SWLW #463: Sociotechnical Lenses Into Software Systems, The Skill of Org Design, and more.

Heya,

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

This Week's Favorite

​​Sociotechnical Lenses Into Software Systems
5 minutes read.

"Sociotechnical Lenses" is a helpful framing by Paul Osman that is useful to use when observing your systems and teams: "When we add human beings to our visualization, it becomes evident that the system is sociotechnical. The humans are doing the work and have the context behind the changes they are making. [...] It’s impossible to think holistically about software without thinking about the operational environment, or the users of the system, or the people involved in building and maintaining it. These things come together to create another lens through which we can view the world."

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Culture

When Instagram & Facebook Are Down
1 minute read.

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

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Why WFH Isn’t Necessarily Good for Women
5 minutes read.

WFH might have more negative consequences in the long term than we are willing to accept now. It doesn't have to be that way, but it requires a lot of attention which is often hard for companies to commit. Many will say they do yet act the opposite. It's early to tell where we're going and the impact, so have an honest and open discussion with your team. Make sure there is proper awareness and effort invested into that. Listen and write down concerns. Follow up over time and see how the team feels about it.

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And Now, a Thread of Ancient Sysadmin Wisdom: An Incomplete List of Things We Have Learned From Decades of Outages. (Thread)
4 minutes read.

Incidents are an unplanned investment in learning and improving the robustness of the business - humans, process, and technology. Corey Quinn shares tips in his own unique and funny way. What is your favorite incident report (postmortem)? Which companies are doing it well? What can you learn from them without melting down your production environment?

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Eating the Cloud From Outside In
6 minutes read.

You should read this post by Shawn swyx Wang and Ben Thompson's post (Cloudflare’s Disruption) as it will help you understand how companies can leverage technology to enable a new business strategy. How companies view the world and act has the highest signal to their culture: "Strategically, Territory over Positioning happens to be exactly the right call. In a zero-sum market that isn't growing, you want to jockey for position and take out enemies. In a positive-sum, infinitely expanding market like Cloud, you want to encircle them."

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Peopleware

The Skill of Org Design
15 minutes read.

Cedric Chin with a piece that I believe should be a mandatory read for every manager. It made me stop and think of how I see building an engineering organization. It helps to put a better structure and terminology when you consider your Org Designing skills. What did you pick up? Who can you share it with and discuss this week?

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Best of 2020 in Tech Talks
5 minutes read.

This is probably a meta-share, as I'm sharing a curated list of great content as part of this week's curated list of content. I bet that you'll be adding a few of Cindy Sridharan's recommended talks to your "read me later" watch list.

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Entrepreneurial Motivations: Light and Shadow Forces
4 minutes read.

While there is a big difference, Andrew Finn's framing of "Light and Shadow Forces" can be used to think of IC vs. Management path. What is the Light version behind your motivation to grow on one path or transition to the other? What is the Shadow version? What do you think others will answer about you?

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And finally, inspiring tweets...

@spencerfry: Every important feature bubbles back up eventually

@collinmathilde: In hard times and challenging times, as leaders, it's more important to: (1) Connect before you correct. (2) Be curious, not critical. (3) Be careful, not crushing. I need to remind myself of this almost every week.



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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.