/Leadership

The Quest To Understand Metric Movements

tl;dr: “At Pinterest, we have built different quantitative models to understand why metrics move the way they do. This blog outlines the three pragmatic approaches that form the basis of the root-cause analysis (RCA) platform at Pinterest. As you will see, all three approaches try to narrow down the search space for root causes in different ways.”

featured in #591

Software Quality

- Abi Noda tl;dr: Google‘s Engineering Productivity Research team sharing how they define Software Quality. For engineering leaders focused on quality, this paper provides a helpful framework for articulating what it means and where improvements need to be made. The paper posits there are four types of quality that influence each other: process quality, code quality, system quality, and product quality. Abi discusses each in detail. 

featured in #591

Exploring For Strategy

- Will Larson tl;dr: Will covers: (1) The goals of the exploration phase of strategy creation. (2) When to explore and when it makes sense to stop exploring. (3) How to explore a topic, including discussion of the most common mechanisms: mining for internal precedent, reading industry papers and books, and leveraging your external network. (4) Why avoiding judgment is an essential part of exploration. 

featured in #590

Software Quality

- Abi Noda tl;dr: Google‘s Engineering Productivity Research team sharing how they define Software Quality. For engineering leaders focused on quality, this paper provides a helpful framework for articulating what it means and where improvements need to be made. The paper posits there are four types of quality that influence each other: process quality, code quality, system quality, and product quality. Abi discusses each in detail. 

featured in #590

The Million Dollar Question: Build / Maintain Or Buy

- Ramita Rajaa tl;dr: This classic debate takes on a new meaning for transactional messaging infrastructure. When there are hundreds of APIs to integrate on a regular basis, security and reliability at stake, and costs to consider, should you build/maintain or buy? Take a look at this in-depth review analyzing the pros and cons of each side. 

featured in #590

How I Give The Right Amount Of Context (In Any Situation)

- Wes Kao tl;dr: “Giving the right amount of context helps teams move faster. Too much context? Your manager can’t tell what’s important. They’ll need to wade through details, trying to sort information into a pile of what’s important vs what to ignore. Too little context? Your manager has to follow up and pull information out of you that you should have mentioned proactively. There is such a thing as being too concise.”

featured in #589

Stop Apologizing For Reasonable Business Decisions

- Wes Kao tl;dr: “As a leader, the one thing you are expected to do is make hard decisions. Unfortunately, most of us are wired to avoid conflict. So when it comes time to communicating these decisions, many leaders subconsciously look for shortcuts that allow us to get this over with as soon as possible. One of these shortcuts is defaulting to apologizing to smooth things over, while telling yourself the story that you’re being an empathetic, vulnerable leader.” Wes shares how this is a bigger deal this decays relationships with your team.  

featured in #588

Looking Under the Lamppost (On Problem-Solving)

- Ed Batista tl;dr: Ed explores how we often avoid solving difficult but necessary problems in favor of easier, more comfortable ones. It argues that while this is understandable, true growth and meaningful solutions require the courage to venture into uncertainty.

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Measuring Programmer Influence, Kinda Sorta

- Kent Beck tl;dr: “Can we use data to figure out who among a large team contributes most? No, if what we are looking for is a reliable, definitive answer. Data, however, may give us hints of pockets of certain kinds of impact resulting from certain kinds of behavior.”

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This 90-Day Plan Turns Engineering Leaders Back Into Frontline Developers

- David Loftesness tl;dr: David Loftesness - engineering leader at Amazon, Twitter and Eero - wants to remind managers itching to get back to the technical trenches that this option is on the table — and it’s not a step backward. But there will be organizational, communication, and even psychological hurdles ahead, from navigating resistance from your manager to dusting off the cobwebs on your coding skills, especially with how rapidly the tech landscape is changing lately.

featured in #587