/Management

3 Questions That Will Make You A Phenomenal Rubber Duck

- Dan Slimmon tl;dr: Dan’s 3 favorite questions to ask when someone is stumped on a complex problem: (1) “How did you first start investigating this?” This helps us regain perspective as our focus shifts from one thing to another to another. (2) “What observations have you made?” This helps recall some of our observations. Since there are many - small and large, interesting and boring, relevant and irrelevant - we tend to not hold all of them in our head. (3) “If your hypothesis were wrong, how could we disprove it?” People get a single idea in their head about the cause of the problem, and this encourages them to shake that idea for others.

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The Research On What Makes A Great Manager Of Software Engineers

tl;dr: Engineers and managers rank the top attributes of engineering managers, and their relative importance. Researchers at Microsoft evaluated how engineers and managers relate and differ in their views, and how software engineering is different from other jobs in the perceptions about what makes great managers. The best managers (according to engineers) are those that create a positive environment, enable autonomy, and present growth opportunities. These factors are often more important than just being technical.

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The 10 Types of Authorization

- Graham Neray tl;dr: RBAC isn't an authorization model — it's a collection of authorization models, and you can apply more or less granularity for roles depending on the needs of your application. Learn about the 10 types of authorization and go a level deeper than the standard abstractions of RBAC, ABAC and ReBAC.

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Measuring Developer Productivity: Real-World Examples

- Gergely Orosz Abi Noda tl;dr: In this issue, Abi outlines the developer productivity metrics used at 17 tech companies, such as Amplitude, Etsy, DoorDash. He then dives deep into several companoes of varying size, notably Google & LinkedIn, Peloton, scaleups and smaller companies. Abi’s advice on how to choose your metrics: start with the problem you want to solve. Is it shipping frictionless, retaining developers by keeping them happy and satisfied, raising the quality of software shipped, or something else? Then work backwards from there. 

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Unit Of Work

- Andrew Bosworth tl;dr: The environment you are working in has a rate of change (entropy) e.g. competitors, regulators, consumer behavior. The relationship between this rate and the unit of work you undertaking is critical to understand: (1) If the unit of work is bigger than the rate of change, then you will fall behind. (2) If your unit of work is smaller than the rate of change you are likely driving change for others. Sometimes you have an irreducibly large bit of work that doesn’t fit inside the entropy window e.g. a re-architecture. The likely outcome is that midway through the very expensive program you’ll find yourself having to start it over because the environment you are building for continues to evolve.

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Learning From A Strategy Project

- Anna Shipman tl;dr: “I was leading one of a number of engineering groups within a larger organization; each group had its own priorities, but most of them required delivery through my team; and we had our own priorities. So we ended up slowing each other down.” Anna looked to her managers to solve this before deciding to create the strategy herself. Here’s are some of the things she learned: (1) Even if you think you know the desired end state, take a smaller chunk and make some tangible steps. (2) Overcommunicate the goal and your progress towards it. (3) Focus more on bringing people with you than on getting a perfect answer.

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Incentives And The Cobra Effect

- Andrew Bosworth tl;dr: “Incentives are superpowers; set them carefully.” The Cobra Effect is when the solution for a problem unintentionally makes the problem worse. Andrew believe this issue is more widespread than anticipated. He provides several examples, including: everyone sharing feedback directly instead of through managers. This leads to people withholding valuable feedback to maintain relationships or damaging relationships if they can’t share negative feedback elegantly.

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Applying The SPACE Framework

- Laura Tacho tl;dr: The SPACE Framework of Developer Productivity is a holistic approach to thinking about and measuring software developer productivity. The SPACE framework is not a list of metrics or benchmarks. Instead, it outlines five different dimensions of productivity that can inform your own definition of productivity, and by extension, your measurements: (1) Satisfaction and Well-being. (2) Performance. (3) Activity. (4) Communication and Collaboration. (5) Efficiency and Flow.

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The Checklist Manifesto

- Murat Demirbas tl;dr: This book advocates for integrating checklists as potent safety and fault-tolerance tools across diverse domains. While the author, a prominent surgeon, enriches the narrative with numerous surgery cases, he also discusses their use in the construction and aviation industries. Checklists significantly reduce cognitive load, enabling complex tasks and effective team collaboration. Murat questions why we don’t use checklists more frequently in software development.

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The Problem With Your Manager...

- James Stanier tl;dr: James proposes a principle called "the Reporting to Peter Principle:" you will rise to a point where you will experience extreme internal conflict with the way that your manager does their job. This will manifest as disappointment, frustration, and a feeling that you should be doing their role instead of them. This represents a key inflection point in your own development as a senior leader and presents you with two choices, which James outlines. 

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