Software Lead Weekly

The Fight
3 minutes read.

I always enjoy starting the weekend with an inspiring post: "you’ll only feel truly fulfilled when you find that product, that team and that company that values what you value. Because even when things get hard, that will be worth fighting for."

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Dress for the Job You Want, Not the Job You Have
1 minutes read.

This photo made me laugh so hard, it felt right to share it with you as well. Fun way to start a weekend. Inspiration - checked, fun - checked. I think we're ready for a great weekend!

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Why Happiness at Work Really Matters
4 minutes read.

There is one golden nugget in this post that made me smile - the "Church of Fail" idea - where staff are encouraged to share their failures. We should talk less about optimizing our software and talk more about how to optimize for happiness and fun at work. I bet the latter will create a stronger impact on the product than the former.

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The Case Against Pay for Performance
5 minutes read.

You should bookmark this post and return to it every time you consider tying Performance Review to a monetary incentive. Here is an interesting point: "Staying employed at the same company for over two years on average is going to make you earn less over your lifetime by about 50% or more.". Netflix's model for compensation is definitely interesting to integrate. Would that work in your company? Share it at the office.

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The Limits of “unlimited” Vacation
7 minutes read.

Jacob Kaplan-Moss (of Heroku) with great insights to the pros & cons of unlimited vacation policy some companies have (such as Heroku). I like to see the policy includes a "minimum vacation time", so people will be "forced" to take some time off to relax. Also, the idea from Evernote on giving $1000 to take an entire week off is an interesting approach.

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Engineering Minimum Viable Inspiration
4 minutes read.

Warning, this post is by notorious Dave McClure, so expect some rough language. That being said, if you lead people, I think you should absolutely read Dave's words - "but there’s one job you can’t hand off to anyone else: setting the vision and inspiring your team. that job is yours & yours alone. no one else can do it."

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What Do You Do When There's Just Too Much Work?
5 minutes read.

One of the toughest challenges of leadership is to create a healthy rhythm of success and an ongoing momentum of something that gets bigger and bigger over time. Just as we plan a product to meet the needs of a customer, we need to invest the time to plan a working environment to meet the needs of our employees. Alex will show you one thing that you can do to boost your team's moral.

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@roidrage: If you want more time to read, you have to make time to read, every day. 30 minutes, every day, is a good start.

@cap: Nothing's always perfect or easy. Find a team, a product, a company worth fighting for.