SWLW #391: Office centricity is over, Get better at Probabilistic Thinking and more

I hope that you and your family are doing well, and you are able to find a new rhythm in this hard situation. As always, below you can read my best findings for the week -
 

This Week's Favorite

​​Five Senior Devs in the Room, Arguing About How to Proceed, Not Making Any Headway. You’re One of Them. What Do You Do? (Thread)
4 minutes read.

There are plenty of cynical responses, but also a lot of great resources and advice included for us to learn from. What would you do? I'd think "can we agree at least on the pains and requirements?", and then move to "who should own it? Who will wake up at night if it goes wrong? Is the decision reversible? Can we let them move forward and support them?"

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Culture

Q: When I Was 4, My Sister Was 2. I Am Now 44. How Old Is My Sister Programmer: 44 - (4 - 2) = 42. Tester:
1 minute read.

My humble effort to help you start the weekend with a smile on your face, even in this difficult time. This is indeed a tough question.

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Product for Internal Platforms
7 minutes read.

"These are some things I’ve observed and learned in this process. I share them with you because I think many folks in platform-type teams, especially engineers and those of you on platform teams without formal product managers, might benefit from understanding how to approach these problems." -- if you're part of an engineering Platform team or have such team in your organization, share this post by Camille Fournier with them. Think a lot about how you build relationships, create visibility and put your customers first. We build systems, but it's humans who operate them.

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As of Today, Shopify Is a Digital by Default Company. Office Centricity Is Over.
4 minutes read.

It's interesting to see companies such as Shopify, Twitter, Coinbase, and others thinking about leveraging the covid-19 situation to build a different way of work. We cannot say how it would look like in the future (this is war time), but it is time to think and strategize: "A common misconception about company culture is that if you have a good one, you have to hold on to it. I believe this to be wrong. If you want to have a great culture, the trick is to evolve it forward with your environment. Take the best things with you from version to version."

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Navigating the Depths of Nearly Failing to Profitability, Part 1: A Brewing Storm
8 minutes read.

Most companies talk about how they're killin' it, growing faster than ever and raising huge rounds of money with no pain. I wanted to share Andy Cook's story from Tettra because it's important to see how the struggle looks like from the inside. I'm cheering for them and for their herculean effort to stay alive and get to profitability. I highly recommend reading all 4 parts, of course.

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Peopleware

How Can I Get Better at Probabilistic Thinking?
4 minutes read.

For those of you who didn't read about the topic so far or follow Shane Parrish (his podcast, the Knowledge Project, is one of my favorites), this is an excellent intro into one of the pieces that made me change the way I make decisions.

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Let Your Bugs Teach You
2 minutes read.

I love everything that Julia Evans draws or writes about. She has so much fun teaching others and learning how to do her thing. Use every opportunity you have to go deeper, to understand the fundamentals of your craft. It's too important for your career (compounded learning) to say "I'll do it later."

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And finally, inspiring tweets...

@patrickc: "Pessimists sound smart. Optimists make money." — @natfriedman

@JamesClear: Raise your ambitions. Lower your expectations. The higher your ambitions, the bolder your actions. The lower your expectations, the greater your satisfaction. Change the world and be happy along the way.



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Keep reading, keep learning.
-- Oren Ellenbogen.