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🐓 SLI vs KPI, Delivering Bad News, Brilliant Jerks, Sys Design Interviews, Example Mapping, Storytelling, Clear Thinking: TMW #408

Plus news about upcoming Circles groups for 2025...
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Thanks to Aikido for sponsoring this issue of Tech Manager Weekly - a no-nonsense security platform that shows you what matters and how to fix it– from code to CI to cloud. Discount for TMW readers, see below!

Hello there, welcome to the week!

We're really powering up our ever-popular Mentoring Circle programme, with two new groups starting in the last month. Plans are already in place for new Circles starting in January and February, so if you'd like to get involved, now is the time to join the waiting list. Here's what some of the members say about the Circles experience:

If you'd like to learn more and join the list, leave us your details here, and we'll schedule a chat with you.

https://ctocraft.typeform.com/circles

That's it - have a great week, see you next Monday!

Andy @ CTO Craft

CTO Craft Events

CTO Craft Con: London 2025
CTO Craft Con will bring together over 500 Chief Technology Officers and other senior technology leaders from the most exciting start-ups, scale-ups, unicorns, and big tech companies to elevate their engineering culture in London, March 2025.
CTO Craft Con London 2025
CTO Craft Bytes: Investing in AI - Opportunities and Pitfalls for Leaders
Over the course of the evening, we will delve into strategic investment opportunities across industries, discuss risk management strategies to navigate potential pitfalls, and share insights on future-proofing your AI investments in a rapidly evolving landscape.
CTO Craft
CTO Craft Mixer: Boston 2024
Join our community of CTOs and senior tech leaders for an informal meet-up in the Boston area.
CTO Craft

Psssst - we have lots of local Mixer events coming up, including ones in Boston, Goteborg, Manchester and Bristol in November.. Would you like to run one in your city? Drop us a line

Reads of the Week

SLI vs KPI
Is Service Level Indicator (SLI) the same as Key Performance Indicator (KPI)?
Alex Ewerlöf NotesAlex Ewerlöf
RDEL #69: What are top social drivers of performance in engineering teams?
A look at four drivers that can indicate performance on engineering teams.
Research-Driven Engineering LeadershipLizzie Matusov

From our Sponsors

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A huge thanks to all our sponsors and partners, who make Tech Manager Weekly and the CTO Craft community possible:

Aikido, AWS, Albany Partners, Code Climate, Coherence, Damilah, DoIT, Google Cloud, Jellyfish, Plandek, Skiller Whale, Softwire, Sema, Uplevel, Vention, YLD

If you're interested in sponsoring TMW or any of our events, drop us a line at partners@ctocraft.com.

Leadership, Strategy & Business

How to Deliver Bad News Without Becoming the Scapegoat
Leaders often shoot the messenger, especially when the news is unwelcome. Here’s how to build a speak-up culture – and coach employees to deliver hard truths without becoming outcasts
Demystifying Culture with Gustavo RazzettiGustavo Razzetti
A Practical Guide to Executive Presence: Earning Respect
One of the best ways to build executive presence is for other executives to obviously care about what you have to say. This time, we’re going to dive into the behaviors that earn respect from other executives – the traits that help make them allies, and that prevent them from resenting you or taking you for granted
Stay SaaSy
Leading 1 team vs 3 teams vs 5+ teams
The more teams you lead, the more strategic you need to become!
Engineering LeadershipGregor Ojstersek
How to Demonstrate Leadership in Cross-Functional Dev Teams
Software development leaders can demonstrate effective leadership in such teams by creating a shared vision, facilitating communication, and providing support.
DZoneSandeep Kashyap

Culture, People & Teams

The Brilliant Jerk vs. Team Performance - Problem #3
Why The Team Always Wins
Fish Food for ThoughtMike Fisher
The Software Engineer’s Career - Beyond Senior
The mythical post-senior stage of an engineering career and how to prepare for it
Pawel DolegaPawel Dolega đŸ‘ŠđŸŸ
Stop Asking Engineers to Design Instagram
My most successful system design interview wasn’t about designing the next big thing — it was about what I’d already built
The Tech CollectiveSĂ©verin Bruhat
What is an AI Engineer? - Gradient Flow
The growth of generative AI is driving demand for AI Engineers across industries as organizations race to leverage this transformative technology. While this role isn’t entirely new, its scope and responsibilities are evolving rapidly with advancements like Large Language Models (LLMs) and other generative AI tools. To understand what this position means today from theContinue reading “What is an AI Engineer?”
Gradient FlowBen Lorica

Technology, Operations & Delivery

Example Mapping: Your Secret Weapon for Effective Acceptance Criteria
Example mapping is a collaborative technique for a team to take a User Story (or PBI) and have a deeper conversation to clarify their understanding of it. The conversation generates the Acceptance Criteria. (Acceptance Criteria is the generic idea - Example Mapping is the approach I generally recommend.) We need an example. Let’s pretend that we’re building
Agile Pain Relief Consulting | Scrum and Agile Training and ResourcesMark Levison
Old school architectures making a return, part 2: Backend rendered webapps
Separating backend and frontend is an evolutionary dead-end, or at least frequently, a complication.
The Principal EngineerWille Faler
Does website speed contribute to customers booking holidays online?
In a world where customers demand seamless digital experiences, website performance remains an unsung hero until it falters.
loveholidays techIgor Naumov
My Product Management Toolkit (64): Buy vs Build
Tim Cook on Apple’s approach to deciding when to build: “We believe that we need to own and control the primary technologies behind the products we make, and participate only in markets

As I learn ...

Stress, Wellbeing & Growth

The subtle science of storytelling at work - Work Life by Atlassian
Four ways storytelling at work can build bonds, motivate your team, and spark change.
Work Life by AtlassianMike De Socio
Clear Thinking: Your Secret Weapon Against Leadership Stress – Scott Cochrane
Scott Cochrane
There Are Only Three Mindsets: Which Are You? — midwesternish
In 2015 I stumbled across this illustration by the artist Joey Roth, and I instantly adopted it as a governing life philosophy. While it may seem reductionistic or brash, it’s a helpful tool for categorizing mindsets and behaviors. It’s a spectrum that we can jump between at any given time, and no s
midwesternishThere Are Only Three Mindsets: Which Are You?
Stress can disrupt memory and lead to needless anxiety — here’s how
In mice, stress altered the way that the brain formed memories, resulting in an unnecessary fear response.
NatureSmriti Mallapaty

That’s it!

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Have an amazing week!

Andy

Published by:

Andy Skipper