/Leadership

Oncall Compensation

- Gergely Orosz tl;dr: Gergely dives into: (1) Oncall philosophies across the industry. (2) Companies which pay and those that don’t. (3) How much do companies pay. (4) Companies which don’t pay. (5) Poor oncall cultures.

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“Black Hole Words” And The Power Of Asking Stupid Questions

- Molly Graham tl;dr: Molly warns us of black hole words, which "are commonplace in a given industry but everyone has a slightly different definition of them. You can have a whole meeting and if you don’t define the word, you just wasted an hour of everyone’s time." Molly gives us examples, such as "values", "work-life balance", "impact" and "fast."

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How We Work: Moving Fast To Ship Customer Value

- Chris Bell tl;dr: Chris discusses his company's principles for shipping code: (1) Lean into trunk-based development. (2) Ship high quality so each feature "needs to feel cohesive, work near flawlessly, and be the best iteration of itself for it to be valuable." (3) Make it easy for everyone on the team to ship. (4) Keep a weekly changelog to include all of the features shipped over the past week. (5) Optimize for developer autonomy.

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How Do I Get Better At Giving Feedback?

- James Stanier tl;dr: (1) Start with a "micro-yes:" e.g. “I’ve got a couple of ideas for how we could improve. Can I share them?” (2) State your data point: e.g. "we said we’d ship this change by midday, but it’s 4pm.” (3) Make your impact statement: e.g. “our support staff are getting inundated with tickets because we said that it would be fixed earlier.” (4) End on a question: e.g. “what are your thoughts?” As a rule of thumb, most feedback should be positive.

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The Really Important Job Interview Questions Engineers Should Ask (But Don't)

- James Hawkins tl;dr: "It's normal for candidates not to ask harder questions about our company, so they usually miss out on a chance to (1) de-risk our company's performance and (2) increase the chances they'll like working here." James gives several examples of interview questions candidates can ask about product-market fit, financial runway and more.

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How to Deliver Bad News

- Ed Batista tl;dr: 3 steps: (1) State what happened. The most important step is initiating the conversation. It's common to downplay bad news or share the bare minimum. (2) Provide an explanation for the cause. This may be embarrassing, particularly if your action or inaction was a contributing factor but trying to avoid acknowledging your embarrassment often makes it worse. (3) Here's what you're planning to do: this gives the other parties the benefit of your thinking while signaling your openness to theirs.

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The Critical Startup Skills You Might Be Overlooking - And How to Bring Them Into Focus

tl;dr: (1) How to get better at taking your own pulse. (2) How to get better at delegating. (3) How to make your strategy more clear. (4) How to speak less and become a better detective during 1:1s. (5) How to get better at listening — by paying more attention to yourself. And more.

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Different Strokes For Different Folks

- Paulo André tl;dr: "It may not be obvious, but it’s one of the most common issues in product & engineering teams: different people are solving different problems, whether they realize it or not. And that is the root of much anxiety, frustration, and disappointment." Paulo advises us on how to reconcile such a situation. 

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Remote, Hybrid, Or In-Person?

- Fred Wilson tl;dr: "All change has good and bad downstream effects. The broad-based adoption of remote work is allowing people to balance work and home life in ways that are extremely beneficial to them. But team morale and the broader cultural needs of companies have suffered and we need to recognize that... A hybrid model that provides continued flexibility while creating a lot more face time is the long-term answer."

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How We Onboard Engineers At A Devtools Startup

- Chris Bell tl;dr: "To build a truly great developer tool you need to go beyond the default empathy that new engineers have for developers at large. You need to use the tool itself, exactly as a customer would." Chris shares Knock's onboarding principles, process, onboarding project and more. 

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