SWLW #417: Production oriented development, Being glue, 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

​​Being Glue
14 minutes read.

Tanya Reilly gave a wonderful talk about the role of "being the glue" for the team - "Probably the manager was probably just glad that the glue work was getting done. Because someone needed to do it. [...] I invite you take a moment to think about who's doing the non-promotable work on your team." - entry-level engineers need to be careful about it. Having an explicit discussion with your manager is a good step forward to understand the possible impact. Reducing the "glue work" by capping it might help as well. I do expect to see experienced engineers investing in these areas. It helps them gain context, get to know the team better, build trust (so they could promote their ideas), and help scale the team.

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Culture

Engineering Leaders, How Is 2021 Project Planning Going Right Now? Gifs Only
1 minute read.

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

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Production Oriented Development
7 minutes read.

Paul Osman with one of my favorites this week, and something I cannot agree more with: "Non-Production Environments Have Diminishing Returns," Embrace that mindset where things will break and put your detective hat. What would you like to see when that happens? Which tools you'll need? How quickly should they react (monitoring, deployment)? How your teammates should be trained? What will happen the day after such incident happens? Make it part of the way you work. Your team is part of the system you build.

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Companies Slow Down When Well Intentioned People Follow Best Practices Without Properly Considering the Cost Benefit Analysis for All (Thread)
3 minutes read.

I like this thread by Michael Seibel as I know how easy it can be to read something, without truly understanding the tradeoffs and complexities, and applying it in your org. When you believe things are not working to an extent worth making a change to the process or structure, start with writing down the pains and goals. See if there is an agreement on those before you do anything. Once you have it, take the time to align around how you would know it's working what you will measure.

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Turn the Senior Around
5 minutes read.

Shai Mendel offers a way to leverage your technical leaders to help the team grow, rather than deliver all the critical features by themselves. The tradeoffs here are challenging, as it's difficult to "sacrifice" delivery time. The organization will naturally put emphasis on execution time, but this is often short-term thinking you'll need to watch out from. Look for projects with less external dependencies or at risk. Have an explicit discussion about the senior engineer's role in each task they do, so it would be clear for them if they need to put on the "consultant hat" or the "owner hat."

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Peopleware

The Age of Infinite Leverage
4 minutes read.

Individual contributors need to read this post carefully. They can create leverage, but it's also easy to get a false sense of the size of that lever you're pulling. My best advice would always be with "what should you measure to know you're on to something?" -- don't build anything without thinking about the usage. A tool or product with no use is not leverage, it's waste.

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How to Get Lucky?
4 minutes read.

I always enjoy Joseph Jude's writing. This post goes well with last week's "Being visible" -- doing great work, in a great way, in public, will open doors for you. You don't need a lot of wins to make a big impact. You don't need a lot of wins to get lucky.

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How to Write Well: 4 Steps to Improve Your Writing
4 minutes read.

If you've been getting my weekly emails, you know by now that I think writing is still an undervalued skill in our industry. Share this post in your company and discuss how great writing looks like. Do you have examples of high-quality technical design? Product specification? API docs? What makes them great?

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And finally, inspiring tweets...

@omarakhaddaj: Strict but empathic. Kind but persistent. Assertive but considerate.

@joulee: We often focus too much on whether or not we're right when we should be more focused on whether or not we're influential.



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Keep reading, keep learning.
-- Oren Ellenbogen.