Tech Manager Weekly by CTO Craft - Issue #158
Hello again!
You might have seen our CTO Craft Bytes event planned for this coming Friday on AWS Cost Optimisation - there are still free tickets available, so sign up and come along if you'd like to build some knowledge around this subject. We'll be joined by Rob De Feo, AWS Startup Advocate, and Jon Topper of the Scale Factory, an AWS consultancy in London. Almost 100 tickets are gone already - it's going to be fantastic, with an open Q&A session at the end.
Keep your eyes open for more of these events - we'll be running them regularly.
As always, drop us a line, or head to the CTO Craft Mentoring Circles page if you're interested in joining one of the upcoming Circles in the UK/Europe or in North America. We'll be running in more regions soon.
Until next time - stay safe and healthy!
Andy @ CTO Craft
Reads of the Week
Increase Resilience with a Leadership Retrospective
In increasingly turbulent times, one of the most important skills any leader can have is the ability to remain resilient, to bounce back from adversity. Fortunately, it’s a skill that can be practiced and improved.
Six tips to bolster remote leadership and promote trust
A problem voiced by many is a genuine struggle to find time to do work. As we began the enforced remote working, I noticed my calendar suddenly looked like a Windows 95 fragmented hard drive making my operations slower and the stress on the system higher.
Culture & People
3 leaders on crafting a remote L&D program
As the pandemic forces millions of workers to hunker down for an indefinite period of time, workplaces have become remote by necessity. This means work-related activities, including learning and development, have also gone remote.
How to Do Layoffs Right: the step-by-step approach, even if you’re doing them remotely
Throughout the country and around the world, an unfortunate side effect of quarantine is hitting companies hard: major drops in revenue are forcing the difficult decision of layoffs and furloughs.
A Hiring Managers Guide to Enforced Remote Onboarding
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Note Taking During One on Ones
I’ve been experimenting with various note taking strategies when having my regular 30 minutes one on ones (1:1s) with my team. After a few tries I think I’ve found one that fits the way I operate. Of course this is not meant to be used as is, since note taking is quite personal.
Leadership & Self-management
Difference Between Vision and Mission Statements: 25 Examples
Definition of vision and mission: A vision statement focuses on tomorrow and what an organization wants to ultimately become. A mission statement focuses on today and what an organization does to achieve it. Both are vital in directing goals. Mission, vision, values.
3 Dev Leaders open up about remote software development
But as a leader (former VP of Engineering & Ops, now COO), I’ve been spending a lot of time thinking about how I should be helping my team right now. The truth is, I go to bed every night and wake up every morning thinking about it.
The Developer / Manager Feedback Loop Difference
Most software engineers turned managers I’ve met struggle with the same issue in their first weeks on the job and usually end up saying something like: “I couldn’t get any work done this week!”.
Proven Leadership Principles to Elevate Others to Success
Do you remember how it felt when you got that promotion that also included a Manager, Supervisor, or Executive title? Chances are, you felt pride, a sense of accomplishment, and a bit of excitement.
Leading from afar. How to be an effective leader in a remote world.
Large parts of the workforce have had to switch to working from home, quite literally, overnight. Although often seen as a luxury, the harsh truth of remote working is that it can take a while to learn to adapt to no longer being colocated with your colleagues.
Succession Planning for Yourself: How to Find a New Leader When It’s Time to Move On
One of the marks of a great leader is that at some point, they know it’s time to move on. Maybe the team has achieved everything they set out to do, or maybe they’re just in need of a new personal challenge.
Agile, Engineering & Product
Free eBooks from Manning
A great selection of free content from one of the best publishers in the business.
Free eBook from Google: Site Reliability Engineering
Can a system be considered truly reliable if it isn't fundamentally secure? Or can it be considered secure if it's unreliable? Security is crucial to the design and operation of scalable systems in production, as it plays an important part in product quality, performance, and availability.
Dual Track Development is not Duel Track
If you’ve heard the term “dual-track development” before, this article explains where it comes from, and what it means. Here are the key points: Now, if anyone asks you what the article is about, you can answer them without reading the next 1,500 words.
Why I love Trunk Based Development (or pushing straight to master)
Developing using pull requests and feature branches, even when those are short lived, is easier for individual contributors but overall a suboptimal strategy for a team.
Remote Agile Anti-Patterns: Part 4
We started this series on remote agile with looking into practices and tools, followed by delving into virtual Liberating Structures, and how to master Zoom. This fourth article now addresses basic remote agile anti-patterns — the pitfalls any distributed team wants to avoid to become successful.
What Else?
Top 100 Fastest Growing & Declining Categories in E-commerce
The E-commerce landscape has dramatically shifted as many states implement stay-at-home orders and “non-essential” businesses temporarily close to prevent the spread of Coronavirus. Not only are consumers shopping online more, but their shopping behaviors have noticeably changed as well.
Best remote work equipment in 2020
If you’re working on a fully distributed team, partially remote team, or even just working from home occasionally, this is a selection of low-cost equipment you can use to get your home office setup to a “professional” level.
That’s it!
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Have an amazing week!
Andy