Software Lead Weekly Software Lead Weekly

My Lessons From Interviewing 400+ Engineers Over Three Startups
11 minutes read.

Marco Rogers will get you to question your current interview process while providing you some useful frameworks to follow: "This [interviewing] system has not only strengthened our candidate pool, but also the cohesion, versatility and diversity of my engineering team." -- In a way, your interviewing process should be an unfair advantage assuming that someone walks inside your office and willing to take a chance with you (just like you are with them).

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Love to Find Code Comments in the Wild
1 minutes read.

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

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The Final Push
3 minutes read.

"Perfection is not just the enemy of the good, it is the enemy of the ship date." -- Momentum is everything in software companies, as the way you execute these days is far more important than your initial idea or go to market plan. It's how you adjust (product and organization) to keep delivering value to your customer. Fred Wilson with wise words on why you should respect your deadlines, with all the caveats and mitigations to go along with it.

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Go Slow to Go Fast : Building Strong Foundations for Leadership (Part 1)
5 minutes read.

"The source of stress for managers is the emotional burden." -- Alicia Liu with a great series worth reading. Dealing with the stress at work by clearing your mind with exercise is something I should take and implement. The burden is real, and it's so easy to fall into this trap of working more hours, sleeping less at night and trying to win it all. It's almost impossible to make it sustainable though, and this is why it's so important to find a healthy balance for daily investment in ourselves.

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One Lesson Going From <100 People to>400 People in a Short Period Is You Can't Repeat Key Internal Messages, Themes and Strategies Enough. Any Month, Double Digit % of Company Is New and Has 0 Historical Context. Your January All Hands Is Effectively Forgotten by June. (Thread)
2 minutes read.

A very short thread but something that every hyper-growth company is dealing with. Handling how we scale our onboarding process, and spread knowledge across multiple offices around the globe is one of my main challenges this year. Got some ideas to share if you did something like that in your company? I'd love to hear from you on our SWLW Slack channel (reply to this email if you want an invite)

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How (And Why) Should Managers Code?
6 minutes read.

"Because time is always short, try and pick tasks that deliver value aligned with the management work you’re doing. Trying to troubleshoot a team in your portfolio? Pick up some of their work and understand them better. Talking about improving test quality? Go fix some tests and let your actions magnify your words." -- John Barton with a post you have to share with new Engineering Managers. This advice is terrific as you can debug the team by investing the time where you see the biggest pains.

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The Value of Probabilistic Thinking: Spies, Crime, and Lightning Strikes
9 minutes read.

It's always interesting to read Shane Parrish's (he has a great podcast too) thoughts. This time I took a lot from Shane's ideas by thinking about my decision-making framework, focusing on how much time I invest in understanding new data and which questions I should ask to compensate for my recency bias.

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Building Confidence as a CTO
6 minutes read.

Matt Aimonetti with metrics you can use to measure your organization regarding code quality, velocity, and team maturity. I have my own set of metrics, and you should try to define yours -- Knowing that people will always game the measurements, pick them carefully.

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@farnamstreet: One of the biggest problems in organizations is that people with no relevant knowledge help make the decisions.

@naval: When building habits, choose consistency over content. The best book is the one you can’t put down. The best exercise is the one you enjoy doing every day. The best health food is the one you find tasty. The best work is the work you’d do for free.