I'm excited to tell you about the launch of the Tech Lead Academy's newest course, "Fundamentals of
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June 21 · Issue #45 · View online
Level Up delivers a curated newsletter for leaders in tech. A project by http://patkua.com. Ideal for busy people such as Tech Leads, Engineering Managers, VPs of Engineering, CTOs and more.
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I’m excited to tell you about the launch of the Tech Lead Academy‘s newest course, “ Fundamentals of Systems Thinking”. Building software is inherently a complex adaptive system. We rely on so many moving parts (people and technology) that constantly interact and evolve to create unpredictable and complex behaviour. I stumbled across Systems Thinking early on my career and have drawn on these tools to help leaders and companies adopt agile ways of working, digitally transform and understand how to build high performing teams and tech organisations. Systems Thinking provides a useful basis for thinking about any type of system - be it economic, environmental, health (i.e. COVID-19) or software systems. In the course I share how I’ve used Systems Thinking in the context o building software - something you won’t find in other books. We explore answers to questions like, “Why isn’t the team going faster?” or “How can two people disagree and still be right?” As a subscriber to Level Up and to celebrate the launch of the course, I’m offering you a one-time 25% discount off the course price. Register for the course using this link here (discount automatically applied). This offer will be valid until Jul 15, 2020 in case you need time for approval to training budgets. I hope you enjoy this week’s content. If you find it useful, please forward to someone else and send me feedback. Stay safe and healthy 🙏
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Diversity, Inclusion, and Belonging for All Learning Path (Course)
LinkedIn are making their online training for Diversity and Inclusion open for free apparently until August. This looks like a great course if you want to learn more about diversity and inclusion and what you can do as a leader to build such environments.
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Trapped in a Values Oasis.
Reading time: 5mins Another excellent article from Will Larson (@lethain) naming misalignment of values in an organisation as the Values Oasis. It’s a challenge very leader struggles to balance around strengthening existing values, or the attempt to improve them. The outline articles a nice rule of thumb: Lead through ambiguity, and advocate through disagreement 👍.
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Six Former eBay Employees Charged with Aggressive Cyberstalking Campaign Targeting Natick Couple
Reading time: 6mins Some of you may have come across the eBay scandal linked in this article from Fortune, Vox, Gizmodo and this juicy page from @markhurst. Despite being one of the stranger news about tech, the outcome is a failure of good leadership. The former CEO claims no knowledge about the specifics, but the statements quoted show nothing to discourage the behaviour. As a leader, this is effectively supporting and allowing that behaviour.
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Managing During Coronavirus Time
Reading time: 6mins This is a very personal story of a manager managing a remote team for the first time whilst navigating the unpredictable storm of COVID-19. Thank you Sergio Sola (@ssola) for sharing such personal details as I know other leaders are going through similar challenges. Knowing that you are not the only one experiencing these challenges is a useful support. My condolences for your loss ❤️.
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The Return of the 90s Web
Reading time: 7mins Maybe it’s because I’m starting to feel old, but I read this article by Max Böck (@mxbck) with a sense of nostalgia. He thankfully isn’t talking about the return of the blink tag or flash, but his comments certainly correlate with some of my own observations. This could be as simple as my confirmation bias kicking in, but I’ll be happier when everyone goes back to offering an RSS feed and laughed at the reminder of Webrings! Geocities anyone?
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Microsoft: Rust Is the Industry’s ‘Best Chance’ at Safe Systems Programming – The New Stack
Reading time: 8mins Microsoft has deemed C++ no longer acceptable for writing mission-critical software. The industry sorely needs to move to a performant, memory-safe language for its low-low system work. And the best choice on the market today is Rust, Levick said.
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Eliminate Abandoned Resources
Reading time: 7mins I know from experience 😅 cloud bills can easily grow out of control if not carefully managed. Good organisations share a team’s portion of cloud expenses with some going one step further and adding a fitness function limiting how much a team can use to discourage waste. This gives some good concrete examples of what that looks like in a GCP world. Their website has a couple of other useful articles on this topic and it looks like more to come.
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Surviving the Organisational Side Quest
Reading time: 4mins (Medium paywall) Another great article from Tanya Reilly (@whereistanya), Principal Engineer at SquareSpace about navigating and influencing the organisation outside of your team. It’s an essential set of skills to build if you’re going to be an effective leader.
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Automating safe, hands-off deployments
Reading time: 29mins This online article (also available as a 14-page PDF) written by Principal Engineer Clare Liguori (@clare_liguori) shares juicy details about how Amazon manage their deployments and why it’s a mostly hands-on process 🎉. My tl;dr is you have to be willing to invest in good automation and apply good engineering practices to your CD pipeline (not just your code). This is a very good article if you’re on your CD journey and one to share and discuss in your team.
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Facebook vs. Google: 10 Contrasts for Engineering Careers
Reading time: 9mins I’m super fascinated at understanding and describing how culture differs across tech firms. In this LinkedIn Pulse, veteran tech Michael McNally shares his inside perspective of the contrasts he found working in Google and Facebook in more than 15 years. Lots of interesting food for thought for you to consider, what sort of culture do you want and cultivate in your teams?
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Recruitment in Berlin Survey Results [Recruitment Journeys PDF]
PDF: 17 pages Recruiting agency Caissa ran a developer survey here in Berlin and shared the results in this PDF. As a technology leader you’re probably interested in trends in different tech hubs around the world, so this provides some data (based on 123 people). Even if you’re not interested in trends in Berlin recruiting, the report offers some insight about what a poor/good recruitment processes looks like (with a whiteboard interview seen as the most useless but a technical interview seen as the most useful). Unsurprising to me, strong company culture ranks as the most important reason after salary.
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What I’ve learned from 10 years of remote working
Reading time: 7mins
Grant Fritchey (@GFritchey) shares some practical advice from his decade long stint working remotely at Redgate. Many of you may still be adjusting to remote working so I hope the article either reassures you you’re on the right path, or offers you new ideas.
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In this thread 🧵 @anjuan shares some very powerful experiences many of us never have and never will. Read it to expand your own experiences.
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I've worked in software development for over 20 years, and most of my career has been in management. I want to share something about the reality of working as a Black man fulfilling leadership roles in tech.
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Great technical leaders are not only aware of the changing technology landscape but also keep an eye out for the changing business landscape. This is an excellent thread 🧵 and a fun metaphor describing the state of today’s business landscape. It covers “the streaming archipelago”, the “Alibaba iceberg” and the “Joe Rogan lagoon” protected by the “Spotify atoll” 😂
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A reminder of what leaders encourage/allow and their consequences.
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Related: if your meetings require people to say « fuck », « it’s fucked », « unfuck this » to be listened to, then you’ve created a place where discussions are emotional and irrational.
Now your team equals being aggressive to making a point. https://t.co/pL6N2Rf1QL
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Some very good use of AR 🤯
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Washington DC new metro pass displays the metro map with augmented reality when you look at it with your phone or smart glasses. https://t.co/T1ng3Dtgu7
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Patrick Kua, Postfach 58 04 40, 10314, Berlin, Germany
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