42 Things I Learned From Building A Production Database
- Mahesh Balakrishnan tl;dr: Things learned as a tech lead building new infrastructure at a large company: (1) Keep your customers happy; else the rest of this document doesn’t matter. (2) A road-map is a means, not an end. (3) Be conservative on APIs and liberal with implementations. (4) In a transparent codebase with quick review cycles, APIs will leak implementation details unless you gate-keep.featured in #265
featured in #265
Check-In To LISTEN, Not Just To Speak
- Ed Batista 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."featured in #264
Why Flow Matters More Than Passion
- Sarah Drasner 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.featured in #264
Engineering Onboarding - Built to Scale
- Jamshed Vesuna 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.featured in #264
Three Common Traps To Avoid When It Comes To One On Ones (And One Thing To Dial Up)
- Suzi McAlpine 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.featured in #264
Learn To Hire Well And You’ll Never Lose
- Hunter Walk tl;dr: 3 tips: (1) Know what excellent looks like - if you don't know what an excellent marketer looks like, spend time with a few who excel in their domain. (2) Ask candidates who reject you to name names i.e. people in their network who could fill the role. (3) Sell past the close, in case the candidate gets a counter offer from their current employer, etc..featured in #263
Five Clues Your Employees Are Still In Crisis Mode
- Lara Hogan tl;dr: (1) Questioning or doubting new plans, decisions and processes matter. (2) Avoiding or being constantly checked out. (3) Fighting. (4) Bonding, or discussing issues with peers. (5) Talking about leaving the company or role. Lara provides a tactic to help counter each.featured in #263
Incident Review and Postmortem Best Practices
- Gergely Orosz tl;dr: This post covers: (1) Common incident handling practices across the industry. (2) Incident review best practices. (3) Incident review practices of tomorrow. (4) What tech can learn from incident handling in other industries. (5) Incident review/postmortem examples and templates.featured in #262
Compliance Risk Management In 10 Steps
tl;dr: Your business is growing - you’re getting more customers and onboarding more employees. As your network grows and more people interact with your company’s data and information, it’s critical to ensure you’re in compliance with the mandated regulations. Here are 10 steps for an effective compliance risk management strategy.featured in #262