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February 7 · Issue #78 · 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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What’s stopping you from doing that? Reflecting on my weekly coaching/mentoring sessions, this seems to be my question of the week. I know from experience, when you have a relentless to-do list, a barrage of emails or slack messages and little time, you fall into a habit of not prioritising your critical activities. The activities that get crowded out often include self-care activities such as taking regular breaks or stepping away from the desk, or essential activities such clarifying your topmost priorities, breaking down large goals into smaller milestones, or preparing for a critical discussion a couple of weeks from now. We impose invisible constraints on ourselves all the time. We place our own constraints when we say to ourselves, “I don’t have time,” or “No one asked me for that yet.” People-pleasers suffer the most, by prioritising everyone else’s requests over their own — leading to typical consequences such as overtime and burn-out. This week, consider if you’re making progress on your top three priorities. If not, ask yourself, “What’s stopping you from doing that?” You might find, it’s yourself. If you find Level Up useful, please forward to someone you think would benefit. Stay safe and healthy 🙏
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Skills Matter Accelerated Software eXchange Forum
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Book Launch of "Staff Engineer" by Will Larson
Reading time: 5mins If you’ve been following Will Larson (@lethain) since his book on engineering management, you might have heard about his new project interviewing “Staff+” roles. The result is a book that explores the IC/Technical Leader track or those technical leaders who don’t manage people. Congratulations on the launch 🎉
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Choosing Your Next Boss - Save Yourself
Reading time: 6mins People working in tech often have more choice about their next role or job in comparison to other industries. Leah Farmer (@leahlialeigha) shares a great article about making the most of this privilege by considering more than simply the job title and salary.
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Teach yourself engineering management
Reading time: 16mins You might consider this post from Adam C. Conrad as a set of book recommendations, but he adds a lot of valuable context about which book might offer the most value depending on what stage you’re at, drawing on US-centric terms like freshmen and sophomore, etc to group them.
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7 behaviours to avoid in a software architecture role
Reading time: 5mins
Daniel Watts (@dan_badge) offers advice to technical leaders responsible for software architecture. I’ve seen these 7 behaviours and have fallen for a couple of them myself in the past (learned the hard way) so use this list to avoid these traps.
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Join the next public workshop on Feb 24, Mar 17, Apr 21 & May 19 (click the banner)
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ThoughtWorks' Looking Glass
35 pages PDF You may be familiar with the ThoughtWorks Tech Radar, with a focus on techniques, tools, platforms, languages and frameworks. This latest report from ThoughtWorks (disclaimer, I’m an alum) looks at tech trends but with a broader perspective. Although targeted at executives, all technical leaders should take interest in trends, their impact on the work we do, and also the lives we have.
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Writing good code by understanding cognitive load
Reading time: 17mins I feel we’ve been talking a lot about team cognitive load, thanks to Team Topologies but I like how David Whitney (@david_whitney) also approaches the idea of good code by considering individual cognitive load, and common approaches on how to reduce it. 👏
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Porting Firefox to Apple Silicon
Reading time: 16mins This article from Mozilla engineer Gian-Carlo Pascutto (@gcpascutto) offers great insight into all the details that go on “under the hood” to make something like Firefox continue working as its foundations constantly shift. If your product relies on low-level hardware, the article shows which areas to focus on in preparing for a migration to Apple’s M1 chips.
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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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Getting Over Your Fear of Giving Tough Feedback
Reading time: 8mins Giving tough feedback can be really hard. You may have avoided doing it because you were scared. These simple steps from Said Ketchman (@introvertedeng) should help you get more comfortable.
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Basal Cost of software
Reading time: 5mins Most people only focus on the initial cost of building software, or the time taken for developers to build the system. A lot of people underestimate the carrying cost, which is why I like this concept from Eduardo Ferro Aldama (@eferro), as a way of trying to consider the overall lifetime cost of a feature.
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How your organization's writing reveals its problems - and potential fixes - without bullshit
Reading time: 7mins Leaders require great communication skills. Company norms sometimes nudge habits in the wrong direction. This is a great post from Josh Bernoff (@jbernoff) to improve how you and your team communicate. Show good examples and nudge company norms in a better direction.
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Developers spend most of their time figuring the system out
Reading time: 4mins A lot of developers complain about not writing enough code. Little do they realise a majority of their time isn’t about writing, but about reading and building strong mental models about the system they are about to change. This article from Tudor Girba (@girba) explains why.
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Here's a secret for all coaches, consultants, scrum masters looking at the process: There are always 3 processes in place: The official one (typically written up somewhere), the perceived one (people believe this is how things work here), and the actual one.
Focus on the latter!
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The elephant in the room didn’t come through the door. It was born there. Most big problems are created, not discovered.
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A nice twitter thread on remote working. Click on the tweet to read it all 👇
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Some thoughts on remote working...
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Patrick Kua, Postfach 58 04 40, 10314, Berlin, Germany
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