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October 3 · Issue #112 · View online
Level Up delivers a curated newsletter for leaders in tech. A project by https://patkua.com. Ideal for busy people such as Tech Leads, Engineering Managers, VPs of Engineering, CTOs and more.
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Getting better at saying no All leaders struggle to find enough time. Effective time management is a keystone habit for great leaders. If you don’t have enough time to reflect, plan and take care of your to-do list, you’ll end up in a negative reinforcing loop of reacting and dealing with emergencies. If you have enough time to reflect, plan and take care of your to-do list, you’ll have much more impact. Some technical leaders I work with are already in the midst of this negative reinforcing loop and we work together to break out of this loop. One habit that helps is getting better at saying no. There are many reasons why some leaders struggle to say no such as not wanting to disappoint someone, feeling like saying yes builds trust, or assume that they will have the time. Here are some tips to help you get better at saying no:
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Have a clear focus - Call it a personal mission or a top priority. If you don’t have a clear focus on where you should be spending your time, it’s hard to evaluate if someone’s request is aligned to that. Here is where OKRs (when done well) can be helpful because they create visibility on top priorities for teams and individuals.
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Block out time in advance - Peer into the calendar of a leader you admire and you’ll probably find they have calendar blockers like “Thinking Time”, “My Time”, “Focus Time” or “Deep Work” time. It’s easier to say no when you literally don’t have time in your calendar. Save that time in advance.
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Identify a “due by” date - Some requests are for work much further into the future. Instead of saying yes (and doing the work immediately), you might be able so say instead, “No, not now but I can in X days or weeks.”
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Redirect the request to someone more appropriate - People pleasers might struggle to say no because they want to appear helpful. You may not have the time to take on someone’s request, but you might know of someone who can and might even do a better job at it. By redirecting the request, you’re still helping the person achieve their outcome even if you’re not doing it.
Your challenge for this week is to reflect on incoming requests and practise saying no. Enjoy this week’s newsletter and be sure to pass it on to a friend or colleague.
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Practise saying no this week
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Join Apium Academy’s Architecture Training Apium Academy offers personalized practical hands-on software architecture workshops and courses. Use level-up-AA to get 25% off a personalized course or any workshop that you see on their website. |
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Dying to Lead: How Reaching the Top Can Kill You Sooner
Reading time: 6 mins This is a sobering study of leaders from General Electric demonstrating increasing levels of stress shorten people’s lifespan. Consider these trade-offs before continuing to climb the proverbial career ladder.
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What is a Staff (or Staff-Plus or Principal) Engineer?
Reading time: 5mins
Mike McQuaid (@MikeMcQuaid) from GitHub shares his his personal experience stepping into a Staff Engineer role. Many see this as the Individual Contributor (IC) alternative to the Management Track.
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Role of Constraints, Time, Economy in Decision making
Reading time: 5mins Mallika Rao offers her experience on how she took a more deliberate approach to decision-making after stepping into a leadership role. She shares with us how she considers constraints, time and economy on any decisions she might make.
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Level up your technical leadership skills with this online guided workshop
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OWASP toasts 20th anniversary with revised Top 10 for 2021
Reading time: 5mins Every person writing web applications should be familiar with the OWASP list. This article from Jessica Haworth (@JesscaHaworth) highlights some of the changes (and 3 new additions) that you can find in the full list here. Study this. Share this and make the web a safer space for all. |
How Backstage Made Spotify's Developers More Effective — And How It Can Help Yours, Too
Reading time: 6mins This article from Spotify’s blog summarises an interview with Director of Engineering, Pia Nilsson (@pia_nilsson) about their Backstage tool and how it’s providing a backbone to support their development teams. I’m hearing more of this tool being used for larger tech teams. |
Kids who grew up with search engines could change STEM education forever
Reading time: 13mins The “save” icon (often an icon of a floppy disk) is meaningless for more and more people. Monica Chin (@mcsquared96) writes about a similar but ever-growing conceptual problem for people who grew up only with search engines and mobile phones 😧 |
Level up your communication skills with this self-paced course
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Teaching by filling in knowledge gaps
Reading time: 8mins You might know of Julia Evans (@b0rk) from her amazing Zines on specific tools and tech. They’re a great example of effective communication and you’ll probably learn something new. In this article, she explains a good process on teaching and learning by filling in knowledge gaps. |
Innovation, Ownership, and Excellence in Engineering
Reading time: 6mins Senior Director of Engineering at Lucid, Jared Yarn, shares a number of practices they use to encourage innovation, ownership and excellence in their tech teams. What are you doing to cultivate these in your own organisation?
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Engineering metrics at every level: An engineering director’s guide
Reading time: 6mins This is a summary article of a LeadDev roundtable discussion on metrics I recently hosted with James McGill for Engineering Directors. You’ll get a sense of some of the topics and trends that emerged from a group of experienced engineering leaders from companies of all shapes and sizes.
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A reminder for all hiring managers to review your job descriptions and remove that degree requirement 👇
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I don’t have a CS degree either and I think being a Frameworks Engineer at Apple, I’m doing just fine too 😊
Keep up the good work whether you have a degree or not and don’t let anyone discourage you! https://t.co/NF5eiRPo1X
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A great example of how the right abstraction offers a lot of productivity. Anyone remember writing dynamic JS before jQuery 😅?
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I reported this before, but now it's a bit clearer: jQuery did indeed peak in usage halfway through 2020, and is only *now* finally in decline.
What amazing impact... peaking at *80%* penetration of the top 100K websites!
We all owe @ a big debt. Write less, do more! https://t.co/Ky0xoaliqO
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Patrick Kua, Postfach 58 04 40, 10314, Berlin, Germany
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