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January 17 · Issue #75 · 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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Set boundaries by saying no If you’re like most other leaders, you’ve had a busy start to the year, calibrating where you and your team would like to be by the end of the year and what you’re hoping to accomplish in your first quarter. Developers are well-known for poor estimates, but they are not alone. It’s a human condition where we optimistically plan and neglect to plan for surprises. And there are always some! 😅 Even with contingency plans in place, you might find looking back at a past quarter, that your team worked on very different things than what you planned at the start. This might be good if you delivered value and what you wanted to deliver, but can be bad if you’ve been distracted from your overall goals. Practice setting boundaries with others by saying no, so you and your team won’t be distracted from your number one priority for the year. Don’t have a number one priority? Go back and establish a list of priorities for your team, and ensure your peers, partners and others you might work with have good visibility and agree on these priorities. A lot of conflict in organisations can be avoided by first aligning goals. But where there are conflicting goals, you will need to set boundaries on how much you can help by practising how to say no. Find an opportunity this week to practise. If you find Level Up useful, please forward to someone you think would benefit. Stay safe and healthy 🙏
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Learn to set boundaries by saying no
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Senior Engineering Manager @ Signal AI [London] Signal AI is looking to expand its capabilities by adding a key engineering manager to focus on hiring, building and sustaining a high performing, high output, world-class team. Learn more here.
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Finding the Gemba in Software Development
Reading time: 4mins I really enjoyed studying lean intensively in the early 2000s. Lean manufacturing has this idea of “Go to the Gemba” (go to the place of work) which, in a factory setting, is the factory floor. Peter Gillard-Moss (@petegillardmoss) has a great post that all leaders should consider what the Gemba means for them and why it’s key for leaders to continue to “Go to the Gemba”
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Three habits to thrive in your first engineering leadership role
Reading time: 8mins If you are in a first time engineering leadership role, I share three habits you can build to thrive in your new role.
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Software Engineering Leadership Communities
Reading time: 3mins It’s easy to feel lonely as a software engineering leader. A community offers support and is a great way to establish and grow your own support network. In this post, I link to a number of free, inclusive engineering leadership communities you might consider joining.
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Decide What is Necessary
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Join the next workshop on Jan 28, Feb 24 or Mar 17 (click the banner for more info)
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Software development in 2021 and beyond
Reading time: 12mins
Amanda Silver (@amandaksilver), Corporate VP of Product (Developer Division) at Microsoft, considers how things shifted in 2020 for developers and what it implies for 2021. Several of these trends (including increased low-code tooling, and human-centered developer tools) definitely resonate with my own observations.
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AI Models from Google and Microsoft Exceed Human Performance on Language Understanding Benchmark
Reading time: 3mins
Anthony Alford (@anthony_alford) reports that research teams from Google and Microsoft have recently developed natural language processing (NLP) AI models which have scored higher than the human baseline score on the SuperGLUE benchmark. 😯
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20 years of Drupal: Founder Dries Buytaert on API first, the end of breaking compatibility, and JavaScript bloat
Reading time: 9mins I’ve never worked with Drupal but I believe it was a strong open source contender used for commercial content-heavy websites that weren’t a blog. This interview with Tim Anderson (@timanderson) and Drupal’s founder, Dries Buytaers (@Dries) shares some good insights on what he might have done differently over 20 years.
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Celebrating 20 years of Wikipedia
Reading time: 7mins No one can argue about the impact and reach that Wikipedia had and continues to have on the world. I still remember the physical encyclopedia in our school library and Microsoft’s Encarta. This landing page shares facts and stories about Wikipedia’s history and opportunities for you to celebrate their 20th anniversary. Consider donating to keep it independent.
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🌟🌟🌟 Reach thousands of engineering leaders around the world. Maybe you want to share a leadership role you’re looking to fill? Interested in becoming a sponsor? Get in touch for details. 🌟🌟🌟
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Maximizing Developer Effectiveness
Reading time: 14mins A long read but totally worth it. Tim Cochran (@timcochran) answers the question, “What can you focus on to maximise developer effectiveness?” This is part of a series of articles, so watch out for future ones.
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How to Stop Endless Discussions
Reading time: 6mins Leaders need to ensure decisions are made, and I enjoyed this post from Candost Dağdeviren (@candosten) share a tool I’m fond of (spoiler: RFCs) on moving towards decisions 🥳 rather than endless discussions.
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No Meetings, No Deadlines, No Full-Time Employees
Reading time: 11mins You’ll know Gumroad if you’ve bought something from an independent creator, and its founder Sahil Lavingia (@shl) shares his philosophy around shaping its culture which is definitely unique. It’s not going to work for all companies but glad to see it continues to work for Gumroad.
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Reteaming often, or how to build a great product while on a boat
Reading time: 14mins In rapid growing companies, you’ll often see or experience teams rapidly forming, often breaking apart to form new teams and needing to reform Jakob Wolman (@jakobwolman) shares his experience using a fun metaphor ⛵️ on how they managed the reteaming process.
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Some great advice! Words matters
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"If your organisation is forcing you to report on effort metrics, try changing the language around them. “We invested twenty story points this week” is a lot more honest than “we delivered,” because it begs the question about what’s the return on that investment." https://t.co/85vF9yPuyd
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Yes! A valuable leadership lesson I’ve learned… make the right thing easy!
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Write this on a rock:
"The single best predictor of behavior is ease, more than price, or quality, or comfort, or desire, or satisfaction. Overall, the easier something is to do, the more likely people are to do it."
(via @ )
https://t.co/uzb1Ct2Twd
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Patrick Kua, Postfach 58 04 40, 10314, Berlin, Germany
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