SWLW #432: Back to the office, Learning speed, and more.

Heya,

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

​​Back to the Office
7 minutes read.

It's hard to predict what will happen once covid-19 is behind us, at least in some way (less dangerous), figuring out the "new normal". Elad Gil covers the different models and tradeoffs you should consider when thinking about your strategy: "Irrespective of what model you chose above, what the CEO and executive team does will be emulated by a large portion of the company."

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

Product [sponsored]

Effective Feature Management by O'Reilly
Learn how you can use feature flags to reduce risk, iterate faster, and gain more control in your dev cycles with this book written by LaunchDarkly CTO/Co-founder, John Kodamul.

 Promote your product on SWLW and reach over 26,650 leaders 

Culture

Without CSS vs. With CSS
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.
Share it via Twitter or email.


Career Ladders Aren't Enough – You Need a Thoughtful Promotion Process, Too
6 minutes read.

Sarah Milstein shares the process she created at Mailchimp to promote senior ICs (Staff Engineer level and above) which I think many of us can explore: "Although career ladders like ours offer common touchpoints for assessing an engineer’s readiness for promotion, they aren’t designed to provide a process for ratifying promotions."

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


How to Tell When Your Startup Needs Engineering Managers
12 minutes read.

Joseph Gefroh covers well how you should think about the engineering team's structure in the early days. I'd read "Splitting the Role of Head of Engineering" to figure out where it hurts the most.

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


Jeff Bezos on the Importance of What's Not Going to Change
3 minutes read.

Thinking about "what's not going to change for the next 10 years" is a great framing for building a sustainable business. You can use this time horizon to influence the type of decisions you want to make. For example: which practices you want to invest in for the next 10 years around your health, knowledge, relationships, wealth, etc.

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

Jobs [sponsored]

Director of Engineering @ Phorest Salon Software (Dublin / Remote)
This opportunity is to join Phorest as a leader in our product development team to support the CTO to create and sustain a high-performing, high output, world-class team. Learn more here.

Engineering Manager, Cloud Security @ Forter (London / TLV / NYC)
Join me, the geek behind SWLW and the VP Eng at Forter, to prevent fraud and abuse in e-commerce as we're building the biggest network of trust online. Read about our dev team and join us!
 

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

Peopleware

Engineering Manager Resources
4 minutes read.

Ryan Burgess gathered resources worth knowing if you're an Engineering Manager. Share it around with your teammates. I've discovered a few great resources from it and added them to my Instapaper.

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


"I Hate My Job, I'm Going to Quit and Start My Own Company. How Hard Can It Be?" Oh So Tremendously Hard. A Thread.
4 minutes read.

Read Corey Quinn's thread reminded me of the struggle I've been through when trying to launch my startup. I admit it was a lot easier in my mind, and I was naive to think that engineering and product should suffice. It was a good lesson, as painful as it was.

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


Learning Speed: What Jeff Bezos, Elon Musk, and Bill Gates Know That Most People Don’t
16 minutes read.

So many gems in this post by Michael Simmons, covering learning patterns and insights from people we all know. To learn faster, you need to have a way to practice with as little friction as possible. Build your life and your organization in a way (culture, tools) that will allow you to experiment more.

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

And finally, inspiring tweets...

@rohamg: If the road is long, bring friends

@jasonfried: Company culture is not written down, it’s acted out. A company’s culture is a 50-day moving average of *how it is*, not how it thinks it is, wants to be, or was supposed to be.



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 and my work by becoming a SWLW Patron. Thank you ❤️




Keep reading, keep learning.
-- Oren Ellenbogen.