SWLW #539: Navigating the unpredictability of everything, The Ambiguous Zone, and more.

A weekly newsletter by Oren Ellenbogen with the best content I found around people, culture and leadership in tech. You can also read this issue online and recommend this newsletter to your teammates for a great discussion.

Heya,

As always, below you can read my best findings for the week.
 

This Week's Favorite


​​Scale. Skill. Speed.
7 minutes read.

These two insights are spot on and wonderfully written: "The challenge for successful organizations moving forward is not they do not have scale, skill, or speed but rather what happens as a new world emerges where the benefits of scale diminish, when new skills become critical but the ability to hire the newly skilled with the old incentives are reduced, and the speed of the world outstrips the speed of the organization." and "The shift of power from big to small, management to talent, and from the towers of power to the talent with wrenches in the trenches has only just begun."

Read it later via Pocket or Instapaper.
Share it via Twitter or email.



Product [sponsored]


Get SOC 2 Compliant in Weeks, Not Months
Secureframe makes it fast and easy to get SOC 2, ISO 27001, HIPAA, PCI & GDPR compliant. With guided workflows and one-click integrations, the entire process is automated. Get compliant in weeks—not months—so you can focus on growing your business
 

 Promote your product on SWLW and reach over 30,935 leaders 

 


Culture


Old Apple Ads We Enjoy
1 minute read.

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

Read it later via Pocket or Instapaper.
Share it via Twitter or email.



Navigating the Unpredictability of Everything
17 minutes read.

If you want to understand how to build a business or why founders act in a certain way, this post should be bookmarked and revisited. I've captured the lessons section near the end in Anki Notes, as it's an important list to iterate on when thinking about your business (as a founder or employee).

Read it later via Pocket or Instapaper.
Share it via Twitter or email.



Talking About Risk With Thresholds 🔥
3 minutes read.

Thinking with thresholds, as suggested by Ryan McGeehan, is an interesting approach. You can use it to set priorities by using minimum thresholds, e.g., "We'll invest at least 30% of our time this year to push forward our mobile offering."

Read it later via Pocket or Instapaper.
Share it via Twitter or email.



The Ambiguous Zone
3 minutes read.

There is no movement without friction. Learning to hire and retain employees who can challenge core assumptions and offer creative ideas is one of the most vital assets great leaders have.

Read it later via Pocket or Instapaper.
Share it via Twitter or email.



Jobs [sponsored]


Engineering Leader (Platform) @ BioRender
We're hiring an Engineering Leader at BioRender to lead, develop, and grow our Platform team in our mission to accelerate the world's ability to communicate science.
 

 Looking to hire for your team? Promote your open positions on SWLW! 



Peopleware


Why You Are Important... Historically So
6 minutes read.

ChatGPT (now v4) is moving us all forward in a remarkable cadence like never before. Things that felt like magic appear almost every month. Connor Beem with an interesting observation on the impact each one of us will be able to achieve by leveraging AI to produce more, faster. It might speed up how meaningful smaller companies can be, where each one of us can become a better builder (copywriting, code, design) and salesperson.

Read it later via Pocket or Instapaper.
Share it via Twitter or email.



Long Time Coming but a While Ago I Asked Twitter to Help Define "Product Thinking". I Finally Got Around to Grouping the 120 Odd Responses... (Thread)
3 minutes read.

The grouping of the results is helpful as a map of areas you can invest in learning specific tools and figuring out how to practice them. Try writing "what do I understand from that," "which tools or frameworks will help me practice that," and lastly, "where can I practice that this week."

Read it later via Pocket or Instapaper.
Share it via Twitter or email.



The Ultimate Guide to OKRs | Christina Wodtke (Video)
73 minutes read.

Christina Wodtke offers excellent tips on OKRs worth listening to before you start planning next year. It's not only about setting the right objects and figuring out the key results to measure, but also building the stories around it to align the team around them.

Read it later via Pocket or Instapaper.
Share it via Twitter or email.



And finally, inspiring tweets...


@ProfFeynman: 1. Never stop learning. 2. See failure as a beginning. 3. Teach others what you know. 4. Assume nothing, question everything. 5. Analyze objectively. 6. Practice humility. 7. Respect constructive criticism. 8. Love what you do. 9. Give credit where it's due. 10. Take initiative.

@bpoppenheimer: "Whenever I want to write a big song, I can't...That's when I get writer's block—when I try to write a song to fill the entire galaxy...But if I write about something the size of a glass of water—a week later, I notice it's got the universe in it." — John Mayer


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.

You are receiving this because you subscribed at softwareleadweekly.com.

Software Lead Weekly is curated with love by Oren Ellenbogen.
unsubscribe from this list  or  update subscription preferences 

Mailing address is Zalman Shneor 4 st., Herzelya, Israel.

Older messages

SWLW #538: Culture viruses, When our persona becomes our prison, and more.

Friday, March 17, 2023

Weekly articles & videos about people, culture and leadership: everything you need to design the org that makes the product. A weekly newsletter by Oren Ellenbogen with the best content I found

SWLW #537: Debugging Architects, Apple Pie Position, and more

Friday, March 10, 2023

Weekly articles & videos about people, culture and leadership: everything you need to design the org that makes the product. A weekly newsletter by Oren Ellenbogen with the best content I found

SWLW #536: How to become more predictable, The age of cargo cult Agile must end, and more.

Friday, March 3, 2023

Weekly articles & videos about people, culture and leadership: everything you need to design the org that makes the product. A weekly newsletter by Oren Ellenbogen with the best content I found

SWLW #535: A thorough team guide to RFCs, What is the basis for competition for a startup, and more.

Friday, February 24, 2023

Weekly articles & videos about people, culture and leadership: everything you need to design the org that makes the product. A weekly newsletter by Oren Ellenbogen with the best content I found

SWLW #534: Stop obsessing over Development Velocity, Knowledge Creation and the Human Race, and more.

Friday, February 17, 2023

Weekly articles & videos about people, culture and leadership: everything you need to design the org that makes the product. A weekly newsletter by Oren Ellenbogen with the best content I found

You Might Also Like

Import AI 399: 1,000 samples to make a reasoning model; DeepSeek proliferation; Apple's self-driving car simulator

Friday, February 14, 2025

What came before the golem? ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏

Defining Your Paranoia Level: Navigating Change Without the Overkill

Friday, February 14, 2025

We've all been there: trying to learn something new, only to find our old habits holding us back. We discussed today how our gut feelings about solving problems can sometimes be our own worst enemy

5 ways AI can help with taxes 🪄

Friday, February 14, 2025

Remotely control an iPhone; 💸 50+ early Presidents' Day deals -- ZDNET ZDNET Tech Today - US February 10, 2025 5 ways AI can help you with your taxes (and what not to use it for) 5 ways AI can help

Recurring Automations + Secret Updates

Friday, February 14, 2025

Smarter automations, better templates, and hidden updates to explore 👀 ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏

The First Provable AI-Proof Game: Introducing Butterfly Wings 4

Friday, February 14, 2025

Top Tech Content sent at Noon! Boost Your Article on HackerNoon for $159.99! Read this email in your browser How are you, @newsletterest1? undefined The Market Today #01 Instagram (Meta) 714.52 -0.32%

GCP Newsletter #437

Friday, February 14, 2025

Welcome to issue #437 February 10th, 2025 News BigQuery Cloud Marketplace Official Blog Partners BigQuery datasets now available on Google Cloud Marketplace - Google Cloud Marketplace now offers

Charted | The 1%'s Share of U.S. Wealth Over Time (1989-2024) 💰

Friday, February 14, 2025

Discover how the share of US wealth held by the top 1% has evolved from 1989 to 2024 in this infographic. View Online | Subscribe | Download Our App Download our app to see thousands of new charts from

The Great Social Media Diaspora & Tapestry is here

Friday, February 14, 2025

Apple introduces new app called 'Apple Invites', The Iconfactory launches Tapestry, beyond the traditional portfolio, and more in this week's issue of Creativerly. Creativerly The Great

Daily Coding Problem: Problem #1689 [Medium]

Friday, February 14, 2025

Daily Coding Problem Good morning! Here's your coding interview problem for today. This problem was asked by Google. Given a linked list, sort it in O(n log n) time and constant space. For example,

📧 Stop Conflating CQRS and MediatR

Friday, February 14, 2025

​ Stop Conflating CQRS and MediatR Read on: m​y website / Read time: 4 minutes The .NET Weekly is brought to you by: Step right up to the Generative AI Use Cases Repository! See how MongoDB powers your