/Management

What Causes New Engineers To “Sink Or Swim”?

- Lizzie Matusov tl;dr: Consider these tips to more effectively ramp up new teammates: (1) Structure early learning opportunities. New engineers can more quickly ramp up to the context and domain knowledge required to do their work. (2) Be clear about role expectations. Establishing clear expectations for the role is often overlooked in the chaos of growing a team. (3) Prepare the first few tasks ahead of time. Give engineers a series of tasks that build on organizational and system context so they can apply their knowledge more directly and build confidence.

featured in #514

Give Your Team Permission To Fail

- John-Daniel Trask tl;dr: The future of software engineering seems even more unknowable these days. Here, JD Trask of Raygun makes the case for getting comfortable with change — and with failure. By encouraging experimentation, even when it looks like a tangent, even when it barely works, we make real discoveries and developments. Permission to fail is permission to try; let your team just try things.

featured in #514

Getting An Engineering Executive Job

- Gergely Orosz tl;dr: Gergely covers the following from Will Larson’s book: (1) Deciding whether to pursue an executive role. (2) Why each executive job search is unique, and how that will shape your process. (3) Finding executive roles externally and internally. (4) Navigating the often chaotic executive interview process. (5) Negotiating an executive contract. (6) Deciding whether to accept an executive offer once you have it. 

featured in #513

An Open Letter To Auth Providers

tl;dr: The first job of any auth company is to protect its customers – before anything else. Somewhere along the way it feels like a lot of auth providers lost sight of the thing that matters: You, their customers.

featured in #513

Managing High Performers

tl;dr: (1) Don't neglect managing high performers. (2) Recognize and value high performers, notably through career planning. (3) Establish higher expectations. (4) Provide constructive feedback. (5) Pay them very well. (6) Focus them on their strengths. (7) Address behavioral issues immediately. (8) Help them through growth plateaus. (9) Recognize when they've stopped growing. 

featured in #513

3 Critical Skills You Need To Grow Beyond Senior Levels In Engineering

- Irina Stanescu tl;dr: (1) Learning to scale yourself: Maximizing what you can do on your own by ruthlessly prioritizing your time and teaching / delegating as much as you can. (2) Navigating ambiguity: detective work, isolating uncertainty, dividing and conquer, making decisions with incomplete information, being able to pivot. (3) Influencing without authority. 

featured in #513

3 Critical Skills You Need To Grow Beyond Senior Levels In Engineering

- Irina Stanescu tl;dr: (1) Learning to scale yourself: Maximizing what you can do on your own by ruthlessly prioritizing your time and teaching / delegating as much as you can. (2) Navigating ambiguity: detective work, isolating uncertainty, dividing and conquer, making decisions with incomplete information, being able to pivot. (3) Influencing without authority. 

featured in #512

1-Measure-3-1

- Anna Shipman tl;dr: “A format I have found useful for making proposals is 1-measure-3-1. This is a variation on the 1-3-1 problem-solving method, focused specifically on proposals: (1) The problem to solve or opportunity to grasp. (2) Measure: how will we know it’s solved / the opportunity is met. What metrics are we looking to shift, or outcomes are we looking to achieve? (3) What are the three options we have considered (4) Our one recommendation.”

featured in #512

JWTs vs. Sessions: Which Is Right For You?

- Lydia Gorham tl;dr: Both JWTs and session cookies are viable approaches to solving the issue of persisting authentication and authorization context in a stateless HTTP world, but they take fairly different approaches that have their own pros and cons.” Lydia breaks down the trade-offs and explains how you can use JWTs and sessions together to achieve a best of both worlds.

featured in #512

Finding Stuck Energy

- Paulo André tl;dr: Everyone has a switch. Your job is to find it. If you don’t, all the latent energy this person has will remain untapped. To find that switch, you have to temporarily forget the work and focus on the human. Build a relationship. It’s never wasted time. “What is something you found really interesting recently? Teach me all about it.” is a good question to see what lights them up — and, if you pay attention, you’ll likely hear in the answer important clues that might help you change something at work.

featured in #511