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July 17 · Issue #153 · 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 happens if someone doesn’t want a growth opportunity? Great managers should find ways to grow their people, but there will be many situations where a person maybe doesn’t want to grow. How do you handle this? Firstly, it’s useful to imagine that growth is not linear. An intense period of learning and growth often requires stability and recharging. A series of tough challenges that force growth, directly one after the other often results in burnout. These situations, unfortunately, happen in hypergrowth companies all the time. Secondly, it’s useful to find out what is most important to people *right now* and in the near future. As an example, new people to the industry (e.g. boot camp/university graduates, interns) are often full of curiosity, and motivation and are very open to learning anything and everything. Compare this to a seasoned person (e.g. 10+ years of experience) who will be more opinionated in areas they want to grow in. A more seasoned person may want to avoid certain growth challenges because it repeats past experiences or they are not interested in growing in those skills. For example, asking a distributed backend systems engineer to pick up iOS skills may not be a growth area they want to focus on long-term. Finally, it’s important to remember that work reflects only one aspect of a person. I tend to reflect on a person’s full ability to learn, which will be affected by other aspects of someone’s life. For example, someone may have an extreme lifestyle change (e.g. the first newborn, or going through a divorce/separation) where learning isn’t their top priority. World events such as the pandemic and war also affect people in different ways, especially in their capacity to take on new experiences. Great leaders build trust with their team so they can have open and candid conversations about a person’s needs. Sometimes people will be happy being a solid team member at work without needing a growth challenge for several months and that’s okay. Enjoy this week’s newsletter, and please pass it on to a friend or colleague who might benefit.
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What happens if someone doesn't want a growth opportunity?
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The open source platform for your product data PostHog’s product data platform has everything product teams need. Analytics, Heatmaps, Recordings, Funnels, Feature Flags, Experimentation and more — all seamlessly integrated. You can self-host, so user data never leaves your infrastructure.
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Engineering Manager vs Scrum Master
Reading time: 8mins I get a lot of questions in organisations that use Scrum about the differences between the Engineering Manager (EM) and Scrum Master (SM) roles. In this new article, I compare the two and explore some common challenges.
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Transitioning into the Staff+ Engineer Role - from Player to Coach
Reading time: 13mins I’m a big fan of coaching skills and the mindset shift from Maker to Multiplier so this article by Ventures CTO Nicky Wrightson (@nickywrightson) offers some great advice that resonated with me.
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Technical Writing for Developers
Reading time: 24mins Although this article by Eluda (@eludadev) is aimed at developers, it offers some great insights on better writing. Considering leaders spend a significant time writing (emails, slack messages, memos, documents), you will definitely pick something up. If not, at least it’s a good article to share with your team.
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Sign up for the next workshops with dates now live
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Using GPT-3 to explain how code works
Reading time: 10mins
Simon Willison (@simonw) points out an amazing use of GPT-3 for coders and gives some concrete examples that are just 🤯. It makes me wonder how quickly IDEs will integrate this to boost DX 🚀
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Functional programming is finally going mainstream
Reading time: 12mins With origins that stretch back to the late 1950s, functional programming might seem dated—but it can be a boon for growing teams working with large codebases. Klint Finley (@klintron) explains how.
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Things You Should Know About Databases
Reading time: Senior Staff Engineer at 1Password, Mahdi Yusuf (@myusuf3), offers a well-written article that introduces two fundamental concepts about DBs (indices and transactions). The article has some great visuals and clear examples 👏
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Struggling with time? Take this self-guided course to find out different approaches that might work for you
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The Structure and Process Fallacy
Reading time: 3mins
Nick Tune (@ntcoding) challenges a common mindset in which leaders forget the human element and think the “right” structure or “process” will solve it all.
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Read the memo Google’s CEO sent employees about a hiring slowdown
Reading time: 4mins Mitchell Clark and Alex Heath (@alexeheath) from the Verge share a memo from the CEO, announcing Google’s hiring slowdown to staff. An interesting insight into both how the CEO communicated it but also the trend in our industry.
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Revert to Source
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A good reminder about biases built into AI 👇
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My jaw actually dropped.
@ showed 3 examples of black doctors/nurses where Google’s Vision AI rated the image as 70%+ “Street Fashion” despite them literally wearing scrubs
When he painted the nurses white, it switched to “Formal wear”
Truly unbelievable
https://t.co/hgM3gA9uvO
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Movable Type (an ancient form of blogging software) 😅🤣
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Patrick Kua, Postfach 58 04 40, 10314, Berlin, Germany
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