/Management

Making Sure Your Auth System Can Scale

- James Hickey tl;dr: The balance between authentication security and performance is a perpetual challenge. This article dives into the heart of this issue, emphasizing the trade-off between stringent security practices and system scalability. You'll find practical tips to maintain secure auth while meeting customer demands, and discover strategies to make sure your systems remain secure and efficient.

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Explain Like I'm Five

- Andrew Bosworth tl;dr: From the CTO at Meta: "Whatever simple explanations lack in nuance, they make up for in power. People remember them. They become the basis for future knowledge... A good team faced with a hard problem will produce a rigorous document. A great team faced with the same problem will produce a single page. People often aspire to explain the complexity they uncover. But the opposite is more valuable."

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6 Software Engineering Templates I Wish I Had Sooner

- Ryan Peterman tl;dr: "This post captures my favorite templates that I use to structure my thoughts and save time." The following templates are shared in word documents: (1) Engineering design doc. (2) Postmortem review. (3) Diff (or PR) Summary. (4) Direction doc. (5) Eng project management. (6) Launch post.

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Measuring Product-Market Fit Is More Than Vibes

- Andy Vandervell tl;dr: Andy presents product-market fit (PMF), not as a magical occurrence, but as something measurable. Steps to measure PMF include tracking high-value events, creating an Ideal Customer Profile (ICP), launching PMF surveys, and monitoring retention. Andy underscores the importance of understanding the market and ensuring that paying customers align with the startup's ICP. 

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Private Estimates, Public Progress

- Kent Beck tl;dr: On Monday morning the whole team i.e. engineering, product, customers, testers, designers, etc... asks and answers the same question: “What is most important for us to accomplish this week?” Then ask, “What can we actually accomplish this week?” On Friday afternoon get together & say, “How did we do? How did we react to surprises? Customers, how are you feeling? Engineers, how did the work flow? Product, how are customers acting in aggregate? Designers, how did your work flow & how are customers reacting?" Kent argues that this process creates energy amongst the team, a better sense of scope, collaboration, alignment and adaptation. 

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Characterizing Software Developers By Perceptions Of Productivity

- Abi Noda tl;dr: “Developers are different in what they consider as a productive or unproductive workday; this study aimed to help leaders make sense of these differences.” The study found 6 types of developers and what they deemed as productive: (1) Social developers: feel productive when helping coworkers, collaborating and doing code reviews. (2) Lone developers: avoid disruptions such as noise, email, meetings, and code reviews. (3) Focused developers: feel most productive when they are working efficiently and concentrated on a single task at a time. (4) Balanced developers: less affected by disruptions. (5) Leading developers: more comfortable with meetings and emails. (6) Goal-oriented developers: productive when they complete or make progress on tasks.

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Communicate Design Tradeoffs Visually

- Tim Lyakhovetskiy tl;dr: “A goal of any written design or project proposal is to present and evaluate alternatives. However, documents that include multiple solutions can be difficult to read when the qualities of each solution are not clearly expressed. A common approach to simplifying proposals is to use “pros and cons” for each alternative, but this leads to biased writing since the pros and cons may be weighed differently depending on the reader’s priorities.” Tim shows us how to color code these tradeoffs to make it easier for readers to parse ideas.

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CTO Board Deck Template

tl;dr: For too many engineering leaders, the most stressful part of their job isn’t a bug or a system crash. The thing they worry about most is making the case that their engineering team is positively impacting the broader company. In this CEO-approved slide deck, you’ll find simple ways to communicate how your team is increasing engineering efficiency, all while delivering business results consistently

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Networking As An Introvert CTO

- Vadim Kravcenko tl;dr: (1) You go to an event. (2) Approach person, say Hi, and introduce yourself. (3) Ask questions. (4) Listen carefully and share your experiences. Keep a look out for common ground. (5) Go to 3 if the conversation feels fresh; otherwise, continue. (6) End Gracefully. Go to 2 if you’re not tired; otherwise, continue. (7) Eat some food. Leave the event. (8) Follow up with everyone you liked via email. Vadim also shares his core principles: (a) Make others feel accepted. (b) Give first, then give some more i.e. don’t make networking transactional. (c) Don’t overthink it.

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Time Management

- Andrew Bosworth tl;dr: “Consider the next week of your life. How would you like to spend your time? Write down all the things you’d like to do and assign them rough percentages of how much of your time they should take. Account for your obligations first. With your remaining time try to give more weight to things that give you energy. Focus on tasks that play to your personal strengths. Now audit where you have actually been spending your time without judgement. Resist the temptation to explain the difference between your ideal and actual allocation. I have been doing this exercise every few months for a decade. I haven’t once found that my actual allocation matches my target. So I make corrections to my schedule.”

featured in #458