SWLW #466: The next Big challenge for Data is organizational, What is underneath Productivity, and more.

Heya,

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

This Week's Favorite

​​The Next Big Challenge for Data Is Organizational
5 minutes read.

Bryan Offutt with a great post that will make you think about your data pipeline, teams structure, and data ownership: "When viewed through an organizational lens, it becomes clear that the concepts of data observability and the existing tooling around it are papier-mâché solutions to a much larger problem. They provide a starting point to understand the landscape, and will work well for smaller data teams where one group is responsible for the entire pipeline. But without solving the ownership problem, the question of who is responsible for this is still a shrug at scale. A stack trace is only useful if you know who to talk to about which part."

Read it later via Pocket or Instapaper.
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Culture

“Anti-Trust Stopped Microsoft From Taking Over the Internet”
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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Being Nice and Effective
5 minutes read.

"Being diplomatic and tactful when candor is needed and forgetting that care without candor creates an ineffective climate" -- This trap shared by Subbu Allamaraju on how nice people can sabotage their effectiveness is a widespread one. I've learned a lot from this post, looking into the leadership types mentioned here, considering my leadership style with different people at different situations.

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Learn to Hire Well and You’ll Never Lose
5 minutes read.

Hiring is 50% of a manager's responsibilities. Doing it right means you have a vision to help you attract people, you know the type of team you want to build and how to leverage each other strength's, and what's your role in it. Listen to Hunter on his advice for "Sell Past The Close." This can have a dramatic impact on improving the last mile.

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Essential Complexity in Systems Architecture (Video)
23 minutes read.

I'd share Laura Nolan's post with the technical folks in the organization. Not only software engineers, but anyone who tries to understand the challenges we have when building production systems.

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Peopleware

What Is Underneath Productivity?
4 minutes read.

Dan Shipper wrote a post that resonated strongly with me. It's as if I wrote it myself, suffering for the same things Dan writes about and finding ways to manage my energy better. What did you find out about yourself recently that made you change your ways? Who helped you spot it? Who gave you some tools to try?

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42 Things I Learned From Building a Production Database
5 minutes read.

Mahesh Balakrishnan shares so many gems and lessons learned. I'm sure you'll take a few and look for ways to improve your skills around them. For example, this one: "Make your project robust to re-orgs. A company management hierarchy is inherently fragile (a tree is a 1-connected graph, after all); socialize the project continuously with managers who might take over in the future. Do whatever it takes to make sure that manager churn does not result in unfair career outcomes for ICs."

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Process People
5 minutes read.

"In many cases, process people are hired because the managers are not willing or able to do their job – especially in terms of coaching and developing their makers. If that’s what’s really going on, then that is the problem that must be fixed. [...] Make sure their purpose and contribution is clear, and that they are not there to try to make up for managers that aren’t willing or able to coach and develop their people." -- Read Marty Cagan's post and ask yourself if you see some of the patterns he mentions in your organization. Do you think it's reasonable? Do you want to do something about it?

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And finally, inspiring tweets...

@justinkan: Your best hires make you feel incompetent and slow.

@lpolovets: Underrated skill: being able to accept constructive criticism with an open mind, and without being dismissive or defensive.



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Keep reading, keep learning.
-- Oren Ellenbogen.