Tech Manager Weekly by CTO Craft - Issue #171
Hey there!
I recorded a podcast episode on Tackling Burnout as a CTO with Peter Bell at CTO Connection, which you can hear here - if you or someone on your team is struggling, especially during this incredibly difficult time, please do reach out. We can help.
We're planning a series of events focused on fintech - if you're interested in joining a panel, drop me a line, and keep an eye on the events page for details and dates!
There are still a couple of places in the next Mentoring Circle, starting w/c August 3rd - drop a reply to this if you'd like to chat about joining
Until next time!
Andy @ CTO Craft
From our Partners
An Introduction to Cloud Databases - from AWS
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Mentoring Circles for CTOs - join a Community of Practice and accelerate your leadership development - from CTO Craft
Learn about how a Mentoring Circle can help you build leadership skills as a technologist; super-charge your leadership skills in a Community of Practice for CTOs and other Technology Leaders
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Watch of the Week
Building Performing Teams: The Multiple Faces of Technical Leadership
Andy says: "An amazing panel featuring Anna Shipman, Pat Kua, Omosola Odetunde and Piergiorgio Niero on the changing state of technology leadership - you don't want to miss this."
Culture & People
Psychological safety, emotional intelligence, and leadership in a time of flux
Two renowned scholars and two McKinsey experts illuminate the leadership imperatives of our time: bringing people together, energizing forward progress, and reimagining normalcy.
Are Feature Teams or Component Teams Right for Your Product?
Whenever you require more than a single development team to progress your product, you have choice: You can organise the teams around features or components.
The Goal Fits the Team
Since I first started writing about OKRs seven years ago, I have had a lot of companies reach out to me for advice. OKRs were originally envisioned to create focus on things that are important but not (yet) urgent. OKRs act as an accelerant on progress toward strategic efforts.
How to hire executives
To build a great company you’ll need to hire great people — it’s one of the top three priorities of the CEO. Executives have outsized influence on your company, and there is a slightly different process to hire them versus most employees.
Job Interviews Don’t Work
Better hiring leads to better work environments, less turnover, and more innovation and productivity. When you understand the limitations and pitfalls of the job interview, you improve your chances of hiring the best possible person for your needs.
Leadership & Self-management
Founder Series – Pivoting Tech Strategy During a Crisis
Andy says: "Watch this brilliant Q&A with CTO in Residence at Impact X and friend of CTO Craft Ez Britton for insight on when and how to change direction."
Even Experts Need Experts
We’re always so surprised when the expert manages to jump to the right config, flip a switch, and set the machine back in order. We assume it’s innate talent, some magic imbued that resides only within them and goes no further.
Josh Waitzkin on Mastering the Fundamentals
Some excerpts from Josh Waitzkin’s The Art of Learning: An Inner Journey to Optimal Performance. The best way to launch into the learning process is by breaking down what you are learning into its fundamental building blocks. Mastering these builds your foundation.
Leading in Difficult Times: Coaching with Compassion
Constantly giving directions or trying to coerce people rarely brings out the best in them. The need to exercise compassionate leadership magnifies in uncertain times like these when people are anyway struggling to find a balance between work, related anxieties and impending uncertainties.
How to Decide Which Tasks to Delegate
Ping! Something needs your attention. Is it an email? A tweet? A text? A reminder on your phone? A calendar invite? Ping! Another one. Ping! There’s that sound again. Or maybe it’s a visual cue, an ever-ascending ticker count on your app icons or inbox.
Agile, Engineering & Product
Questionable Advice: Can Engineering Productivity Be Measured?
For software engineering in particular, I feel that metrics can be gamed, don’t tell the whole story, or in some cases, are completely arbitrary.
Agile Laws & Distributed Teams: From Conway to Goodhart to Parkinson
On many occasions in the recent past, working with distributed agile teams has amplified existing organizational, technical, and cultural challenges in many organizations.
Visio, draw.io, LucidChart, Gliffy, etc - not recommended for software architecture diagrams
"Which diagramming tool should we use?" is a question I'm asked frequently.
Hitting the Target but Missing the Mark
As a developer fresh out of school, the first two service level agreements (SLAs) that I was accountable for were on-time delivery (OTD) and first time right (FTR).
What Else?
Here are Google, Amazon and Facebook’s Secrets to Hiring the Best People
Google, Facebook, Apple, Amazon, Google, Amazon. These top tech companies each receive over a quadrillion resumes per year (source needed). So it’s safe to say they have a good process for choosing the best job candidates. But what is it?
Andy says: "Pinch of salt at the ready, please..."
That’s it!
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Have an amazing week!
Andy