SWLW #579: The Value of Canonicity, Early Stage Startup Handbook, and more.

Happy holidays and happy new year! Like always, I share my best findings for the week.

 

This Week's Favorite

The Value of Canonicity: What Happens When We Run an Engineering Organization by Constraining the Number of Tools in Our Toolbox “For the Greater Good”?
9 minutes read.

"We want to incentivize change when a new situation compels us to use different technologies that provide better value for a given task (i.e., essential variance). In contrast, we don’t want to pick a new technology just for the sake of using a different one (i.e., non-essential variance). Or, to put in another way, we prefer having canonical ways of doing things. [...] But preferring less variance isn’t the same as avoiding evolution or being unwilling to consider alternatives." -- Great analysis and reasoning behind Nubank's technology stack decisions. Each company needs to pick the optimization factors that make sense to serve the business. This should be a top-down exercise rather than waiting for it to shape up by itself.

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Culture

Schrödingeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeer
1 minute read.

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

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Visualize Brooks's Law: When More People Makes a Late Software Project Later
4 minutes read.

Adam Tornhill provides some good framing when investing budget in hiring, training and dealing with software complexity and maintenance. The "Measure Team Composition Trends" section can be helpful if you can measure the team's impact. The remaining problem remains - no tool will help you measure business value, i.e., no PM can predict which feature will move the needle, yet some frameworks can help increase the probability of that. Sometimes, it's worth measuring the delta between prediction and actual estimation to match with the "Team Composition Trends," It offers some proxy of the team's ability to deliver effectively over time and on a separate thread to see if the estimates are fair.

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Some Estimates
6 minutes read.

Shai Yallin's post can trigger interesting discussions with your teammates to create alignment. Shared vocabulary (e.g., forecast instead of commitment, estimate in time range instead of dates) and expectations settings can nurture a high trust environment while enabling the business to deliver value sustainably.

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Early Stage Startup Handbook
5 minutes read.

"It's important to note that daily.dev is a remote company, comprising 24 team members across 14 countries, which adds complexity regarding time zones and communication." -- Remote companies always provide an interesting lens for how growth should look like. Communication and alignment are at least ten times harder, so you must compensate with written processes and expectation-setting.

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Peopleware

Six Tips for Staying Technical as a CTO
5 minutes read.

Allan Leinwand shares his advice as a technical CTO in companies like Shopify and Webflow. Allan's tip on "Create a Team of Tech Advisors" is an interesting take I didn't hear often, and I can see how it can help to be vulnerable and seek advice: "I have a private Slack channel with about 20 senior engineering leaders that are internal and external to Shopify. I use that channel to ask questions, be vulnerable about what I don’t know, and get industry-specific guidance. This is a place I can ask anything and try to come up to speed quickly on technology."

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Be Alone Until You Are Valued. 12 Signs That You're Mentally Strong (Thread)
3 minutes read.

I love every benchmark in this thread. Being comfortable in your own skin and enjoying your alone time is becoming increasingly important today. The addiction of getting an immediate dopamine kick by getting external recognition is making us more fragile as individuals and as a society.

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And finally, inspiring tweets...

@gdb: Easy to underappreciate the value of good abstractions and reliable infrastructure

@davj: "One of the underrated qualities of successful founders is their ability to manage their emotions and fears while still executing." - Michael Seibel



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.