/Leadership

Taming Complexity With Reversibility

- Kent Beck tl;dr: As a system scales, whether it is a manufacturing plant or a service like ours, the enemy is complexity. If you don't confront complexity in some way, it will eat you. However, complexity isn't a blob monster, it has four distinct heads: (1) States: When there are many elements in the system and each can be in one of a large number of states, then figuring out what is going on and what you should do about it grows impossible. (2) Interdependencies: When each element in the system can affect each other element in unpredictable ways, it's easy to induce harmonics and other non-linear responses, driving the system out of control. (3) Uncertainty: When outside stresses on the system are unpredictable, the system never settles down to an equilibrium. (4) Irreversibility: When the effects of decisions can't be predicted and they can't be easily undone, decisions grow prohibitively expensive.

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Traits I Value

- Andrew Bosworth tl;dr: 15 traits valued by the CTO at Meta: (1) Ownership: Valuing individuals who take full responsibility for their tasks, allowing others to trust that these tasks will be handled competently without constant oversight. (2) Rigor: Preferring team members who think thoroughly and exhaustively, understanding all alternatives, assumptions, and limitations to ensure well-informed decision-making. (3) Bias for Action: Appreciating those who recognize the cost of gathering information and the cost of delay, and who act decisively to maintain progress.

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The 100 Best Bits Of Advice From 10 Years Of First Round Review

tl;dr: "End every meeting or conversation with the feeling and optimism you’d like to have at the start of your next conversation with the person. If you envision running into this person again and how you want that to go, it’ll undoubtedly influence how you navigate a present conversation — usually for the better. Chris Fralic on how to become insanely well-connected."

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Effective Engineering Teams

- Addy Osmani tl;dr: The Google research team concluded that the following were pillars of team effectiveness. Addy discusses each in depth: (1) Psychological Safety: "On our team, making a mistake is seen as an opportunity to learn rather than a blunder to be penalized." (2) Dependability: "I can count on my teammates to deliver on their promises and commitments." (3) Structure and Clarity: "We have a clear and effective roadmap for decision-making within our team." (4) Meaning: "The work I contribute to the team holds personal significance for me." (5) Impact: "I can clearly see how our team's efforts make a difference to the broader goals of the organization."

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Benchmarking

- Will Larson tl;dr: It’s easy to lean too heavily on benchmarks by believing that they answer questions: they don’t really do that. Benchmarks only ask questions, they never answer them. It’s up to whoever is using the benchmarks to extract the questions and do your own work to answer them. If you look at “R&D costs as a percentage of revenue” across companies, you’ll notice that some are four or five times higher than others. Are the high spenders early in making a calculated bet into releasing a new service, or are they just inefficient? Either, or both, could be true, and that’s the sort of interesting question-answer pair to work through when using benchmarks to evaluate.

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It's All Just Leadership After All

- James Stanier tl;dr: "The pertinent question is whether you should manage senior managers and senior ICs differently. After all, they have different roles and responsibilities, and so it would be natural to assume the way that you manage a Staff Engineer would be different than the way that you manage an Engineering Manager. Right? Nope, that assumption would also be wrong. Sorry. You don't need special approaches for managing both roles. In fact, you can apply the same strategy to both, and not only does this simplify your approach, it actually encourages the best behaviors from both roles." James discusses his approach. 

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The Human Side Of Software Engineering Teams

- Abi Noda tl;dr: Developers were asked to rate a set of challenges to determine which factors had the highest impact. The two most impactful challenges identified were insufficient analysis at the beginning of a task and lack of leadership. Other impactful challenges included missing documentation, demotivation, and information not being made known to the team. Abi discusses how to address these. 

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Organize Your Week As An Engineering Manager

- Nicola Ballotta tl;dr: "What should my week look like, and what exactly should I be doing?" This question is particularly pertinent for those who have transitioned from a developer role, where their schedule was often tightly structured and well-defined. In this essay, I aim not only to provide answers to these questions but also to guide you through the process of creating a weekly calendar that reflects the typical responsibilities of an EM."

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Explain Like I'm Five

- Andrew Bosworth tl;dr: From the CTO at Meta: "Whatever simple explanations lack in nuance, they make up for in power. People remember them. They become the basis for future knowledge... A good team faced with a hard problem will produce a rigorous document. A great team faced with the same problem will produce a single page. People often aspire to explain the complexity they uncover. But the opposite is more valuable."

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Developing Leadership Styles

- Will Larson tl;dr: Will covers the following: (1) Why executive roles are particularly dependent on having multiple leadership styles. (2) How and when to use three primary styles: leading with policy, leading from consensus, and leading with conviction. (3) How lessons taught early in management careers about micromanagement discourage too many executives from leading with conviction. (4) How to develop leadership styles that you currently feel uncomfortable using. (5) How to balance across these styles, especially when you’re uncertain which is most appropriate for a given scenario. 

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