What To Do When a Beloved Employee Quits
- Lara Hogan tl;dr: "Consider team dynamics, the projects on this person’s plate, and what you want the future to look like. The employee may: (1) Be highly respected so you want to optimize for supporting their teammates and helping them feel secure after they leave. (2) Be disruptive to team culture, so you want to optimize for a smooth and speedy departure with minimal conflict. (3) Have a lot of connections to folks you may want to hire for future roles, so you want to ensure they have a really positive experience in the last few weeks. Lara walks through the playbook.featured in #366
How To Maintain Engineering Velocity As You Scale
- Marcelo Cortes tl;dr: 4 guiding principles to maintaining velocity, in which Marcelo elaborates on his approach to each of the following: (1) Hiring the best engineers. (2) Building solid long-term foundations from day one. (3) Tracking metrics to guide decision-making. (4) Keeping teams small and independent.featured in #365
Building Layoffs On A Healthy Foundation
- Kellan Elliot-McCrea tl;dr: "This is not a complete guide to doing layoffs. I think there is room and need for someone to write a definitive guide to doing layoffs well, but this is not that. This post is just some things I think about when I’m not in the middle of a layoff that I’ve found reduce the negative impacts when I do find myself in the middle of a layoff."featured in #365
Reminiscing: The Retreat To Comforting Work
- Will Larson tl;dr: Will discusses the concept of a type of work called "reminiscing": when under pressure, most people retreat to their area of highest perceived historical impact, even if it isn’t relevant to today’s problems. "When you see your capable CEO start to micromanage words in a launch email, or your talented CTO start to give style feedback in code reviews, take it for what it’s worth: they’re reminiscing. If you dig deeper, they’re almost certainly panicking about something entirely unrelated."featured in #364
How To Run A Transparent Startup
- James Hawkins tl;dr: James covers topics around how to: (1) Avoid context overload. (2) Share financial performance. (3) Build product openly. (4) Share strategy. (5) Be open around people topics, such as pay structure, hiring and firing decisions. And more.featured in #364
featured in #363
It's Time to Do More With Less
- Shubha Nabar tl;dr: Visibility into engineering operations is hard due to the fragmentation and diversity of data sources. Industry benchmarks and frameworks such as DORA and SPACE are gaining traction, enabling teams to get a sense of how they’re doing and the room for improvement.featured in #363
When Is Short Tenure A Red Flag?
- Jacob Kaplan-Moss tl;dr: "Here’s a question that comes up a lot. It goes something like: “I’ve only worked 10 months at this job, and it’s terrible. If I look for a new job now, will my short tenure be a red flag?” Or, from hiring managers: “I’m looking at a resume showing they’ve worked three jobs in the last four years. Is that something to be concerned about?” Jacob discusses his perspective here, as well as how hiring managers and candidates should evaluate and respond.featured in #363
Group Dynamics: Very Loud (and Very Quiet) People
- Ed Batista tl;dr: "If you're a leader with an unusually loud or unusually quiet team member, what can you do? First, assess your tolerance and that of the other group members for communication styles that differ from your own. Bear in mind that the goal is a more effective group, not simply one that's more comfortable for the majority. Having done that that, what further steps can you take?" Ed outlines the various tools at your disposal.featured in #362
featured in #362