Software Lead Weekly Software Lead Weekly

Abstract Management Interfaces
6 minutes read.

Chris Schillinger writes about how to set clear expectations on outcomes you'd like to see from managers and how they lead their teams. I love the examples Chris shares for "Front-line Manager Interface" and "Manager-of-Managers Interface." See what you want to copy from there and apply it to your team. This type of self-exploration and setting clear(er) expectations made me create managerreadme.com. This is applicable for all leadership roles, not only managers. For example, consider how to set Abstract Technical Interfaces as a Principal Engineer who wants to guide others on outcomes and behaviors.

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"We’ll Fix It in the Next Sprint"
1 minutes read.

My humble effort to help you start the weekend with a smile on your face, even in this difficult time. I'm sure that it will be fixed in the next sprint.

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Some Thoughts on the Principal Role
5 minutes read.

Mikio Braun wrote an excellent post that I'd share with Senior ICs who try to understand how to increase their influence in the organization, leveling up to Staff/Principal level: "The notion of autonomy can also be misunderstood. It does not mean that you talk to nobody and come up with solutions by yourself and then push those through. Ideally, you will be talking with lots of people and get as much interaction and help to solve problems as possible. There are three main reasons for why you shouldn’t solve problems alone: By involving others you get their perspective and a fuller picture of what you need to consider. You give others the chance to work with you and (hopefully) learn. And finally, involving people in creating a solution goes a long way towards getting their buy-in."

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What's Luck Got to Do With It? (Postmortems)
5 minutes read.

"When someone says we were lucky, your ears should perk up; it should be the beginnings of a line of inquiry, not a settled explanation representing an endpoint." -- Language matters. There is a reason why naming is considered one of the two most difficult problems in Computer Science. Choose carefully the framing of how you do Better Next (this is my language) or Postmortems in your company.

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Stage of Company, Not Name of Company
5 minutes read.

Nikhyl Singhal shares a helpful framework you can use when figuring out the company you want to join. If the company is doing well, you might find areas in the company that feel (to an extent) in a different phase.

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Asking Better Questions
7 minutes read.

John Cutler will open your eyes to figuring out how to set the environment to allow better questions to bubble up and survive. Consider doing such practice with your team - maybe a workshop (even remote!) can get the team to talk about the hardest questions the team is dealing with.

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The Observer Effect Interview: Daniel Ek (Spotify's CEO)
13 minutes read.

You will find many gems on how Daniel Ek thinks differently about business and running a company. Some of my favorites were on "On Becoming a Father," "On Shadowing Other CEOs," and "On Delegated Decision Making."

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@eugeneyan: Writing about something is a cheat code to clarifying your understanding of it.

@thesephist: An extremely underrated generalist skill: Formatting your writing so key info can be scanned easily / read quickly.