Advocating For Emphasis

Nobody cares about quality by Will Larson

In a larger org, where decisions are often made several levels above us and communicated with varying amounts of why, it's easy to start feeling like you're being told about rather than included in decisions. This can lead to feelings of absoluteisms, as Will puts it, "Nobody cares about IMPORTANT_PRIORITY."

As a leader, if you're feeling this way? Your people almost certainly are as well.

The post provides both a warning against these types of absolute-based feelings, as well a framework for "advocating for emphasis".

The Maths Of Large Teams

Why Jeff Bezos’ Two-Pizza Team Rule Still Holds True by Janet Choi

Sorry about the ridiculous full-length photo of Bezos. The rest of the article is killer. And top of mind for me as I've taken over a pair of squads recently who have at least 20 and up to 35 people working in their spaces.

A small business of 50 people has an incredible 1,225 links to manage. 

Squishy Tissue, Part 2

An Introduction to NGINX for Developers by Stefanos Vardalos

Part of the connective tissue of modern distributed systems.

On Writing Well

How to write the perfect sentence by Joe Moran (The Guardian)

I'm amazed at how much we write. We write to persuade, we write to organize our thoughts. Lately I've been trying to read or watch one thing a week about writing well.

Prod Dev Team Mistakes

Product Team Mistakes by Laura Klein

CD

Five Ways to Shorten your Continuous Delivery Cycle by Scott White

Event Sourcing Warning

Don't Let the Internet Dupe You, Event Sourcing is Hard by Chris Kiehl

Responsibilities and Rights

A Manager's Bill Of Responsibilities (And Rights) by Charity Majors

Another One

DEPLOYS: IT’S NOT ACTUALLY ABOUT FRIDAYS by Charity Majors

Oh go on, read Charity's previous post as well. This one especially resonates with me, as I've prioritized in 2019 talking about and spreading the wisdom of Accelerate around my office.

Thoughts on Preparing For A Career In Tech

Don’t Teach Your Kid to Code. Teach Them to Communicate by Greg Satell

My hot take would be, why not do both? Nonetheless I appreciate the callout that while there's a focus on learning tech skills, it's actually the big bucket of skills often referred to as 'soft' that determine a lot our success.

Knowing The Other Side Of The Argument

The Work Required to Have an Opinion from Farnam Street

Interesting History

The origins of the job interview from Workopolis

Decision Ownership Ideas

Engineering decision model: messy opinions, neat ownership by Rudy Rigot

I've been thinking a lot about decision making processes lately. Balancing inclusion with the need to be productive (and making decisions being a first-class input to productivity) is one of the hardest challenges we face as engineering leaders; I believe it requires both complex models (many layers of divergence/convergence and continuously redistributing opportunity) and nose-to-the-ground listening to hit that balance.

Hiring From The Candidates Perspective

How do I understand the results of my job search from Ask Hacker News

Posts like this give great insight into what candidates are facing; knowing what the environment is like out there gives us an opportunity to design our own hiring pipelines differently.

Wisdom From Poetry

Mending Wall by Robert Frost

Really? Really. The breathing cultural metaphor for how we can design our systems for scalability by placing walls that, rather than silo-fying, are the devices that make good neighbors.

Fiction Worth Pondering

Affordances by Cory Doctorow

Lessons

5 Things I’ve Learned in 20 Years of Programming by Erik Dietrich