Debugging Teams: Groundhog Day
- Camille Fournier tl;dr: "Have you ever been on a team that seemed to work very hard but never move forward? Where you look back quarter after quarter, or perhaps year after year, and you did a lot, but nothing actually seemed to happen? Congratulations, you’re in the middle of Groundhog Day." Camille discusses the symptoms of Groundhog Day and how to get out of it.featured in #372
Investing In Internal Documentation: A Brick-by-Brick Guide For Startups
- David Nunez tl;dr: Nunez outlines specific steps for creating a culture of good internal documentation hygiene. "Pulling from his own playbooks as Uber’s first dedicated docs hire and the first-ever Head of Docs Content for Stripe, he shares ultra-tactical advice for each part of the process: from building the habit and incentivizing engineers to make the effort, to keeping things organized."featured in #371
Real-World Engineering Challenges #7: Choosing Technologies
- Gergely Orosz tl;dr: Gergely interprets the following software engineering or engineering management case studies from tech companies: (1) Trello choosing Kafka over RabbitMQ for messaging. (2) Why Birdie moved to Micro Frontends. (3) Why MetalBear settled on Rust. (4) Why Motive moved over to Kotlin Multiplatform Mobile.featured in #371
11 Laws of Software Estimation for Complex Work
- Maarten Dalmijn tl;dr: (1) The work still takes the same amount of time regardless of the accuracy of your estimate. (2) No matter what you do, estimates can never be fully trusted. (3) Imposing estimates on others is a recipe for disaster. (4) Estimates become more reliable closer to the completion of the project. This is also when they are the least useful. (5) The more you worry about your estimates, the more certain you can be that you have bigger things you should be worrying about instead. And more.featured in #370
How To Handle A Reorganization As An Engineering Manager
tl;dr: (1) Don’t tell your team about the reorg too early. (2) Learn the company’s goals for the reorg. (3) Share ideas and advocate for yourself and others. (4) Think about how your team is likely to react, and tailor your communication to account for that. (5) Don’t add to the drama.featured in #369
Traits You Can Change, And Traits You Can't
tl;dr: The author pinpoints traits that can be changed and those that cannot. Mistaking the two causes costly, common talent retention issues: (1) Failing to believe in a rising star, because you thought that their weaknesses couldn’t be addressed. (2) Investing too much in a lost cause, because you thought that their built-in weaknesses could be coached.featured in #368
Lead Time For Software Delivery
- Shubha Nabar tl;dr: With the emergence of the DORA metrics as a standard for measuring the quality and velocity of software delivery, software engineering organizations the world over are starting to think about their “lead time” for delivering software changes. Read this post to learn all about "Lead Time", how it is different from "Cycle Time" and more...featured in #368
The Engineering Manager’s Tools
- Francisco Trindade tl;dr: "While companies and teams vary, in most cases, an EM has authority over how their team works and how they evaluate their team members. This authority means they have three primary tools for change: Systems, Behavior, and Reward." Francisco discusses each here.featured in #367
What US Engineering Managers Can Expect To Earn In 2022
- Scott Carey tl;dr: "Data found that engineering management roles – ranging from engineering manager up to director and VP of engineering – still consistently pay the highest among tech roles." The article shows the national average salary range for the 50th and 75th percentile of applicants of CTO, senior manager, and other roles.featured in #367
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