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June 26 · Issue #150 · 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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Leading as an introvert You might be surprised but a lot of people in technology are introverts and this means a lot of technology leaders are also introverts (which includes myself!) Like many characteristics of a good leader, start with self-awareness. If you identify as an introvert, then there are surprising benefits to being an introvert that can lend strengths as a leader (tl;dr being a good listener, more thoughtfully processing information, and more observant). Lean into these strengths and find opportunities to apply them well. To succeed as an introverted leader, you will need to be more diligent about managing your energy. After all, interacting with many people all day will typically drain your “battery”, so make sure you find approaches that allow you to recharge. This short article offers some good tips how. Remember that there are a wide variety of people and this also means there are a wide variety of ways to succeed as a leader. Enjoy this week’s newsletter, and please pass it on to a friend or colleague who might benefit.
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Introverted leaders are just as succcesful, but know they need to manage their energy levels
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SavvyCal — Scheduling Software Everyone Will Love Protect your calendar and save time for deep work. SavvyCal allows for frequency limits, meeting batches, ranked availability, and more to maximize productivity.
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Complainers: 5 Ways to Limit the Garbage People Pour into Your Ears
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Employee Development: How to grow your employees when you can't promote them
Reading time: 17mins The folks over at Lighthouse offer practical things you can do to grow your employees when you can’t promote them.
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Women’s leadership organizations are filling the power gap
Reading time: 11mins You are hopefully aware of the lack of diversity in tech, particularly in senior leadership roles. Your company might have some great actions in place such as policies, training and explicit leadership development programs, but sadly many do not. Where you don’t, consider connecting with one of the external organisations mentioned in this article by Calvin Coffee (@calvin12coffee). Act as a good sponsor and explicitly make connections to provide opportunities where they might not exist. |
New dates for 2022 announced and go on sale from Jul
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Microsoft promises to tighten access to AI it now deems too risky for some devs
Reading time: 3mins
Katyanna Quach (@katyanna_q) reports on a new Microsoft AI standard proposal, called Responsible AI. This is a great move, recognising the abuse AI can use and the current lack of regulations. 👏
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GitHub Copilot is generally available to all developers
Reading time: 5mins GitHub’s CEO, Thomas Dohmke (@ashtom) announces the public launch of the ML-driven pair programming tool that provides strong autocompletion. It’s generally available for all developers for $10 USD/month or $100 USD/year and is free to use for verified students and maintainers of popular open source projects. Bonus: Not sure if it coincidentally timed, or in response to GiHubt, but Amazon Chief Evangelist, Jeff Barr (@jeffbarr) also announced the preview of a similar tool called CodeWhisperer. Either way, developer productivity wins 🚀👏
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Stack Overflow Developer Survey 2022
Reading time: 48mins The folks over at Stack Overflow released the results of their survey from May 2022 of more than 70K+ developers. If you’re not wanting to read through the entire report, at least read the overview or some highlights in this blog article by Ryan Donovan and David Gibson. |
Struggling with time? Take this self-guided course to find out different approaches that might work for you
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How to Optimize for Fast Flow Using Alignment and Autonomy: the Journey of a Large Bureaucracy
Reading time: 14mins Principal Engineer Truls Jørgensen (@trulsjor) shares a case study from the Norwegian Labor and Welfare Administration (NAV) about how they achieved alignment in over 100 autonomous teams. |
The case for turning off your Zoom camera
Reading time: 7mins Given many organisations are either hybrid or still fully remote, this article from BBC Worklife (@BBC_Worklife) is a good reminder about why and when you might encourage people to keep their Zoom cameras on and when you might encourage them to turn them off. |
Limiting Work In Progress as a Manager
Reading time: 4mins Director of Engineering, Erik Wiffin (@erikwiffin) offers a short story and his approach to making sure he can be as effective as a manager, which requires you to limit your work in progress. Think of this as good time management and prioritisation skills and I consider this a foundation skill (hence why it’s on offer at the Tech Lead Academy) |
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Dunning Kruger effect in action 😅
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I used to be like "What do managers even do with their time? Emails and docs aren't hard."
What a fool I was. Context switching, ensuring team and partners are aligned, and critical decision making are just a few of the aspects of being a technical leader.
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So true! Read this thread for more 👇
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One of biggest learnings for me was the importance of architecture to get great outcomes, both in DevOps and in any engineered system.
I was trying to think of a great example of modularity, and started marveling at the USB interface.
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If you enjoyed this newsletter, 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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