/Management

Voice or Veto (Employees' Role in Hiring Managers)

- Ed Batista tl;dr: When a leader is hiring a new manager, she often uses "voice or veto" for employees to assess candidates. In a "voice" process, employees have opportunities to assess the candidates at various stages & provide input. In a "veto" process the leader will not hire a candidate if employees object. The most common issue is that leaders don't clarify and communicate which strategy they're taking from the outset. Ed shows how to navigate this. 

featured in #268


"This Project Will Only Take 2 Hours"

- Austin Henley tl;dr: "Whenever I think something is extremely simple, I walk through it step by step to uncover the complexities, design decisions, use cases, and potential features that I missed." Austin gives an example, here.

featured in #268


Becoming A CTO

- Kevin Goldsmith tl;dr: "My goal is to provide insight and advice for those interested in someday becoming a CTO." Kevin covers the differences in being a CTO at an early-stage vs midsize company, and advice for those in management who want to grow into the role: (1) Learn about the business your company is in. (2) Learn about the other functions. (3) Respect and learn other technology areas aside from your own, and more.

featured in #267


Manage Your PCI Compliance Without The Hassle: A Checklist

tl;dr: PCI DSS compliance is the industry standard to ensure that you're taking the strongest precautions for protecting vital customer payment data and your company from data breaches. But who has the time to prep for a ROC or a SAQ? You’re busy, but we’re here to help. Minimize compliance management stress in just 7 steps with our PCI checklist.

featured in #267


Sociotechnical Lenses Into Software Systems

- Paul Osman tl;dr: "Systems we are building are constantly being modified by different people, with different contexts, at different times, who may or may not speak to each other directly." Therefore, investing in incident analysis is a necessary part of understanding the social aspects of your system as they can reveal important information about your technical systems, organization, and how various parts interact.

featured in #267


How We Work: Moving Fast To Ship Customer Value

- Chris Bell tl;dr: Chris discusses his company's principles for shipping code: (1) Lean into trunk-based development. (2) Ship high quality so each feature "needs to feel cohesive, work near flawlessly, and be the best iteration of itself for it to be valuable." (3) Make it easy for everyone on the team to ship. (4) Keep a weekly changelog to include all of the features shipped over the past week. (5) Optimize for developer autonomy.

featured in #267


The Engineer’s Guide to Career Growth - Advice from My Time at Stripe and Facebook

- Raylene Yung tl;dr: Critical for building a career as an engineer: (1) Strive to be the most valuable, but least critical i.e. you shouldn't be the point of failure. (2) Maintain an emotional equilibrium, especially as the larger your team gets, the greater the ups and downs. (3) Focus on growth and learning at every step — not on climbing the ladder. Raylene also provides advice for various roles i.e. junior engineers, ICs, tech leads, and more.

featured in #266


Notes On The Kool-Aid Factory's Planning Issue

- Will Larson tl;dr: This article covers management planning breaking them down into the following: vision, reality, decisions, the plan & accountability, and execution preparedness. Starts with the goals of planning, such as: (1) Focus on the right global priorities. (2) Ensure clear ownership. (3) Coordination across shared workstreams. (4) High shipping velocity. 

featured in #266


Building vs. Buying In-App Chat: The Ultimate Guide to Weighing Cost, Risk, & Other Product Roadmap Decisions

tl;dr: Don’t waste months building in-app messaging from scratch. Today’s sharpest PMs are buying software components instead of building them to focus their engineering resources. Stream’s Chat APIs & SDKs provide the solid infrastructure you need to scale.

featured in #266


How To Build A Culture Of Ownership, And Other Engineering Leadership Tips From Plaid & Dropbox

- Jean-Denis Greze tl;dr: How Jean-Denis navigates the following 5 leadership challenges: How to: (1) Craft a bottoms-up culture of ownership from the top. (2) Motivate for tackling big problems at scale. (3) Balance company and employee goals. (4) Build teams with high humility and low egos. (5) Transition to becoming a manager of managers. 

featured in #265