SWLW #475: Hunting Tech Debt via Org charts, What is Engineering Enablement, and more.

Heya and happy new year 2022!

As always, below you can read my best findings for the week. If you want to support my work or join SWLW community - scroll down to the bottom of the email to see how.
 

This Week's Favorite

​​Hunting Tech Debt via Org Charts
7 minutes read.

I love the framing by Marianne Bellotti on looking at the org structure to understand the incentives applied, and Tech Debt manifested from it: "The best organizations at managing technical debt tend to be the ones that have a thoughtful process in place to adjudicate competing incentives. Everyone has to have a pathway to win."

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Culture

Tell Me About Your Off-Site Disaster Recovery Plan
1 minute read.

My humble effort to help you start the weekend with a smile on your face, even in this difficult time. I'm sure the disaster recovery plan was well tested.

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What Is Engineering Enablement
5 minutes read.

Tal KimHi provides good background on the role and responsibilities of Developer Enablement / Experience teams. There are many ways to implement that, but once you cross the 30 engineers, it feels like the right time to consider it: "Engineering Enablement can take many forms. It can be a guild. It can be a squad or a task force that is made up of different individual contributors who have been tasked with solving a specific issue. Or it can be a formal team and role in the organization. [...] They should be viewed as a stand-alone product (feature) team that is serving customers (other developers/stakeholders) within the organization."

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The 2 Greatest Clarifying Questions in Product Development: "On What Time Frame? Under What Circumstance?" Everything That Is True Can Become False, and Vice Versa, Depending on How Far in the Future You Are Looking. (Thread)
3 minutes read.

The insightful Julie Zhuo suggests using constraints to move beyond the hand waving into the hard decisions: "Generic questions will only get you generic answers, which may be not just unhelpful, but wrong. [...] So read carefully. Think critically. Understand your context, and force specificity when you can."

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Lead by Leading
2 minutes read.

Classic Seth's post, short and to the point: "But in every area of our lives, if we choose to lead, we can lead. Simply by beginning. [...] First we begin."

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Peopleware

Navigating Your Career Towards Your Own Definition of Success
4 minutes read.

"I made a pact with myself — I don’t want to be led by fear. When I identify that I’m avoiding a decision due to fear, I stop to think of the worst case scenario, which for me is to be led by chance rather than creating my chances. I tap into that rebellious side we all have and push myself to get out of my comfort zone, because I know that on the other side I’ll be grateful for choosing authentically." -- Wonderful and brave writing by Miri Yehezkel, making a difficult decision to better align with her dreams and goals.

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The CEO of No
9 minutes read.

Andrew Wilkinson built a very different type of business and applied very different rules than most people. I find it fascinating to understand his principles to make decisions or live life (worth looking for interviews with him if you're into podcasts). As always, we shouldn't try to copy his style or way of living but use it as inspiration to ask ourselves more significant questions, as Andrew constantly does. Iterate on these questions and answers to change your actions every few months or years. I appreciate this framing: "What I do instead is try to structure my life around how to make myself happy, and how to make my family happy."

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Managers Should Ask for Feedback
5 minutes read.

CJ Cenizal is so spot on with actively seeking feedback. I think that Engineering Managers and tech leads should do that. Use one of CJ's responses under the "Accept what you hear" section to make sure people want to continue and provide you with feedback in the future.

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And finally, inspiring tweets...

@RyanHoliday: Don’t talk about projects until you’re finished. Save that carrot for the end. Talking and doing fight for the same resources.

@ShaneAParrish: Boring progress compounds into exceptional results.



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 by becoming a SWLW Patron. Thank you ❤️




Keep reading, keep learning.
-- Oren Ellenbogen.