SWLW #554: How to do great work, Compounding optimism, and more.

Heya,

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

This Week's Favorite

How to Do Great Work
18 minutes read.

Paul Graham wrote an essay I want to let my kids read. I was lucky to have "internet mentors" (they weren't aware they were my mentors) when I was 16 to start experimenting, building, and looking for inspiration from others, or as Paul writes it: "Develop a habit of working on your own projects. Don't let ״work״ mean something other people tell you to do. If you do manage to do great work one day, it will probably be on a project of your own. It may be within some bigger project, but you'll be driving your part of it. [...] Consciously cultivate your taste in the work done in your field. Until you know which is the best and what makes it so, you don't know what you're aiming for."

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Culture

Investors Talking With Founders
1 minute read.

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

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The Three Kinds of Leverage That Anchor Effective Strategies
8 minutes read.

"Leveraging strengths is the only way to do great work. (Not “fixing weaknesses.”) Better yet, leveraging differentiated strengths means you beat the competition. Best is when that differentiation is durable over time." --Jason Cohen does his best - Capturing great insights from a long career of building companies. For example, here is one that will force you to look deeper not only at your product but also at your internal infrastructure: "A competitor who invests in a core platform with specific trade-offs will not be able to change those trade-offs for years, if ever; therefore selecting different trade-offs, resulting in different product features (and liabilities), will remain differentiated."

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Compounding Optimism
4 minutes read.

Morgan Housel writes beautifully about the importance of compounding optimism and understanding we don't know how our words and ideas might influence future generations: "Ideas compound. Inventions compound. Education compounds. A trivial thing can grow into a massive thing, and faster than most people realize. [...] But when you view it as one person coming up with a small idea, another person copying that idea and tweaking it a little, another taking that insight and manipulating it a bit, another yet taking that product and combining it with something else – incremental, tiny bits, little ideas mixing, joining, blending, mutating, and compounding together – it’s suddenly much more conceivable."

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Navigating the Software Engineering Career Ladders
5 minutes read.

Arnav Gupta captures well the different transitions the company is going through as the company grows. This can be helpful for orientation when you join a new company and need help understanding the org structure.

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Peopleware

Curiosity vs. Defensiveness (Video)
3 minutes read.

Use Kaley Klemp's framing on curiosity to ensure you're "above the line" when you learn and communicate.

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The Amazon Builders' Library Is an Hidden Gem: It Consists of Articles Written by Some of the Most Senior AWS Engineers Covering Foundational Patterns, Where Most Learnings Can Be Applied Anywhere (Thread)
4 minutes read.

One of these threads I'll share with all of the engineers in the office for two reasons: (a) the quality of the highlights Giorgio Bonfiglio brings from the various posts and (b) seeing how far building an engineering brand as AWS did can impact the industry.

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DORA Metrics: We’ve Been Using Them Wrong
8 minutes read.

I really enjoyed reading Ori Keren's post. While remembering where he's coming from (CEO of LinearB), Ori puts the spotlight on the right place: We must learn how to connect DORA or other metrics to concepts and ideas the business understands and cares about. His advice on "Establish Team Working Agreements" is the most significant takeaway worth considering together as a team.

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And finally, inspiring tweets...

@angjiang: Half doing something is an expensive way of not doing it

@garrytan: The best leaders are collaborative but firm. It is actually a strength to rank high on openness, but only when paired with the ability to say no. Great design is open to the kaleidoscope of ideas but then incredibly relentless in pruning it down to the essence of what must be



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.