/Management

Signposting: How To Reduce Cognitive Load For Your Reader

- Wes Kao tl;dr: “Signposting is using key words, phrases, or an overall structure in your writing to signal what the rest of your post is about. This helps your reader quickly get grounded, so their brain doesn’t waste cycles wondering where you’re taking them.” Wes shares how to implement this when writing about complex ideas. 

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The Developer’s Guide To User Management At Scale

tl;dr: When you’re building an application at scale, there’s a ton of features to consider around user management such as implementing sessions via cookies or JWT, supporting bot protection, and handling identity linking. And these only scratch the surface. This comprehensive guide covers all things related to authentication (Multi-Factor Auth, SSO, handling sessions), security (bot protections, authorization policies), and user flows (inviting new users, identity linking) that you need to keep in mind for your app.

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The Disappointment Frontier

- James Stanier tl;dr: The disappointment frontier is the void formed from the mismatch between your team and reality. “Overcommunication, transparency, and a clear delineation between what you can and can't control will help you navigate the disappointment frontier bridging your team's world and the external reality. It's not your job to create a perfect utopia for your team. Instead, it's your job to help them successfully navigate reality with you as their guide.”

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An Engineering Manager Challenge

- Ted Neward tl;dr: Ted shares his answer to the following interview question: "You're the tech lead and your team is getting stretched thin. You decide to add resources but you can afford 1 senior full-stack developer or 2 junior full-stack devs. Which do you choose and why?" 

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Emotional Signposting: Why You Should Tell People How To Feel

- Wes Kao tl;dr: “If you share information that’s not obviously positive or negative, you must proactively tell people how they should feel. Give context to the information, data, or fact. If there’s even a slight chance your audience might benefit from the extra clues, I would consider using signposting. It’s super fast for you, and super helpful for them.” Wes shares examples.

featured in #517


An Engineering Manager Challenge

- Ted Neward tl;dr: Ted shares his answer to the following interview question: "You're the tech lead and your team is getting stretched thin. You decide to add resources but you can afford 1 senior full-stack developer or 2 junior full-stack devs. Which do you choose and why?" 

featured in #517


The Developer's Guide To Notification System Tooling

- Chris Bell tl;dr: Chris covers: (1) The key components of a notification system and their relevant use cases. (2) An overview of the tools, frameworks, and services available when building a notification system. (3) How to put these together to make the right choice for your use case and product.

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No Wrong Doors

- Will Larson tl;dr: “Some governmental agencies have started to adopt No Wrong Door policies, which aim to provide help – often health or mental health services – to individuals even if they show up to the wrong agency to request help. The core insight is that the employees at those agencies are far better equipped to navigate their own bureaucracies than an individual who knows nothing about the bureaucracy’s internal function.” Will discusses how engineering orgs can implement similar policies.

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Getting Buy-In To Get Things Done

- Nicole Tietz-Sokolskaya tl;dr: “One way to get people to go from agreeing it should happen to actually doing the work is to get buy-in. When you have buy-in, people will actively work toward the goal instead of just agreeing to it. Getting buy-in is hard. It's also extremely rewarding, and it's how you get real work done as a leader. Without it, the work falls away when you're not around. With it, everyone will push forward together.”

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Making Engineering Strategies More Readable

- Will Larson tl;dr: “A complete engineering strategy has five components: explore, diagnose, refine, policy, and operation. However, it’s actually quite challenging to read a strategy document written that way. That’s an effective sequence for creating a strategy, but it’s a challenging sequence for those trying to quickly read and apply a strategy without necessarily wanting to understand the complete thinking behind each decision.” Will covers: (1) Why the order for writing strategy is hard to reading strategy. (2) How to organize a strategy document for reading. (3) How to refactor and merge components for improved readability. (4) Additional tips for effective strategy documents.

featured in #516