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June 19 · Issue #149 · 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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What is expected of me? A lot of people in technical leadership roles have the same question, “What is expected of me?” It’s natural to want assurance, but the flip side of being a leader is that you’re expected to exercise judgment and direct your attention and energy to the most impact areas. The wrong behaviour, often demonstrated by newer, and less effective leaders, focus on the lack of clarity, complaining and waiting for someone to give them direction. The bad news is… it often never comes until it’s too late. Although it’s fair to want to have some direction, the reality is that leaders, by definition are there to lead. In this context, leading means crafting more certainty from uncertainty. To craft more certainty, observe the current state, identify constraints and gather information before making a decision about what to work on. This applies to the team. It also applies to you in your role as a leader. Don’t wait around for others to create clarity for you. Start with what you can do. Write a draft role description. Build a stack-ranked priority list. But most importantly, use these artefacts as the start of conversations to build shared expectations with others around you. Learn about what people agree with and where you see differences. Enjoy this week’s newsletter, and please pass it on to a friend or colleague who might benefit.
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"What is expected of me?" is often the wrong question for leaders to start with
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SavvyCal — Scheduling Software Everyone Will Love You shouldn’t have to feel awkward about sharing your scheduling link! Give your schedulers a calendar, not a list of time slots.
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Adapting to Endure Toolkit 2022 from Sequoia Capital
4 slidedecks (between 24-52 slides) Given the uncertainty in the current market (hiring freezes, layoffs, etc), I’m sharing this not so typical link released by Sequoia Capital (@sequoia) which they generously shared with their founders. Reading these will give all leaders a better understanding of the business landscape and context as well as very practical advice on four areas: adapting to endure, leading in uncertain times, extending your runway and forecasting and scenario planning.
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Software Engineering - The Soft Parts
Reading time: 48mins This long read comes from Senior Staff Engineering Manager, Addy Osmani (@addyosmani), who reflects on 10 years working on Google Chrome. There’s a good table of contents as an overview of the advice and one worth bookmarking.
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The Problem With Promoting High Performers
Reading time: 5mins (Medium paywall)
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New dates for 2022 announced and go on sale from Jul
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Cloudflare mitigates 26 million request per second DDoS attack
Reading time: 5mins
Omer Yoachimik (@OmerYoahimik) discloses how the folks over at Cloudflare automatically detected and mitigated a 26 million request per second DDoS attack — the largest HTTPS DDoS attack on record.🫣. I found it interesting the source was hijacked VMs and servers.
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Firefox Rolls Out Total Cookie Protection By Default To All Users
Reading time: 5mins One of the main reasons I love using Firefox (@firefox) as my default browser (you should too!) is they prioritise user privacy. I love their container features (thanks FB) for separate sessions and now they have a similar idea for cookies. Read more about this fantastic feature and how it works.
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How Apple could kill CAPTCHAs with Private Access Tokens
Reading time: 7mins
Andrew Orr (@andrewornot) provides a detailed breakdown from one of the recent WWDC2022 that could provide a user benefit for all. What I like about this article is that it explains how Private Access Tokens (PATs) work and that they are trying to make it a web standard too! 🎉
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Learn what it means to manage systems, not people with this self-paced course. Click the banner to find out more
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The truth about bias in performance feedback
Report: 26 page PDF (form submission required)
Textio (@textio) has found strong patterns of inequity in job performance feedback from over 25,000 people. This new data reveals major demographic biases by gender, race, and age. Such example points include:
- Compared to men, women are 7x more likely to report being described as “opinionated,” and 11x more likely to report being described as “abrasive.”
- Black and Latinx people receive 2.4x more feedback that’s not actionable compared to white and Asian people.
- White men under 40 get the word “brilliant” in performance feedback 8.7x more than women over 40.
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The Fallacy of Splitting Time
Reading time: 6mins
Ben Northrop (@ben_j_northrop) explores why managers and team members often fall into the trap of context switching. I find this is particularly true for those who haven’t studied the origins of agile/lean (limit work in progress people!). One other big reason I think he’s missed out on is that people are generally bad at saying no ( bonus article for that)
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Business Value, Soccer Canteens, Engineer Retention, and the Bricklayer Fallacy
Reading time: 12mins This was a fun read by Ian Miell (@ianmiell) which starts off with a great story connecting good leadership behaviours and how organisations think about work (as a set of cookie-cutter work, or the complex dynamic adaptive system software that it is).
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Recruiter: So why do you want to work at our office in Mexico?
Dev: I want to be a señor developer
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A nice heuristic to think about internal processes… 👇
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PSA: if you're interviewing at a mid-sized startup with aspirations, ask them how long it takes someone to get an s3 bucket with a certain set of permissions. Their answer will tell you a lot about which set of problems you'll be letting yourself in for should you work there.
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Patrick Kua, Postfach 58 04 40, 10314, Berlin, Germany
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