Software Lead Weekly Software Lead Weekly

We Don't Care Enough to Give You Constructive Feedback
3 minutes read.

Seth Godin with anoter wonderful post. Helping someone else with their career growth can be one of most difficult challenges any leader needs to go through. While we tend to focus on the practice of providing a constructive feedback, what we need to start with is actually building trust with that other person. They need to know you're geniunely trying to help, rather than criticise. Work on that first, make sure people trust you and appreicate your openion, then focus on rituals and tactics on delivering that feedback.

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Culture vs Cult in One Infographic
1 minutes read.

While not the usual funny post, I thought it's a great observation of the difference between culture and cult in one small photo.

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Why Managing for Progress Is So Important
3 minutes read.

I cannot agree more with this post by Tomasz Tunguz - "From all this data, the team revealed a critical ingredient to be a great manager: managing for progress... To feel great at work, the authors argue employees need twice as many wins as losses, even if those wins are very small." - this is one of the struggles any leader out there is facing. Can you help your teammates find their rhythm? Can they feel the progress? Do you take the time to stop and celebrate?

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Atlassian's Big Experiment With Performance Reviews
10 minutes read.

Fascinating read if you have participated in Performance Reviews, and you're looking for new ideas on how to make the most out of it - "So, what was the problem? In short, twice a year the model did exactly the opposite to what we wanted to accomplish. Instead of an inspiring discussion about how to enhance people's performance, the reviews caused disruptions, anxiety and de-motivated team members and managers. Also, even though our model was extremely lean and simple, the time investment was significant."

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12 Remote Workers Reveal How to Be Happy, Effective and Valuable
18 minutes read.

I found a lot of great ideas in this post, regardless if your team (or yourself) is working remote. Working remote can be a harder challenge as there is no face-to-face pressure and alignment, and as such, we need to communicate more explicitly about our expectations. How do we want to work together? Communicate? What "done" means? How would we know if someone is doing great work? This is something we should do and improve even if our team is co-located. If you're tight on time, check "Communication with your team" section.

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What Doesn't Seem Like Work?
2 minutes read.

Play to your strengths - "What seems like work to other people that doesn't seem like work to you?" - this is a great advice for producing value, and building a brand for yourself. Great post by Paul Graham.

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15 Interview Questions to Measure Emotional Intelligence
3 minutes read.

A short post you can print and bring for your next interview. Having question you can use for getting to know the candidate a bit better (and their EQ), is part of our responsibility in looking for culture fit.

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How to Spot Future Leaders
5 minutes read.

We often fail to mentor people for a new leadership position until it's too late. It's imperative to start today and look at the behaviors different people in the team show, in order to spot for leadership potential and helping them to use their unfair advantage (individual's strengths) to build the confidence needed to become a leader. The seven types in the article might make it easier to create a language internally when you're considering who should move into a managerial position.

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@indec: Engineering management, especially in startups, seems to be a much-undervalued & oft-ignored discipline, but done well it's a game changer.

@rands: That moment when you realize you have a lot of slides, but no talk.