point won't be to have a readable and maintainable code, then our relationships for validating value will change. We're not there yet for complex and large codebases. Where will we land? How much of the human context will we be able to shift inside for the machine to figure out? "We still rely on that intangible fusion of experience, company culture, personal conversations, and intangible intuition. Human + machine context is always greater than the machine alone."
Read it later via Pocket or Instapaper.
Share it via Twitter or email.
5 minutes read.
An interesting take on how "value verification" will work in the future. I'm stating "value" as code is a tool. If the target at some point won't be to have a readable and maintainable code, then our relationships for validating value will change. We're not there yet for complex and large codebases. Where will we land? How much of the human context will we be able to shift inside for the machine to figure out? "We still rely on that intangible fusion of experience, company culture, personal conversations, and intangible intuition. Human + machine context is always greater than the machine alone."
Read it later via Pocket or Instapaper.
Share it via Twitter or email.
"The Pain Is the Pitch."
3 minutes read.
"The clearer you can describe a potential customer's pain, the more they'll assume you have the cure. People will get so focused on their solution that they'll forget to talk about the customer's problem." -- Understanding this can help you create more buy-in on every idea and at every level. Being specific, so much so that your customer (or user) can feel it vividly, is the target.
Read it later via Pocket or Instapaper.
Share it via Twitter or email.
3 minutes read.
"The clearer you can describe a potential customer's pain, the more they'll assume you have the cure. People will get so focused on their solution that they'll forget to talk about the customer's problem." -- Understanding this can help you create more buy-in on every idea and at every level. Being specific, so much so that your customer (or user) can feel it vividly, is the target.
Read it later via Pocket or Instapaper.
Share it via Twitter or email.
The Manager I Hated and the Lesson He Taught Me
4 minutes read.
"You’re thinking like a coder, not an engineer. Build things that survive failure." -- I think it's more important that managers will be able to provide such a level of technical feedback before they learn how to deliver it well. In a perfect world, you'll do both. Most people deliver kind feedback that is meaningless, actively preventing significant growth by chasing optics and being loved by others.
Read it later via Pocket or Instapaper.
Share it via Twitter or email.
4 minutes read.
"You’re thinking like a coder, not an engineer. Build things that survive failure." -- I think it's more important that managers will be able to provide such a level of technical feedback before they learn how to deliver it well. In a perfect world, you'll do both. Most people deliver kind feedback that is meaningless, actively preventing significant growth by chasing optics and being loved by others.
Read it later via Pocket or Instapaper.
Share it via Twitter or email.
Inspiring Tweets
@thejustinwelsh: I know it’s cliché but the moment you stop viewing success as a destination is the moment you’ll start enjoying the present.
- 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.