SWLW #452: Mind the Platform execution gap, Incremental note-taking, Beat the Bystander Effect, and more.

Heya,

As always, below you can read my best findings for the week -
 

This Week's Favorite

​​If You Want to Transform IT, Start With Finance
12 minutes read.

Excellent post by Ian Miell for why infrastructure teams often struggle to get the budget they need to support the business as it scales. The way I see it, you can discuss and allocate funding for specific projects and explain their business value. You can also keep some ratio of platform engineers to experience engineers and use that to set baselines. Either way, you need to learn to speak in a way that finance will understand.

Read it later via Pocket or Instapaper.
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Culture

How a Startup Looks on the Outside vs. On the Inside
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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Guiding Critical Projects Without Micromanaging: The Limits of Flexible Management
5 minutes read.

"So if you happen to share my particular style of management — heavy on delegation, trust, and lightweight check-ins — I encourage you to add these forcing functions to your rotation." -- Camille Fournier offers to add monthly status meetings to help different members get on the same page.

Read it later via Pocket or Instapaper.
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I've Decided to Become a Full-Time Individual Contributor at HashiCorp and Will No Longer Be an Exec. Do What You Love, Not What Others Expect!
4 minutes read.

Mitchell Hashimoto's announcement says a lot about HashiCorp's culture and matureness as a business. Optimizing for sustainability can often set a strong alignment between the org's needs and individual needs. Companies that will learn how to attract talent and keep them for many years (regardless of their initial position or equity) will have a competitive advantage over time.

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Mind the Platform Execution Gap
11 minutes read.

This post by Chris Ford and Cristóbal García García is a must-read if you want to build a platform team (or group): "A platform organization is not just an operations department, so it needs more than operational capabilities." -- Do you see areas worth improving? Are there broken areas that require more attention from the leadership team?

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Jobs [sponsored]

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Peopleware

Beat the Bystander Effect With Minimal Social Pressure
5 minutes read.

The Bystander Effect is real, and you feel it in emails and group chat. Andrew Critch will help you with tools to communicate better: "The general trend I want to set here is: whenever you notice yourself creating the bystander effect, try to create a more specific and noticeable failure mode instead."

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Storytelling
13 minutes read.

Learning to craft a story is an asset every leader needs to develop to set a vision for their team or convey a non-trivial change. Julian Shapiro with another inspiring and pragmatic essay to help you think and practice your skills.

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Incremental Note-Taking
16 minutes read.

"The mind is like an iceberg: most of our everyday thoughts go unnoticed. By this, I mean: Most productivity solutions focus on the 10% of our thoughts that are easy to categorize and structure, like lecture notes, meeting minutes, people’s contacts, and highlights of readings. But the vast majority of thoughts we think – the other 90% – still hold underrated, underestimated latent value" -- another masterpiece by Linus. I couldn't stop reading and thinking about my practices.

Read it later via Pocket or Instapaper.
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And finally, inspiring tweets...

@jackbutcher: Play the game until you can make the rules

@kunalb11: Teams are productive when they’re sharing useful information. Teams are bonding when they’re sharing useless information. Bonded teams are more productive.



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.