/Management

An Engineering Manager Challenge

- Ted Neward tl;dr: Ted shares his answer to the following interview question: "You're the tech lead and your team is getting stretched thin. You decide to add resources but you can afford 1 senior full-stack developer or 2 junior full-stack devs. Which do you choose and why?" 

featured in #517

The Developer's Guide To Notification System Tooling

- Chris Bell tl;dr: Chris covers: (1) The key components of a notification system and their relevant use cases. (2) An overview of the tools, frameworks, and services available when building a notification system. (3) How to put these together to make the right choice for your use case and product.

featured in #517

No Wrong Doors

- Will Larson tl;dr: “Some governmental agencies have started to adopt No Wrong Door policies, which aim to provide help – often health or mental health services – to individuals even if they show up to the wrong agency to request help. The core insight is that the employees at those agencies are far better equipped to navigate their own bureaucracies than an individual who knows nothing about the bureaucracy’s internal function.” Will discusses how engineering orgs can implement similar policies.

featured in #517

Getting Buy-In To Get Things Done

- Nicole Tietz-Sokolskaya tl;dr: “One way to get people to go from agreeing it should happen to actually doing the work is to get buy-in. When you have buy-in, people will actively work toward the goal instead of just agreeing to it. Getting buy-in is hard. It's also extremely rewarding, and it's how you get real work done as a leader. Without it, the work falls away when you're not around. With it, everyone will push forward together.”

featured in #517

Making Engineering Strategies More Readable

- Will Larson tl;dr: “A complete engineering strategy has five components: explore, diagnose, refine, policy, and operation. However, it’s actually quite challenging to read a strategy document written that way. That’s an effective sequence for creating a strategy, but it’s a challenging sequence for those trying to quickly read and apply a strategy without necessarily wanting to understand the complete thinking behind each decision.” Will covers: (1) Why the order for writing strategy is hard to reading strategy. (2) How to organize a strategy document for reading. (3) How to refactor and merge components for improved readability. (4) Additional tips for effective strategy documents.

featured in #516

Getting Buy-In To Get Things Done

- Nicole Tietz-Sokolskaya tl;dr: “One way to get people to go from agreeing it should happen to actually doing the work is to get buy-in. When you have buy-in, people will actively work toward the goal instead of just agreeing to it. Getting buy-in is hard. It's also extremely rewarding, and it's how you get real work done as a leader. Without it, the work falls away when you're not around. With it, everyone will push forward together.”

featured in #516

What Is SCIM Provisioning And Why Is It Important In An Enterprise Roadmap?

tl;dr: Signups are great, but your product only grows when your customers actually use it. Adding Directory Sync to your app can help improve activation rates and land those larger enterprise deals. Like SSO and SAML, implementing Directory Sync is full of archaic standards, versioning nightmares, and manual integrations; it can be a lot to handle. This Developer's Guide will walk you through everything about Directory Sync: what it is, why it’s important, protocols like SCIM, and how to build it into your product.

featured in #516

Delegating Gets Easier When You Get Better At Explaining Your Ideas

- Wes Kao tl;dr: Wes developed the framework below when explaining projects to direct reports, dotted-line reports, vendors, agencies, contractors, recruiters, and anyone she’s managing formally or informally. Here are five areas to cover: (1) Increase comprehension: Am I explaining in a way that’s easy to understand? (2) Increase buy-in: Am I getting the person excited? (3) Derisk: Am I addressing obvious risks? (4) Confirm alignment: Am I giving them a chance to speak up? (5) Feedback loop: Am I creating the shortest feedback loop possible?

featured in #516

Delegating Gets Easier When You Get Better At Explaining Your Ideas

- Wes Kao tl;dr: Wes developed the framework below when explaining projects to direct reports, dotted-line reports, vendors, agencies, contractors, recruiters, and anyone she’s managing formally or informally. Here are five areas to cover: (1) Increase comprehension: Am I explaining in a way that’s easy to understand? (2) Increase buy-in: Am I getting the person excited? (3) Derisk: Am I addressing obvious risks? (4) Confirm alignment: Am I giving them a chance to speak up? (5) Feedback loop: Am I creating the shortest feedback loop possible?

featured in #515

How Should You Adopt LLMs?

- Will Larson tl;dr: “That context makes LLM adoption a great topic for a strategy case study. This document is an engineering strategy document determining how a hypothetical company, Theoretical Ride Sharing, could adopt LLMs.”

featured in #515