SWLW #509: Using GPT-3 to Augment Human Intelligence, PM & EM Rules of Engagement, 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

​​Using GPT-3 to Augment Human Intelligence
13 minutes read.

Henrik Olof Karlsson with a beautiful essay I enjoyed reading this week. You can now actually play with curiosity and have a better search engine throwing back at you interesting threads to pull. As readers and curious humans, it's up to us to learn to ask better questions and verify the correctness of the answers we get: "But for now, it is enough to point out that GPT-3 is unreliable. Yet it also enables a new way of traversing the internet—sideways and at the speed of conversation. And this is valuable because you can reach places you would never have reached on the internet itself." -- Can we learn new concepts at work faster? Can we use GPT-3 to simulate interesting challenges (generating managerial dilemmas) while seeking advice on solving them?

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Culture

Remember Kids, Always Test in Production Like Airbnb
1 minute read.

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

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The False Trade-Off Between Quality and Speed
7 minutes read.

"In the current world of service development, products are built as long-term services that keep evolving over time to adapt to their users’ needs. As a consequence of this, most product development work happens in the context of an existing code-base and an existing live product. [..] For most cases and in most stages of the lifecycle of a project, building low quality software is slower than building high quality software." -- Mario Caropreso with a brilliant and important take. First, writing your definition of quality would be a great exercise. Second, shifting the framing that software should work for years, you now look at the notion of speed very differently. It's not always true (e.g. early startup stage), but once it does, your mindset should change if you want to build a sustainable company.

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This Is a Very Basic Interpersonal Thing, but This Image Has Been Stuck in My Head Ever Since I Saw It Recently
3 minutes read.

A simple and powerful image that might stick when you look at conflicts. It can help you in your conflicts with others or by guiding others in a heated discussion. Worth reading the thread as there are some good suggestions for books in it and a funny re-take on the photo that made me laugh and show it to my wife. We both agreed. I am the problem.

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PM & EM: Rules of Engagement
8 minutes read.

Writing how you see two roles in the company interact has massive value in setting explicit expectations: "This was created as an internal document at Segment a year ago and it’s been incredibly well-received. It’s used by new PMs + EMs looking to build a successful partnership, by seasoned PM + EM pairs looking to debug specific responsibility and ownership issues, and by managers wanting to help their teams understand how to become better functional partners." -- Where do you think writing such a working relationship will help your company?

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Peopleware

First Focus. Then Simplify
5 minutes read.

I think the focused vs. simplified perspective John Cutler offers is very helpful: "Based on my experience, teams take one of two approaches: (1) We PICK 3 of the 12 personas to focus on (2) We try to create 3 personas that capture the 12 original personas. #1 is focused and focus is hard. #2 is simple. No one will complain about #2, unless they are really paying attention."

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How Can Some People Write So Beautifully? Two of My Favorite Writing Techniques (Thread)
4 minutes read.

Writing is still an undervalued skill in our industry. These tips by Julian Shapiro can be playful to experiment with if you're writing a blog post, presenting in a Hackathon, or showing a Demo.

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Technical Evaluation of a Startup
8 minutes read.

Fascinating post by Ian Langworth where he shares how he conducted a technical evaluation of a startup, giving us an inside view into the levers he finds interesting. If it was a task given to you, would you look at other things? Why?

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And finally, inspiring tweets...

@david_perell: Been doing a bunch of hiring. Key lesson: Good people speak in specifics. Even if they can talk big picture, they can also put their boots to the ground and speak practically about the work. Beware of charismatic people who only speak in lofty abstractions.

@sama: try a lot of things and do more of what works. work on things that are interesting but not prestigious. follow the path as it unfolds



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.