Software Lead Weekly Software Lead Weekly

Speed as a Habit
11 minutes read.

"I believe that speed, like exercise and eating healthy, can be habitual" and "Deciding on when a decision will be made from the start is a profound, powerful change that will speed everything up." -- These two observations by Dave Girouard are critical for teams that focus on results. Never compromise on speed, when things slow down it's usually an "Organizational Smell" due to lack of trust, but make sure you have built trust with your teammates first so they'll trust your intentions.

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"Should I Deploy on Friday?" T-Shirt
1 minutes read.

My humble effort to help you start the weekend with a smile on your face. And the right answer is of course ...

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The Stages of Teamwork Complexity
4 minutes read.

Lorenzo Pasqualis with a helpful framework to understand the cost of bigger teams when it comes to sharing context and having effective communication. I don't agree with the conclusion in it though: People often think that breaking a big team into smaller teams will make the overall velocity higher. This is like breaking a monolith into microservices hoping the system will be more robust, just to find out that you’ve moved the complexity into a higher "layer". Team size should be set by the Senior/Junior ratio in the team and the product phase/maturity in the market, as that often dictate your need to shift people to work on different things every quarter.

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Essential Lessons From Laszlo Bock in Work Rules
5 minutes read.

Make sure to read lesson #3: "You must measure your managers against the results you want" -- use the survey to understand how people perceive the value of management in your organization. Give it to managers of managers, who think about how to scale the company further.

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Choose Your Actions, Not Your Feelings
4 minutes read.

Steven Reidbord explains the importance on letting yourself and others acknowledge our emotions while questioning the way we act: ״Calling on another to account logically for feelings often has an aggressive edge; it banks on the fallacy that emotions are rational and controllable when they are not. Analysis of emotions is quite valuable — if done in the spirit of curiosity, not criticism.״ -- Google's notorious research & finding on setting a safe environment is exactly about that: making sure the team feels comfortable to be authentic, to be themselves. In that setting, you can discuss behaviors and desired results.

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1/ if You're a Young (age) Engineering Manager Who Don't Know How to Mentor an Older Senior Engineer, Always Start With Getting to Know Them (Tweetstorm)
2 minutes read.

This one is by yours truly. When I served a team as an Engineering Manager, having older Senior Engineers working with me, I constantly asked myself "How can I help them improve? What can I bring to the table?". I felt that I need to prove myself worthy. I wrote this thread as a reminder to others dealing with similar situation.

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‘Build a Team That Doesn’t Need You’ and Other Counterintuitive Strategies to Succeed as a Manager
4 minutes read.

Reading Kevin Stewart's words, I feel so much the same: "I don’t need the applause... I take pride in my team shipping. If they’re the front people, going on stage with confidence, writing the blog post, doing the video, I want that. Being a developer these days is a lot more than just writing the code. So the more I can fade into the background, the better off they are."

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To Be a Better Leader, Ben Horowitz Thinks Like Chance the Rapper
3 minutes read.

"a note of caution: If you follow the first rule of leadership, not everybody will like you. I know this, because not everybody likes me." -- Ben Horowitz insightful as always. A short and important reminder of being authentic when serving others.

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@EricaJoy: Reminder: If you think Person A can and should improve in some way, telling Person B your criticisms about Person A won't make that happen.

@expa: Co-founder isn't a title you get, it's more of a commitment you make