Software Lead Weekly Software Lead Weekly

The Human Scalability of "DevOps"
13 minutes read.

Matt Klein with one of the best posts I've read about how to scale your engineering organization thinking about the operational ("DevOps") aspects of it - "Modern hyper-growth Internet companies have an egregiously large amount of burnout, primarily due to the grueling product demands coupled with a lack of investment in operational infrastructure. I believe it is possible for engineering leadership to buck the trend by getting ahead of operations before it becomes a major impediment to organizational stability... Operations engineers and software engineers are partners, not interchangeable cogs."

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When You're Fixing an Outage and Everybody Tries to Help Out Without Communicating
1 minutes read.

My humble effort to help you start the weekend with a smile on your face.

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Engineering Process Is Overvalued
4 minutes read.

Read Benjamin Encz's points on "What is the stuff that really matters?" as this is where you should focus on. "My main issue though is not the implementation of a specific process. It is that many teams put too much emphasis on process in the first place while neglecting more important areas of building a great team." - It's not that process is overvalued, I think that process without a complete strategy is overvalued. Proces as a bandage, a patch or a "quick hack" can damage your team. It shifts the focus to the wrong things, giving you a false sense of progress.

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Tea and Tech Culture
4 minutes read.

"Consider how your team interacts together at and around work. Are you reinforcing an environment where only one or two types of people would thrive? [...] Don’t think of it as culture fit. Think of it as culture add. We learn when things are new, and things are new when they’re different." -- Alice Goldfuss is a terrific writer. This post served me as a great reminder that we need to hire people who compliment us, making us stronger because of what they bring to the table.

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The Soft Stuff (resources)
5 minutes read.

James Wrubel with resources, templates and inspiration you can use around 1:1s, Career Ladders, interviewing questions and much more.

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Say the Hard Thing
5 minutes read.

"Feedback is about building trust and we humans are extremely slow to trust. It’s cool. Take your time. I am patient because I understand what is at stake. It’s the health of our working relationship." -- Another great post by Rands (Michael Lopp) on the importance of micro-feedback, where you hold people accountable for the kind of quality they want to be responsible for. This applies to how they lead a project, write code, deliver a talk, provide feedback to others in a team's meeting etc.

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It's Fun (Or, More Specifically, "Therapeutic") to Reflect on Learnings Over the Years for Business-Ing. 15+ Years in to All This, I'm Still Winging It on Just About Every Level Possible, So Take These Insights/Observations for What They're Worth. (Thread)
5 minutes read.

I've been following Josh Pigford work since he started Baremetrics. There is always so much to learn from him, and this thread is packed with wisdom. If you have your own business, leading a team or working on your side-projects, you'll enjoy this Josh's takeaways.

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I Made a Handy Flowchart Called "Should I Say Resources?" Use as You Need to (Image)
1 minutes read.

Emily Webber with an image I'd love people to print and hang around in random places. Stop saying "resources", when you want to say "people". Get others around you to be more aware of it.

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@benjammingh: The "soft" in "soft-skills" is pronounced "human".

@jasonlk: A tough skill as CEO is to celebrate half victories. You need to learn how. The team needs more wins than you do