SWLW #403: 50 short product lessons, Surfacing people’s strengths, 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

​​50 Short Product Lessons
18 minutes read.

I found myself jumping between ideas and principles, taking a lot of notes, and thinking about applying them in my work. Jump between items in the list as you see fit for today's challenges, and bookmark it to re-read in a few months. The "Artificial deadlines" and "Prioritizing Opportunities" were among my favorites on the list.

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

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Culture

Guy on the Right Is a Growth PM
1 minute read.

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

Read it later via Pocket or Instapaper.
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The Magic Wand Approach to Surfacing People’s Strengths
5 minutes read.

"People often dismiss their strongest capabilities as mundane or obvious. It is therefore important that they experience the value that others gain from their skills." -- Dalit Brosh shares questions you should ask to identify and amplify your teammates' talent.

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


How to Attract More Women to Join Your Organization
5 minutes read.

"This happens because women tend to underestimate their abilities and performance and to over-judge themselves, regardless of their actual performance, whereas men tend to overestimate their abilities and performance." -- Moran Weber wrote an important post as we (men) are over-confident in our ability to hire female talent while keeping things as they are. I needed to read it, and to add it to my "monthly re-read" list.

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

Jobs [sponsored]

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Help people break the paycheck-to-paycheck cycle. Build w/ Go, React Native, GraphQL, Postgres, Bazel. Remote encouraged.

 

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Peopleware

A User Guide to Working With You
4 minutes read.

Julie Zhuo shares her User Guide and a template you can use to align expectations with your teammates: "It creates clarity on how you work—what you value, how you look at problems, what your blind spots or areas of growth are, and how to build trust with you." -- This is still a controversial topic, so like anything you do - be careful about how you use it. If you like, you can also use the side-project I've built to write and share your manager readme (managerreadme.com).

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


Hi, I Am Kris. I Have Been Working With Computers Since I Am 14 Years Old, and I Am Over 50 Now.[...] This Is What I Know About Software Development: (Thread)
3 minutes read.

"So 90% of your work is archeology, classification of technical debt and refactoring or non-interrupting replacement. This *is* what software development actually *is*. We lied to you in University, and again in the hiring interview." -- Kristian Köhntopp captures it so well.

Read it later via Pocket or Instapaper.
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The Role of Principal Engineer at Auth0
8 minutes read.

"More precisely, we needed a documented technical strategy that would detail what we should and shouldn’t be doing to be successful in the long run." -- Damian Schenkelman shares his experience as a Principal Engineer at Auto0 - his responsibilities, how he spends his time, and how he impacts the organization (people, business, and code).

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

And finally, inspiring tweets...

@nukemberg: Organizations, like code, require periodic refactoring. Attachment to titles, job descriptions, power structures, etc makes this refactoring much harder. This means ppl must have a sense of security that is unrelated to a specific role

@CanadaKaz: Do things. Don't be things.



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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.

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Keep reading, keep learning.
-- Oren Ellenbogen.