Jan 11, 2021

☕️ Circles, Training, Organisational Slack, Alignment Records, Arctic Foxes: TMW #197 by CTO Craft

By Andy @ CTO Craft • Issue #197 • View online

Hi there, welcome to the week! Hopefully your 2021 has had a smooth re-entry

Last week saw the first Mentoring Circle sessions for 2021 - the groups discussed a load of varied topics including long-term remote/hybrid office setups, manager READMEs and engineering manifestos, team canvases, consistent releases and smaller batch sizes, offshore teams, and a whole lot more. We’re pulling together the next Circle right now - if you’ve had a look at the website and would like to learn more, drop me a reply to this email.

Big news coming next week… We’ll be making announcements here and on Slack, so keep your eyes peeled!

Have a great week

Andy @ CTO Craft

Reads of the Week

From Zero to CTO - Meet Lena Reinhard

The inimitable Lena Reinhard, VP of Engineering at CircleCI talks to CTO Craft about empowering teams, the power of context and plants.

ctocraft.com • Share

I (Don’t) Know Kung Fu

When I hired my first dev team, I ran into the same problem that every other startup CTO faces. Attracting great people without great budgets is tricky for a startup, in part thanks to competition from tech giants (👀 looking at you AppAmaGooFaceSoft).

skillerwhale.medium.com • Share

About our Partners

A huge, huge thanks to our partners for supporting CTO Craft Con 2020 - you’re all amazing!

Amazon Web Services, The Scale Factory, YLD, LinearB, Albany Partners, Skiller Whale, iTechArt Group and PGS Software

🥝 🥝 If you’re interested in seeing our Partnership Opportunities, drop a reply to this email! 🥝 🥝

Culture & People

Why Organizational Slack Is Crucial for Long-Term Resilience

Back in March, when companies went remote overnight, most thought it would last a month, maybe two. People talked about “the great pause,” and were even excited about the flexibility of working virtually. Five months later, there’s no clear end in sight.

academy.nobl.io • Share

The top time management skill for Software Engineers in 2021

Many software engineers are beginning 2021 looking to learn new skills, build faster and better, and level up your career. I submit that time management is the number-one skill to invest in this year, because it’s the skill foundational to all other accomplishment and improvement.

www.getclockwise.com • Share

How to Tell If a Company’s Culture Is Right for You

During the interview process, you had a singular goal: to get an offer. Now that you have one, you must determine whether the job and organization are a good fit for you. Your first port of call: prospective colleagues.

hbr.org • Share

4 Ideas to Help Improve First Time Manager Selection and Success

Great workplace communicators understand growth occurs by focusing on continuous improvement. This resource reveals the secrets you need to boost your success in a management or leadership position.

artpetty.com • Share

What Does Mastery Look Like in Software Engineering?

This is a brief analysis on the the question popped up on the Internet’s Intellectual Dome — Hackernews (news.ycombinator.com) on the mastery of software engineering. Here is the discussion for your reference.

medium.com • Share

Leadership & Self-management

Being Chief Technology Officer: Lessons learned in my first year

Happy New Year! 2020 was a difficult year for most of us, as we fought with COVID-19 and came to terms with the remote way of working. It was a year when we had a lot more time in our hands as all of us were locked in our houses with almost no travel.

shekhargulati.com • Share

From Software Engineer to CTO

Cathy Polinsky, CTO at Stitch Fix, chatted this week with Pear associate, Harris, who leads our talent initiatives. This is a recap! Watch the full talk at pear.vc/speakers. It starts as an obsession. You play with your first coding language, and you’re hooked.

medium.com • Share

Building trust with a new team

Organisational change is inevitable. People come and go. Teams get formed and disbanded. People you manage and the people that manage you change over time.

medium.com • Share

Make High Impact Decisions with Confidence using Alignment Records

Imagine you need to set the future technical direction of a large Engineering organization.

engineering.procore.com • Share

My Top 10 Leadership Insights Of 2020

No matter where you live on this pale blue dot, one thing we all share in common is the sentiment of seeing the start of a new year as a new beginning. As an opportunity to begin anew and set goals that will help us do better over the next 12 months.

www.tanveernaseer.com • Share

Agile, Engineering & Product

The ‘arctic fox’ model of software delivery

Recently, I celebrated my seven year anniversary of originally starting at Xero, and it got me thinking about what we’ve achieved in that time.

medium.com • Share

Accurate Estimations

How long will it take? How much will it cost? What time should we leave? How much do you want? Estimations are information about the unknown. We constantly use this information to make decisions: allocating resources, changing strategies, and choosing partners.

camhashemi.com • Share

Maximizing Developer Effectiveness

Technology is constantly becoming smarter and more powerful. I often observe that as these technologies are introduced an organization’s productivity instead of improving has reduced.

martinfowler.com • Share

What Else?

Productivity Data From 50 Dev Teams

This article summarizes key findings from the report and includes opinions from LinearB CEO Ori Keren about how we can interpret the data. This article summarizes key findings from the report and includes opinions from LinearB CEO Ori Keren about how we can interpret the data.

dzone.com • Share

That’s it!

If you’d like to be considered for the free CTO Craft Community, fill in your details here, and we’ll be in touch!

https://ctocraft.com/community

Please do remember to share this link if you know of anyone who’d like to receive TMW:

http://www.techmanagerweekly.com

Have an amazing week!

Andy