SWLW #562: Beware the metagame, The pitfalls of familiarity, and more.

Heya,

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

This Week's Favorite

Beware the Metagame
3 minutes read.

"I have a lot more respect for people who stick to the base game, avoiding getting sucked into the much more comfortable metagame. While we need researchers and scientists to go meta, they should remain tethered to the base-game and work closely with practitioners." -- The scale here also applies to practitioners. You can have meta-conversation arguments about organizational design or architecture forever.

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Culture

Your Business Before Data vs. Your Business After Data
1 minute read.

My humble effort to help you start the weekend with a smile on your face. It's incredible to see how data and statistics changed the game so much.

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


Yes, You Should Test on Production…
14 minutes read.

Marco Chiappetta wrote one of the best posts I've read on how to think about the value of testing in production in various scenarios (product type, product maturity, etc.). The Criticality vs. Shipping Confidence graph is a powerful framing when considering where you should land in your testing strategy.

Read it later via Pocket or Instapaper.
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How GitHub’s CTO Architects Engineering Teams That Scale
7 minutes read.

“Rather than thinking of expectations as rules that employees must follow, think of them as the point where culture and implementation meet.” — Jason Warne (CTO of GitHub) shares his learning as an executive in a few great companies.

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How to Prepare for Difficult Conversations
5 minutes read.

Stefano Baccianella shares an open-source tool you can use to practice difficult conversations using ChatGPT. There is no doubt that using Generative AI to practice real-world scenarios will be a great way to train people to improve their communication skills.

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Peopleware

The Pitfalls of Familiarity
5 minutes read.

Yohanes Theda reminds us of how biased our thinking is and what we can do to reduce the mistakes we might make because of it: "Going for something familiar instead of something better can easily hinder progress without even us knowing it. [...] it is also the case with many other things in life, not just people and relationships. Perspectives from new, even unexperienced people, are always much needed; especially when something has gone on for a long time without anyone ever questioning it because they have been too familiar to it to ever realise that there is something wrong. Fresh perspectives are needed to unearth some deep-seated mistakes."

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What I Wish I Knew When I Became CTO
5 minutes read.

Many interesting insights from David Mack on the role of the CTO. A few of my favorites: "It’s reasonably common to end up doing jobs you’ve never done before. You can accumulate responsibility faster than you can learn how to harness it," "Hire to keep up with growth, not to generate it," and " I now know that you need to budget time and strategize for the replacement of technologies. You accept long-term “technical debt” with the adoption of any technology"

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Safe to Fail: A Journey in Reviving My Creativity
3 minutes read.

"my over-attachment to spending my time and energy on doing the “right” soul-aligned projects made it difficult to work on anything when nothing felt quite “right.” And that’s been the invisible thread underlying my creative struggles the past couple years." -- Edmond Lau shares his journey to feel safer to fail by focusing on quantity more than quality (creativity unblocks creativity).

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

And finally, inspiring tweets...

@LukeVerswey: “Always know the game you’re playing and whether you want the prize for winning that game.” is incredibly salient

@rakyll: Life is too short to waste. If you are waking up every day and don't/can't celebrate your accomplishments, you are wasting your life with wrong people.



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.