SWLW #574: Supporting sustainability, How to put the plus in ‘Staff+’ Engineer, and more.

As every Friday, I share my best findings for the week.

 

This Week's Favorite

Is This Real Life?
6 minutes read.

"Every large human cooperation system is based on a fictional idea that only lives in our collective minds." -- This post made me think a lot about the power of ambitious narratives (with great stories to create momentum) and that life is not linear nor one dimensional. Learning to find the right people to surround yourself with and when to change that circle is a critical skill worth discussing more openly (from an early age). After all, they're a big part of the narratives you believe in and develop.

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Culture

Deploying a Blog With 3 Posts in 2023 to Prod
3 minutes read.

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

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Supporting Sustainability
6 minutes read.

This is such a powerful framing to consider when thinking of doing a better job as a leader: "The manager is still asking the team to do things. Having to ask a team to do something is often a sign of a bug in the organisation. An organisational smell. What’s stopping the team self-organising to the most important work? What information were the team missing to help them spot that X&Y were more important? What skills or perspectives are they missing to be able to make the best choices?"

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3 Insights From 4 Years at Spotify by Jason Yip (Video)
43 minutes read.

Very few people like Jason Yip have such an amazing ratio of words to ideas and insights. Listen or watch, this talk provides so many gems for you to take and practice with your teammates.

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Abstraction Is Expensive
5 minutes read.

A painful reminder for technical leaders when they try to optimize for the business's needs while considering technical and organizational complexity: "You can’t avoid abstractions as a software engineer - software itself is an abstraction. In a way, software engineers are professional abstraction wranglers. The only thing we can do is stay on top of our abstractions, the underlying assumptions they make, and their implications. Focusing only on your “core business need” and your “unique value add” doesn’t build a successful business alone - if the abstractions you use to get there aren’t well-aligned to your goals, you will have achieved a pyrrhic victory at best, and your focus and dedication to the bottom line may have cost you the chance to scale up or run profitably."

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Peopleware

How to Put the Plus in ‘Staff+’ Engineer
6 minutes read.

"Set deadlines for when and how a decision will be made in advance. This might look like: “I will leave this RFC open for comments until X date; if nobody has objected to the proposed solution by then, I will begin implementing it.” This way, you know how and when you’ll move forward instead of languishing in uncertainty forever. " -- I love the concept of RFC with deadlines to enable fast decision-making and execution. Share Ryn Daniels's post with technical leaders seeking to grow into the Staff+ position.

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Morgan Housel Has Written 4,000 Blog Posts and Sold 4 Million Copies of the Psychology of Money. as a Writer, He's the Best Storyteller I Know Too. Here Are His Principles for Writing (Thread)
5 minutes read.

Morgan Housel is an excellent writer. David Perell shares his interview with him and a few insights in this thread. Here is my favorite: "Everyone should write. Why? Because everyone is full of ideas they’re not aware of. This means they’re also unaware of the value of their ideas, and this value can only be unlocked via writing. Start with one brave sentence and see where it goes."

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Continuous Team Advocacy
5 minutes read.

I love the ideas for creating visibility and engagement from leadership (both sides) by Nitin Dhar: "Advocacy by engineering managers is not a sporadic task but a continuous commitment. It’s about creating a narrative that aligns the team’s work with the company’s vision, thereby ensuring visibility, building trust, and enhancing resilience"

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And finally, inspiring tweets...

@PhilOfLife_: Avoiding people who lower your vibe is self care.

@mitchellh: 10x engineers blah blah blah who cares. The engineers that impress me the most are the ones that fearlessly dive into code, domains they know absolutely nothing about and end up producing amazing work in a short amount of time anyways. Truly awe-inspiring every time I see it.



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.