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May 22 · Issue #145 · 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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All decisions look good without feedback I was at a developer conference this week, presenting an opening keynote on Architectural Fitness Functions and running my Tech Lead Masterclass. I noticed a couple of times individuals were talking about simply using the latest tool and technology if they felt like it. I can empathise with them, about where this comes from, and a statement I’m sure other developers get assurance from. However, what is good for one individual is not always good for a team or always good for an organisation. What is often missing is a long or missing feedback loop. Let’s take a concrete example. During my consulting days, I saw an extreme example of this in an enterprise. They had an “innovation” team who got to research and play with the latest technologies. They would prototype a technology, leave a skeleton application and then leave it to a product team who had to bring it to production, as well as evolve, maintain and support it. If you were on that innovation team, you can imagine how fun that might have been. If you were in the product team that inherited the prototype, you can also imagine how that might feel. I supported several of those product teams, and the general feeling was frustration. Frustration that the code produced by the innovation team was scrappy, full of “bad practice” (e.g. copy-paste, autogenerated, had bad naming, extremely coupled concerns, difficult to test and don’t even get me started on the complaints that the poor operations and support team had with the applications that made their way into production so quickly (i.e. nightmare to operate and support). The two separate teams are not necessarily bad. What is not good is that there was only a single flow of information. The innovation team never heard of the longer-term consequences of what they had built and how they built this. They had no ability to learn what was working and not working for other teams and the organisation and therefore no ability to learn and improve. Similarly, when individuals simply throw in a new library, framework, or new programming language, they don’t see longer-term consequences like increased cognitive load, difficulty to hire/learn skills or even if it’s easier to support and how well it does in production. I’m not saying that teams shouldn’t innovate and try new tools. This is essential in our industry, but if individuals are going to try something new, they should look at the wider impact of decisions. Leaders can encourage this by shortening feedback loops or introducing a missing feedback loop. Think of Amazon’s “you build it, you run it"-philosophy. Your challenge for this week is to look for very long feedback loops or to notice potentially missing feedback loops. What can you do to shorten the long feedback loops, or what feedback loop can you put in place. Enjoy this week’s newsletter, and please pass it on to a friend or colleague who might benefit.
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All decisions look good without feedback
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6 ways staff engineers help reach clarity
Reading time: 13mins I really liked this article from Alex Ewerlöf, Senior Staff Engineer at Vovlo cars as it’s a good example of strong leadership skills for roles who aren’t on the management track. In this, he offers 6 good ways (more than) staff engineers can have a positive influence across a tech organisation.
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10 Fantastic Tips on Being a More Positive Leader
Reading time: 6mins Although negativity has a place for leaders, I don’t know of many people who want to work with an incessantly negative leader. The folks over at 6Q offer some tips on being a more positive leader.
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How Should CEOs Answer the Question, “What Keeps You Up at Night?”
Reading time: 9mins
Dave Kellogg (@Kellblog) explains why he thinks the question, “What keeps you up at night?” is a trick question for CEOs. For all technical leaders, this is a good insight into the challenges but also expectations of CEOs - roles higher-level technical leaders like CTOs/VPs Engineering will interact with.
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Level up your engineering manager skills with this online cohort-based course
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OpenFeature - a standard for feature flagging
Reading time: 5mins If you use or are thinking about feature flags, you’re asking if you should use a library or framework. In this article, Pete Hodgson (@ph1) explains why we might need an industry open standard for feature flags 😅.
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Artifice and Intelligence
Reading time: 13mins You might wonder why I’m including this article from Emily Tucker, Executive Director of the Center on Privacy & Technology at Georgetown Law (@GeorgetownCPT), in the tech category. It’s because naming is a key part of tech… and we are so bad at this as an industry (looking at you web3 bros 😬). This is a really articulate article about why AI implies something much greater than tech really is. 👏
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Introducing Envoy Gateway
Reading time: 5mins
Matt Klein (@mattklein123) announces Envoy Gateway, a new member of the Envoy Proxy family aimed at significantly decreasing the barrier to entry when using Envoy for API Gateway.
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Communication skills separate adequate leaders from great ones. Take this self guided online course to level up yours today.
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How to Create Psychological Safety on Engineering Teams
Reading time: 8mins Psychological safety is the number one factor for the success of highly effective teams at work, based on research by Dr. Amy Edmondson. Seema Thapar shares 9 points on how to foster this in in engineering teams.
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Facilitating an inclusive, remote retrospective
Reading time: 11mins I’m including this article from Sumeet Moghe (@sumeet_moghe) not because he mentions me 😅, but because he offers some very practical advice about running an inclusive retrospective in a remote environment. Many of these points also translate well into general remote meeting facilitation ideas 🥳
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10 Progressive Organizational Structures Developed By Real Companies
Reading time: 8mins
Joost Minnaar (@joost_minnaar) from the Corporate Rebels shares 6 different organisational structures that are very different from what you might think is the norm. Definitely great food for thought.
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In software architecture, the *last* responsible moment to make a decision is often also the *first* one. Everything before that is just wild guesses.
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Patrick Kua, Postfach 58 04 40, 10314, Berlin, Germany
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