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July 31 · Issue #155 · 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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Pressure One of the most challenging parts to being a leader is responding to pressure. There are many different forms of pressure such as:
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Business pressure - How well is the business doing? How is cash in the bank? Is the business struggling? Or expanding so rapidly with pressure to deliver at the cost of research/investments, etc?
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Interpersonal pressure - Perhaps you are working with a new person (e.g the Product-Engineering dynamic), or there is a situation with a team member that adds more friction to conversations and interactions than you think there should be.
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Team pressure - Does your team have expectations that you are going to take care of certain organisational issues? How realistic or wide are these expectations from what you can achieve?
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Personal pressure - We all want to do a good job, but sometimes we can set high bars that push us much further.
Given that there are so many different pressure dimensions, each with differing amounts and moving at different times, the challenge for leaders is to recognise pressure and find outlets to relieve this. Most leaders I know engage in activities that are good distractions such as running, swimming, yoga or meditation. A few tend to take up more extreme variants such as taking part in ultra marathons or iron(wo)men competitions, etc. What I find fascinating is that a lot of these events typically involve some physical exertion (good for blood circulation and endorphins), have a repeated schedule (low effort when an activity is part of a routine/habit) and it’s a very extremely different context that refocuses the brain away from the topics you’ll face at work. Of course, there are also the less healthy or more dangerous outlets which some leaders respond to with pressure which I can’t recommend. I’m sure you can imagine a few… 🤔 You can’t know which pressure and how much you’ll face in the future, but it’s important to have established your (healthier) responses and routines when the pressure increases. Your challenge for this week is to reflect on your default outlets for pressure. Do you have any? Are they sustainable/low-effort to join? What different (and maybe healthier) responses could you try? Talk to some colleagues and find out how they handle pressure and maybe you’ll be inspired to try something new too 🎉. Enjoy this week’s newsletter, and please pass it on to a friend or colleague who might benefit.
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What helps you cope with pressure?
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The open source Product OS, built on the modern data stack PostHog’s suite of product and data tools 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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An in-depth guide to everything you should do in your first three months as a first-time manager of managers
Reading time: 21mins Engineering leadership coach, Lena Reinhard (@lrnrd) offers a detailed guide aimed at first-time manager of managers. Her guide offers a week by week play on what to focus on over 12 weeks 👏.
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As a Leader, You Own Your Communications Bubble
Jarie Bolander (@thedailymba) warns us about the bubble we create around us as leaders, but also seven tips to improve your situation if you find yourself building too many “walls.”
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From Visibility to Representation – Rethinking DEI
Reading time: 15mins I’m including this article by Cate Huston (@catehstn) in the leadership section because if you’re a leader, you’re going to shape team/org culture in some way. Cate warns us of the signs of performative DEI (Diversity, Equity, Inclusion) and five areas you should focus on.
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Level up your technical leadership skills with this remote cohort-based workshop
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Software Visualization — Challenge, Accepted at Spotify
Reading time: 8mins Engineers at Spotify, Renato Kalman and Johan Wallin, share the importance of using visualisations to communicate between different tech teams and share how they approach this in their teams.
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Event Sourcing: Why Kafka is not suitable as an event store
Reading time: 7mins Kafka is a nice solution to stream events, but it lacks some fundamental features to make it useful as an Event Store for Event Sourcing. Anton Stöckl (@TonyBologni) goes into the details why in this article.
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Programming languages endorsed for server-side use at Meta
Reading time: 6mins Engineering Manager at Meta, Eric Garcia, shares their internal programming language guidance to help their teams make better tech choices. Interestingly, Rust has now been added to the list.
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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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Reimagining how we think about career development
Reading time: 7mins Experienced engineering leader, Amy Chantasirivisal (@AmyChanta) challenges the traditional growth ladder and offers a taster as to what an alternative might be.
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How To Stay On Track Without Staying Online: 4 Keys to Successful Remote Collaboration
Reading time: 7mins
Tom Kowal (@tk_kowal) looks at the challenges of remote and being distributed, and shares 4 key approaches he uses to improve collaboration in this context.
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Remote, Hybrid, or In-Person?
Reading time: 6mins I really enjoyed reading this article by Fred Wilson (@avc) which provides a balanced perspective of the trade-offs (and perhaps different personal/organisational preferences) between the spectrum of remote/non-remote working modes.
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What decisions did you make this week? 🤔
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If a big enough decision doesn’t appear to have a trade off, then you’re just not aware of the cost
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Not just managers! Lots of developers should understand this too! 👇
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I wished management had a good understanding how costly it is to build something wrong in comparison to not building anything.
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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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