Software Lead Weekly
Issue #668, 12th September 2025
This Week's Favorite
Build Places, Not Products
6 minutes read.
Lucas Crespo's writing inspired me in the same way that Nike focuses on athletes and Apple (used to) focus on the crazy ones. Building a place where work gets done, where the atmosphere dictates the way this work is being done.
Read it later via Pocket or Instapaper.
Share it via Twitter or email.
6 minutes read.
Lucas Crespo's writing inspired me in the same way that Nike focuses on athletes and Apple (used to) focus on the crazy ones. Building a place where work gets done, where the atmosphere dictates the way this work is being done.
Read it later via Pocket or Instapaper.
Share it via Twitter or email.
Culture
Trying to Code Without Any AI Tools in 2025
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.
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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.
Quiet Influence: A Guide to Nemawashi in Engineering
4 minutes read.
Japanese is a beautiful and rich language, capable of encapsulating an idea with a single word. Matt Hodgkins explains how you can use Nemawashi as a technical leader to promote your ideas: "Now that you’ve done all the hard work, the final meeting should be a formality. You are no longer “revealing” a big idea, you are confirming a decision that has already been made thanks to your pre-alignment work. [...] The decision is no longer an “if”, it’s a “when”."
Read it later via Pocket or Instapaper.
Share it via Twitter or email.
4 minutes read.
Japanese is a beautiful and rich language, capable of encapsulating an idea with a single word. Matt Hodgkins explains how you can use Nemawashi as a technical leader to promote your ideas: "Now that you’ve done all the hard work, the final meeting should be a formality. You are no longer “revealing” a big idea, you are confirming a decision that has already been made thanks to your pre-alignment work. [...] The decision is no longer an “if”, it’s a “when”."
Read it later via Pocket or Instapaper.
Share it via Twitter or email.
The Forward Deployed Engineer Model (Video)
51 minutes read.
"The FDE model is doing things that don't scale, at scale." -- fascinating conversation with Bob McGrew, covering in depth a process and mindset very few companies outside Silicon Valley are using. Take notes and consider experimenting with it in your company, both for internal users (e.g. your sales or support teams) and with your paying customers.
Read it later via Pocket or Instapaper.
Share it via Twitter or email.
51 minutes read.
"The FDE model is doing things that don't scale, at scale." -- fascinating conversation with Bob McGrew, covering in depth a process and mindset very few companies outside Silicon Valley are using. Take notes and consider experimenting with it in your company, both for internal users (e.g. your sales or support teams) and with your paying customers.
Read it later via Pocket or Instapaper.
Share it via Twitter or email.
Why Retention Is So Hard for New Tech Products and How to Apply These Lessons to the Current Gen of AI Apps
6 minutes read.
Starting with the end in mind is also important when selecting a category and building products within it, with retention in mind. If you want to create a sustainable business with recurring revenues, choose a category that educates customers to behave in that way. Andrew Chen summarizes the lessons he has learned that should help you refine your product and go-to-market approach.
Read it later via Pocket or Instapaper.
Share it via Twitter or email.
6 minutes read.
Starting with the end in mind is also important when selecting a category and building products within it, with retention in mind. If you want to create a sustainable business with recurring revenues, choose a category that educates customers to behave in that way. Andrew Chen summarizes the lessons he has learned that should help you refine your product and go-to-market approach.
Read it later via Pocket or Instapaper.
Share it via Twitter or email.
Peopleware
The Coding Agent Metagame
6 minutes read.
"I could say many great things about the way Claude Code is built–but the most underrated aspect is the feeling that you can endlessly hack it to your liking. Using Claude Code feels more like playing the piano than shuffling tickets in Jira. I get the vague sense that by using the tool differently, I could become a virtuoso. There's not just the game of writing code, but a metagame that we're all playing by using it in weird and wonderful ways." -- This post will remind you of the post I shared this week on "Build places". How you make your users feel is as important as what they can do.
Read it later via Pocket or Instapaper.
Share it via Twitter or email.
6 minutes read.
"I could say many great things about the way Claude Code is built–but the most underrated aspect is the feeling that you can endlessly hack it to your liking. Using Claude Code feels more like playing the piano than shuffling tickets in Jira. I get the vague sense that by using the tool differently, I could become a virtuoso. There's not just the game of writing code, but a metagame that we're all playing by using it in weird and wonderful ways." -- This post will remind you of the post I shared this week on "Build places". How you make your users feel is as important as what they can do.
Read it later via Pocket or Instapaper.
Share it via Twitter or email.
How to Give a Good Talk
6 minutes read.
Michael Greenberg shares a simple framework (Inform, Educate, and Entertain) to remind you that "A good talk meets the audience in the middle. It informs the audience what the value proposition is; it educates them, offering some new teaching; it entertains them. In exchange for these valuable things, the audience will give you their precious resource: their time and attention."
Read it later via Pocket or Instapaper.
Share it via Twitter or email.
6 minutes read.
Michael Greenberg shares a simple framework (Inform, Educate, and Entertain) to remind you that "A good talk meets the audience in the middle. It informs the audience what the value proposition is; it educates them, offering some new teaching; it entertains them. In exchange for these valuable things, the audience will give you their precious resource: their time and attention."
Read it later via Pocket or Instapaper.
Share it via Twitter or email.
2025 Advice to My Old Selves
5 minutes read.
I both like the advice that Shawn Wang writes to himself (e.g. "Make a list of everything you want to do by 40 and really work backwards and whittle it down to timelines or it will fly by.") at different points in life and the format itself. I'm not sure if sharing my life's lessons with my kids will be helpful to them (I hope), but at the very least, it will leave them with something from me, and it will leave me with gratitude for the time I had and the experiences I gathered.
Read it later via Pocket or Instapaper.
Share it via Twitter or email.
5 minutes read.
I both like the advice that Shawn Wang writes to himself (e.g. "Make a list of everything you want to do by 40 and really work backwards and whittle it down to timelines or it will fly by.") at different points in life and the format itself. I'm not sure if sharing my life's lessons with my kids will be helpful to them (I hope), but at the very least, it will leave them with something from me, and it will leave me with gratitude for the time I had and the experiences I gathered.
Read it later via Pocket or Instapaper.
Share it via Twitter or email.
Inspiring Tweets
@bscholl: A few months ago, we made a strange decision @boomaero : we put a superstar engineer in charge of recruiting. The recruiting engine took a little to spool up but now it’s working: This month Boom is growing 10% in one month. And with an extremely high talent bar.
@garrytan: Don't think about strategy when you haven't built anything yet! When you're starting, it's much better to focus on a specific customer (even better if you're the customer!) and making them extremely happy— than to go through the motions playing startup while worrying about TAM
- 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.