/Management

Uptime Guarantees — A Pragmatic Perspective

- Itzy Sabo tl;dr: “The cost of building and operating a system in a way that guarantees 99.99% uptime is several times as expensive as 99.5%. This is in terms of system complexity, the number of engineers required, their specialisations, experience levels, and corresponding salaries, as well as significantly increased operational costs and arrangements.”

featured in #412

Contrafreeloading

- Mike Fisher tl;dr: “Most people want to work for their rewards. Promotions received after striving for it for years are the ones people are most proud of.” Mike illustrates how humans don’t want free rewards. He believes the three grand essentials of happiness - “something to do, someone to love, and something to hope for" is a valuable framework to manage your own or someone else’s career.

featured in #411

Rules Of Thumb For Software Development Estimations

- Vadim Kravcenko tl;dr: “Who am I to tell you how to estimate projects? I can only give you some pointers and describe some things that worked well for me over the years. So that’s exactly what I will do — give you some rules of thumb to make your life easier.”

featured in #411

Meaningful Collaboration Across The API Lifecycle

- Kin Lane tl;dr: Collaboration is at the heart of successful software development, but working together on APIs brings challenges. In this article, Kin Lane, Chief Evangelist at Postman dives into the critical components of meaningful API collaboration across the API lifecycle and provides insights and strategies for success.

featured in #411

Cloud Exit Pays Off In Performance Too

- David Heinemeier Hansson tl;dr: “Each of these machines were less than $20,000. Amortize that over five years. That's $333/month for all the hardware (minus routers etc) needed to run Basecamp Classic today. And this is still a large SaaS app that's generating literally millions of dollars in revenue per year.”

featured in #411

Avoiding The Rewrite Trap

- Camille Fournier tl;dr: “Year after year, engineers convince themselves and their leadership that a rewrite will solve all their problems. And then they or their leadership get fired, because most rewrites fail to deliver anything at all. Avoid the trap: don’t go into this exercise unless it is the only way forward, and if you absolutely must, plan accordingly.”

featured in #410

Theory Of Mind

- Andrew Bosworth tl;dr: “Theory of mind is a concept I first learned in a class on psychology. It describes our capacity to understand the mental states of others.” Andrew explains why this concept is the reason why its so important for leaders to communicate the context around their decisions.

featured in #410

The Modern Data Stack Sucks

- Ian Vanagas tl;dr: “The problem with the modern data stack is that it often fails the people it was originally meant to serve. It creates a gap between engineers and the data that is valuable to them. They are unable to self-serve and must learn the modern data stack tools, or rely on the data team for insights.”

featured in #410

The Case Against Measuring Cycle Time

- Abi Noda tl;dr: “There are cases in which individual teams may find cycle time useful. However, using cycle time as a top-level performance measure that is pushed onto all teams is counterproductive. To actually improve performance, leaders should focus on measuring the friction experienced by developers and removing the bottlenecks that slow them down.”

featured in #409

Engineering Maturity Model

- Mike Fisher tl;dr: “It’s all about layering. The reason I can build a house is because I know what goes first, second, third, and fourth…” I think this is the same thing with great engineering organizations, it’s all about layering, knowing what goes first, second, third, and fourth.” Mike defines and describes these layers.

featured in #409