🥞 State of Tech Hiring, DevEx Surveys, Incidents, Leading Through Change, Microaggressions, Open Source: TMW #297 by CTO Craft
Hello there, welcome to the week!
A massive thank you to everyone who's reached out about the Lightning Talk slots at our Unconference on day 3 of CTO Craft Con in November - we're working through everything at the moment and will be in touch ASAP to lay out some plans. There are some amazing ideas there. If you have something you'd like to talk about at the Unconference, don't hesitate to drop us a line.
CTO Craft Con and the community at large are only possible with the help and support of our amazing sponsors and partners. We still have some sponsorship slots for the conference available, so if you or your company would like to get involved, and get your story in front of thousands of CTOs and budget holders, drop me a reply here 😊
On with the links! See you on Thursday
Andy @ CTO Craft
CTO Craft Con Winter 2022 - A Conference for CTOs, by CTOs
Grab a front-row seat to the most in-depth discussions of what it means to be a senior leader in a technology organisation, how to build a solid foundation with other C-level leaders, how to ensure alignment between engineering and other functions and how to keep you and your team’s skills sharp. November 14 - 16 2022
CTO Craft Bytes
Office Hours with Meri Williams and Hywel Carver, Fri 14 Oct at 12:30 BST
Hywel and Meri will be joining us to answer questions from the community, inviting them live on stage to discuss how they'd tackle your thorny issues.
If you attended the Hard vs Soft Skills chat with Hywel and Meri a couple of weeks ago and would like to pose them your challenges on screen, you won't want to miss this!
Reads of the Week
Navigating an Uncertain Hiring Market: 2022 State of Tech Salaries Report
Hired's annual data report explores trends in salaries, locations, the impact of remote work, and jobseeker survey results.
From our Sponsors
Velocity Next: Maximizing the Business Impact of Engineering [In-person Event] - from Code Climate
Attend Code Climate's in-person NYC event on Nov 10th. This interactive event for CTOs is filled with delicious food, top shelf drinks, and expert perspectives, as top leaders will discuss strategies for turning engineering insights into business impact.
Data Mesh on Trial: the case for and against - from 101 Ways
Would you like to learn how data mesh can benefit your organisation? Join our ‘trial’ where expert witnesses provide evidence on the pros and cons of a decentralised domain ownership of data. As the ‘jury’, you decide the verdict.
About our Sponsors
Thanks as always to the amazing sponsors helping CTO Craft bring you resources like this newsletter, our events, community and more:
AWS, Albany Partners, Code Climate, Google Cloud, iTechArt, Jellyfish, LinearB, Lohika, 101 Ways, O’Reilly, PGS Software, Pentalog, Skiller Whale, Steamhaus, Swarmia, YLD
Culture & People
A Deep Dive into Developer Experience Surveys
I designed this survey using the SPACE framework as guidance, along with my experience working with over 100 leaders on team performance. Questions are grouped into categories that are relevant for most engineering teams.
How to facilitate a team roles and responsibilities workshop
Monica ViggarsA team that understands and agrees on what one another does is likely to be more high functioning than those who don’t.
The Five Orders of scaling agile teams
I have been doing work recently to help contextualize the decision-making framework for scaling and de-scaling networks of teams. This reflects my current understanding and beliefs. Any constructive feedback to either validate or challenge my perspective would be very welcome.
OOPS! Learning from the incident you didn't have
"An unintended but unavoidable consequence of associating safety with things that go wrong is a creeping lack of attention to things that go right." - Erik Hollnagel, A Tale of Two Safeties.
Leadership & Self-management
When Leading Through Change, Inspect What You Expect (With Curiosity and Compassion)
When you’re leading change, it takes more than a strong plan, implemented well to succeed. It’s also vital to inspect that the actions and behaviors you THINK matter most are having the IMPACT you expect.
How to Avoid Decision-Making Pitfalls
Don't fall into these common decision-making pitfalls! Making decisions can be a tricky business.
How to Intervene When You Witness a Microaggression
Microaggressions — those brief, commonplace behaviors or comments that often unintentionally exclude or demean the target — have become a frequently discussed topic in management scholarship and practice.
Why You Should Separate Salary And Performance
We all believe a great school report deserves a tenner, right? Well, I disagree. Here's why I believe that. And how that translates to separating salary from performance. Good performance brings its own rewards, and especially in the workplace.
Agile, Engineering & Product
Open Source Work Is Work
Back in June, I presented the current state of Spotify’s open source activities to our developers as part of our internal Spotify Engineering Conference, aka SpEC.
RASCI Charts
This article explains the RASCI Chart practically. After reading it, you will understand the basics of this powerful project management tool. The RASCI Chart is a method used to describe the roles and responsibilities of individuals within a project or other line work.
Fools! Stop Mysticizing System Dynamics
Occasionally, my Twitter feed sends to me a writer arguing via queueing theory, stock and flow diagrams, equations, or even simulations to advance their ideas of how software teams should operate. These are the tools of system dynamics. I understand the appeal. We’re engineers.
How to run an effective retrospective
Team retrospective doesn't need fancy formats or activities. It needs to help the team improve. Here's how I run it as an engineering manager Team retrospective is one of the best tools in my toolkit as a manager, but it's often misused.
That’s it!
If you’d like to be considered for the free CTO Craft Community, fill in your details here, and we’ll be in touch!
https://ctocraft.com/community
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Have an amazing week!
Andy