SWLW #641: The Meeting Manifesto, Avoiding Strategy Drift, and more.

Like always, I am sharing my best findings for the week. Under "Culture," you'll find content worth reading and sharing with others; you'll need others' help to pull it off. Under "Peopleware," you'll find content that can help you approach situations differently with new perspectives and frameworks.   

 

This Week's Favorite

The Meeting Manifesto
3 minutes read.

"Meetings should be a last resort, not a default. If there’s no clear decision to be made, cancel it. If there’s no prep, cancel it. If the right people aren’t in the room, cancel it. Most people sit through bad meetings. The best refuse them. They come prepared. They keep them small. They keep them short. They make sure every meeting justifies its existence." -- Which other practices should we try to reduce and optimize further versus letting inertia set the tone?

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Culture

Middle Managers in Big Companies
1 minute read.

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

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Unpopular Defaults for High-Performing Tech Organizations
5 minutes read.

"Your engineers should spend time understanding the broader context of their work. Encourage them to shadow customer success or support teams quarterly. Better yet, have them rotate into those roles for a day from time to time. Don’t allow them to look for “sign-offs” from Product, but expect collaborative and iterative work. The goal isn’t to burden them but to give them exposure to the real-world impact of their work. Engineers who understand customer pain points and business priorities make better decision—and aren’t stuck in ivory towers." -- Aviv Ben-Yosef is spot on here. Healthy teams understand the worth and reasoning of their work versus producing features with no usage and value. It forms better partnerships with Product and GTM teams, and it helps the team develop empathy for the customers.

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The Easy Path That Leads to Failure
5 minutes read.

“They [great leaders] must understand how their actions have repercussions down the line and that they add to the culture rather than subtract from it. Knowing the long-term consequences of current actions is a seniority trait.” — This is such an important takeaway. You’re making many decisions that can influence that trust and long-term thinking. How will it change the dynamics and incentives for people to behave differently. Will you be proud of that? Will it help you attract more talent that would appreciate it?

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Engineering Roles, in Plain English
3 minutes read.

Pedro Gil Carvalho captures a TL;DR version of the different levels in Engineering. It can help create a discussion when considering adding more seniority levels in your organization. Share your version with your recruiters and managers so candidates and employees have a clear answer to "what does it mean to be a [level] engineer?" in your company?

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Peopleware

Chasing Squirrels: Avoiding Strategy Drift
6 minutes read.

It's so easy to talk about strategy or meta topics instead of focusing on execution. It feels like by changing your strategy, you can find a more lucrative lever that will change the company's trajectory. Earning the right to change strategy is key, as Nilam Ganenthiran puts it: "Day-to-day execution is hard, boring, repetitive, and tedious, while strategy discussions are fun and allow for the crafting a narrative of success in your mind before anything has even been done."

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The Post-Performance Review Guide No One Talks About, Part 1
5 minutes read.

"With your manager, or on your own, attempt to determine which piece of feedback is most impacting your success in your role or at the company and then take some time to figure out what you may be able to do about it." -- Feedback is essential, but not all is equal in value. Know what you're optimizing for, have it in writing (and share it), and then decide which areas you need to improve on to get there.

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The Complete Guide to SaaS Pricing Strategy
11 minutes read.

Everyone at the company needs to understand how the product(s) are being priced, and what are some of the best practices (and pitfalls to avoid) others are applying. You might think that only people involved in the deal process should care about it. I disagree. Understanding pricing will help you understand and improve decision-making on features to build, positioning, optimizations worth considering and more.

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And finally, inspiring tweets...

@hnshah: If a piece of feedback instantly makes you defensive, there’s a good chance it’s exactly what you need to hear.

@Julian: For aspiring writers: Your ultimate goal isn't building a writing habit. It's falling so in love with interesting ideas that you can’t help but tell the world about them. Writing is the medium—not the objective.



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.