Issue #264

29 October 2021


Issue #264
Pointer.io


Friday 29th October's issue is presented by Swarmia
Check-In To LISTEN, Not Just To Speak
- Ed Batista
#Leadership #Management
 
tl;dr: It's common to start meetings with a "check-in" to see how everyone's doing. Ed notes the benefits for the speaker, and also notes that attentively listening heightens the group's "commitment to be present" and "sets a tone to make subsequent discussions less frenetic and more productive." In other words, "your degree of presence correlates with your degree of efficiency."
Why Flow Matters More Than Passion
- Sarah Drasner
#Leadership #Management #Culture
 
tl;dr: "In flow, obstacles that would cause anxiety are perceived differently, and people have more resolve to push through a task." Managers can help engineers reach flow by: (1) Creating a "clarity of purpose." (2) Set "challenging but not impossible" work. (3) Providing a sense of ownership over work. (4) Provide feedback quickly. (5) Compensate fairly. (6) Believe in their abilities. 
4 Resources On Software Team Productivity Everyone Should Know
- Ari-Pekka Koponen
#Leadership #Productivity

tl;dr: Lessons from the top resources on engineering productivity. Including: (1) Project Aristotle: Understanding team effectiveness, (2) DORA: Four key performance metrics, (3) SPACE: A framework for developer productivity, and (4) two studies on the limitations of retrospectives. Easy-to-read summaries with practical advice on how to apply them.

Promoted by Swarmia.
Engineering Onboarding - Built to Scale
- Jamshed Vesuna
#Management #BestPractice

tl;dr: Management at Robinhood rebuilt their engineering onboarding process around 3 key themes: learning experience, community building, and purposeful team matching, each outlined here.
A Note From Swarmia:

Does managing engineering feel like flying blind? Up to 60% of all work teams do is not on your roadmap. Swarmia gives you instant visibility into your engineering organization. Identify and remove blockers, and start shipping 10x faster within weeks 🚀.

LIMITED OFFER: Pointer.io readers get a free DORA metrics and SPACE framework analysis based on their GitHub data.

 
 
#Leadership #Management
 
tl;dr: (1) You only focus on tasks and not enough on the person doing them. (2) Not listening and coaching enough i.e. Your direct report should do more of the talking. (3) Not asking or being open to receiving feedback. Dial up checking in on your report's wellbeing.
The Largely Untold Story Of How One Guy In California Keeps The World’s Computers Running On The Right Time Zone. (Well, Sort Of)
- Daniel Rosehill
#TimeData

tl;dr: "Brief odyssey into the esoteric world of the tight-knit time zone data maintenance community who quietly keep the world’s computers from avoiding DST-related-meltdowns."
Practical Frontend Philosophy
- Jared Gorski
#Front-end

tl;dr: This is a rather general post, written for people curious about how to think about "the frontend". However, I think it's relevant to interested humans of all knowledge and skill levels."
#SoftwareDistribution
 
tl;dr: Although impossible to calculate precisely, Daniel believes zlib, sqlite & libcurl are installed in "billions of devices," and the most widely used software in the world.
 
Notable GitHub Repos
Transformers
State-of-the-art Natural Language Processing for Pytorch, TensorFlow, and JAX.
 
Kerla
New operating system kernel with Linux binary compatibility written in Rust.
 
GitHub Copilot
Documentation, walkthroughs, examples and latest resources for Copilot.
 
ByteTrack
Multi-Object tracking by associating every detection box.
 
Pointer.io
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