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April 18 · Issue #88 · 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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Beyond the Binary I was taking part in a podcast this week (I’ll share it when it’s available) and one of the questions was “What’s the most challenging thing for first-time technical leaders?” I think there are many. But one habit that is particular hard for software engineers to break is going “Beyond the Binary”. A lot of software engineers are trained to think in binary. A system is working or not working. A feature is done or not done. A test is green or red. A decision is right or wrong. Monoliths or Microservices. When these engineers transition into a leadership role they apply this mindset and struggle with the uncertainty of leading. There are rarely black or white cases and leaders need to decide what to do with imperfect and changing information. Just like Fred Brooks once wrote, there is still No Silver Bullet, and leaders need to be comfortable with seeking more than two options or looking for the “right” approach. One of the concepts we cover in Shortcut to Tech Leadership is learning to spot strengths. One strength is not absolutely better or worse than another strength. Rather, one strength may be more useful in a certain context. This requires situational awareness of your current (or near-term future) context to understand what strengths may be more useful (or a hindrance). Go beyond the binary by accepting there is “No Silver Bullet.” Identify your options (ideally more than two), look at the trade-offs between them and seek to understand the trade-offs you need.
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It's rare to see true examples of black and white when leading
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39 Challenges of Building Mobile Apps at Scale How are large mobile apps built and what practices do world-class teams use? Written by former Uber engineer and manager Gergely Orosz, the book is free for a limited time. Grab your copy now.
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An ex-Verizon employee explains why it's not worth helping customers
Reading time: 7mins Leaders set the goals of a system and often, unwillingly, set goals that create perverse incentives. Those who defend against perverse incentives is one key difference between good and bad leaders, which is why I’m including this article in the Leadership section. This article highlights the consequences of perverse incentives. It must be changed by the leaders responsible for the system.
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Five Years of Public Speaking
Reading time: 12mins I know a lot of leaders would like to improve their public speaking skills which is why I’m including this article from Thierry de Pauw (@tdpauw) who shares his experiences. The start particularly resonated with me as I know a lot of people assume you have to be an extrovert to be a great public speaker, when I know so many people (especially in tech), who identify more as an introvert (me included 😉)
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The most powerful tool in Mike Talks' facilitation arsenal
Reading time: 5mins The best engineering leaders I’ve worked with all have strong facilitation skills. I loved this article from Mike Talks (@TestSheepNZ) who shares a great strategy I often use in facilitation and useful for all leaders building an empowered team.
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1 seat left for May! New dates for June (ideal for those in the APAC region) (click the banner to find out more)
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ThoughtWorks' Technology Radar Volume 24
I always enjoy reading the ThoughtWorks’ (@thoughtworks) Tech Radar. It’s an opinionated ( YMMV) guide from what ThoughtWorks’ teams are seeing around the world such as the rise of platform teams, monolith (maybe?), changes in preferred long-term data sources and mainstream machine learning. Definitely worth downloading ( no email required) and discussing with your teams.
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Spotify's Car Thing
Not a typical article but the home page for Spotify’s new experiment around creating a simple device, hilariously called “Car Thing.” Apparently free for a limited time for US-customers and probably most useful with those who have a car (both of which do not apply to me!) I like seeing how tech companies experiment and innovate so I’ll be watching this experiment to see how it goes.
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Am I FLoCed?
Reading time: 4mins This page will check whether Google Chrome’s experimental new ad-targeting technology is enabled in your browser. Worth testing (or moving to Firefox if you can 😅)
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Don't make me think! API Concept Spill
Reading time: 8mins If you’re interested in anything to do with system design or architecture, you should follow Uwe Friedrichsen (@ufried). In this article, he shares how to avoid concept spill when designing APIs.
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Software Development Trends 2021
PDF Length: 52 pages I’ve enjoyed the past reports from CodingSans (@codingsans) which they’ve been publishing since 2017. This report summaries ~500+ participants responses with results split across developer and management lines. I liked the adaptation to remote working (2.05% say their company doesn’t allow it 😟). The results don’t surprise me so much, especially around the biggest challenges people face which tend not to change from year to year. Worth reading at least the intro part for the five sections if you’re pressed for time. ( Yes, you have to give an email address)
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Disadvantages of Pull Requests
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Information Relativity
Reading time: 7mins I’d never heard of this term before but I really enjoyed how Cisco software EM John Rauser (@jrause) explained it in this article. This is an important concept for all people working with software to understand.
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A great thread for every engineering leader 👇 Click the link to expand
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It's easy to focus on individual contributor productivity, but it's NOT the way to speed up.
The speed of delivery for software teams is dominated by * the number of loops/returns in the human process, * the waits in the human process, and * the speed of the test suite.
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Patrick Kua, Postfach 58 04 40, 10314, Berlin, Germany
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