Software Lead Weekly Software Lead Weekly

Your First 90 Days as CTO or VP Engineering
13 minutes read.

"Your goal as a senior leader is to make durable improvements towards these goals, which results not from making changes but making the right changes. Further, durable improvements depend on creating systems that create changes, not performing tactical actions that create the ephemeral appearance of improvement." -- Bookmark this guide by Will Larson and use it on your next leadership role, even if it's not VP Eng/CTO. Your first 90 days in a leadership position will benefit from it.

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What the System Looks Like vs. What the Candidate Was Shown During the Interview Process
1 minutes read.

My humble effort to help you start the weekend with a smile on your face. It's close enough, no?

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Habits vs. Goals: A Look at the Benefits of a Systematic Approach to Life
6 minutes read.

I prefer Habits over Goals. Habits are less fragile - you're not a failure for a single miss - and have a better alignment with a "Good Enough" mindset to get you out of analysis-paralysis. Two additions I like adding to my habits is considering: (a) Do I want to do it for the next 20 years? (b) Who will hold me accountable for it (e.g. going to the gym 2-3 times per week)?

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How to Move Beyond Gamification: Applying Game Design to Business Software (Video)
16 minutes read.

I've been following Rahul Vohra's (co-founder of Rapportive and now of Superhuman) work for a few years. He has a unique mind, putting his eyes on the prize even if it means doing a lot of things that do not scale or counter-intuitive. Think about it when you build internal tools in your company, when you're working on your side-project or when you're building your product as a founder.

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What Has Your Work Taught You That Other People Don't Realize? (Thread)
5 minutes read.

Paul Graham opened a thread with many responded with interesting takeaways. What is your answer to it? This one by Yishan is spot on: "Solving a problem by using new tech is the riskiest way to try and solve a problem. You are much more likely to succeed by finding a new way to use an existing piece of proven tech."

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Goodbye, Clean Code
5 minutes read.

Dan Abramov with a post that all of the engineers in the audience can relate to: "I sure didn’t think deeply about any of those things. I thought a lot about how the code looked — but not about how it evolved with a team of squishy humans." -- capturing it as "It’s a Phase" is precisely how we iterate in our life, trying to figure out how elegant code looks like. For me, the definition is (a) easy to change to support a new feature or behavior, (b) easy to build on top of it, and (c) new team members can quickly join, read it and contribute to the team.

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What Are Your Favorite Books (Or Articles) About Product Management? (Thread)
5 minutes read.

Lenny Rachitsky started and summarized a thread for those of you who want to understand product management better. Skim around and pick up a few books or blog posts. Then, share it with relevant product managers (or those who want to become one at some point) in your company who can benefit from it too.

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40 Lessons From 40 Years
4 minutes read.

I'm 35 years old (turning 36 next month,) so reading Steve Schlafman's post made me think about my lessons learned so far in life. I think you can take many of Steve's takeaways and see how to turn them into positive habits in your life now.

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@eriktorenberg: When doing diligence on a decision it's best to ask yourself some version of: "Have I already made the decision in practice & I'm now seeking information to confirm my gut instinct? If yes, what could change my mind? If not, what would get me to conviction one way or the other?"

@patrick_oshag: "Minimize cognitive load for others" is one of the most useful heuristics for good software development.