What We Learned About Hiring From Our First Five Employees
- Andy Vandervell tl;dr: The company founder shares the profiles of the first 5 company employees and key takeaway from each hire, including: (1) Test people out with paid work before you hire them full time. (2) Define your culture and your "ideal hires" from the start. (3) Go looking for great people in different places. And more.featured in #356
Every Achievement Has a Denominator
- Charity Majors tl;dr: "One of the classic failure modes of management is the empire-builder — the managers who measure their own status, rank or value by the number of teams and people “under” them." Charity argues the case for the opposite i.e. managing with a small denominator, or set of resources, and delivering outsized results.featured in #356
Your CTO Should Actually Be Technical
- Aditya Agarwal tl;dr: Technical leaders should be highly technical for 5 reasons: (1) Only way for CTOs / VPEs to be true judges of quality. (2) Allows them to make highly educated tradeoffs - quality, speed, launch dates, feature inclusion etc... (3) Enables them to command the respect of the entire team. (4) Highly technical people very often have a deep passion for technology. (5) Easier time attracting and recruiting other highly technical people.featured in #355
The State Of Internal Tools 2022
tl;dr: Since 2020, we’ve surveyed developers for our State of Internal Tools report. We set out to find how companies build internal tools, who uses them, and how teams measure their impact on the business. Discover our highlights from this year’s State Of Internal Tools here.featured in #355
How Long Do Software Engineers Stay At A Job?
- Marcus Smith tl;dr: "Around 50% of software engineers only stay at a company for two years before switching to somewhere new. The national average for job tenure is 4.2 years so software engineers stay at one place for half as long. Typically the larger the company the longer a developer stays in one role."featured in #355
The Daily Life Of Software Developers
- Abi Noda tl;dr: "Researchers identified 11 factors impacting developers’ assessment of a good workday. The factors were organized into three high-level factors, (1) value creation, (2) efficient use of time, and (3) sentiment." This post covers each of these factors in more depth.featured in #354
featured in #354
The Hierarchy Is Bullshit (And Bad For Business)
- Charity Majors tl;dr: "It took two decades, an IPO and a vicious case of burnout before she allowed herself to admit how much she hated her work, and how desperately she envied (guess who??) the software engineers she worked alongside. Turns out, all she ever really wanted to do was write code every day. And now, to her dismay, it felt too late. Why did it take Molly so long to realize what made her happy? I personally blame the fucking hierarchy."featured in #354
What Makes Developers Unhappy?
- Abi Noda tl;dr: Large-scale study with over 2,000 developers that looked to understand the top 10 causes of unhappiness, the top 5 being: (1) Being stuck in problem solving. (2) Time pressure. (3) Bad code quality and coding practice. (4) Under-performing colleague. (5) Feel inadequate with work. And more.featured in #353
Resources For Navigating Complex Leadership Work
- Lara Hogan tl;dr: A resource hub for leaders and managers on 9 key topics including: (1) Influence & managing up. (2) Leading through crises. (3) Cross-functional relationships. (4) One-on-ones. (5) Hiring. (6) Meetings. (7) Feedback & performance reviews. (8) Communication & team dynamics. (9) Adapting your approach.featured in #353