Tech Manager Weekly by CTO Craft - Issue #165

Howdy all!

We have a number of Bytes events coming up through June - you can see the full list here: CTO Craft Events

The first is a panel on Remote Hiring with leaders from hiring-related startups and a work culture consultancy:

📅  CTO Craft Bytes - Successful Remote Hiring - June 5th, 12.30pm BST

Till next week!

Andy @ CTO Craft

Reads of the Week

ThoughtWorks Technology Radar

The Radar is a document that sets out the changes that we think are currently interesting in software development - things in motion that we think you should pay attention to and consider using in your projects.

Stack Overflow Developer Survey 2020

This report is based on a survey of 65,000 software developers from 186 countries around the world.

Culture & People

VP Engineering & VP Product Management: How to create a united front

Jennifer and I were aware that, sometimes in some other companies, engineering and product leaders didn’t get along. As we talked about why this happened, we realized that some of it stemmed from each group having a different source of truth.

Distributed Work’s Five Levels of Autonomy

As I mentioned to Sam on the podcast, “any company that can enable their people to be fully effective in a distributed fashion, can and should do it far beyond after this current crisis has passed.” It’s a moral imperative.

Why Your Technology Team is Not High-Performing

Last year I was part of an amazing group of leaders and change-agents in the DevOps world that came together to write a paper on the paradigm shift of technology teams moving from project-based delivery to a product-based model.

Different types of 1:1 conversations visualised (Twitter thread)

"#1. Ping Pong

Both parties are equally engaged and curious about the other.

Answers are thoughtful, and each participant always turns their answer back into a question for the other."

Leadership & Self-management

From Zero to CTO - Aubrey Stearn

Interim CTO at Oakam Aubrey Stearn tells CTO Craft about her experiences as a new technology leader, the skills she had to develop, what works for her now and where she's headed over the next five years

Time Machines & Leadership: 10 things I wish I knew at the start

After numerous nights fighting and trying to fix the machine, it call came down to one package time-machine:1.1.0. I install the latest update time-machine:1.2.0 and I'm ready to go. I grab the cold metal handles and push myself into the machine. Set the dial back to 2015 and type npm start.

What I learned interviewing tech execs at scaling startups

I wasn’t quite prepared for my experience as the COO of a scaling startup, despite more than a decade in technology and my work as an executive coach and organizational strategist.

The Definition of a Tech Lead

Our industry is infamous for confusing terms. Roles in software development are a good example. Titles like Architect, Tech Lead, Team Lead and Engineering Manager provide endless confusion. In this article, we’ll explore the definition of the Tech Lead role.

Comparison of three strategy alignment frameworks – OKRs, Spotify Rhythm and Art of Action Strategy Briefing

One of the strongest management trends right now in companies striving towards Agile is undoubtedly OKRs, “Objectives and Key Results”.

9 Communication Essentials for Leading Virtually

More than ever, you are leading and managing teams of employees who are dispersed virtually throughout the country, hemisphere, or globe (aka GDT).  If you are suddenly thrust into this role, it is essential to replace the image of managing remote employees with one of engaging virtual (GDT) teams.

Agile, Engineering & Product

Managers — Look at Your Engineers’ PRs

While managing my last team, I focused on the basic unit of work for an engineer — the pull request. My goal was to improve the quality of my feedback by referencing the engineer’s work directly and deriving concrete action items.

Building a Platform Team — Laying the Foundations

Every piece of software begins with a single line of code and grows from there. Walmart.com was no exception to this. We launched a slew of features over the last couple of years and our sales grew at a phenomenal rate.

How to Increase Software Developer Productivity

Is your organisation: Wanting to get more out of your Software Developers? Wanting to increase RoI? Spending too much money fixing bugs? Development team not releasing business value fast enough? Maybe your a software developer and you want to lift your game to the next level? If any of these point

What Else?

The 3 Hour Workday: An Operating System for Knowledge Workers

The modern workplace is sick. Chaos should not be the natural state at work. Anxiety isn’t a prerequisite for progress. Sitting in meetings all day isn’t required for success. These are all perversions of work- side effects of broken models and follow-the-lemming-off-the-cliff worst practices.

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.typeform.com/to/XXRNqV

Would you be open to supporting Tech Manager Weekly by becoming a paid subscriber, for only £10 per month? We’d appreciate it massively, and you’d be the first to receive exclusive content and benefits. Click here

Please do remember to share this link if you know of anyone who’d like to receive TMW:

http://www.techmanagerweekly.com

Have an amazing week!

Andy