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February 20 · Issue #132 · 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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Leadership Hygiene: Free time One of the first things I explore with some of my clients is how much free time they have in their schedule. First-time leaders are used to working through a lot of tasks. Not having a specific “task” with a concrete outcome feels unproductive. I know a lot of people, including my past self, feel some sense of guilt with lots of free time. It might sound like, “I should be in meetings,” or “I should be seen to be doing something.” I often describe having enough free time as leadership hygiene. You need to have enough free time to lead well. Of course, *too much* free time might also be an issue, but I find that is rarely an issue. Leaders need free time to navigate the flood of information and to prioritise (decide what not to do, or do later). Leaders need free time to identify key decisions to be made, how to make each decision and to make progress on each. Leaders need free time to find ways to break “big problems” into clearer, smaller, manageable problems and to involve the right people to solve them well. Without enough free time, ineffective leaders fall into a constant, reactive trap and can’t have the best impact they can have. Your challenge this week is to reflect on last week and if you had enough free time. If you feel you didn’t have enough free time, reserve at least 30-60mins more this week. Use this time to see if you’re working on the most important things. Enjoy this week’s newsletter and be sure to pass it on to a friend or colleague.
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You need free time to think to be an effective leader
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How’s That Reorg Going? Conway’s Law states architecture derives from organization structure. It’s critical to get it right! Orgspace helps you collaborate with your team to drive more effective reorgs.
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The good, the bad and the tech strategy
Presentation: 62 slides Technical Director at the FT, Anna Shipman (@annashipman), recently gave a talk about what makes good and bad strategy and specifically looks at tech strategy. There’s currently no video of the talk but the slides have some good content 👏. |
Get and Pass the Engineering Leadership Interview with Kyle Cooper Leadership Recruiter at Meta
Podcast: 18mins (Transcript available) This week I read a conversation about an engineering leader struggling to get to interviews for a new engineering leadership role. This recent interview between Manager’s Club and Meta Leadership Recruiter, Kyle Cooper, felt timely and you might also benefit if you’re looking for a new leadership role.
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CIOs share what gets them excited, and what keeps them up at night
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Places running out for the next workshops on Mar 16/17. Click the banner to register now
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Making the web better. With blocks!
Reading time: 5mins I was excited to read about this new project from Joel Spolsky (@spolsky), who has already had such a big positive impact on our industry with tools like Fogbugz, Trello, Glitch and co-created StackOverflow. His new (early days!) project is about making an open protocol to share blocks across applications. 👏 If this interests you, I also recommend reading this longer article from Leonardo Losoviz (@losoviz) who evaluates the impact on CMS systems like Wordpress. |
Data Patterns on Edge
Reading time: 12mins Handling data well is yet another challenge for leaders in tech given the firehose of data plus ever-changing data privacy laws. Anoop Koloth presents some great patterns you might use if you’re heavily involved with Edge Computing. |
That broken tech/content culture cycle
Reading time: 5mins CEO at Glitch, Anil Dash (@anildash) provides 24 points to see if you’re falling into any of these traps 😢. Highly relevant if you’re building a platform for content, social network, etc. A guide that I hope no one takes as a rulebook… 🧐 |
Invest in your communication skills today. Click the banner to find out more
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Remote changes everything for South African tech talent
Reading time: 4mins I like to share trends in tech around different regions around the world when I get a chance, as I feel a lot of content I come across is very US- or EU- centric. I don’t come across a lot of articles about South Africa (SA) so this one about the reverse brain drain from Philip Joubert (@PhilipJoubert) is super interesting. I’m guessing SA is not the only country experiencing this. |
Code Ownership, Stewardship, or Free-for-all?
Reading time: 8mins I know many organisations struggle with the idea of who can/should contribute to what code in a distributed services world. Ben Northrop (@ben_j_northrop) shares some of the trade-offs and considerations looking at a number of different approaches. |
BBC Hack Week. Innovation at the BBC
Reading time: 4mins Hackathons are fun ways to tap into the creative potential of everyone. Head of Engineering at the BBC, David Buckhurst, shares 6 tips on how to run them well with a fun 6min video to watch at the end.
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A great thread from former CTO/VPE Shopify/Atlassian about scaling tech companies 👇
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Another common question I’m answering working with scaling tech companies is…
Q. What’s the worst leadership advice you’ve heard?
A. By far the worst is “Hire great people and get out of their way”.
Let me explain… 🧵 (1/32) https://t.co/5X9U9uLCre
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Emily has shared yet another fantastic project of hers to help you think about team organisation 🎊.
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If you enjoyed this newsletter, please send me feedback and share it with others! |
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Patrick Kua, Postfach 58 04 40, 10314, Berlin, Germany
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