Software Lead Weekly Software Lead Weekly

Bits Are Free, People Are Valuable
5 minutes read.

One of those posts that really gets you to think "hmm... what if...". What if we could record things people do at work so others could learn from them when they need to? What if we could do gather the information (video, voice etc.) in the background, without disturbing them? What if we could easily let them choose the "good parts" (editing is hard and very time consuming) or do it for them? What if it was easy to search for it so we could learn on how to start with a specific section in the code or project? What if screencasting was effortless? What if arranging the company's knowledge and culture was as simple as today's google search? Bits are free, infrastructure is getting cheaper and people are valuable.

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How to Open the Door
1 minutes read.

One photo of what happens when geeks are responsible for decoration, or annoyed by people pushing the wrong buttons.

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Corporations Aren't Recruiting Enough Weirdos
5 minutes read.

"There’s much more to learn about the weirdness factor. The question I continue to explore is why some people who stand out as weird also thrive, while other weird people wither." - definitely something that makes you wonder on the type of people you hired so far, and what if you could leverage it to enrich your company's culture.

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From 3 to 16: How to Hire and Build a Remote Team
8 minutes read.

This post is so good that if you're considering hiring remote teammates, you simply have to read this one. That's it.

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Introducing Chaos Engineering
3 minutes read.

I love the title. The idea behind Amazon's Chaos Engineering position is to "anticipate future failure modes" and to build the required infrastructure to actively prepare for each situation. My bet is that we're going to see this position in more companies that reach a certain size and scale. Do you need some chaos engineering to make sure your service is solid?

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5 Lessons We Learned While Scaling and Restructuring Our Engineering Teams
5 minutes read.

Interesting read by the team at Shutterstock on their growth and adjustment from a team of only a few to over 300 people. If you're short on time, read "The Challenge of Coordination" section to learn some ideas on how to coordinate effort between 20 teams.

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How Spotify Helps Their Engineers Grow (Video)
65 minutes read.

Interesting talk by Chris Angove, on how Spotify created loops and add-ons as a system to replace traditional Performance Reviews and ladders of promotions. It's about 35 minutes of talk and then 30 minutes of Q&A. I wish I could listen to a full day of talks such as this one, with some more concrete details on how to implement it so other companies could learn from that.

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Write Code. Sometimes.
3 minutes read.

The wonderful Sahil Lavingia of Gumroad with a great advice on how to write a little amount of code yet providing huge value to his teammate, while working as a CEO. This is the advice I give Engineering Managers when they want to do some "maker mode" work - amplify your teammates by reducing Technical Debt or simply automate boring stuff people hate doing.

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@dcancel: The trick is not in spotting an opportunity but in seizing one when you stumble upon it. #jfdi

@meredithperry: Good advice is hard to accept when you've invested a lot of time in a different opinion. Letting go of ego will greatly benefit your product