Software Lead Weekly Software Lead Weekly

How to Get Lucky: Focus on the Fat Tails
10 minutes read.

Taylor Pearson with an excellent framing that made me think a lot about the way I invest my time and energy: "Because everyone is operating with a bell curve model in their heads, they are spending the same amount of time and energy taking care of each one of their users. But because not all users are created equal, if they were optimizing properly, they would spend 50% of their time on the 1% of users who are most excited about the product — and being an early adopter is a strong sign of being excited." -- this applies to which systems you need to invest at work, and how to invest time with your family, friends, and teammates (margins => quality). This is also true when picking your next role, reading a book or joining a new company (margins => personal growth rate).

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1. When You're on the Team Working on the Product. 2. When You Manage the Team Working on the Product. 3. When You Manage the Managers of the Team Working on the Product.
1 minutes read.

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

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Hiring Engineering Leaders
11 minutes read.

I'd bookmark Rushabh Doshi's post in case you need to hire Engineering Managers in the future. My favorites questions were under "XFN Collaboration and Communication Interview," but to be honest, there is so much gold here that a lot of Rushabh's questions and added it to my list for future interviews.

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Rethinking the Daily Stand-Up
7 minutes read.

"The stand-up format is never set in stone. It continuously evolves based on team feedback and the needs of all engineers on the team, so that it (and the team) can continue to improve." -- we've changed our Daily format 3 times in the past 2 years, with a goal to provide value to everyone. Some of this value is information (context, status), and some is building empathy (help someone else, share some happy or sad news).

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A Framework for Making Smarter Decisions and Fewer Errors
10 minutes read.

This is a great takeaway seek leverage by training your mind to think differently: "If you’re like most people, you’ve never been explicitly taught how to make effective decisions. You make decisions like a golfer who never took any lessons: miserable with the state of your game and yet not seeking to learn a better swing, and instead hoping for the best every time you lift the club. Hoping that this time your choice will finally work out." -- even if you're short in time, do yourself a favor and learn all of the 3 methods under "General Thinking Concepts." -- for example, you can use Second-Order Thinking when planning and estimating a feature by saying, "Let's say my feature is deployed to production, how do I know it's providing value? How do I know if it's working well while I'm asleep?"

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List 3 Things You Believe Strongly in Your 40’s You Didn’t Quite Understand in Your 30’s? (Thread)
4 minutes read.

As I'm getting really close (less than 2 weeks) to turning 36, I found Jeff Richards's question intriguing. What is it that I should absorb and cherish more? What should I stop doing? Where should I invest more of my time and energy? I hope this thread will give you a few interesting directions to think about at the weekend. My favorite: if you are not "killing it" at home, doing so at work is nothing to brag about.

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Observations on Product Management
3 minutes read.

"Being data-driven is not vision. People who cling to being data-driven rarely create anything new or interesting. I also personally find it hard to explain why to them." -- short and insightful observations by Dan Hill.

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@dvassallo: Working less than you possibly could is not laziness. Laziness is enduring an existence you dislike and not even try to do anything about it.

@shl: Reading is the inhale, writing is the exhale. Breathe.