SWLW #393: Empowering teams to choose tools, Stripe's remote Engineering Hub one year in, 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

​​After Launching @AstroBehnken and @Astro_Doug to Orbit on Crew Dragon, Falcon 9 Landed on the of Course I Still Love You Droneship and Returned to Port Canaveral
3 minutes read.

These photos and marvelous achievements by SpaceX and NASA might make us think big again when it comes to space. Once SpaceX were able to cut costs by order of magnitudes, landing the Flacon9, the game has changed. I watched the lift-off with my son, and we were overwhelmed with excitement.

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

Product [sponsored]

Investing in internal tools doesn't need to be difficult   
Retool cuts the time it takes to build internal tools from weeks to hours. Companies like Coinbase, Doordash and Brex use Retool to quickly build the apps their operators need and ease the maintenance burden on their engineers.

 Promote your product on SWLW and reach over 25,500 leaders 

Culture

Managing Through the WHY, WHAT and HOW
4 minutes read.

Lawrence Ripsher's framework can serve as a good rule of thumb when a team member picks a task (or when they are assigned with one). I'd pay extra attention to the "Avoiding Pitfalls" section, as I believe this is where most people fail with less experienced employees.

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


Stripe's Remote Engineering Hub, One Year In
7 minutes read.

It's fascinating to read Jay Shirley sharing how Stripe dealt with a hybrid model of distributed offices and remote work. "Remote Stripes score lower when asked whether Stripe fosters a sense of connection for employees in their location. However, 77% said that their location is not a barrier to having an impact at Stripe, a 10% increase from a year ago." -- I'd love to see their employee retention (in years) and the impact they saw when making this shift. A lot of gems in this post made me think about how to leverage the setup while reducing some of the inherent downsides in it.

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


Empowering Teams to Choose Tools
5 minutes read.

This post reminded me of Dan McKinley's post "Choose Boring Technology"(one of my all-time favorites!). Take the time to clearly state the baseline of tools and practices you want to promote. Make sure the quality (usage, docs, what you get out of the box, etc.) is high so it can serve your team as a good default. When you define that, take the time to clarify how exceptions should look like when teams need to pick other tools instead of the default. Done well, this will become a differentiator for your tech team in the market, e.g., Etsy used it to attract talent that connected to it.

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

Jobs [sponsored]

Head of Engineering @ WorkOS
WorkOS is a developer platform that makes apps enterprise-ready. (API for SSO/SAML/etc.) It's hiring for Head of Eng! This is a unique opportunity to join a fast-growing and fully distributed company.
 

 Looking to hire for your team? Promote your open positions on SWLW! 

Peopleware

Evergreen Note-Writing as Fundamental Unit of Knowledge Work
5 minutes read.

For those of you who missed it, Andy Matuschak is one of my favorite people to follow and read everything he writes. I found myself navigating in Andy's notes and learning new terms and concepts. Take a few minutes and explore. Click on topics and ideas that look interesting and see how Andy took notes to capture his insights and takeaways (and built a system to help him navigate).

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


OK, an Important Note for Talented Mid-Career Folks, When Making Job Changes: Be Extremely Rigorous About Your Personal Stack-Rank Between 1. Title 2. Money 3. Scope. You Can Lose a Lot of Potential Money if You Aren’t Crystal Clear on What Matters Most to You Between These 3 (Thread)
5 minutes read.

Shreyas Doshi shares a valuable lesson I've learned in the past 20 years. Take a bet on the company and people who work there - these two factors have the most significant effect on your personal growth trajectory. Great companies will evolve faster, attract strong talent, and enable you to learn and practice at a higher rate. I enjoyed reading the conversation within the thread, as it helped me framed some ideas I had more concisely. How do you know which company to pick? Ask how they grew in their KPIs (not their headcount!) in the past 6m, 12m, and 24m. Ask how they plan to achieve another S curve growth in the near future (12m-24m).

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

And finally, inspiring tweets...

@david_perell: If you can’t communicate an idea clearly, you haven’t written about it enough

@JayBeDreamin: Your mind is an ever-producing thought machine. The world is an ever-producing noise machine. The older I get, the more I realize that success just means peace from both.



p.s. if you're interested in joining SWLW's Slack channel, simply reply to this email and let me know.

p.s.2 are you leading a team of engineers? Write your Manager Readme or get my book Leading Snowflakes: The New Engineering Manager's Handbook.

You can support me and my work by becoming a SWLW Patron ❤️



Keep reading, keep learning.
-- Oren Ellenbogen.