SWLW #505: The practical application of "Rocks, Pebbles, Sand", Ambition as an anxiety disorder, and more.

Heya,

As always, below you can read my best findings for the week. If you want to support my work or join our SWLW community in Slack - scroll down to the bottom of the email to see how.
 

This Week's Favorite

​​How to Present to Executives
6 minutes read.

Will Larson covers excellent tips to learn and practice when presenting to executives in your company. The SCQA (Situation, Complication, Question, Answer) method can be practiced to pitch your ideas also to your peers. This point is important to remember: "A great meeting with executive leadership is defined by engaged discussion, not addressing every topic on the agenda. Some will consider this a controversial position, preferring to measure every meeting by its action items, but this ignores the often more valuable relationship establishment and development aspects of these meetings."

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Culture

How Programmers Over-Prepare for Job Interviews
1 minute read.

My humble effort to help you start the weekend with a smile on your face.

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The Practical Application of "Rocks, Pebbles, Sand"
11 minutes read.

"A thousand quick wins do not add up to creating durable advantages or fulfilling a long-term vision." -- every manager and technical leader should read Jason Cohen's post when planning your next year's goals, and then to execute the day to day.

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I Think the Term “Technical Debt” Is Muddying the Waters. Let Us Speak Plainly. (Thread)
3 minutes read.

James Shore with great advice: "To prevent this, follow the camp site rule: Always leave the code better than you found it. To fix it… follow the camp site rule. You don’t need to ask permission for a week of refactoring, or a rewrite. Just start tidying as you go." -- This is a good sign of a healthy company. People should have enough autonomy to take a few days to improve their environment. I would add, though, that knowing when to refactor is also important. Sometimes the code is not stable yet (e.g. new MVP is constantly changing). Sometimes the code is not in use by anyone. You might want to wait, and you might want to delete code rather than make it easier to understand and change.

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Ambition as an Anxiety Disorder
5 minutes read.

"We must act like we are in control even if we know it's an illusion without letting the self-deception give in to either side decisively. It’s like watching your autonomy duel honesty on a platform over a lava pit. If your sense of agency wins you become insufferable and no honest people will have you. If honesty wins, you are calibrated but paralyzed. Powerless." -- Kris Abdelmessih made me think a lot about my drivers and others around me with whom I respect and enjoy talking.

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Peopleware

Spell. It. Out. Don't Make Your Audience Guess What You're Trying to Say.
4 minutes read.

Leo Polovets's post goes well with "How to present to executives." Learning to communicate effectively to your audience is an undervalued skill. This can be practiced in writing emails, summarizing a project status or the quarter's results, presenting a new initiative, etc. Think and optimize for the reader or listener, and always aim for the person with the least context.

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Binaries Over Priorities
2 minutes read.

"What about some grey area between now or later? Anything other than now rounds down to later. And low = no. Being binary about what you choose to do brings clarity to what needs to be done." -- Jason Fried with a good reminder that it's easy to say yes and take another commitment. Limiting your Work In Progress based on your team's capacity is a way to make hard decisions. The organization will always strive to push for more. Don't fight it. I don't think trying to pick one thing is doable, as putting more people on it often will only prolong the project. Define rules and framework that would force a healthy discussion to work together on sustainably promoting multiple things.

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Write Better Docs With a Product Thinking Mindset
10 minutes read.

Sarah Moir with a powerful framing I'm going to revisit in the next few weeks (Anki Notes is an excellent tool for it) until it settles: "Where project thinking focuses on the steps and process for creating a product, product thinking focuses on the motivation for creating a product and the possible outcomes of that motivation."

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And finally, inspiring tweets...

@gdb: Coding conventions are often far less important than coding standards — that is, most approaches for organizing code can work, but the key is getting everyone to do it the same way throughout your codebase. Explains how there can be so many mutually-conflicting coding dogmas.

@mmay3r: Systems vs goals is a false dichotomy. You can have both and they benefit from each other.



p.s. if you're interested in joining SWLW's Slack channel, simply reply to this email and let me know. If you're leading a team, consider writing your Manager README (it's free) or getting my e-book and interviews Leading Snowflakes: The New Engineering Manager's Handbook. You can also support me by becoming a SWLW Patron. Thank you ❤️




Keep reading, keep learning.
-- Oren Ellenbogen.