Software Lead Weekly Software Lead Weekly

Medium’s Engineering Interview Process
14 minutes read.

An amazing read to how Medium handling their interview process, and more importantly -- adjust it to avoid biases and learn from their victories & failures. I found myself reading it all, jumping between different areas and thinking a lot about the way we do things in my company. Wonderful read!

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

What It's Like Maintaining an OSS Project
1 minutes read.

My humble effort to help you start the weekend with a smile on your face. I also feel that this GIF explains the job of a successful engineering manager, at least 90% of the time.

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

Every Problem Is a Scaling Problem (Video)
65 minutes read.

Raffi Krikorian's talk made my commute this week truly pleasant. His experience of scaling Twitter's engineering is remarkable, and I truly connected his vision of owning your team's growth (including recruiting) rather than "outsourcing" it to other departments in the organization.

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

Lazy Leadership (Scaling Yourself Out)
12 minutes read.

Trying to take a step back and figure out a way to build an effective and scalable organization is hard. Most people enjoy "being the hero" and avoid delegating decision-making to others. "If you think it would fall apart, you’ve made yourself more important than you need to be, and you’re working in your business instead of on it. It’s time to build a machine... To me, a great leader’s job is to build a machine that produces a product." -- take 30 minutes of your time and try to put in words "Here’s where I focus my time:" like Andrew Wilkinson did. It's a great way to stop and ponder if you're investing your time wisely.

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

Process Is Documented Culture
3 minutes read.

"There’s no need, especially in the beginning, to manufacture culture – it’s already happening and being built in real-time. The leader’s job, therefore, is to document them, observe, and codify them so that everyone can become literal champions of those things, especially as you begin to hire and scale the business." -- just a perfect explanation.

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

The Virtues of Laziness and Impatience
3 minutes read.

"As you grow more into leadership positions, people will look to you for behavioral guidance. What you want to teach them is how to focus. To that end, there are two areas I encourage you to practice showing, right now: figuring out what’s important, and going home." -- even harder than that is to teach others how to improve at challenging themselves and their surrounding in finding smarter solutions. It has to come from them if you'd like it to scale.

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

How to Say You’re Sorry
2 minutes read.

Being able to say sorry properly is a rare quality these days. Don't let your ego destroy precious relationships with others: "Keep in mind that you can’t apologize your way out of being an ass. Even the best apology won’t rescue you if you haven’t earned people’s trust."

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

Choose Boring Technology (Slides)
10 minutes read.

These slides are fantastic and represent Etsy's engineering culture pretty well. It's not that I agree with this philosophy word by word, but understanding how technology will impact your teammates' efficiency while helping you to manage production is crucial. Slide 9 is something you should hang on your wall at the office.

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

@blakesmith: New programming rule: You're not allowed to complain about a programming language until you've put it into production.

@roidrage: The older I get the more I find myself going back to the minimum, the essentials. It's kind of relieving in a lot of ways.