I have a lot of personal respect for Pete Gillard-Moss (@petegillardmoss) who has been leading remote teams for the last 7 years. His advice here is super timely. I also agree very much with his last sentence, which is worth reading the article alone.

I’ve included this in the leadership section because I think the tips offered here are super important for you as a leader to use. These tips should be useful for you and your team.

A crisis is a perfect time to watch for great acts of leadership. Being based in Berlin, I watched this video live. I wanted to share it because it exemplifies many of the principles of what I wrote about last last week in Coping with a Crisis. 👏

Here is a wonderful story from Lauren Tan (@sugarpirate_) giving another great example of the Engineer/Manager pendulum. This is a podcast from the lovely folks at the ChangeLog (@Changelog) complete with transcript for those that prefer reading full of many gems.

This is a fascinating tool from Uber Engineering (@UberEng) looking to automate some of the tech debt created from feature flagging (and not cleaning up afterwards). There’s a short (6min) video from one of the article authors, Murali Krishna Ramanathan, Piranha in action.

Although I’ve never worked in the software gaming industry, I’m well aware of the tough situations many find themselves in. This article outlines some of the common challenges - assumptions changing, tight deadlines and difficult-to-trace bugs make this accomplishment an impressive feat. Thanks to Tom James (@iiotenki) for translating Tetsuya Iida’s story.

The URL has been a key part of Internet based infrastructure. The first discussion was on the 11th Jan 1982! 🤯 If you want to know the backstory of how it came to be, read this article from Zach Bloom (@zackbloom). I found it fascinating to take a quick history lesson relevant to all of us today.

Not specifically “tech” but more “tech culture”, this fun article by Violet Blue from Eater SF (@eatersf) highlights how, for me, the Bay Area is such a different part of the world. By the way, the Totwaffles thread by Ada Powers (@mspowahs) is worth reading just for the entertaining writing style!

Even the Masters of Chaos Engineering are struggling to adapt in parts to some of the changing world circumstances. Don’t feel like you’re alone here!

Many people are losing their jobs, and even the tech sector is not protected from this. What’s different about it is that a lot of it is happening remotely. As a leader, be even more empathic during these times. A process like this face-to-face is hard, let alone when done it remotely. This article from Biz Carson (@bizcarson) highlights what that feels like.

Major IT failures still happen all the time 😿. This story sounds like another example of a company too focused on “Doing Agile” instead of “Being Agile”. Another classic case of the artificial build-vs-buy argument.

Reading time: 2mins

A quick note that Scott Berkun (@berkun) has worked with his publisher to make digital version of his book, “The Year Without Pants” free for now. It’s a great book about transitioning to remote work based on the author’s experiences from Wordpress.com.