SWLW #552: Embrace Complexity; Tighten Your Feedback Loops, Concepts & Consequences, and more.

Heya,

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

This Week's Favorite

Embrace Complexity; Tighten Your Feedback Loops
14 minutes read.

Fred Hebert shares his talk transcript with many important insights on the complexities of building companies. My favorite was: "Don't deliver more than you're equipped to." sharing how they approach on-call at Honeycomb and the tradeoffs they made that impact delivery vs. maintenance and sustainability.

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

Product [sponsored]

 Promote your product on SWLW and reach over 31,120 leaders 

Culture

Dating a Tech Bro vs Finance Bro
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.


To Build a Top Performing Team, Ask for 85% Effort
6 minutes read.

Greg McKeown will make you think about how you work, how you create a sustainable working habits for yourself, and if you're a manager or a leader - how you influence your environment. Intensity and effort are incredibly hard to measure in software development. It's important to discuss the outcomes we seek and nurture a conversation around managing stress and whether we think we're in a healthy place. I expect the answer always to be "no, there is a lot of stress" if you're working for a successful company. But it's the controls you need to focus on - Do we openly discuss it? Do we try to reduce it? Do we make it okay to acknowledge it? Do managers adjust things over time to change stress levels? Do we get people to feel in control of where to push themselves harder and when to take a step back and relax? Do we talk about how they rest and sleep after work hours (not from a judgemental place, but to create awareness)?

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


The New New Moats: Why Systems of Intelligence Are Still the Next Defensible Business Model
17 minutes read.

Jerry Chen wrote an updated view of his 2017 essay on AI and defensible moats, given the fast-developing field of AI. It's interesting to think about the "AI Cloud" (or AppStore) and the players that will set the tone there.

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


What Is the Right Level of Specialization? For Data Teams and Anyone Else
5 minutes read.

"People are spending way too much time working on things that have nothing to do with their business. We have come a long way, but I still see people wasting way too much time debugging YAML, waiting for deployments, or begging the SRE team for help." -- Erik Bernhardsson discusses the tradeoffs when hiring tools-oriented versus goal-oriented people. No doubt that some tools introduce overall simplification for the users while they also increase complexity for the maintainers, which requires specialization. It's unavoidable. It's a worthy discussion to see where the balance is not serving the business and make adjustments to the tools you leverage and the people you need.

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

Jobs [sponsored]

Director of Engineering @ Pumpkin
Join Pumpkin's mission to ensure the health and well-being of pets, while driving innovation and excellence in the future of our engineering practice.
 

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

Peopleware

Executive Compensation
12 minutes read.

This post can serve you well if you plan to hire an executive for your company or if you're interviewing for an executive position and need clarification on what you can and should negotiate for.

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


Concepts and Their Consequences
3 minutes read.

"A concept is a brick. It can be used to build the courthouse of reason. Or it can be thrown through the window." -- Nick Travaglini wrote a beautiful post on how we use words to create concepts and reason, allowing us to create narratives and stories to change our world. Which bricks are you using now? Which do you throw out the window?

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


Values Navigator: A Psychological Test to Understand Your Core Values
4 minutes read.

Values Navigator and similar tools are helpful as a tool to create a mirror in time - things often change when our life circumstances change. The fact you pause for a second and ask yourself these questions is good for self-reflection for the person you are now. You can act upon that to alter your environment to fit better what you seek now. Do it every few years to make the adjustments you need to feel you live by your values.

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

And finally, inspiring tweets...

@AdamMGrant: The saddest form of success is realizing that the goals you achieved weren't yours at all. In the short run, pursuing other people's dreams earns approval. In the long run, it's a recipe for regret. A meaningful purpose doesn't maximize your status. It matches your values.

@markimbriaco: Too many startups getting built to make things more complicated, too few getting built to make them simpler. Simpler is much harder, but that's not an excuse. If you're going to talk about changing the world, it seems only fair to consider whether it's for better or worse.



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.