tl;dr:Kellan discusses the intricacies of determining optimal team sizes in organizations. He emphasizes that growth should address specific challenges not just increase numbers. Effective software development is best achieved by small, focused teams, which serve as units of concurrency. As teams expand, upgraded organizational infrastructure becomes essential. Kellan highlights the impacts of turnover, plan changes, and onboarding processes and suggests that a clear goal-setting approach, rather than arbitrary growth, leads to better outcomes.
tl;dr:Kellan discusses a model for understanding engineering processes that focuses on two elements: "Push" and "Pull." "Push" refers to the rules, templates, and expectations set by a team for a process. "Pull" is the inherent value or need that the process fulfills, making it worthwhile and valuable for team members to engage in it. The author notes that many processes fail due to a lack of "Pull," as seen in the example of weekly status updates that fade out because "It didn’t feel like anyone was reading it."
tl;dr:Shopify's meeting cost calculator stirs debate; are meetings wasted time or vital? Alternatives emerge such as Dropbox's "Core Collaboration Hours" and Frame.io's "Huddle Days", which foster spontaneous discussions, encouraging productive work and respecting individual work rhythms.
tl;dr:Kellan tries to answer a simple question: “where is the frustration and disillusionment, so prevalent currently in the software industry, coming from?” He covers 4 key trends in the last decade: (1) An explosion in the complexity of software development. (2) Talent become significantly more expensive. (3) Success become more elusive than ever, with startups having “lost that magic feeling.” (4) Conflicts over changing expectations of the work environment.
tl;dr:"This is not a complete guide to doing layoffs. I think there is room and need for someone to write a definitive guide to doing layoffs well, but this is not that. This post is just some things I think about when I’m not in the middle of a layoff that I’ve found reduce the negative impacts when I do find myself in the middle of a layoff."
tl;dr:Rules of thumb for making planning suck less: (1) Do fewer things. (2) Bottom up processes don't work. (3) Planning is the wrong time to introduce anything new. (4) You must provide frameworks and constraints. (5) Project planning has an inflection point. (6) Don't wait to kill bad ideas. (7) Minimize dependencies. And more.
tl;dr:Technical leads have no time to manage, which means there is an opportunity to manage your manager. This presentation structures what that relationship looks like from both sides.
tl;dr:When considering org design, a useful exercise is to walk down each level of the org by asking the 5 whys, this helps you understand where the pressures lie. The author runs through this and the common discoveries he's made when asking these questions.