Is Engineering Strategy Useful?
- Will Larson tl;dr: “This chapter starts by exploring something I believe quite strongly: there’s always an engineering strategy, even if there’s nothing written down. From there, we’ll discuss why strategy, especially written strategy, is such a valuable opportunity for organizations that take it seriously.”featured in #586
This Is How You're Eroding Accountability
tl;dr: “Most management teams aren’t dumb and do their best to establish strong accountability cultures. But we wanted to share a few common ways that smart people screw up accountability on their teams, often despite the best of intentions – and what to do about them.”featured in #586
featured in #585
Distributed Systems And Organization Design
- Ted Neward tl;dr: Engineers (and their managers) have spent much of the last forty years learning the various repercussions and implications of distributed systems. As an engineering manager, I've discovered that there is a remarkable similarity between distributed systems design and engineering organization design.featured in #585
"We're A Product Engineering Company!" - Engineering Strategy At Calm
- Will Larson tl;dr: “Like almost all startups, the engineering team was scattered when I joined. Was our most important work creating more scalable infrastructure? Was our greatest risk the failure to adopt leading programming languages? How did we rescue the stuck service decomposition initiative? This strategy is where the engineering team and I aligned after numerous rounds of iteration, debate, and inevitably some disagreement. As a strategy, it’s both basic and also unambiguous about what we valued, and I believe it’s a reasonably good starting point for any low scalability-complexity consumer product.”featured in #584
A Field Guide To Team Dynamics And Conflict
- Andy Cleff tl;dr: “The guide provides a spectrum of common team patterns, starting with healthy ones, things you’ll likely observe with high-performing teams, and then progresses through muddy “not clear” territory, to various levels of not-so-good, and all the way to fully toxic.”featured in #584
How Do Interruptions Impact Different Software Engineering Activities?
- Lizzie Matusov tl;dr: Key findings include: (1) Performance and productivity are impacted by interruptions, in nuanced ways. (2) The type of task, and type of interruption, changes the stress associated with an interruption. (3) Perception and physiological data don’t always align. Lizzie elaborates on each.featured in #583
Bridging Theory And Practice In Engineering Strategy
- Will Larson tl;dr: Will covers: (1) Why strategy documents need to be clear and definitive, especially when strategy development has been messy How to iterate on strategy when there are demands for unrealistic timelines. (2) Using strategy as non-executives, where others might override your strategy. (3) Handling dynamic, quickly changing environments where diagnosis can change frequently. (4) Working with indecisive stakeholders who don’t provide clarity on approach. (5) Surviving other people’s bad strategy work.featured in #583
How I Give High-Quality Feedback Quickly
- Wes Kao tl;dr: (1) Give feedback on one thing that will make the biggest difference. (2) Don’t jump straight into line edits. (3) You don’t need to write out all your feedback. (4) Balance what’s easy for you (feedback giver) and easy for them (feedback receiver).featured in #582
A Reading List For Leaders In A Crisis
- Ed Batista tl;dr: Broken down into the following different categories: (1) Responding to the crisis. (2) Supporting others. (3) Managing yourself (4) On coping. (5) Learning from a crisis. (6) Other resources that Ed recommends.featured in #582