Issue #84, 4th July 2014

This Week's Favorite


Confessions of a Startup: All Our Numbers, Insights, Everything
12 minutes read.

One of the best inside-look into a company that's killing it today. It's a bit of a long read, but it's packed with great insights on how the team at LookBack are building their company and culture. Do not miss the "Team" and "Product" sections.

Read it later via Pocket or Instapaper.
Share it via Twitter or email.


Culture


10 Tricks to Appear Smart During Meetings
4 minutes read.

If you want to start the weekend with a good laugh, this is exactly the post for you. Send it to your teammates, should be fun to try it out during your next meeting.

Read it later via Pocket or Instapaper.
Share it via Twitter or email.


Collect Your Naysayers
1 minutes read.

Short and brilliant. If you're build a company, the number of rejects you're going to get is enormous. The sooner you'll start treating them as a great engine for motivation (proving them wrong) and feedback (why they said no), the sooner your company will be able to adjust.

Read it later via Pocket or Instapaper.
Share it via Twitter or email.


You Can't Keep Your Best People Forever
5 minutes read.

Important read on how the legendary Reid Hoffman sees management's job - "no one goes to work for one company forever anymore, and that managers shouldn’t pretend they do". Acting from a place of openness and putting your employees first, will eventually build a healthier company, one that employees are excelling at their work and others want to join. Losing talent is a smaller price to pay than scaring away talent or having poor talent stay.

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Share it via Twitter or email.


Peopleware


The Developer Is Dead, Long Live the Developer
4 minutes read.

"Having more wide-spread knowledge about the environment their code runs in gives a much better picture on how the code can be improved to run better, in production, to serve happy customers." -- just read the post, it's pure gold if you want to get the essence out of the DevOps movement.

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Share it via Twitter or email.


Technical Debt 101
16 minutes read.

Start with the last paragraph (The cultural shift) and go all the way up. If you're a non-technical person, I believe this is the best post you can read about technical debt that would make absolute sense. I love how Maiz Lulkin puts it - "A primer about technical debt, legacy code, big rewrites and ancient wisdom for non-technical managers."

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Share it via Twitter or email.


9 Things I Learned as a Software Engineer
10 minutes read.

Wonderful post by Manual Ebert, on things he wished he knew when starting grad school. My personal points are "Intelligence is overrated" and "Be a stake-holder and make your agenda known". Highly recommended read.

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Share it via Twitter or email.


Inspiring Tweets


@janamal: If Tetris has taught me anything, it's that errors pile up while accomplishments disappear.

@pjrvs: it's amazing how much can come from a little focus and intention.

- Oren

P.S. Can you share this email? I'd love for more people to experiment and improve their company's culture.

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