Tech Manager Weekly by CTO Craft - Issue #139
Hi all - hope the week has begun well!
We’re currently planning CTO Craft Mentoring Circles in London UK - if you’re interested in learning more about the format, benefits and costs, reply to this email and we’ll schedule a chat.
It's conference season! I'll be attending the McKinsey BLINK. event this week, and YLD's Innovate next week, so if you're going to be at either, drop me a line, and we'll grab a coffee. If you have any suggestions for technology and leadership events, let me know!
As always, if you find something you think should be in the next TMW, drop me a reply to this email
Andy
Curated by Andy Skipper, founder of CTO Craft and mentor and coach to CTOs, VPs of Engineering and other technology leaders around world
Reads of the Week
Selling Engineering Brand - CTO Craft
I meet many startups in London and the rest of the UK who struggle with hiring engineers. It’s a competitive marketplace for sure, but differentiating yourself from other companies and selling your…
The Right Way to Ship Software
This article is by Jocelyn Goldfein, angel investor and former engineering executive at Facebook and VMware. She’s well known for helping engineering teams scale their operations through periods of hyper-growth.
Why “Scrum” Isn’t Making Your Company Very Agile
How Misconceptions About The Product Owner Role Harm Your Organization, And What To Do About It
Bye Bye Time & Materials
The way IT is done is changing. The days of huge, long-term projects and contracts with fixed tariffs are over. A trend toward smaller projects and less work based on fixed hourly tariffs is accelerating.
Culture & People
Why This Engineering Leader Thinks You Shouldn’t Aim for Zero Regrettable Attrition
As Greenhouse’s CTO, Mike Boufford built an engineering team that grew from one to 60 in its first five years — with zero regrettable attrition. When he first shared this statistic with other engineering leaders, they were blown away.
Heroes and Juniors: Increasing Engineering Team Velocity
Ten years ago recruiting engineers was all about ninjas, rockstars and 10xers, and while many people made fun of those terms and the people who used them, almost no one questioned the underlying concept that engineers who can do the work of full teams were desirable hires.
Bereavement at Work: How to Help an Employee When Tragedy Occurs
Sam walked up, teary-eyed and with a look of distress across his face. My mind flashed to every possibility. I knew it wasn’t good… but I had no idea what it could be. Would you know what to say if that happened to one of your team members?
Leadership & Self-management
The 6 Decision-Making Frameworks That Help Startup Leaders Tackle Tough Calls
When it comes to the choices we make, most of us like to think we’ve made the “best” decision.
Fast/Slow in 3X: Explore/Expand/Extract
It’s been a while since I’ve written on 3X, so here’s the basics. As an idea/product/company grows, value-maximizing behavior changes dramatically. Fast and slow take different meanings depending on location on the curve.
The quest for simple and robust signals in production systems
It is today easier than ever to generate a lot of observability data (metrics, logs, and traces) from your applications and forward it to a central location where you can efficiently query it. However, systems can still get pretty hard to reason about.
Are You Data-driven, Data-informed or Data-inspired?
Have you noticed recently an increase in the usage of the terms ‘data-driven’, ‘data-informed’, and ‘data-inspired’ around your office? It might seem like your co-workers are just jumping on the buzzword bandwagon and throwing words around.
Agile, Engineering & Product
Programmer’s discipline
My whole career I have gotten along well with engineers, because engineers are very, very disciplined. When engineers start to whine about a process you’re trying to implement, you want to really dig into what’s bothering them, because they hate senseless bureaucracy and stupid process.
Google Is 2 Billion Lines of Code—And It's All in One Place
How big is Google? We can answer that question in terms of revenue or stock price or customers or, well, metaphysical influence. But that's not all. Google is, among other things, a vast empire of computer software. We can answer in terms of code.
16 Stand-up Anti-Patterns Threatening Your Transition to Scrum
The daily stand-up is the ceremony with the highest anti-pattern density among all scrum ceremonies. Learn more about the stand-up anti-patterns that threaten to derail your agile transition. Typically, a good scrum team needs about five to ten minutes for a stand-up.
Product Manager vs. Product Owner
As you may know, the product owner originated from Scrum, where the role is responsible for “maximising the value of the product create.” [1] This sounds like a text-book product management responsibility to me.
Fast Software, the Best Software
I love fast software. That is, software speedy both in function and interface. Software with minimal to no lag between wanting to activate or manipulate something and the thing happening. Lightness. Software that’s speedy usually means it’s focused.
What Else?
AirPods Are a Tragedy
Apple claims that AirPods are building a “wireless future.” Many people think they're a symbol of disposable wealth. The truth is bleaker.
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