SWLW #553: Delete friction,CTOs’ top tips on transitioning from VP Engineering, and more.

Heya,

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

This Week's Favorite

Delete Friction
3 minutes read.

"Sometimes it’s better to accept that we’re not always rational and just do the thing that gets us on the right track." -- Garrett Dimon with an important lesson on one tiny change he did that got him back to reading in the morning. Sometimes there is no clear answer to "why" a specific change created a healthier habit. We can apply logic to justify it, but we can do the same for many things we tried before and failed. Embrace things as they are.

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Culture

The New Apple Vision Pro Is Crazy
1 minute read.

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

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From Busy to Productive: Time Management Tips for Engineering Managers
4 minutes read.

Nitin Dhar shares 12 strategies to manage your time and energy effectively. A few that are worth exploring in more detail: "setting clear expectations," "fostering autonomy within your team," "adopting the practice of time blocking," "limiting meetings," and "consolidate communication."

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The Hottest New Perk in Tech Is Freedom
5 minutes read.

Rani Molla shares an interesting perspective on how smaller companies, offering employees to work remotely, might compete with the Big Tech companies who start pushing employees back to the office. There are so many variables in play here. The office is not bad and remote is good. Allowing different types of flexibility and treating our employees as adults is what we all look for. It requires us to train and support better managers who can deal with this new complexity.

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The Elevation of Human Work
4 minutes read.

"This future is here. There will be an AI amplifying tool for every major profession within five years. These tools can catalyze human excellence across occupations – right brain, left brain, and any brain." -- We have started to see this already, and with the current speed at which Generative AI products enter the market. The "Copilot-for-X" will appear in many Hackathons and Pitch Decks for fundraising in the next few years.

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Peopleware

How to Stop Procrastinating Using the 70% Rule
5 minutes read.

"You’re procrastinating for the same reason I was: you’re scared of looking bad because you don’t know all the answers right now. Since then, I’ve tried to live by the 70% Rule: When I feel like I have 70% of the information, I make a decision and start. The 70% Rule works for big goals as well as small goals because it gives you the momentum for getting started. As soon as you start a new project, the momentum gathers, and good things start to happen." -- Taylor Pearson with a beautiful insight.

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Stepping Up: CTOs’ Top Tips on Transitioning From VP Engineering
5 minutes read.

Harry Dunn shares seven tips when entering the CTO role after serving as the VP of Engineering. I would pay more attention to the section on "Connect with the executive committee," as building close relationships with your peers is imperative if you want to impact the business across all disciplines.

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50 Ideas That Shaped My Thinking
6 minutes read.

You can discover so many intriguing and powerful concepts to delve deeper into in this Twitter post by David Perell. Mark a few ideas and look them up in your favorite place (ChatGPT these days? or is it still googling things up?) to learn the framework and apply it to your immediate challenges.

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And finally, inspiring tweets...

@tomerg: It kills me that people keep talking about programming as though that was a significant part of a practicing engineer’s job. Code is an artifact, not the goal. Programming is an implementation detail, not the job

@naval: Great people change you, not by expectation but by inspiration.



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.