/Leadership

Decision-Making Pitfalls For Technical Leaders

- Chelsea Troy tl;dr: “In my experience, it is at least the case that when programmers become trial-by-fire managers, they realize they don’t know how to do their jobs. Technical leadership — tech lead roles, principal eng roles, and even the dreaded “player-coach” role—those sneak up on people. A lot of times there’s still programming involved, so folks feel prepared. Their experience has exposed them to technical decisions and it got them promoted, so the way they do it is probably fine. Right?” Chelsea discusses 3 pitfalls she commonly sees. 

featured in #593

Diagnosis In Engineering Strategy

- Will Larson tl;dr: Will covers: (1) Why diagnosis is the foundation of effective strategy. Conversely, how skipping the diagnosis phase consistently ruins strategies. (2) A step-by-step approach to diagnosing your strategy’s circumstances. (3) How to incorporate data into your diagnosis effectively. (4) Dealing with controversial elements of your diagnosis. (5) Why it’s more effective to view difficulties as part of the problem to be solved, rather than a blocking issue. (6) The near impossibility of an effective diagnosis if you don’t bring humility and self-awareness to the process.

featured in #593

Eyes Light Up (ELU)

- Wes Kao tl;dr: Wes introduces "Eyes Light Up" as a key indicator of effective messaging for leaders. Rather than relying on intellectual feedback, she advises watching for genuine excitement in your audience's eyes. These visceral reactions are more valuable than verbal responses. Stop when eyes glaze over, pivot when interest wanes.

featured in #592

The Rotation Program That Keeps This Startup’s Engineers Learning — And Not Leaving

- Krista Moroder tl;dr: Over the past several years, Moroder has helped formalize the rotation program at Checkr, and she’s scored some pretty brag-worthy retention stats as a result. “Two years ago, non-regrettable attrition was zero, and the year after that, it was 2% — because one person left. Across the board, my team is extremely tenured right now,” says Moroder. “For staff engineers and above, about 60% of them have been here six years or longer.

featured in #592

The Quest To Understand Metric Movements

tl;dr: “At Pinterest, we have built different quantitative models to understand why metrics move the way they do. This blog outlines the three pragmatic approaches that form the basis of the root-cause analysis (RCA) platform at Pinterest. As you will see, all three approaches try to narrow down the search space for root causes in different ways.”

featured in #591

Software Quality

- Abi Noda tl;dr: Google‘s Engineering Productivity Research team sharing how they define Software Quality. For engineering leaders focused on quality, this paper provides a helpful framework for articulating what it means and where improvements need to be made. The paper posits there are four types of quality that influence each other: process quality, code quality, system quality, and product quality. Abi discusses each in detail. 

featured in #591

Exploring For Strategy

- Will Larson tl;dr: Will covers: (1) The goals of the exploration phase of strategy creation. (2) When to explore and when it makes sense to stop exploring. (3) How to explore a topic, including discussion of the most common mechanisms: mining for internal precedent, reading industry papers and books, and leveraging your external network. (4) Why avoiding judgment is an essential part of exploration. 

featured in #590

Software Quality

- Abi Noda tl;dr: Google‘s Engineering Productivity Research team sharing how they define Software Quality. For engineering leaders focused on quality, this paper provides a helpful framework for articulating what it means and where improvements need to be made. The paper posits there are four types of quality that influence each other: process quality, code quality, system quality, and product quality. Abi discusses each in detail. 

featured in #590

The Million Dollar Question: Build / Maintain Or Buy

- Ramita Rajaa tl;dr: This classic debate takes on a new meaning for transactional messaging infrastructure. When there are hundreds of APIs to integrate on a regular basis, security and reliability at stake, and costs to consider, should you build/maintain or buy? Take a look at this in-depth review analyzing the pros and cons of each side. 

featured in #590

How I Give The Right Amount Of Context (In Any Situation)

- Wes Kao tl;dr: “Giving the right amount of context helps teams move faster. Too much context? Your manager can’t tell what’s important. They’ll need to wade through details, trying to sort information into a pile of what’s important vs what to ignore. Too little context? Your manager has to follow up and pull information out of you that you should have mentioned proactively. There is such a thing as being too concise.”

featured in #589