🥝 Creative Developers, Ownership, Evaluating Leaders, Unhealthy Environments, Software End of Life, Macro Architectures: TMW #373
What's the best April Fool prank you've seen?
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Thanks to YLD for sponsoring this issue of Tech Manager Weekly - a software engineering and design consultancy, helping your team succeed by fostering a progressive culture of learning.
Hi there, it's Easter Monday! Welcome to the week
No April Fool's joke here, but if you've fallen foul or have tricked someone today, we'd love to hear about it!
That's it - on with the links...
Andy @ CTO Craft
Can data explain the creativity of developers? | CTO Craft
Written by Christina Forney, VP Product at Uplevel As someone who’s been an engineer, managed engineering teams, guided them as a product manager, and advocated for them as VP of Product for several dev tools, I can confidently say that the most innovative and impactful developers are a lot like artists. Why does this matter? […]
Uplevel
CTO Craft Events
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CTO Craft Bytes: Exploring the Future of Platform Development: A Glimpse into 2030 with GenAI
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Rachel Thomas
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Rachel Thomas
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Reads of the Week
It’s Not About The Great Idea
Process over Projects
Mike Fisher
Creating a Culture of Ownership: Breaking Free from Hierarchy - Blog
The buzzword ‘ownership’ has been circulating in education and business circles for the past decade. Apparently, we want more of it, but what does it…
From our Sponsors
[From YLD] Unlocking GenAI potential: The role of semantics and syntax in GenAI applications
Sérgio Ramos discusses the relationship between semantics and syntax in leveraging LLMs, whether through RAG, caching, evals, or guard-railing. Learn how these elements enhance LLM applications, combining old and new techniques for optimal performance.
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Leadership, Strategy & Business
The IKEA Effect and How I Screwed Up!
Learn about the IKEA Effect’s role in organizational change from my firsthand account of its misapplication. I also share lessons on communication, co-creation, and the power of early involvement for successful change initiatives.
Jeremy Brown
How To Represent Decisions You Disagree With
How to stand in front of your team representing a decision you didn’t agree with? How to keep your integrity and support the team going through the change? What approaches are useful and what’s better avoided in turbulent times?
Péter Szász
Advice That I Can’t Get Out of My Head
If you want to spend years in high growth environments, and reap the benefits that that growth entails, it’s essential to make sure that you are learning at least as quickly as your role is growing if you want to keep your job. You can get a coach, find mentors, take classes, read, listen to podcasts, or pursue any number of other different ways to learn – the right learning strategy is the one that you’ll actually follow through on. The path that I’ve invested in the most was reading, particularly reading as much as I could about business and scaling high growth tech companies.
Stay SaaSy
How do we evaluate people for their technical leadership?
In February some years ago, my then-manager surprised me with a damning performance review. He had just returned from parental leave, having departed in September. Before he left, he had proposed a…
View all posts by Chelsea
Culture, People & Teams
Building engineering
How I’m thinking about building an engineering culture.
Ben Werdmuller
Performance management: the rising tide
Why are we doing this anyway?
James Stanier
Creating Discomfort Zones
So many modern leaders have gotten things all wrong. They have turned the team’s “well-being” into their primary objective, confusing comfort for success. However, the purpose of all modern perks i…
10 Ways We Create Unhealthy Team Environments - Ron Edmondson
No one intentionally sets out to create unhealthy team environments, but there are things which injure the health of a team.
Technology, Operations & Delivery
Software End of Life Part 1: The Journey to Closing Down a Legacy Product
Managing a legacy software product closure, navigating challenges and strategies to retire outdated software systems.
Mark Aberdour
How to Get Tech-Debt on the Roadmap
Only doing product-led work can lead to an unmaintainable system with lots of downtime. Unfortunately, getting time to work on the things that would prevent that can be challenging. Engineering roadmaps balance many competing demands, and the people making the decisions aren’t always the closest to the code. There is a need to learn how to speak their language.
Ben Hartshorne
Clinical troubleshooting: diagnose any production issue, fast.
Over the years, I’ve developed a reliable method for harnessing the diagnostic power of groups. My approach is derived from a different field in which groups of experts with various levels of…
Dan Slimmon
Why you need a macro architecture and what did I put in it?
What is a macro architecture and what is important?
Stress, Wellbeing & Growth
The Art of Story Design: Understanding Story Structures
Once upon a time, there was a little girl called Melinda. Melinda was a very shy girl and if there was one thing she thoroughly disliked it was telling stories to other people. Now Melinda’s school though had this activity every Monday morning, where all the kids would sit
Melinda Seckington
Ten Principles to Keep Our Anger in Check | The Leading Blog: A Leadership Blog
Leadership Now is a leading source for leadership development and analysis. We believe that anyone can make a difference by leading from where they are.
How Do I Get Results Without Feeling Burned Out?
A driven leader must learn how to prioritize his workload to achieve more balance.
Pomodoro Technique: The Secret to Laser-Sharp Focus
The Pomodoro Technique might be just what you need. This simple time management method can help you boost your productivity and achieve laser-sharp focus.
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Have an amazing week!
Andy