/Career Advice

The Niche Programmer

- Asko Nõmm tl;dr: "Being a niche programmer is not bad at all. Pay is great, competition is low and the interview processes for the most part very humane.' Asko discusses his relevant experience with Clojure. 

featured in #313

The Untapped Potential Of Less

- Leidy Klotz tl;dr: "No one argues that, when trying to improve something, we don’t often subtract. We pile on “to-dos” when we really need “to-stops,” or create incentives for good behavior … but don’t get rid of obstacles to it." People think first about adding and, as a result, systematically overlook subtractive changes.

featured in #312

Ditch Your To-Do List and Use These Docs To Make More Impact

- Brie Wolfson tl;dr: Specifically for engineering directors, Will provides book recommendations and answers the following: "how do you foster execution on teams you indirectly manage?" Will cites 3 interesting pieces to consider: (1) Understand what’s happening on indirectly managed teams. (2) Adding things necessary for execution. (3) Remove things getting in the way of execution.

featured in #310

Writing For Engineers

- Heinrich Hartmann tl;dr: "This article contains some learnings that have helped me (and others) to become better and more productive as a writer over the past 15 years. I am sharing them in the hope, that you find them useful." Heinrich covers how to prepare for the topic you want to write about, confusing writing and learning, and much more. 

featured in #309

Principles

- Paulo André tl;dr: "You start realizing that everything comes back to a relatively small number of principles, universally applicable." Paulo's 20 principles include: (1) Don’t fool yourself. Self-awareness is the foundation without which nothing else works. (2) Lead yourself first. Manage emotions, don’t suppress them. (3) Focus on what you can control. Attempting to control the uncontrollable is a waste of time and energy. And more. 

featured in #308

Help Your Teammates Navigate Moments Of Self-Doubt 

- Lara Hogan tl;dr: "If you have a teammate coming to you questioning their worth and effectiveness, I want to equip you with a framework that will help this teammate recognize their successes and impact." Lara discusses the BICEPS framework that covers: Improvement, Choice, Equality / Fairness, Predictability and Significance. As well as some questions you can ask your teammate e.g. In the last year, where have you created more clarity or predictability for people?

featured in #306

Maybe You Should Do Less 'Work'

- John Whiles tl;dr: "Working in tech, I've observed developers who work as hard as possible when they don't need to. I'm here today to tell you that it's a bad idea and you shouldn't do it." By this, John means someone who has "no real sense of how much work is expected of them and then drives themself at an unsustainable pace trying to meet a standard." He advises us on a different approach. 

featured in #304

How To Criticize Coworkers

tl;dr: Principles of good feedback: (1) Praise in public, criticize in private. (2) Use “I” language instead of “you” language. (3) Be as specific as possible using SBI (situation-behavior-impact). (3) Be on the same side. (4) Stop if you’re too worked up. (5) Use a tight feedback loop i.e give at least 2 examples.

featured in #303

My Guiding Principles After 20 Years Of Programming

- Alex Ewerlöf tl;dr: (1) Don’t fight the tools: libraries, language, platform, etc. Use as much native constructs as possible. (2) You don’t write the code for the machines, you write it for your colleagues and your future self. (3) Deprecate yourself. Don’t be the go-to person for the code. (4) Any significant and rewarding piece of software is the result of collaboration. And more.

featured in #302

How To Do Less

- Alex Turek tl;dr: When your reports are complaining that nobody can do code reviews or seem increasingly stressed in standups, these are signs that your team may be doing too much. "You’re stuck in a trap, and thrashing won’t get you out. You can escape by stopping your current approach, and doing something new. You’re going to deliberately overshoot, cutting down WIP, and then maintaining a healthy amount going forward."

featured in #301