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March 21 · Issue #84 · 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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Standard of work At least once during the Shortcut to Tech Leadership workshops, a participant asks a variation of, “How do I convince my Product Manager to refactor/write tests/design?” My standard response is, “Why is this even a discussion?” Picture yourself in a restaurant (in a country where it’s currently possible 😅) and you order a main dish. You’re paying a premium for the dish, exchanging money for the expertise and time of professionals in the kitchen. This ranges from washing and cutting of ingredients to cooking and arranging the dish. It also includes continuous cleaning of the kitchen, so you can enjoy your meal minus food poisoning. When developers offer, what I consider, essential activities, to Product Managers, I imagine this restaurant analogy. It’s like chefs offering customers detailed choices about what behind-the-scene activities they would like to pay for. I can’t think I’ve ever seen washing, cutting, cooking or cleaning on a menu. Remember that companies exchange money (e.g. salary, fees) for time and expertise, or “you know best” how to build software. Developers might share what their standard of work includes (i.e. a shared definition of done, during estimates) but these activities should not be negotiable. What you should negotiate on is what you build (i.e. features) with that standard of work. Enjoy this week’s edition. If you find Level Up useful, please forward to someone you think would benefit. Stay safe and healthy 🙏
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What is your standard of work?
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VP of Engineering at Fonoa (Remote) Fonoa is solving tax for global businesses with an API first product cross borders. We look for a leader who can shape our engineering function at scale. Please check the link to apply.
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Finance for non-finance directors: In 3 parts
Reading time: 20mins (Part 1), 13 mins (Part 2), 13 mins (Part 3)
Anna Shipman (@annashipman) from the Financial Times has published an excellent 3-part guide to finance for non-finance directors. I know many technical leaders and managers would benefit from this as most don’t undergo any training. Worth the long read and notes. This link points at Part 1, but you she has also published the final parts, Part 2 and Part 3.
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My Year at Home...Work...Home?
Reading time: 5mins
Leah Farmer (@leahlialeigha) shares some lessons learned from starting a new leadership role just before a year of lockdown. Many of these lessons resonated with me.
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19 years, 7 months, 3 days an IBMer
Reading time: 4mins I’ve included this article from Nick O'Leary (@knolleary) as he’s a great role model for a person in tech with long tenure. He also demonstrates the impactful work one can have as a technical leader, without being a manager, having reached the title of Senior Technical Staff Member last year. Read a little bit about what he accomplished in his time at IBM.
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CUPID – the back story
Reading time: 10mins
Dan North (@tastapod) presents a compelling article about the issues with the well-known design heuristic, SOLID. He additional alludes to his alternative (not yet published) with a cute name called CUPID.
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Stanford's 2021 AI Index Report
222 Page PDF Regardless of your technical background, AI affects all of us and technical leaders need to understand how it might shape the systems we build or the opportunities it creates. This very large report (jump to Page 4 for the summary) from Stanford (@indexingai) offers excellent research into various areas. Tip: Read the summary and jump to the relevant section that interests you. Dont feel guilty for not reading everything - I haven’t 😉
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Laying the foundation of our open source ML platform with a modern CI/CD pipeline and MLflow
Reading time: 7mins Continuing on the theme of AI/ML, I’ve included this detailed article by Theodore Meynard because I think it’s a great example of applying rigorous engineering discipline to an area that is often lagging. If you don’t have CI/CD pipeline around your ML services, read this article to see how others approach this.
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The Modern Java Platform
Reading time: 16mins
James Ward (@_JamesWard) offers an excellent summary of what 20 years of evolution leaves in Java today. Even if you haven’t done any Java programming for 3-4 years, you might be surprised to see how it’s changed over time.
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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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The SPACE of Developer Productivity
29 Page PDF You might know of Nicole Forsgren (@nicolefv) from her fantastic Accelerate book and the DORA metrics. Her new team at Github return to look at metrics in the context of developer productivity, publishing a new framework SPACE (Satisfaction and well-being, Performance, Activity, Communication and collaboration, Efficiency and Flow). This reminds me of a Balanced Scorecard approach for leaders and managers and, I think, essential reading.
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How HashiCorp Works
Reference website HashiCorp has an impressive engineering and product-focused culture. I personally think it’s one of the most modern companies that balance research-intensive work and strong product engineering. HashiCorp have now generously published how they work, sharing individual, manager, team, and company-wide practices. This is a website I’ll be returning to time and time again. Thanks to Armon Dadgar (@armon) and Mitchell Hashimoto (@mitchellh) for generously sharing!
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Nurturing Design in Your Software Engineering Culture
Reading time: 7mins Many organisations swing from one extreme of too-much time on design, to the no-design spectrum. Nick Tune (@ntcoding) offers some practical approaches engineering leaders can use to nurture enough design.
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Some engineers don't care about the problem as long as they get to use interesting tools
Others don't care about the tools they use as long as they get to solve an interesting problem
Both mindsets are great, but a recipe for misery when misaligned with the organization needs
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Patrick Kua, Postfach 58 04 40, 10314, Berlin, Germany
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