Ditch Your To-Do List and Use These Docs To Make More Impact
- Brie Wolfson tl;dr: Specifically for engineering directors, Will provides book recommendations and answers the following: "how do you foster execution on teams you indirectly manage?" Will cites 3 interesting pieces to consider: (1) Understand what’s happening on indirectly managed teams. (2) Adding things necessary for execution. (3) Remove things getting in the way of execution.featured in #310
Startup Getting Started? Think Pragmatic Security
tl;dr: There is an assumption that security should be the main priority for a founder when getting your startup going. Think again. Security is a tool to protect your customers and your business, and a founder’s main concern is growing that business. That’s a good thing -- here's how.featured in #310
10 Tips For Running Engineering Meetings on Zoom
- Vineel Shah tl;dr: Tips include: (1) Be the dumbest one in the Zoom - "as the person leading the meeting, your job is to provoke and channel the talents and expertise of everyone in the discussion." (2) Poke at the quiet ones (3) In a single-team meeting, skip Zoom chat and use Slack. And more.featured in #310
How to Freaking Find Great Developers By Having Them Read Code
tl;dr: Typical white-boarding interviews are suboptimal. A better method is to have "the candidate read existing code and talk about what it does and how it works." Reading code is: (1) Probably 95% of what a developer does in their job. (2) Way more efficient than writing. (3) Puts the candidates at ease compared to writing code. The author shows us how to put this is into practice.featured in #309
Motivating Developers To Care About Documentation
- Paulo André tl;dr: Ask yourself why you need documentation e.g. making better decisions across the org, helping people get the right information, making onboarding more self-service. "If we’re deciding whether to write something, we should ask whether writing it will help us with one of those objectives." Paulo suggests pointing your team towards the "why" and also provides tips for maintaining the practice.featured in #309
I Used To Think You Don't Need Product People. I Was Wrong
- James Hawkins tl;dr: James' company grew rapidly by assembling a small product team and following 6 steps, including: (1) Hiring product managers who can code, and who were "scrappy, anti-plan type folk." (2) Focus on optimizing leading indicator metrics as high up the funnel as possible, for a faster feedback loop. (3) Structuring the company for autonomy. And more.featured in #309
Eight Points For One Team Is Two Points For Another Team
- Lloyd Atkinson tl;dr: "In my ongoing quest to explore the problems that are endemic to modern software development, I decided to focus in particular on estimation and the disaster that is “story pointing.”" Lloyd discusses the antipatterns experienced when estimating, including failing to realize story points are an estimate, coercing developers into choosing a lower number, discounting high or low numbers, and more.featured in #309
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Compasses and Weathervanes (30 Questions for Leaders)
- Ed Batista tl;dr: "The compass is a popular metaphor for leadership - we value its steadfastness and reliability. The weathervane symbolizes bad leadership - we're skeptical of leaders too easily swayed." The most effective leaders integrate aspects of both so the question isn't "what kind of leader should I be?" but "what kind of leadership is called for at this moment - and am I capable of summoning it?" Ed provides us with 30 questions to navigate this.featured in #308
How Live Is Your Stream? Measure Live Latency At Scale With Mux Data
tl;dr: Beta test the new HLS Live Stream Latency metric in Mux Data for free! Understand the live streaming experience, and find opportunities to improve.featured in #308